Page 81 of Secret Nights and Northern Lights
“What if we travel the world together? You could come with me on my freelance assignments. You can go freelance, too. You’d have the freedom to write whatever you wanted. Or we could start our own travel blog. There are a lot of possibilities here, but the point is that we’d get to be together and do what we both love.”
My tears have run dry as I’ve slowly gone numb. So when I say, “I’m not going to ride your coattails, Ben,” my voice is hollow and emotionless.
“It wouldn’t be like that!” He buries both hands in his hair, pulling at the ends. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Please leave.”
“Ems, Iloveyou.”
Despite everything that has transpired in the past half hour, I will not allow him to feel the way I felt when he withheld those words from me fourteen years ago.
“And I love you, too. But I’m not sure that’s enough. I trusted you. I opened up to you. I told you how I felt like an impostor, like I was never good enough. And this entire time, you knew we were only on this assignment together because ofyou, and younever told me. Do you know how mortifying that is for me? It’s one thing to feel overlooked in my career and like the work I do is insignificant. It’s another thing entirely to have the person I love exploit that.”
“I swear, I never thought your work was insignificant,” Ben says, voice breaking, “and that’s not what I intended to do.”
“Intentional or not, can’t you see that’s exactly what happened? You’d read all of my fluff pieces and you knew I wasn’t where I wanted to be in my career, so you requested me on this assignment, and it worked for you because I desperatelyneededthis assignment. And then I had to find out the truth fromCalvin, of all people.”
“I didn’t see it that way. I swear, Ems.” There’s a watery sheen in Ben’s green eyes now, and if I weren’t numb, that alone might break me. “I never intended to hurt you.”
“Yet somehow, you always do.”
“Please don’t do this.”
“You need to go,” I say again. “I have an office to pack up.”
Ben stands, glancing over me one last time before respecting my request and disappearing from my cubicle.
When I’m alone, the numbness evaporates, and I give in to sobs that rack my body. I don’t know how much time passes before Jacklyn is back in front of me, pulling me out of my cheap, faux-leather chair as she tells me, “Come on, let’s get you home.”
Chapter 24
The next two weeks are a blur of alternating pain and numbness. When I’m numb I wish to feel anything at all, yet ironically, when the pain sets in and buries me beneath the debilitating weight of heartache, I long to feel numb again. The living room becomes my new habitat—night and day, day and night, on repeat. Unemployed now, it’s not like I have anywhere better to be than this sofa. Jacklyn comes directly home from work each evening and takes up residence with me. We watchFriendsreruns and eat strawberry ice cream straight from the carton (because fuck bowls, nothing matters anymore). She’d offered to quitAround the Globein solidarity, but I’d refused. We can’t both be unemployed if we want to keep our apartment.
Thanks to my father drilling the importance of a savings account into my head from a very young age, I have enough saved to cover my share of the bills for a few months, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take to find another job. Travel journalism is a niche market, so I’m faced with the reality that I’mlikely going to have to give up my dream of traveling and focus on finding any writing job that pays the bills. Yet for the past two weeks, I can’t summon the energy to shower on a regular basis, much less job search.
I’ve become a shell of myself.
Just like fourteen years ago.
If it were just one loss, I think I’d be strong enough to handle it this time around. It’d hurt of course, but I’d get through it. But I don’t know how to cope with the loss of my rekindled relationship with Benandthe loss of my dream careerandthe loss of my financial security all at once. So I don’t. I exist on this sofa, sustained by ice cream, ramen, and an occasional PB and J if it’s a good day.
I’ve made it through all ten seasons ofFriends—at least one thing I’ve accomplished—and am on the series finale when Jacklyn arrives home from work one evening with a little too much exuberance in her step for my liking. I’m on the part where Ross realizes Rachel got off the plane, admittedly not my wisest decision, when Jacklyn picks up the remote and switches the TV off.
“Hey! I was watching that!”
“Noooo,” she drawls, perching on the arm of the sofa. “You were being a dirty little masochist.” She pulls the carton of mostly melted ice cream from where it’s cradled in my arm like a newborn baby and sets it on the coffee table. “Besides I have news. Important news.”
“Ugh, fine. What is it?”
“Calvin’s out.”
“Out where?”
“No. Out, out. OfAround the Globe.” She slides her handacross her neck in a slashing motion. “Finished. Done. Fired. Ousted by the board.”
I rise up on an elbow, suddenly feeling something other than the searing ache in my chest for the first time in weeks, although I can’t quite put a name to what it is. Happiness? Hell no. Vindication? Maybe. Intrigue? Abso-fucking-lutely.
“What do you mean he got fired?” I question. “He’s been there forever.”
