Page 108 of Emmett
Just as he did in the memory that I seem to be reliving, Emmett stands at the stove, carefully watching the pan in front of him while using one hand to dunk slices of bread into a messy egg mixture.
As I approach, I wrap my arms around his middle and rest my head on his shoulder, breathing in the smell of his aftershave and freshly-shampooed hair. “You’re up early,” I say, noting the time on the stove which reads at only a little past seven. “You’re cooking for me again.”
“I’m putting stuff in a pan and hoping it doesn’t kill you,” he corrects me as he drops a fresh slice of bread into the pan.
Chuckling, I move to the refrigerator and reach for a bottle of water. I empty it within a few large gulps and pull open the cabinet to toss the bottle into recycling.
“Emmett,” I say, staring into the garbage bin, “why is your mother’s letter in the trash?”
“Because it’s trash,” he answers. Turning to meet the incredulous look on my face, he tells me, “After I met her, Ichecked my email at least three times a day every day to see if she wrote to me. I emailed her the day I got home because the entire time I was in the— the whole time, I kept thinking that I wanted her to be there. She didn’t write me back. After you went home, I checked over and over and over again, and she saidnothing.” He turns away from me, moving instead to pull a piece of toast from the stove and set it onto the already large stack of golden-brown slices. “I emailed her again last night and it bounced, so…”
“Pretty boy, I am so sorry,” I tell him, and I mean that. My parents beg for me to let them back into my life so that they can get at my assets and resources, but all that Emmett wants from his mother is connection.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I mean, it’s not okay at all, but it’s for the best, right? Now it’s out of my hands.”
“It causes you pain.”
“Yeah,” he shrugs, “it does.”
Moving past me, he pours what’s left of the egg mixture into the garbage bin and directly onto the letter, as if making it unreadable will take away everything inside of it and everything inside of him that aches. I have half the mind to find the woman’s address and show up on her doorstep. I don’t have a clue what I would do when I got there, but I want tofixthis for him. I want her to feel what she’s done to him, just like I spent years wanting my own parents to feel what they’d done to me.
“Come on,” he says, knocking into my hip with his own, “I think I nailed it this time.”
Our meal is quiet this morning, with little conversation between us. He doesn’t want to talk about his mother anymore, and he doesn’t want to address the way that he’sfeeling; which only serves to make me want to talk about it until he opens the door and lets me in. It’s hard not to worry.
“Does your place have a doggie door?” He finally asks. “I never looked.”
A smile crosses my face as I look at him. “There’s no ‘doggie door,’ but Moose has a doorman.”
“Clo goes out a lot.”
“He can manage,” I tell him.
As we work to clean our mess from the kitchen, I pull Emmett into my arms, tucking my face into the crook of his neck.
“I can’t tell you that it ever goesaway, but it does get easier. It just takes time for that.” He squeezes me tightly and presses his lips to my cheek, and I move to cup his face in my hands. “I can stay today.”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head, “I’m fine. You told me you wouldn’t babysit.”
I did say that, and I meant it at the time, but as I look around his house, I can’t help my heart from racing at the thought of leaving him alone. I find myself taking note of small things that I never would have considered to be dangerous in the past; the knife block on the counter, the toolbox that sits above his washing machine, the belts in his closet, the garden hose.
The kitchen and the spring air disappear from around us, replaced instead with cold air that bites at my skin and rough asphalt that digs into my knees. I can feel the weight of Emmett’s limp body against mine, and my lungs find it difficult to fill. My heart slams against the wall of my chest and I feel as though—
“Nash,” Emmett says as his hands move to cup my face. “Let’s watch a movie.”
“Nowwho’s babysitting who?” I tease, forcing a smile onto my face.
“No, you were right,” he tells me with a shake of his head. “There’s a difference.”
I’m not normally one to watch a movie at eight o’clock in the morning – in fact, I’m not normally one to watch a movie at all, but I find myself following Emmett to his couch and dropping down on top of his body with my own.
I lay with my chest against his as we watch a film which makes no sense, and he seems to mock it the entire time that it plays.
“Why does she not drive herself if she hates him so much?” I ask.
“Her car broke down,” he tells me as his fingers comb through my hair.
My brow furrows. “When did that happen?”