Page 28 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

I wished that I had the transcript, but I’d reviewed it a bunch of times so I remembered his words pretty well.

“You said that you didn’t understand what had happened, but you had slid.

Life had come at you too fast because all you did in college was go to class and have a beer, but that your friends had been busy preparing.

Ava had started cornering pathetic strangers in doctors’ waiting rooms to fix you up and you were living in her basement, and you didn’t seem to like any of it. ”

“I have a job now,” he said. “I’m not living in a basement anymore.” He started to carefully drive around pedestrians and boats. “I think I’m making progress.”

“You are. It’s all great, but it wasn’t like I didn’t want to be friends with you because you might have needed a kickstart. I liked you.”

“Because I imitated a chicken? No, because you were desperate. That was what you told me.”

“No, just because I liked you,” I said. “I did, and I would have even if I weren’t desperate, pathetic, abnormal, and sad.”

“Do you still feel that way?” He stopped, waving a crew of men to cross with their boat in front of us, and looked at me.

I thought. “No. I feel pretty good.”

He put out his hand, palm up to show the calluses he’d earned on his oar. I put mine on top of it.

Due to Ava’s incredibly slow driving, we reached the restaurant first. “Everly is writing that they’re on the way, but that Mommy is taking her time and doesn’t believe in speeding like she’s in the Detroit Grand Prix,” Levi said, reading from his phone.

“It’s because of her shoulder,” I said. “It hurts when she drives.”

“Damn, is that still bothering her? I thought the surgery was supposed to fix it.” He frowned. “She didn’t tell me and she was carrying all those chairs for you guys?”

“Everly and I carried them. I think she’s going to be very strong, like her mom. And you,” I added as I thought of him racing down the river.

“You know, I’m pretty bad at it. Most of the guys in my boat have rowed for years, some of them at big college programs.”

“You looked very good to me,” I answered, and at that point, Ava finally showed up. She and her brother got into a minor argument about why she hadn’t said anything about her shoulder still hurting, and it came out that he’d been the one that provided most of her care after the surgery.

“Not that she would let me do much, but at least I was on-site, in her basement,” he explained to me.

“Speaking of your living arrangements,” his sister began, and something in her tone made me look up from the picture that Everly and I were drawing together. She’d asked for a vampire fox, which strained my artistic abilities and was made more difficult by the lack of sharpness of our crayons.

Levi also picked up on something in those words. “Aves, what did you do?” he asked her.

“A little while ago, I put in an application for an apartment for you,” she said. “I knew you were looking and this place is reasonable, although…it’s ugly.” She looked apologetically at me but I didn’t understand why.

He did. “You’re talking about Emerson’s building?”

Now she looked slightly smug. “Yes, and you were approved! So if you want it, it’s yours.”

“Hernán’s old place? Is that what she means? Across the hall from me?” I asked in rapid succession, but the two of them were arguing vociferously. It went on for a while and Everly and I looked back and forth, watching.

“Ava, I’m not one of your children!” Levi finally told his sister. “We have parents and they did their job. Why do you have to be a…” He turned to look at Everly and stopped.

“You should tell her your feelings, but in a nice way,” she encouraged, and he started to laugh.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, but I wanted to talk about it now.

This was a great idea! I had never considered that he should move into my building, mostly because it wasn’t very nice but also because I’d never have guessed that he would want to live so close to me.

But now? If Ava thought it was a good idea, then I was all about it.

“I would leave you alone,” I said. “I wouldn’t be like Hernán, spying on you.”

“Who’s Hernán?” Everly asked, very interested.

“Oh, is he your neighbor that speaks Spanish? I know about him and we’re learning Spanish in school.

Tenedor , agua , menú, rojo !” she announced, pointing around the table, and Levi said she had sounded great and they’d learn more words together later.

She had rolled her R very nicely, something that I struggled with.

“But I wouldn’t spy,” I reiterated, bringing us back to the other topic. Second-language learning was very important, but—

“Emerson?”

“Emerson?”

“What are you looking at? Aunt Emerson? Can I call you that?”

“Here’s your orange juice. Have you had a chance to look at the menu?”

Vaguely, somewhere in the background, I heard their voices. My attention was focused on the door of this restaurant, though, where two people had just entered. “That’s Grant,” I told them all, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

“What?” Levi asked. “Damn. I forgot that we were near his parents’ house.”

“That’s her ex?” Ava demanded. “How do you know where his parents live, Levi?”

“We had to do some recon,” he explained and she made sounds of assent, mm-hm, like that statement made perfect sense.

Not to Everly. “What’s recon? What’s an ex? If you don’t tell me, I’m going to ask Thea,” she threatened, referencing her best friend who had more than ten years on her and would know the answers to those questions.

“I need to go,” I announced, but I would need to find a back door, or maybe a window?

Then my eyes lit on the person behind Grant.

She stepped forward, flipping her long, dark hair over her shoulder and with her pretty mouth turned down, as if this restaurant wasn’t nearly nice enough for her amazing self.

It was Vivienne. My eyes searched for her husband Lance, but I didn’t immediately spot him—

Grant saw me. I could tell when he did, because he stopped frowning and his jaw went slack, emphasizing that he’d gained a little more weight and that his second chin was becoming more prominent.

He stared across the restaurant and I stared back, unable to think through the shock of it.

“That’s Grant,” I told them again. “That guy right there, he and I were together for five years. Five years of my life.”

“Emerson.” Levi put his hand on my arm, and I turned to him instead. “Do you want to leave?”

“No, we can’t walk past him,” Ava responded.

I saw that she was taking in the whole situation through the corners of her eyes, without moving her head at all.

“We’ll wait until he and his…that woman get a table, and then we’re out.

We’ll stop and get ice cream,” she immediately said to her daughter, who closed her mouth on any kind of complaint and seemed pleased.

“We don’t have to leave,” I told them. My voice sounded hoarse and croaky.

“You don’t want to stay here,” Ava said, and she was right. Levi moved his hand away but I reached for it again, and he linked our fingers together.

Both Grant and Vivienne stared the entire time they stood at the host stand, and then they kept it up as they went to their table.

Fortunately, they were across the room from us, but they still could see when Ava put down money for our drinks, gathered our stuff, and hustled us out, positioning herself between me and my ex-boyfriend and apologizing to the server on the way.

“It’s a crisis,” she told him, and then we were on the sidewalk.

“Time to go home,” Levi said to me and Everly mentioned the ice cream, which she was very interested in.

“Text me later,” Ava ordered us, and we walked toward his car.

When we got there, when we were safely inside and then driving away from that restaurant, Levi spoke again. “You don’t look like you’re going to faint anymore.”

“What? I’m not going to faint.”

“You were like a ghost,” he countered. “The minute you saw him, your eyes got huge and you lost all color.”

“I was surprised.”

“That’s an understatement,” he said. “You have to think that you’ll see him sometime, since you live in the same place.”

Maybe Vivienne had been right about what she’d said when she came over to my apartment: I needed to move back to where I’d come from.

“It may be a big city but you should prepare yourself,” Levi continued. “I run into people all the time.”

“What would you do if you ran into Mary Evelyn?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “I would probably be surprised too, especially if she was with her new boyfriend like your ex was with that woman today. But I hope that I’d be able to say hello, or at least wave, and I hope I wouldn’t let on that I was upset.

She doesn’t have a part in my life anymore and she doesn’t need to know what I’m thinking or feeling.

I certainly wouldn’t want her to believe that I was still in love with her and that my world was rocked by her presence. ”

“Grant wasn’t with a new girlfriend,” I corrected.

“That was Vivienne, the woman who dropped by my apartment in her Porsche. She’s married to his best friend, Lance.

” I hadn’t seen him or any of their other friends as we’d walked out, thank goodness.

“I was surprised. I was shocked,” I admitted, but there was more to correct in what he’d just said.

“I’m not in love with Grant anymore. I’m not. ”

“Sure.”

“I’m not,” I repeated, and we didn’t say much else for the rest of the way to my apartment. I couldn’t tell if he believed me, but it was true. I took a deep breath and repeated that in my mind: I was over Grant, no matter if I had almost fainted.

I was over him.