Page 42 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

It was different without Hernán’s presence, but I still felt better once I was in the fresh air.

It was perfect weather for Levi’s run and for me to rest on the steps and breathe, getting control of the anxiety that had mounted as I’d sifted through the hardware on my apartment floor.

What was the matter with me? Things were good, weren’t they?

I had new clients and business was picking up.

I had plans to go with Ava to a Pilates class later today, which she’d sworn would be great for both of our injuries—so I had another friend.

Hernán was talking about flying to Chicago to see the museums he’d missed on his rushed road trip, and he’d suggested that I meet him there.

“Or you and Levi could come together,” he’d written.

“If you split the cost of gas and only get one hotel room, then you can do it, no?” I’d looked at the words and understood his meaning.

He had accepted that Levi and I were a couple.

Wasn’t that what the kissing meant? It was a sign of courtship, like holding hands with a boy in elementary school or getting beer thrown at your head in college. It all meant something.

Maybe sitting outside wasn’t enough to calm my anxiety like it used to, because I was having a problem getting in a full breath.

I couldn’t quite speak but I did wave to the woman from the house across the street who had come out and called, “Hi, Emerson,” before she started sweeping her porch.

A few houses down, another woman was talking to her son in the driveway, and I knew that she and her husband had been having some issues with him.

She’d told me all about it in an anonymous confession, except that she wasn’t a stranger anymore because I knew her as my neighbor Linda.

I watched as her son got into his car and drove off fast, and I hoped that he wouldn’t get into an accident.

As he skidded around the corner, he nearly collided with another vehicle turning onto our street. I had gotten to my feet and was thinking about going over to ask Linda if she was ok, but then I recognized the white Porche that had been here before.

It was Vivienne’s car.

That made me furious. No more of these stupid secrets!

I was over the mysterious games that she and August were engaged in.

I was tired of mysteries in general, including poor directions for furniture building projects and especially the inexplicable behavior of men who did things to leave you totally confused—like when they kissed you.

I walked over to the curb and stood with my arms crossed, ready to tell Vivienne to keep on going and not bother to talk to me again, because I wasn’t interested in hearing her personal problems or her advice that I needed to run myself out of town.

But when the Porsche stopped next to me and I looked through the window, I didn’t see her behind the wheel.

It was Grant. He looked back at me and I was so shocked that I lost track of where I was and I wasn’t sure that my heart was still beating.

This was worse than when I’d seen him in the restaurant after Levi’s regatta, because that had been an accident and we’d both been surprised.

Now he had sought me out at my own home, a place he shouldn’t have even known about. Why had he come here?

I realized that I was saying the same thing out loud to him.

“Why are you here? Why did you come? What are you doing?” I yelled through the glass, plus more questions with slightly different wording but all variations on the same theme.

He stared back at me without answering before he stepped out and walked around to my side, and I got a good look at him.

That was why I said the next words: “You need a haircut.”

“I know,” Grant replied. “You always used put reminders in my phone and now I forget to make appointments for myself until it gets really shaggy.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked again, and I wasn’t going to play the game where I didn’t get answers. Not again!

But Grant still just stared at me. “Emerson,” he said, and his eyes dragged up and down my body. “Fuck, you look good.”

“I don’t look any different.” But he did.

Besides the bad hair, he seemed haggard, with bags under his eyes and heavier jowls around his jaw.

His skin was bumpy and irritated, like maybe he’d been forgetting to replace his razor blades.

I had done that for him, too. He also looked pale, as if he hadn’t spent much of the summer at his friends’ pools or jetting off with them to a beautiful, far-away beach.

He looked tired and…older. He wasn’t really the charming party guy I’d known for five years.

“You’re beautiful,” he told me, and I heard disbelief in his voice. I felt skeptical too, because I mostly remembered him criticizing my looks.

“Why do you and Vivienne keep coming here?” I asked him. “Why do you keep bothering me? I don’t want to see either of you.”

“Vivi’s been coming here?” His surprise seemed genuine, and then he rubbed his face with his hands, hard. “She didn’t tell me that. A lot has happened, Emerson. Things are shitty without you.”

“Good,” I told him, “because you deserve it.”

“Maybe I do.”

There was no “maybe” about it, and it didn’t really matter if his life had turned bad. But I was curious. I wanted some answers, so when Grant asked if we could go inside, I suggested that we sit on the steps. Then I heard a lot more from him than I expected.

But he was gone by the time that Levi came home, and I was back in my apartment. “What’s wrong?” he asked when I opened my door to his knock and he saw my face.

“I’m working on something frustrating,” I said.

“I’m having trouble finishing it.” It was now in my bedroom because I didn’t even want to look at it.

I’d been struggling before but after Grant’s departure, I hadn’t been able to focus at all.

“Ava will be here soon to pick me up. You were gone for a long time.”

“I went farther than I expected to because I was thinking about stuff,” he answered. “I decided that I have to keep pushing August to talk to me but also try to resign myself to being ok without the answers. What else can I do?”

I had no suggestions except that he should step away, and that wasn’t Levi. He wasn’t a guy who could drop his friends, and would I have wanted someone like that? No. And I did really, really want him.

“Hernán was texting to make sure I was all right,” he continued. “Did you mention anything to him?”

“I wrote that I was worried,” I admitted.

“You don’t have to be. Wait a minute, is your chin wobbling?”

It might have been, but then Ava honked at the curb.

“Coral,” I called, and she scampered out from under my bed to greet the love of her life and go with him to his apartment.

I said goodbye to both of them and hurried to the curb.

We were supposed to go exercise and that was good because it would take my mind off everything.

But Ava stared at me when I got into the car. “What’s wrong?” she asked, just like her brother had done.

“I’m trying to build something and it isn’t working,” I answered.

“Really?” She sounded suspicious as she shifted into drive. “You look more like Liv used to when she was trying to cover up something about her dumb boyfriend Patrick…oh, no. What did Levi do? Tell me, and I’ll make him say sorry.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with Levi. Grant came over,” I admitted. “Grant, my ex.”

She slammed on the brakes and we both jolted forward into our seatbelts.

“Sorry! Holy shit! Ok, we’re not going to Pilates.

My shoulder hurts too much, anyway,” she told me when I objected, since I knew that she been planning this all week and also how she was worried that she didn’t get enough exercise.

“I can walk home,” I offered. We had only traveled about half a block.

“No, I have an idea,” she said, and we started moving forward again. We ended up at what I might have called a dive bar on Detroit’s East Side, a place called the Crookstown. Ava ordered two Boilermakers.

“It’s a little early,” I pointed out, but she said we were going to be here for a while and would sip.

“What happened?” she demanded. “Why did he come to see you?”

I hadn’t bothered to type up a transcript because, although the words had seemed to seer into my brain as Grant had said them, my memories after he left were so confused that I hadn’t been able to get them out coherently. I rubbed my temples and tried to think.

“He…he…”

“Drink this first,” Ava said, and pushed a shot glass into my hand. “Ready?”

I had thought that we were going to sip, but then she tilted the bottom so that the liquor poured into my mouth. “ Joder ,” I gasped, when I had swallowed and finished coughing. “What is that?”

“Whiskey.” She gulped her shot then wiped off her mouth on her arm. “Go on and talk.”

The liquor had served to shake free some memories and release them from my lips. “First, he acted surprised at how I looked and he said that I was so beautiful,” I recalled. “But I’m just the same as I was before, now that I’m not grey anymore.”

“Grey?”

“Everything was,” I explained. “But not now. Levi and I spent so much time outside and the idea of being optimistic started as a joke, but then I really tried it. After a while, it came naturally and then I felt better. Maybe that’s what Grant saw. Maybe I actually am different.”

“You look different to me,” she agreed. “You look a lot happier.”