Page 43 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“He said that, too. He was totally mystified by the fact that I wasn’t in a gutter crying because we’d broken up.

He kept asking, ‘You’re really doing ok?

’ As if I shouldn’t have been! He was the one who left me, not the other way around.

He blocked my number while I was in the hospital when I needed him!

Even though I already knew that we had to break up, I still wouldn’t have treated him that way if he had been the one who got hurt. ”

“How’d you know that you had to break up?” Ava asked, and pushed the mug towards me. “Drink some beer.”

We both did. “When we had the accident, we were arguing about what he’d said at Lance and Vivienne’s party.

We spun out of control to avoid a truck and time slowed down,” I said.

“It couldn’t have been more than a second or two before we collided with the cement barrier, but it seemed to last for so long.

I saw everything perfectly and I knew that Grant and I were over, that we shouldn’t have been together in the first place. It was crystal clear.”

“What had he said at the party at Landon and Genevieve’s house? What started the argument?” She looked at me over the top of her mug and when I didn’t immediately answer, she nudged me with it.

“It was Lance and Vivienne’s house. We were sitting around their pool and some of his friends started joking about how he was the holdout.

They meant that Grant and I weren’t married, but almost everyone else in their group had tried it,” I explained.

“Then Lance said, ‘When are you going to do it, Grant? We all have to walk the plank sometime.’” I paused, because the memory of this still hurt.

I hadn’t bothered to put it in a transcript since I knew that it would always stick with me, the humiliation and anger I’d felt when my boyfriend had spoken.

“Grant looked at all his friends and told them, ‘I’ll get married someday. But I won’t marry her.’ Then he stared right at me and said, ‘Not Emerson, not ever.’”

“Holy shit,” Ava repeated. “What a douche canoe!”

“I hadn’t nagged him. I hadn’t suggested that we look at rings, I didn’t talk about what I wanted my dress to look like,” I said. “There was no pressure from me, but I thought that five years meant something.”

“Even if he felt that way, why would he have announced it in front of all your friends? Total asshole move.”

“They weren’t my friends,” I corrected. “They were his friends, and they thought it was funny. I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach but he wouldn’t talk about it afterwards. Today he explained why.”

“Why? Why?” she demanded.

“It was because of Vivi, his best friend’s wife. Well, she’s not anymore,” I amended, “because they’re getting a divorce.”

“Please explain again who the hell that woman is,” Ava ordered, and I talked about our interactions when Grant and I had been together and then her visits to my apartment. As I wrapped up, I noticed the giant number of notifications on my phone.

“Hold on, I have to tell Hernán that I haven’t been kidnapped,” I said. “ Estoy bien ,” I texted, and then came back to attention. “Where was I?”

“You had told me that Grant acted like a douche donut because of Vivienne but you didn’t explain it,” she answered quickly, gesturing at me to continue.

I rubbed my temples again as I replayed it in my mind. “Grant said that since our accident, his whole life has fallen apart.”

“Good!” Ava burst out. “But why?”

“He said that he’s about to lose his job. He’s pretty sure that he’s going to get fired for missing too many days and showing up late, and he also said that his parents are furious with him.”

“Why? What else did he do?” She bounced eagerly.

“He racked up a bunch of debt and he doesn’t have any savings anymore,” I said.

“He can’t drive because his license is suspended.

He’s several months behind on rent and he’ll probably get evicted from his new place.

And finally, after all this time, they’re mad.

After everything that he’s done in his life, after the other car accidents and the times he got caught cheating, or when he almost got kicked off his lacrosse team for hazing.

Then he did it again in college at his frat and almost got kicked out of there, too. ”

“Wow,” she marveled. “He sucks more than I thought.”

“It seems like his parents might have realized that. They spent years ignoring his behavior and excusing everything, but now they’re calling him on it,” I said. “I guess they’re drawing the line. He said that they told him that he needs a woman like me in his life.”

“He fell apart without you,” she said with satisfaction, “and he sees the error of his ways.”

“Maybe. Maybe he’s just looking for me to clean up this huge mess and get him back on track.”

“But you’re not going to do that,” she said pointedly. “You’d never, ever get back together with him.”

“There’s even more,” I said. “There’s the whole thing with Vivienne.”

“What?” Ava leaned forward, almost knocking her beer onto the ground. “Why? What did she do?”

“She was beautiful and perfect, the ideal woman. She was the role model for everyone, especially for me. That was what he always told me.”

“I hate this guy.”

“Now it makes so much sense that I can’t believe I didn’t see it.

” I was still talking to Ava, kind of, but mostly I was hearing Grant speak as I sat on the top step of my building and looked down at him.

“He admitted that he’s been in love with her since college.

Back then, he and Lance both liked her, but Lance had money and a nice car, so he got the girl.

Grant had to watch as they paired off but he never lost those feelings. All this time, he wanted Vivi.”

Her eyes were huge. “Oh…”

“For five years, for our entire relationship, he was in love with her. He compared me to her all the time, in every way, and I always came up short. I worked at it, fixing how I dressed and how I talked, how I did everything,” I said.

“But it would never have been enough, no matter what I did. He said that it always made him angry.”

“Because you were a different woman? He blamed you for that?”

I nodded. “But now he says that he changed his mind.”

“Well, it’s too little, too late. Right?” Ava prompted.

“He said that the blinders are off,” I went on.

“He had thought that Lance was a liar and an idiot when he complained about Vivi. Lance used to say that she spent too much money, that she couldn’t keep plans straight, that he couldn’t trust her to take care of things.

Like, once she was supposed to get airline tickets because his parents were already using their private plane, and by mistake she booked them into London, Ontario instead of London, England.

I remember Grant laughing but Lance was mad.

He asked who made the vacation plans in our relationship, and of course I did.

We didn’t go anywhere, though, unless it was low-cost or free. I was trying to save money.”

“So now your ex sees that the woman he idealized for all this time is human, and also never paid attention to geography since she doesn’t know the difference between Canada and the United Kingdom.

He wants you back but you told him that it’s too late,” Ava summarized, but then her eyes narrowed.

“Right? You said it was too late, right?”

“I told him that we were doomed from the moment we met, since he was in love with someone else and I…I don’t know why I spent five years with him,” I said, but then hesitated.

“No, I do know. I’ve been so mad about it and the app therapist told me that I needed to work on forgiveness, but she quit before she told me who I needed to forgive.

It’s not him. He doesn’t need that, but I do.

I have to let go of being so upset with myself for the mistakes I made.

My thoughts kept running in circles around the idea of five years, that I’d wasted them.

I was angry that I’d gone down that road in the first place because I never should have been with him at all.

When he hit me with that cup of beer the night we met, I told him that he was an asshole and I should have walked away. ”

“He hit you with a beer?” She sounded shocked. “Why was that ok?”

“It wasn’t!” I answered. “I knew that back then, but I made myself ignore it. I told myself that this was the way men acted, that if I wanted to have bonds with anyone, I had to be willing to excuse some flaws.”

“Little flaws, sure,” Ava said slowly. “I want to kill Jeff when he squeezes every tube in the middle. Glue. Lotion. We have separate toothpaste now, so that our bathroom can be a more peaceful place. That’s a flaw, but if he thew a beer at me and then told me that I needed to imitate another woman? No. No way.”

“I’ve never been good at making people like me but Grant seemed to, especially at first,” I said.

“I didn’t know that I was second-best—no, I did know, but I didn’t understand why.

I thought if I could make myself good enough and also make him happy and stable enough, then we’d be ok.

I saw how much he admired Vivi but I didn’t know that he loved her, not until today. I guess I had blinders on, too.”

“Why would you have expected that your boyfriend would act that way?” she consoled.

“I felt a little sorry for him when he talked about his problems.”

“Don’t,” she said succinctly.

“He’s a mess, mostly about Vivienne. I had no idea that he had the ability to love someone so much,” I said. “I know that he never loved me like that.” All the work I’d done never would have made any difference in the end, not when his heart was leading him to her.

Ava stared. “Emerson, please don’t let misplaced sympathy trick you into getting back together with him.”

“No, that’s not going to happen. I don’t want Grant. I realized a long time ago that I didn’t even like him very much, but he was able to accept me and that was enough. Before, it was, but not now. Now I want a real bond, like real love, not just someone who needs me to clean up his problems.”

“That sounds like a good goal.” She clinked her mug to mine and I saw that both of us had done a lot of sipping, because they were nearly empty.

“Here’s to love. Don’t settle for a douche ashtray who only tolerates you while he’s secretly in love with someone else.

At least he didn’t act on it. Oh, holy shit.

” Her eyes widened. “Did something happen between the two of them while the two of you…no, don’t cry. Here, this napkin is pretty clean.”

It had some of her beer spilled on it, but that was ok. “They’ve been cheating together for years,” I said. “Almost since the time that Grant and I got together.”

“He’s awful. So is she!”

“She didn’t want to give up the lifestyle,” I explained.

“She had everything she wanted while she stayed with Lance, all the material stuff, and then she got to sleep with Grant on the side. But Lance had been suspicious for a while. Grant wouldn’t tell me why but Lance saw something that I didn’t, and after the car accident, he had Vivienne followed.

He caught them. She’d signed a prenup that Lance’s mom had insisted on, and now she has practically nothing.

She moved in with Grant and he said that all they do is fight. ”

“Right, because the ideal woman is still human,” Ava said. “And life’s a lot harder without a private jet and with the rent due. They’re getting a dose of reality, and good. Good! Why does he think that you would care?”

“He said that he can recognize how wrong he was. He didn’t apologize, because he doesn’t do that, but he said that now he sees that I wasn’t so bad after all. He said that he lost his best friend and his girlfriend, and that the woman of his dreams is a flop.”

“The word he was looking for is ‘nightmare.’ Like, ‘The woman of my dreams is a nightmare,’ and boo hoo.” She mimicked rubbing her fists over her eyes. “His loyalty is impressive,” she continued. “Now he’s ready to ditch the new girl, too.”

“I think that’s why she was coming over to my apartment and telling me to leave Detroit. Vivienne was afraid that he would do exactly this, that he would try to come back to me so he could recover the life he’d had. I know that I shouldn’t feel sorry for her—”

Ava put her fingers over my mouth. “We’re not feeling sorry for either of them,” she informed me.

“But I understand how it feels when people don’t love you the way you want and need.”

She removed her hand and picked up the mug of beer. “Here’s to you getting that exactly that kind of love.”

We clinked our glasses again and finished the rest of the liquid. “I know I’m crying, but I do feel better. I’m glad to know all this,” I said. “It’s like I’m finally putting it to bed.”

“And now you can finally get over him.”

“Ava, didn’t you hear me? Didn’t you listen to what I said?

I am over Grant. I have been for months, for more than a year!

I’ve been a mess because my life fell apart and I needed help, so having a boyfriend would have been great.

But not him. I don’t want him and I don’t understand why you think that I do. ”

She hesitated for a while and then said, “Because Levi thinks so.”

“I’ve told him the same thing!”

“I’m not going to speak for him, even though I really, really want to,” she answered. “I really do, a whole lot, but you guys should figure it out together.” She signaled to the waitress. “After we have another round.”