Page 37 of On the Way to You
Emery just squeezed my thighs a little tighter, the pad of his thumb tracing the skin in smooth circles, eyes resting on mine as he waited.
I took a deep breath, folding my hands on my lap and staring down at them as I spun my ring. “It was my twelfth birthday. My parents forgot. Again,” I added, and my heart stung with the familiar ache of being forgotten, a feeling I knew too well. “It was the first year I didn’t care to remind them.”
I was still watching my hands, but I felt Emery staring at me, felt his gaze on me. I pushed out another breath and kept going.
“My dad didn’t come home from work that evening, and my mom thought he was cheating again. So, she threw me in the car to go look for him. I begged her to stay home, but she insisted, and she had been drinking. I knew better than to argue with them when they were drinking.
“I was reading my book in the back seat,A Wrinkle in Time, so I don’t really know what happened. All I remember is my mom cursing, and then the car jerked, over and over again. It felt like we were hitting the biggest speed bumps to ever exist. Then we flipped, I don’t know how many times, and I blacked out. When I came to, there was smoke everywhere, and I looked down and there was just… blood. So much blood.”
Tears flooded my eyes again, and I tried not to blink, not to let them fall, inhaling another shaky breath.
“My left leg was pinned by the door, it had been crushed in, and the car had landed on that side. So, I was just… stuck. I didn’t notice the pain until my mom started screaming. Then it all hit me — the blood, the smoke, the pain — and I blacked out again.”
I shrugged, a mixture of emotion and complete numbness washing over me, each of them fighting for dominance.
“I woke up in the hospital, and by that time, they’d already amputated my leg. My mom walked away completely fine. She was too drunk to even tense up, so other than some bruises and cuts from the seat belt and airbag, she was fine.” Two tears slipped from my eyes at the same time, rolling down over my cheeks and hitting my thumb in unison. “She was fine, except she was angry at me, because she knew the hospital bill would be outrageous.”
“Jesus Christ,” Emery breathed, and his hands moved to grab mine. He held them tightly as I closed my eyes, more tears seeping through.
I shook my head. “It’s weird how much of it I don’t remember. Tammy, my friend from back home, says I repressed it all. But I don’t really recall much of the physical therapy, or getting used to my leg. I know it was hard, I know I hated it, but one day it was just… easier. And every day that passed, it became more and more normal. When I started doing yoga, that’s when I really found peace with it. With everything, really.”
“You do yoga without your leg on?”
I nodded. “I wanted to build strength and balance. Sometimes I do it with my leg on, just to test it, but I like doing it without it more. It’s nice to remind myself that I can still be strong, even if I am missing a limb.”
Emery was silent for a moment, then he dipped his head down a little lower until my gaze met his. He was completely surrounding me now — his knees on either side of mine, elbows resting easily on my thighs, hands covering mine, eyes piercing through my ghosts. “You are strong, Cooper,” he whispered. I looked away, but he moved until he was blocking my view again. “You are. And the fact that something like this happened to you and you’re still here,living, smiling and spreading light… it’s incredible.” He paused, swallowing. “I couldn’t do that.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“No,” he cut me off. “I’m serious. I know myself, and I would have given up years ago.” He watched me for a moment. “I hope you never do.”
I closed my eyes, his words settling around me. “I’m a little tired, could we maybe make plans in the morning?”
“Of course,” Emery said softly, backing out of my space. He released my hands and I immediately wrapped them around myself. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Want me to shut off the lights?”
I shook my head. “I’ll wait until you’re out.”
“Okay, I’ll be fast.”
With that, Emery jumped up, digging through his bag for his toiletries before dipping inside the bathroom. I let out a long, loud breath once he was gone, the memories of the crash still fresh in my mind as I fell back against the cool, rough, Native American print comforter. Kalo moved closer to me, whimpering a bit as she nudged me with her nose. She could always tell when I was sad, and I just rubbed the fur on her paw, reassuring her I was fine.
I was tempted to read another passage from Emery’s journal, knowing it was still sprawled out on the floor from where he’d been writing, but after talking about the accident, I was too tired to even lean up again. Instead, I wiggled until my head was on the pillows, tucking my legs under the sheets.
Kalo curled up beside me, and though I said I would wait, exhaustion pulled me under while the shower was still running. I faintly remember hearing the water cut off, and then the door opening. A few seconds later, the lights were off, and then I must have started dreaming, because I swore I felt a hand brush my hair back from my face.
I cracked one eyelid open, but Emery was already in his own bed, scribbling in his journal by the light from his phone. And I fell back asleep to the sound of the page turning.
“Okay. So, we have Colorado Springs and the Grand Canyon,” I said around a mouthful of banana muffin, washing it down with iced coffee as I continued planning our route the next morning. “What else?”
The sun had barely risen, but Emery and I had been up for an hour, eating breakfast from the hotel lobby and figuring out our next moves. Emery seemed to have woken up in a good mood again, which I was thankful for, since I needed his patience and cooperation to figure everything out.
“I want to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway,” Emery said. He was playing fetch with Kalo, though she rarely brought the toy back, usually flopping down in the same spot and chewing on it, instead.
“Okay, let me see…” My tongue stuck out of the corner of my mouth as I studied the map on my phone, making notes in the notebook Emery had bought from the lobby when we grabbed breakfast. “Done.”
“Don’t you need to make plans for where to stay and stuff, too? For Seattle?”
I nodded. “I do. Next hotel we stop at, we should make sure it’s one with a business center. I can just spend a day putting in apartment applications and job searching.”