Page 29 of Right Where You Left Me

“In her— and why are you out here crying all alone?” He asks, his voice getting heated as he looks at Sage’s closed door. “What the hell did she do?” He mutters under his breath in French, I’m sure cursing the situation he just walked into.

“She broke up with me.” I whisper. His body stiffens beneath me.

“Emma.” He sighs. “What happened?”

I tell him about Liam, about the lunch that I should never have made her go to with me. I tell him about how I planned to apologize, but the second we got here she shut down and ended things.

“Shit.” He says when I’m done.

“About sums it up, yeah.” I mumble.

“Emma.” He shuffles me so that I’m looking at his face. “I am always Team Sage. She’s been my best friend since we were twenty-two, and she’s been there for me through a lot of bad shit that’s happened in my life.”

I nod. “Of course.” I say and try to get up, but he hugs me again.

“But,” He starts. “She is wrong here. I’m not going to tell you that everything is perfect or that she shouldn’t be hurt.

But she did over react, and I know she’s processing some of her own shit with this, I’ll talk to her okay?

I’ll try to make it better. You two have something special, and I promise I’ll try to get through to her. ”

I let out a breath. “Thank you.”

He squeezes me one more time and lets me go. “Do you want me to drive you home? I don’t know if you should drive when you’re this upset.”

I shake my head. “I’ll be fine.”

“Text me then? When you get home. So that I don’t worry.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry, Emma.” He says softly.

I just shrug because what else can I even say about it anymore. Sage is done with me. She’s so terrified of getting hurt again that she’d rather believe that I’d get back together with Liam than want to try and be with her for the long haul.

The drive home is a blur and I don’t even realize I’m inside until I hear my mom say my name. I must look awful because she gasps and calls for Liam who immediately has his hands on my face asking me what’s wrong.

I shrug him off and sit on the couch staring at those fucking cat figurines. The black one with the green yarn taunts me as the words fall off my tongue.

“She ended it. Sage is done with me.”

“What?” My mom asks, confused. “What do you mean?” She plops herself down beside me and I let her pull me into her. Liam flanking my other side. I let myself melt into the warmth of their embraces as tears start flowing down my cheeks again.

“Sage broke up with me.” I manage to choke out. “She—” A sob heaves from me as I try to tell them what happened, but the words get stuck in my throat. All that escapes is a painful whimper as I fall apart between two of my favorite people.

“Oh, honey,” my mom soothes as she runs a comforting hand through my hair. “Take your time. We’re right here.”

I don’t speak for a while. Taking in their soothing words and touches when it feels like I’m being split apart inside. I feel like if I pulled my heart out, you’d see the deep fissure cutting right through it. A physical representation of the pain currently ripping through my body.

“I just don’t understand,” I croak. “Why didn’t she believe me?”

“What happened?” Liam asks softly.

I let out a shaky breath and tell them about the fight.

I leave out some of the more personal details, but they both listen quietly as I let it all out.

I wipe the tears from my cheeks as I finish telling them about River finding me on their couch and telling me he’d talk to Sage.

I don’t even know how he’ll get her to listen. There was no changing her mind.

“So,” I start, “like I said. She’s done with me, and there’s not really anything I can do about it.”

“I’ll go get some wine.” My mom says, patting my shoulder before shuffling into the kitchen.

Liam and I sit there while we wait, neither of us speaking while we listen to my mom fiddle around in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Emma.” He whispers, breaking the silence that’s settled around us. “I—” He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean to cause this.”

“You didn’t.” I say numbly. “ I did. I should have realized how this would have come across to her, how it would have fed into her insecurities and hurt her. I wasn’t thinking. It’s my fault.”

That’s what hurts the most about this whole thing.

I know that my actions caused this. I knew it while it was happening and I couldn’t explain things to her before she ran from this, from what we could be.

I hurt her before and she’s just protecting herself.

I know that, deep down, she didn’t mean anything that she said.

I can’t blame her for not trusting me, for thinking that I would abandon her again.

I must have done something wrong to make her think that I would be willing to give her up.

But things are different this time. I’m not leaving her. I refuse to let her go.

“This isn’t your fault.” Liam says, wrapping a comforting arm around my shoulders. I can see him hesitate a little, as if he thinks he can’t do this anymore. I lean into his arm, looking up so I can see his face and reassure him it’s okay.

“I guess it’s no one’s fault, not really.” I say softly. “I just really wish I could have made her listen to me.”

“You’ll just have to keep trying.” He says, nudging me playfully. “You really are the most tenacious person I know, Em. Don’t give up on something as important to you as she is.”

I nod. “I won’t.” I say, and I mean it. She may not have listened to me tonight, but she was on the cliff’s edge of her emotions. She wasn’t thinking clearly, and it wouldn’t have mattered what I said to her— she wasn’t going to hear it.

I won’t stop trying. I’ll bang down her door if I have to, but I won’t stop fighting for her.

Sage has always been important to me. Even in all that time that we weren’t speaking, she sat in the back of my mind.

And now, now she’s everything. “I’ll call the shop as soon as they open tomorrow and make her talk to me. ”

“That’s a great idea.” My mom says as she comes back holding three very full glasses of red wine.

She hands us each one before she settles back into the couch beside me.

“Everything will work out how it’s meant to, my love.

” She says. “The universe has tied the two of you together, and you’ll always find your way back to one another. ”

I swallow the knot forming in my throat. I usually laugh and wave her off when she starts talking about stuff like this, but this time it doesn’t feel silly. I want to think that she’s right. That soulmates are real, and that an invisible string really is tying Sage and me together.

“Thanks, Mom.” I say, a little wetly.

She runs a soothing hand down my hair and cuddles in closer.

Liam puts on one of my mom’s home renovation shows and we watch in comfortable silence as we occasionally wipe my stray tears and drink more wine until we pass out for the night.

My dreams are full of river-rock eyes and all the words I wish I could have said.