Chapter Thirty-Three
MY HAND TOUCHED the doorbell, and the nerves inside my throat brought me back to the reality that I was about to see Sam for the first time in a good few months. Suddenly, a memory of our night together at the beach played before my eyes—our own movie. Then Jamie’s first warning. There is something weird about Sam. My best friend’s eyes that night shocked me.
What have I done? The momentary repercussions caught me by surprise. This was never going to work, I realized. Sam was not committed to me in the slightest. He had never been. Why had I done this? People don’t talk about this in relationships—the fact that some are just downright slimes of trickery.
The door opened, the fanciful foyer the first optical illustration. Then Sam’s gorgeous face appeared, sending rivulets of despair down my spine. He seemed shocked to see me, but nonetheless said, “Emma.” He pulled me into a hug that I did not reciprocate.
“Hi,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“Of course. Where are my manners?”
We entered, the homely smell intoxicating, bringing me back to the time when both parents lived at home, when life seemed livelier than it ought to be. There was a time when I would have been impressed by the magnificent entryway, but now, it just felt cold and brooding, like a giant testament to sin. Not that it should, but it did.
Sam pulled me into the living room under arches of wood beams. The interior decorator of the mansion deserved an award; I wondered haughtily if my mom had been the one to design this place. For a moment, I thanked God that He’d blessed me with a best friend like Jamie, with a father like my dad, and with friends I could count on. Plus, the rift in my maternal relationship was starting to stitch up.
Sam recognized the scowl in my eyes, so he sat us down on the sofa and grabbed my hands. Eventually, he drew apart, as my hands were limp. He looked handsome as ever, a hint of stubble appearing on his chin. Though he should have lost some of the glow to his face, Iceland had been nice to him.
“Emma. You’re so beautiful. I did not see one redhead my entire time away.”
“Ah,” I said, though it went through a wall. “Sam, what are we doing?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, cocking his head slightly to the side. While it once seemed cocky, it was now insecure. With the glimmer in his eyes, I instinctively knew what was happening inside me. I was almost to the point of loving him.
“You’re a great guy, and I’m attracted to you, Sam, but it wasn’t the best part to me.”
Sam scratched his jaw before turning to me. “What do you mean?’
“I think your spirit is tainted, but you have a bravery, a true sweetness to you. I wish we could still be friends.”
Sam shook his head, confusion filling his eyes. “Why wouldn’t we be?’
“I can’t do this to myself anymore. Whatever we have is really the absence of what we both need. Sam, you’re going to find someone with whom you can commit; but that isn’t me. And I’m not here to waste your time, and to waste mine, and to destroy what I think of myself, too.”
“What did Jamie tell you?”
“He tells me everything; it’s part of his job. But really, he just told me to let you go. That you deserve something good, and so do I. But I’m not looking for you, Sam. Just like you’re not looking for me.”
Sam lightly drew away. “I never was good for you, Emma. You’re strong, beautiful, stubborn, everything I want in a woman. But you have to realize—”
“You’re not the type to settle down like I need. You’re not someone who will stay faithful, you’re not even a person looking for love. You’re just looking for a good time, and even though what we had was genuine—at least for a moment—and what we had was something beautiful, it’s not enough for you.”
“No,” Sam whispered, his voice still serenading my heart, “it’s not enough for you. I’ve already hurt you; can’t you see that I’ll just hurt you more?”
“Then why not tell me, Sam? Why not just pull the band-aid right off instead of leading me on? Instead of letting me fall in love with you?” As soon as the last phrase fell from my tongue, I knew I did not love him, and I never had.
“Emma,” he said, reaching for my hands again. This time, his hands were sweaty, so I pulled away. “You aren’t in love with me. That is a myth, okay? It is possible to care for someone, but being in love is child’s play. It’s for teenagers. Let’s face it: We were never going to make it, and honestly, I’m glad what we had lasted as long as it did.”
“Sam, you’re lying.” No tears fell from the bases of my eyes, though it felt like they did. The torrent inside my chest was rising up, the vivid pain and hurt in the ball of my throat. “You’re lying to me, and you’re lying to yourself. Just tell me the truth. I’m not the one for you. It’s okay to admit that. I was never your one. I don’t have to be. But please, promise me, when you meet her, when you meet the one, you won’t let her go.” Tyron’s words fell from my mouth, and I smiled at the advice of the Australian I’d met months ago.
“Emma,” he croaked, reaching for my arm. “I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you.”
I stood up, knowing it was my time to go. As I passed through the entryway again, I noticed a clump of woman’s clothing on the fourth stair. Just then, a voice called out, “Sam?”
“It’s nothing, Belle,” was the response, but Sam was lying. I could even tell then.
I gently shut the door, and as soon as I stepped into the fresh light of a cool California winter day, I felt something that hadn’t quite plagued me in a while: peace.
Fresh, joyous peace.
As I hopped into my car and found my way slowly back to Glendora, my brain moved a thousand miles per minute. I never needed Sam, I realized instinctively. With the radio blaring into my ears, I felt like a single woman in Los Angeles—ready to mingle maybe, or you know, take a break.
I’d already been going solo for twenty-two years. Why did I think I magically needed a man now?
So I cruised, feeling the wind invade my ear canals and swirl my hair.
And as soon as I got back to the apartment, I placed Jamie’s ring in my drawer. There was a new person in his life for whom he would gift rings.
Epilogue
THE BLUE ENVELOPE sat on my bed, a little perfect thing that seemed so quaint and feminine. I ignored it, changing into my workout clothes as I struggled to pull my hair into a somewhat decent ponytail. Then came tying my tennis shoes, untangling the self-strangled headphones, and dealing with the fact that my legs were about as limber as rubber. The truth was that I had ignored jogging in my whole time of semi-dating Sam.
The door opened in the living room, and two voices called out, “Emma?”
I jumped up and hurried to where Nina and Jamie waited in light jackets with a cat at their feet. They stood, sun-kissed and bushy-eyed, the love apparent from their stance. I blushed, feeling warmth in my own veins because I was truly happy for their bliss.
“So, how was your little vacation to San Diego?” I asked as they pulled me into a hug.
“Absolutely perfect,” Nina said, dreamily gazing into Jamie’s eyes. “There is no doubt we made the right decision, Emma.”
“You guys didn’t get married, did you?”
“Not yet,” Jamie said, his voice a husky timbre. I imagined, just for a moment, how their wedding might be. Very intimate, I guessed. Nina would wear a white gown again; he would don a black tux.
“I see that Canada is out of the picture,” I said, teasing my best friend, whose radiance was something I’d never seen before.
“Canada?” Nina questioned in confusion. “What about Canada? Now that I’m with a Hollywood actor, I’m not exactly sure what to say about your schedule.”
“I am definitely not going to Vancouver,” Jamie said, his voice deep. “See, this is what was always supposed to happen. The three of us back together.”
“Jamie, that sounds terrible,” I interjected, to which
Nina seconded.
“Okay, fine, fine, I’m back with Nina, who’s going to be contacting Emma to be best man and best maid-of-honor.”
“There’s so much wrong with what you just said, James.” Without blinking, my eyes rolled of their own volition.
“Okay, not best man. But of course you’re my best friend, Em, so…”
“Does this mean there’s another wedding I’m going to have to go to?”
Nina laughed. “Duh, Em. We’re not going to live together before we get married, because that would kill my pastor father. He’s already mortified about my running off at the altar.”
I smiled, deciding it was time to head back to my bedroom, where I would cocoon until I had work the next day, where crabby, pregnant Baylee would be venting about her life, while Margaret would be discussing her happy man, and I would be dying to do this actual thing called casting.
“Hey, Em,” Nina whispered, gently tapping my arm. “Thanks for all of this.”
A smirk appeared on my lips, knowing that it was likely Nina and Jamie would not be getting hitched anytime soon, but it still was a possibility.
I needed a break from all the wedding talk anyway.
The bedroom was chillingly cold, and my phone was buzzing on my desk. I found Annabel had sent a snap of a sonogram, her new baby. There would be more of those coming soon.
For a few minutes, I sat staring out the window, surprised at how far I’d come in the past few months. It had been incredibly worth it—through the thick and thin, I’d come out unchanged, and still unprepared for the hectic, busy life ahead of me. Like a lot of people always said: You’re only twenty-two, sugar cup.
Age isn’t just a number, I’ll give it that, but it is important. There was Christmas in a few days, which I’d be spending at a Texan farmhouse with some biting winds and a beautiful family I could call my own. The airfare cost a fortune, but I decided it was worth it.
Suddenly, as I almost toppled over in my desk chair, I noted the cute blue envelope on my bed. Straining my entire being so that I felt limitless in the space between chair and mattress, I clutched it between two fingers.
With the sound of sweet murmurs through the thin walls of the apartment, I glanced at the envelope, noting that it was marked from Cristina Veraniego. Weird.
As I slipped my pinkie through the paper, my heart burst. I knew what this was.
And, surely, it was.
A wedding invitation.
This time, my response was not a whisper. It was an exploding hiss. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”
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