She follows me, and it only hurts more as I dodge her outstretched hand. As the pain flashes across her face.
“You should go to work,” I croak.
When she shakes her head, I swallow. Step into her.
I pull Emmy into my arms and breathe her in, my lips pressed against her hair as I close my eyes. “Go on, Em. And we’ll talk after. I’ll come and get you. I just… I need a minute.”
Her hands grip my shirt tightly. “Promise me you’ll come.”
“I promise.” I step away just enough to take her in. To look at her face and memorize it. At the dark brown freckle beneath her right eye. At the way her upper teeth slightly overlap the bottom as her lips part. Her hair, wild and free today in springy caramel curls because she's running late.
Because of me.
She came home from work because of me.
She’s disrupting her life because of me.
My voice is heavy. “I’ll do the right thing, Em.”
13
Emmy
The third glass of the night tips, spilling beer all over me before it rolls to the floor and smashes.
A cheer rings out around me as I stare down at it.
“Emmy?” Carla asks gently. She wraps an arm around my shoulders, steering me gently to the far side of the bar and studying my face. “Oh, honey. What is it?”
I can’t look at her. I don’t want to voice the thoughts in my head. Don’t want to put them out into the world, some superstition I never knew I had until now. “Nothing. I don’t feel well.”
It’s not a complete lie. I feel sick, almost dizzy, as the seconds tick by, agonizingly slow as I wait for the end of my shift.
He’ll be there.
The dread only grows as the hours pass and there’s no sign of him. Ben doesn’t walk in, taking his usual spot at the bar. There’s no sign of his smile as he shoulders through the crowd with glasses in his hands.
Carla keeps asking, but I shake her off. She has enough of her own pain going on, with Katie’s illness.
I leave the regular customers, the bigger tippers, to her and take the college students that don’t or can’t tip much.
“Carla.” I grab her as she’s coming back from her break. My head is spinning. “How much do you need for Katie’s trial? The one you’re saving up for?”
A flash of fear flits across her face. “This one? We think at least fifty, with everything considered. It’s in Germany.”
Fifty thousand dollars.
Carla and John barely earn that in a year.
A single medical trial.
By the time we close up, I can barely focus for the fear clogging my throat. I burst out into the street, my head twisting as I call out. “Ben?”
I know.
Iknow.
But I search anyway. I search every corner of the street, my eyes blurring with every step.
