“Everyone needs a love life.” She clicks her tongue.
“Then set yourself up. Last I heard you’re single. And you’ve never been on a date. How can you even match people when you’ve never experienced love?”
Hurt flashes across her blue eyes, and I immediately regret my words. But she’s already talking before I can apologize.
“I know love. I love Papa, and he loves me. I love my sister, and she loves me. I love Henrietta, and she loves me. I love yo—“ She stops herself mid-sentence, the hurt replaced with something like horror mixed with disbelief. She shifts her gray-blue eyes away from me before continuing. “I love you. As a friend. I know friendship and familial love. The only thing that would make romantic love different from what I know is the physical stuff. And we can get along just fine without it.”
I scoff, running my hand through my hair. How can she so easily dismiss romantic love? Especially when she’s trying to match people for a living! I lean down, captivating her full attention, then speak slowly. “Romantic love is so much more than friendship. It’s more than being family. It’s a committed lifetime. It’s knowing someone at their darkest and loving them anyway. It’s needing their touch to bring relief to your anxiety. It’s drowning in theirkiss when you’ve had an awful, hard day. It’s laying your head next to someone each and every night, knowing they have the power to destroy you but trusting that they love you and will choose to enliven you.”
Emma Jane never breaks contact, and we are close enough I smell the butterscotch on her breath from her church candies. The urge to close my eyes and minimize the remaining distance between us surprises me, and I fling myself backward, stumbling over my own feet. Emma Jane reaches out for me, and as my hand closes around hers, I realize that she’s not preventing me from falling.
She’s coming down with me.
As I crash toward the tiled floor, I hold Emma Jane close against me to prevent her from hitting the ground. She lands on my chest as my back slams against the dark blue marble floor, knocking the breath from my lungs. We are a mess of entwined limbs and pained groans. When her eyes lock with mine, I feel a surge of heat course through my veins. Her hair creates a wall against the outside world, and I think I might want to kiss her within this private nook on the floor.
It’s been eight years since I’ve kissed a woman…
“Emma Jane. Do you mind?” I wish I could say my words sound annoyed, but they sound like a desperate plea.Emma Jane. Do you mind getting off of me? Because I’m about to snap and kiss you. And I really shouldn’t do that because you’reyou.
“Oh, right. Um…” She frantically scrambles to get off me, but because of the way we are tangled together, she only manages to straddle me before she falls over, her hands bracing against my chest as her molten gaze suggests she might want to kiss me, too.Oh, God… Give me strength…
It’s not that I want Emma Jane particularly, I tell myself. It’s that I’ve been starved of this type of affection for a long while. I forgot how good it felt to desire a woman.
“What is going on here?” Henry’s booming voice looms over us, and that is enough to get Emma Jane back solidly on her feet. I grunt as I get up, my body reminding me that no matter how much I run and work out, I’m thirty-six.
And she’s twenty-three.
I grunt again, but this time because I’m disgusted with myself. I’m not allowed to have thoughts about Emma Jane because she’s her. She’s like a little sister.
But she’s not,my brain helpfully reminds me.
She’s too young for me. Thirteen years is a ginormous gap, especially when she’s in herearlytwenties…
It’s not like you just met her. You’ve known her forever.
Precisely! She’s the textbook definition of off-limits, I battle with my thoughts.
“Knightley was being his clumsy self and started to fall, but when I tried to help, he brought me down with him.” Emma Jane laughs nervously as if she was caught in a precarious situation.
It feels like we were caught doingsomethingjudging by the way Henry is glaring at me.
Emma Jane elbows me, and I cackle a little too loudly alongside her. “Yep. That’s what happened.” And itiswhathappened, so why does it feel like I’m lying?
“Knightley isn’t clumsy.” Henry’s monotone voice sends chills down my spine.
Mom lingers with a knowing look at the doorway of the kitchen as Henry leaves. We all set to work continuing to prepare lunch. Emma Jane approaches the topic of matchmaking me with someone again, and of course, I shoot her down.
Again and again and again I shoot her down, even when she tries to convince me she will find a “lovely woman.”
It’s not that I’m opposed to love. I’m opposed to falling in love again only to have said love ripped from my fingers. Better to not risk that possibility. I’ve come to terms with the accident and have gotten over being angry at God for it all, but that doesn’t mean I want to go through that again, even if it means experiencing romantic love once more.
Even if it means finding someone who makes mefeel thingsagain…
Which is the icing on the cake as to why whatever just happened between me and Emma Jane—and whatever nonsense got into me the other day in my home when I flirted with her and got dizzy on her scent while she hid herself away in my arms throughout the movie—is irrelevant. Dead. A moot point, as we say in law when something up for discussion is of no importance.
However, after we all sit down at the long dining table to eat our meal, Emma Jane shows me a picture of a pretty brunette with a charming smile and kind eyes. Emma Jane says her name is Mallory and that I’m supposed to meet her at seven p.m. sharp on Friday night. Emma Jane argues that if all goes well, then havinga girlfriend could boost my poll numbers. It’s the most idiotic of ideas, but…
For some reason…
