“Don’t think I’m just going to forget how you dodged this conversation. I’m serious, Em. He seems like bad news. Obviously the breakup was bad if you went so far as to pretend not to know him. If you want to get into the dating pool, you don’t need to do it getting tangled up in a messy situation.”
She held my stare for a few seconds to show me how serious she was and when I didn’t respond she sighed and continued down the hall to the staff room.
She wasn’t wrong. I really should have been staying out of his life. Just not for the reasons she was thinking. And I was going to tell him just that when he begged me for a hug, but I couldn’t get the words out once his arms were around me.
After all this time, he still felt like home.
I settled into an empty chair at the conference table, shooting Mason a smile when he greeted me. I felt self-conscious knowing that he had seen me the other night when I couldn’t even brush my own fucking hair. I pushed the thoughts aside and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I unblocked Enoch’s number and sent him a short text telling him to please not come to my work again unannounced.
“Emory, you going to eat?”
I startled, looking up at Mason, who eyed the food and then my empty plate.Right, lunch.
“Yeah,” I nodded, reaching for the closest platter of sandwiches.
I wasn’t hungry, not after that stand-off with Enoch. Not after my heart was breaking from him telling me that he cared about me, telling me that heknewme. I wanted to scream and punch someone, but I bottled it up and tried to remain present when Lottie started the meeting off with a recap of this month’s events and numbers.
Lottie kept eyeing me and I knew that I was failing at trying to appear nonchalant. She was worried about me. And if I was in her shoes, I would be too. But she didn’t know the history that Enoch and I shared.
With Lottie, with the small friend group that had accepted me here in Anchorage, I could keep people at arm’s length. It was easy to lie, easy to pretend that I didn’t have a closetfull of skeletons that would make someone think twice about associating with me. Because they didn’t know Shiloh Tellez. They only knew the version of me that I wished I was. They knew Emory Crawford. Someone who was a decent friend, a hard-working employee, and a mostly normal twenty-two-year-old.
But Enoch…he had always demanded honesty, and I’d never been able to give it to him.
Last night, I thought that I was ready, that at hearing his forgiveness it would free me from the guilt, and I would feel at peace with my decision to end things. But as the hours ticked by, and I failed to convince myself to pull the trigger, I realized with horror that I had never actually apologized. For any of it.
Maybe it was a byproduct of my time at Eden, but theneedwas too strong. Ineededto apologize. Even if it was going to break me.
It was the only way, I realized. It was the only way that I was going to be able to finally find the peace I was hoping that death would grant me. I hadn’t been humble enough. I’d made excuses for my actions instead of taking responsibility for them and for the hurt that they caused.
Ineededto confess, admit my wrongdoings without placing blame on circumstance or others, ask for forgiveness and find a way to restore what I had damaged.
And then…then I’d be able to set myself free from this hell.
With this last life, I was going to do things right for once. I hadn’t realized until he was sobbing, arms wrapped so tightly around me like I would disappear at any moment, just how badly I had fucked him up. How deeply my actions had impacted him.
Four and a half years later he was holding onto a guilt thatwasn’this to own. It was mine. And before I struck off that last tally, I was going to make sure that he knew that.
It wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t his fault that we had crossed paths again. And he didn’t deserve to suffer because of my past,my mistakes, my sins. He would likely hate me, but I was willing to take that chance if it meant I got to right the wrongs I’d committed. If it meant I got to tell him everything I never had the courage to before.
My mind was crowded with the possibilities of how Enoch might react. All the ways in which I could tell him I wasn’t what he believed me to be. All the ways in which I might untangle the messy web of half-truths and secrets I’d been spinning since the moment we met.
How much could my heart take for him to know? How much truth was too much before I risked breaking him all over again and causing more damage? Where was the line between lying by omission and preserving someone’s sanity and wellbeing?
I didn’t know. But I couldn’t stop obsessing over it.
My brain couldn’t stop.
Eleven
July 1, Wednesday
Emory
Enoch was the only thing on my mind as I tried to go about my daily routine of work, sleep, repeat. As I tried and failed, again and again, to stop using him as a crutch when I had a nightmare, when I had the itch to feel something good and punish myself afterwards. Only now, I didn’t have to simply imagine he was there, I could reread the text messages he’d been sending me since we parted ways on Sunday.
I was stalling just like Bradley. Delaying the moment I’d have to own up, have to see his broken face again, have to potentially watch him cry again, or hear him shout at me, cut me deeper than I ever had with his words. And he’d be right, whatever mean things he said, because I was an idiot. A selfish fucking idiot who couldn’t move on. And I was sick for being relieved that he hadn’t moved on either. That in the years apart he hadn’t buried me for good. That he still carried the good parts of me that I’d left with him.
By the third day, I felt like I was on a never-ending carousel ride of anxiety. At a weak point, I called my therapist back. I justneeded a third-party to tell me to knock it the fuck off and rip the Band-Aid off.
