Then I hear it. Crying. Is she crying?
“Emma?” I knock once on the bathroom door.
“Y–yes?” The fracture in her voice threatens to crack me open.
“Are you—”
“I’ll be out in a second,” she cuts me off, her tone treading that tender line she’s been teetering lately. The line that tells me she is not fine, but no one needs to worry about it.
I sit on the edge of the bed and wait long, grueling seconds before the water finally shuts off. She comes out wearing a bubblegum-pink pajama set with thin stripes stretching from top to bottom. The fabric practically shimmers under the bedroom light, and the stripes are like a trail, one formy gaze to travel and land on the top of her thigh. I blink back to her, and she’s peering at me.
“Sorry.” I smirk. “Have a good shower?”
I could slap myself.Obviously, she didn’t. She was just crying, you idiot.
“Sure?” She peers at me.
“Good, good.”Ask her what’s wrong.
The towel loosens around her head, and her wet brown hair falls around her face. She tousles it, drying the edges, then tosses the towel in the hamper.
“What’s up?” she asks, moving around the room, again not meeting my eyes.
“Can we talk?”
She freezes for a fraction of a second—so quick I might’ve missed it if I wasn’t watching her, but then she’s moving again, busying herself around the bed, straightening the comforter, fluffing a pillow, opening and shutting a drawer. She’s fidgeting. Maybe she doesn’t want to acknowledge what I said.Can we talk?
She grabs a striped throw pillow and starts to assess it then murmurs, “Is everything okay?”
I try to meet her eyes, but they’re focused on a loose thread on the pillow.
“Not really,” I finally say.
This time, she stops. Her wary eyes lift to meet mine, and the look in them knocks the air from my lungs. She’s scared. Whether it’s because of my mom or because of me, I can’t tell. But my gut says it’s the latter. I can’t take not knowing anymore.
“Emma,” I say, my voice tight, “do I scare you?”
A startled, maybe amused, sound slips from her. “What are you talking about?”
“At dinner, it seemed like you were…” I pause as the words, the possible truth, lodge thick in my throat. “Scared of me. After everything with my mom…like you thought I was mad at you.” I swallow. “Do I? Get mad at you, I mean.”
Her gaze drops to the floor, and my heart goes with it.
“Emma,” I whisper, now staring at my hands. “Am I an angry man?”
“Steven, no.”
She slides onto the bed beside me, her arms wrapping around me. “You’re the least angry person I know,” she reassures, rubbing slow, comforting circles across my back.
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
My voice splinters on the last word. Rejection burns through me, small, and stupid, and so achingly human. I’ve been rejected before, many times, but feeling it from Emma seems to hurt worse. Like something vital is being pulled from me, hollowing me out.
“Honey…” she whispers. “Hey, let’s look at each other right now.”
I huff out a shaky laugh and blink up at her, tears glazing the edges of my vision. She wipes them away with her thumb, and I feel ridiculous.
As if she can read my mind, she says, “I’ve seen you cry many times, don’t worry.”
