The Rest Will Come Page 7

  Immediately, her body rejected the idea. She slammed her hand down, nearly tipping the plate all over the floor. Dry heaves rattled her ribs, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

  “I can’t, Ronnie. I just can’t.”

  “Fine,” Ronnie said, removing the plate. “You leave me no other choice.”

  “What?”

  “Ice cream for dinner.”

  ***

  Emma woke up the next morning dissolved into a blanket on Ronnie’s couch. She had slept paralytically once more—one slow, pathetic respiration above being dead—and her joints ached from being crumpled in one position so long. She moved clumsily with both mind and body protesting every shift. Every part of her wanted to sleep into oblivion.

  More evidence of Terrence and cohabitation greeted her in the bathroom. A towel branded with the image of some superhero Emma did not recognize was slung over the towel rod, a canister of shaving cream and a manly razor crammed into the corner on the edge of the bathtub. Ronnie’s toothbrush now had a companion in the white crusted plastic cup. Ronnie had finally permitted someone into her home, into her life. For the first time. A tight stab pierced her chest. Even Ronnie’s toothbrush had more companionship than she did.

  Emma placed her palms on the cold counter and hung her head. She blew the breath out thick between her lips when the tears welled up again. At this point, she did not remember what it felt like to not be crying, to have any sense of clarity in her head.

  “Em?” Ronnie said through the door.

  Emma squeezed her eyes shut to cinch off the tears, wiped her cheeks, and opened the door.

  “How are you feeling?” Ronnie asked when Emma stepped out into the hall.

  “Fat,” Emma said, cradling her stomach. “I can’t believe you made me eat an entire thing of ice cream.”

  “You wouldn’t eat food. Desperate times.”

  “Food sounds so unappetizing right now. Eating is the last thing I want to do.”

  “Then you get force-fed ice cream until that changes. I didn’t expect you up so early.”

  The bedroom door was closed behind Ronnie. Terrence must have come home while Emma lay half dead on the couch. Their couch now.

  “Yeah, I have to work.”

  “Oh come on, Em. You can skip it.”

  “No I can’t. I already missed two days. There’s no way Randy will let me duck out on another. I have three jobs; I can’t miss work. For any reason.”

  “Have you told him what’s going on?”

  “No. I told him I was sick. With how I sounded, I don’t think it was hard to believe.”

  “Tell him what happened; take another day.”

  “No,” Emma snapped. Then softer, “I don’t want anyone to know.”

  Ronnie tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.

  “At least not yet,” Emma whined. “I need to get my head around it first.”

  “How are you going to hide this?”

  “Hide what?”

  “This!” Ronnie gestured up and down over Emma. “The fact that you look like you’ve been shit out of a dinosaur then run over by a truck.”

  “Jesus. Thanks, Ronnie.”

  “Honey, awful shit has happened. You look awful, nothing wrong with that. But you can’t hide it and you won’t be able to keep it a secret. Like I have always told you, you’re too transparent.”

  “Well, for now, I’m going to try. I need the money. We owe Credit Financial this week or they are going to send us to collections. Plus the mortgages, plus the motorcycle payment.”

  “For all of Justin’s debts.”

  “I know. I know!” Emma mashed her hands over her face. “I married an idiot. He dug us in over our heads in debt, convinced me to buy a second house and a car and a motorcycle. I’ve been working three jobs to keep us afloat while the debt collectors keep calling, and he’s out working at a bar some nights and fucking cocktail waitresses in bikinis. I know!”

  Ronnie remained silent, letting Emma scream and lean against the hall wall.

  “How did I get here, Ronnie? How? How is this my goddamn life?”

  “I really don’t know, Emma. You were always the one who had it all figured out, who knew what she wanted in her life.”

  “Look where that got me. I’m alone. Justin’s been cheating on me for longer than I want to know. I’m working three bullshit jobs to not file bankruptcy. You have a job that throws the money at you and have finally moved in with someone.”

  “You’re right. I don’t know how any of this happened. Do you think we switched lives at some point, like some Freaky Friday shit? Because your life sounds like it should belong to me.”

  “We must have. You didn’t do some voodoo on me in the college, did you?”

  “Well, you know I have always been secretly fluent in the dark arts. And you did always nap on my fucking couch when I had insomnia.”

  “Clearly, I deserved this then!” Emma laughed, and the darkness lifted for a brief moment. “What the hell am I going to do, Ronnie?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea. But today, apparently, you are going to pull your shit together and go to work.”

  ***

  When Emma shambled back into her house after two shifts, she was as exhausted physically as she was emotionally. Her flesh felt like it complimented her fractured mental state. It felt like she had an excuse. It was a relief to feel so tired and sore that she could not think. She had happily plunged into the distraction of tasks all day long, except her face hurt from forcing the grin and saying, “No, I’m fine. Just don’t feel very well,” on repeat.

  Under the cover of night, she limped from her car to the dark and hollow house. In no way did she want Justin to be inside waiting for her, she only did not want to be alone with her thoughts. She should have gone back to Ronnie’s welcoming couch. Only she could not face seeing her uncharacteristically happy cohabitation with Terrence.

  There was no place for her, no position that made the pain more bearable, no perspective that made it all feel less real and catastrophic.

  Emma had not eaten all day. Being busy was an easy enough excuse. Ronnie was not there to shove ice cream down her throat. With the more detached apathy and tunnel vision focus of coworkers, her starvation could go on unnoticed and unimpeded. The burning emptiness where her stomach usually sloshed felt appropriate, played in harmony with the symphony of pain on her nerves.

  Emma did not even bother to turn on any lights. She was familiar with the layout of their house. She left her shoes and coat by the door, dropped her keys, purse, and tips on the counter, and heaved her weary bones up the stairs. She might have been asleep before her head actually contacted the pillow.

  ***

  Shifting and rustling in the morning house below her roused her from her coma. She would have been frightened if she cared what happened to her anymore, if she did not know from the bumbling disregard in the movements that it was Justin. She rolled her eyes hard, causing her wounded eyeballs to whimper.

  She did not want to see him. She never wanted to see him again. She could not stand having to confront the reality behind the man she thought she loved. What remained was only some unfamiliar, dumb, cheating asshole. Someone she would have never permitted herself to see herself with once upon a time.

  She had chosen him. She had given everything to him. In front of everyone. And that was the worst part, the pain that twined tightly around every wrinkle in her brain.

  Whining as she thrashed out of her pillowed nest, she dug deep through the endless layers of depression, scratching down to rediscover her anger. She drew the rage up and pushed it out over her flesh in a protective layer.

  Anything to be able to deal with him.

  When she walked down the stairs still in her rumpled uniform from last night, she found Justin dragging bags up from his office in the basement, his playroom. Emma walked around him to gather up the purse, keys, and tip envelope she had abandoned in the dark hours ago.

&
nbsp; “What are you doing?” she asked without bothering to look at him.

  “Just getting some stuff. I think I’m going to blow town for a couple days. You know, clear my head.”

  “What about work?”

  “I’ll take off.”

  “On the weekend? Justin, you make all your money on the weekend. We have to pay the motorcycle and both mortgages by the end of the week.”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Will we? Will we? Like we’re figuring out this separation? Are you just going to leave me high and dry on all this stuff?”

  “Em, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t think you would cheat on me and leave me either.”

  Justin looked down and gathered up the bags to move toward the door.

  “That’s right,” Emma said. “Don’t own up to it. Don’t deal with it. Just continue doing whatever the hell it is you want. Never mind me, your wife, or anyone.”

  The door shut behind him, and the sound echoed through the house.

  Emma stood there alone, still holding the envelope with her tips in it. Tips from the third job she worked to pay his credit card debt, to pay for this house he insisted they buy. She wondered when she had become his bitch.

  She was his bitch.

  He was having sex with some cocktail waitress in a bikini, and he was leaving her. Alone in this stupid house he had to have while they rented their first house to unruly college kids who did nothing but damage it.

  The screen door slammed shut behind her as she fled the house. She paid no attention to Justin loading his car with all his pointless, unconsummated hobbies. She completely lost concept of her body, her mind so enveloped in shock. He could not stop stunning her with his new levels of idiocy and detachment.

  She did not realize she was running until her feet pounded the asphalt, bare skin slapping at the textured road. She did not feel the pain, did not feel her feet. She did not feel anything. A horn blazed loud in her ears as a truck slammed on its brakes in front of her. She did not react. She could only stare at the driver with wide, maniacal eyes.

  She kept running. She pumped her legs and slammed her unprotected feet into the pavement mindlessly until her pulse throbbed through her temples, her breath burned in her lungs, her muscles cried out in their own acid. She ran until she could not think and could not feel anything beyond the exhaustion.

  It was that day Emma became a runner.

  Chapter 7

  Her heaving breaths swirled past her open lips, the reverberation of each stride rippling up her body. Her foot struck the pavement mid-sole on her overpriced, personally fitted running shoes before she coiled the leg behind her and thrust out the next. Even with the chaotic gangster rap threatening to deafen her through the quivering earbuds, the sound of her own breathing encapsulated her.

  Her heart throbbed to support the rapid, gasping inhalations, sending the blood pounding under her skin. The edge of her sight wobbled in rhythm. The sweat beading across her forehead and upper lip and trickling down the curve of her spine was not beckoned by the sun or the temperature around her; heat brewed in and radiated from her core. Her furnace burned hotter with each stride and puffed breath, wafting up waves of heat to lick over her face.

  Emma’s eyes surveyed the curve of the greenway sprawling in front of her. Her sight registered the tall line of security fences hugging a neighborhood of backyards, the low water level of the creek trickling sluggishly alongside her, the twist in the branches of the sprouting trees, the bobbing figures of other runners on the trail. She did not actually see any of the scene.

  Emma was lost in the run.

  The concrete below her crawled up against her toes, easing up in an incline, dragging her up a hill. She drew out her strides, heaving her legs up slower with her quads, leaning forward to employ gravity for aid. As the grade increased, her breathing struggled. She clenched her teeth and spat her exhalations out, swinging her arms toward the crest.

  The hill climaxed and spilled her out into a downhill stretch. Emma let out a gasp in relief with acid writhing over the muscles in her legs, teeming and tingling from her hips to her ankles as she pumped them forward. She leaned back upright and dropped her exertion to coast through the heavy steps down the reward hill. Her heart climbed back out of her skull and the heat flared down, dropping below consuming inferno.

  Her breath remained desperate while gaining pace with each inhale. Her body moved mechanically, methodically, mindlessly. Right, left. Leg, arm. Breathe in, breathe out. Just keep going. She disappeared into the monotonous melody, below the pain on her nerves where her thoughts could not find her.

  Where she was free.

  The hill meandered and waned in front of her jog, and her finish line crept into view. The culmination of her miles edged into sight, the same point at which she started. Almost there. The weight lifted out of her exhausted muscles and heaving chest as an awkward depleted rejuvenation rushed over her.

  Faster. She pushed her tired legs faster. She stopped listening to her body completely. She stretched out her run to her physical limit, reaching with each movement, pushing harder each time her foot struck the ground. She launched off of her steps, sending her breathing into a panicked yet strict rhythm through thin lips.

  When she slammed past the imaginary line on the pavement, Emma put the brakes on. Her heavy footsteps dwindled until she fell into a gentle walk. Her entire body vibrated, her skin was on fire, and her head felt like it was floating. A smile was playing on her lips. Her chest heaved, the sweat pouring. She only felt euphoric, elevated, elated.

  Emma loosed her phone from the sleeve on her arm and stopped her GPS tracking app. Her pace had been better; she was getting faster. Every time, she pushed to her physical edge, and every time, that got her a little further.

  Her body flushed and tingled beneath the shifting layer of sweat secreting over the length of her skin. The stupid, unadulterated smile stretched absentmindedly across her cheeks, contorting her face upwards in a pattern too often forgotten. The brief relent of the weight on her chest permitted her to actually breathe. Its absence made her feel like she was floating. She felt happy. Simple and unrefined, free from thought.

  The heat still radiated out from somewhere buried at her center. Though her inhalations became thicker and more fluid, she was perspiring more than in her dead sprint, if that was possible. She could smell her own exertion on her upper lip and feel it sliding down her back, pooling above her eyebrows, lining the hinges of her knees.

  In this disgusting, saturated throbbing, she was free and content, momentarily divorced from her life and lost in the synapses of her physical body.

  With each cooldown step, her lungs and her heart slowed back toward their resting rates. The heat billowing from her core vanished abruptly and instantly, leaving a chill icing the edge of her sweaty film.

  Each step was also one closer to her car, one in the direction of reality, where there was more than the sound of her breathing and the collision of her shoes with the pavement. She would run into oblivion if she never had to come back, if she never had to deal with or think about the mundane realities anymore.

  Emma lifted her phone and wiped the sweat from the screen onto her race tech shirt. She did not hear any notifications through her blaring music and deafening breathing, but a barrage of text messages, emails, and social networking indicators greeted her on the screen.

  Welcome back to your dreaded reality, they seemed to say.

  There was a message from Ronnie.

  Ronnie: Screw that d-bag. Dinner at my house tonight. T will be out. I’ll order food and get wine. No excuses. Get your ass here!

  This was the reality Emma ran from that day: talking to Ronnie about her latest dating disaster, making it real and binding by confession. Before the run had even cooled on her soles, there it was.

  There was no escape, even on the trail, so she drove home, showered, and got her ass to Ronnie’s in yoga pant
s and a sloppy bun.

  When Ronnie’s door opened, Emma saw the full wine glass suspended in front of her face. Ronnie extended the drink to Emma at the threshold, smirking some combination of a welcoming grin and an I-told-you-so air. The deep red liquid quivered at the surface and refracted pink light against Emma’s face.

  Blood red, like the color that flashed when it became clear Dylan would not be answering her texts.

  Blood red, like the color she fantasized about loosing from his neck.

  She welcomed the blood red of the wine and how familiar it felt. She wrapped her fingertips around the glass and brought it to her lips. She took a long pull of the liquid before she even entered the apartment.

  Ronnie nodded approvingly and walked back inside. Emma followed her mechanically and pushed the door closed behind her, crumpling on the couch.

  “All right. Spill,” Ronnie said, bringing a pizza box out to the table.

  The smell of the melty cheese and savory sauce made Emma want to vomit in her mouth. She dove back into her wine glass, where the aroma was thin and abrasive.

  “I don’t want to.” Her voice echoed sadly on the inside of the glass.

  She kept the curve pressed against her face and watched her exhalations steam patterns above the liquid. Ronnie dropped her head to the side and raised an eyebrow harshly. A glare flirted on the edge of her lashes. Emma knew that look. She whined and threw her arm over her eyes like a child.

  “Stop being ridiculous,” Ronnie said.

  Emma sighed and pulled her head back up, casting Ronnie a defeated gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. This whole dating thing is stupid. Another guy who turned out to be an asshole. Another guy who didn’t want me. I’m still divorced. I’m still single. I just want to be done. I just want the family I was supposed to have already.”