Between the Lines

“That’s the way to ruin the idyllic dream of Darcy and Elizabeth for all time,” Tadd agrees. “Show what it was really like once they got married.” He turns to Quinton. “You’re a gloomy twat!” he says in a falsetto voice.

“And you’re just like your mother!” Quinton barks.

As everyone leaves a couple of hours later, I take Emma’s arm, gently. “Emma, hold up a moment. I want to ask you something.” She’s guarded, but nods her assent.

*** *** ***

Emma

“Come sit.” Reid takes my hand and leads me to the sofa.

“Um, we have to get up early—well, I have to get up early, I guess you don’t have to be there until later…” The excuses tumble through my brain disjointedly.

“It’s not that late,” he says, and I decide to just hear him out. We sit. “You looked gorgeous today.” He’s still holding my hand. “I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”

He’s as beautiful as ever, dark blue eyes sweeping over my face, his blondish hair a bit darker, a bit longer, still perfectly disordered. I blink, his words settling around me. “Reid, what are you—? I mean, I don’t…”

“Emma, I made a mistake. A huge mistake. I was upset when you disappeared that night, but I should have never given you an ultimatum; it was thoughtless and juvenile. I should’ve waited for you to talk to me. I could have explained. You’re reasonable and fair, and I’m sure you’d have listened.”

My heart slams out a rhythm in my chest, pulses it through my body. “But… you didn’t wait. You didn’t explain. You just went off with the first girl, and then the second, third, fourth, I mean Jesus, I stopped counting after that…”

“I was reactionary, just trying to make you jealous—”

“No, you were trying to show me how unimportant I was. And you succeeded.”

This is the combat zone we sidestepped when he took up with Blossom and I just let him go. There’d been no confrontation, no breakup. My throat closes up now as I fight tears. I didn’t think, at the time, that he’d actually injured me. I thought I was just pissed off at his attempts to humiliate me. An ambush of emotions takes over as I realize I sold the whole thing short. What he’d done had hurt. And apparently still did.

He wipes his thumbs under my eyes, carefully removing tears. “Emma, I’m an arrogant guy. I’m used to having things my way, every time, with every girl. You were different. That’s why I can’t get you out of my head.” He leans up, cradling my face between his palms. “Forgive me. Please.” His eyes are mesmerizing, dark blue, and I know there’s more depth to him than he’s allowed me to see, but it isn’t enough.

“I forgive you,” I say. “But I can’t forget. And I can’t trust you, Reid.”

He takes both of my hands in his. “I could be different with you.” He’s so sincere that it takes everything in me to think logically. “You may be the only one who’ll see through all my bullshit and help me try to be something more, something better.”

I stare at our intertwined hands. “I don’t want to help you try to be anything. I want someone who’s already something more. On his own. With or without me.”

He’s quiet then, and I don’t dare look at him yet. “Is there someone else?”

I think of Graham. Graham, who cannot be mine. “No, there isn’t. But that’s really not the point.”

“Then what is the point?” He tips my chin up with his fingers, making me look into his eyes again.

My chin trembles, tears spilling over onto his hand. “The point is, I’m not going to settle for less than I want, less than I deserve. Brooke trusted you, and you abandoned her—and yes,” I say before he can object, “maybe you were just too young to handle the situation at the time, but you never gave me a chance to find that out. You started screwing your way through the rest of the cast like my feelings didn’t matter. I forgive you, because I’m past it. But that’s the thing. I’m past it.”

With the last bit of effort I can manage, I get up and leave his room, shaking from head to toe. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t follow, but I can’t unclench my shoulders until I’m in my room, the door shut and bolted behind me. I flip on a light and fall onto the bed, crying and dialing.

“Emily,” I say when she answers, feeling ten times better the moment I hear her voice.

Chapter 45

REID

It begins the same way it did last time, with a glass of wine during dinner. Within a week, it’s a cocktail before dinner, and wine during. And then something before bed. When it moves into the daylight hours, it’s all over.

Some people leap off of the wagon and some people fall. My mother simply climbs down, calmly and with the same resolve under which she’s checked herself into rehab three times. The first time she tried to get help was when she’d discovered she was pregnant, but she lost the baby during that first cut-short stint of rehab. When she came home and sank into depression, numbing herself regularly because otherwise she did nothing but cry, no one blamed her—not her ten-year-old son, not her husband, not her mother, who lived with us.

My grandmother tried to get her to go back and get the help and counseling she needed to deal with her grief, but Mom wouldn’t go back. Her refusals are never loud and messy. Her dissent is genius, really. She never constructs an argument or has an ugly outburst. She merely nods agreement to whatever is proposed, and then doesn’t follow through.