“Sure thing. Talk tomorrow. Ciao!”
I take a deep breath before hitting talk. “Hello.”
“Emma. Are you okay? Why didn’t you call?” His voice is guarded.
I tell myself that confrontation is good when it means standing up for what I need. When it means getting everything out in the open. “Is there something you want to tell me?” Crap. Vague, Emma. So much for confrontation.
He’s quiet. “Emma, just tell me what you want to know. I’ve told you, I’m not good with games or ambiguous questions.”
“This isn’t a game, Graham.” Emily and Derek exchange a look in the front seat. I swear I can feel the adrenaline shooting through my bloodstream. Heart hammering, hands shaking. “I saw a photo of her and you. In bed.”
Emily turns all the way around in her seat, her eyes shooting flames. Derek lays a hand on her leg and they have a fierce, low-level conversation. I think he’s telling her to stay out of it and she’s telling him where to stick that recommendation.
“What?” Graham says, but I don’t answer or elaborate. He’s cursing, but not at me—he’s holding the receiver away from his mouth. “Where did you see this photo?”
“On Reid’s phone.”
There’s a long pause. “On Reid’s phone,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Send it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“He deleted it.”
“Well isn’t that convenient.” When I don’t reply, he sighs. “Emma, this wasn’t something I wanted to talk about over the phone.”
Oh God. I hang up. I can’t do this. Waiting for the phone to power down, I bite my lip and fight useless tears. Emily reaches back with her left hand, which I take and hold in a cemented grip all the way to her house.
***
Emily and Derek try their best to take my mind off of my disastrous love life, but my brain has a sort of three-strikes-and-you’re-out mentality about the whole thing, and Graham is strike three.
With Reid, I was too mesmerized by his super-celebrity to embark on any equal sort of relationship—if he even wanted a relationship. Reid Alexander was that guy on the magazine covers and movie posters. The guy with pages and pages of images on the web.
Marcus was a rebound, pure and simple. An attempt at something “normal.” I thought he was someone I could be friends with first. A theatre person, like me. The only thing good about that relationship was that I wasn’t all that into him, so he was easy to get over.
Graham is simply threaded through everything. I trusted him. I still want to.
After pizza and mini-golf, Derek drops us off at Em’s house. I go inside and help Mrs. Watson make cookies while Em and Derek say goodbye for half an hour in the Jeep until her dad flicks the driveway lights on and off a couple dozen times.
She breezes in a few minutes later. “Thanks, Dad—we felt like we were at a rave! I’m getting glow sticks for next weekend.”
He growls and stomps upstairs.
Emily and I watch our favorite movie, The Philadelphia Story, which is always good for short-term distraction because Kathryn Hepburn and Cary Grant can take my mind off of anything, even if we’ve seen it fifty times. Emily is vehemently Team Jimmy Stewart, so we have a long history of good-natured arguments during and after.
Tonight, I decide that what Tracy Lord (Hepburn) really needed was some time alone.
“Not a traditionally admired concept in romantic comedies, or, let’s face it, in real life,” Em says, gesturing with a Twizzler.
“True that,” I answer in the voice of Em’s dad, who attempts to relate to his kids by picking up their lingo. The fact that he’s always five years behind the curve (and that he uses the word lingo) pretty much ruins the effect. We bump fists before dissolving into muffled laughter.
After the movie is over, we lie in the dark as we have hundreds of times before. “Why did you hang up on him, if he was about to tell you the truth about her?” Between us, Emily links her hand with mine.
“I guess I just wasn’t ready to hear him confess it.”
“So you’re expecting a confession.”
I turn my head and look at her. “What else follows those words? I didn’t want to talk about this on the phone.” My voice breaks.
Hector jumps on the bed then, walking over our clasped hands and flopping between our shoulders, purring and kneading my bicep with his cotton-ball paws.
“And Wednesday, when I talked to him about moving to New York early and getting an apartment? He didn’t seem to think that was a good idea.”
I hear the frown in her voice. “Why not?”
“He said something about me having a normal college experience… and then Brooke walked into his room wearing a bathrobe sized for a small child, wanting help picking which sex-kitten top to wear to the party they were going to together!” I bite my lip. I’m pissed. I will not cry. “It all looks connected now. And I feel like an idiot.”
Emily raises herself on her elbow so I can see her face over Hector’s mound of white fur. “There’s no reason for you to feel like an idiot.”
“Yeah, there is.” I’m not going to start bawling, but that doesn’t keep tears from trickling out. They seep into my hair as I stare up into her concerned eyes. “I’m an idiot because I still want to trust him. My instincts are all screaming at me to trust him.”
Emily purses her lips and lies back down, still holding my hand like we’ve been doing since we were five. “Wow. That sucks ass.”