But despite it all, he still came in and stayed until who even knows when. He took my childish fear of driving in storms in stride and listened when I talked about my parents and laughed with me over my disaster of a date.
And it was…comfortable. I was comfortable with him in a way I never really have been before. Comfortable enough to not even remember falling asleep or Jeremy leaving. He was comfortable too. I could tell. There was an easy energy between us that’s never been there before, and I wonder if it will stay awhile, or if it was a one-day thing brought on by an impromptu trail run and a mid-storm rescue mission. I guess only time will tell.
I check the clock on the living room wall and see it’s time for me to get my ass up if I want to get to the gym. Running is my main exercise of choice, but a few years ago I joined a boxinggym just for fun. Something about punching the shit out of a heavy bag a couple times a week really does it for me.
As I peel myself off the couch, I remember my car is still at Pour. I’m cycling through the logistics of getting to the gym and then downtown to pick up my car when I see the note on the coffee table, with my keys next to it.
Ems,
I hope you don’t mind but I took your keys last night and picked up your car after you fell asleep. I didn’t know what you had planned today, but I didn’t want you to have to worry about making the trip back downtown. It’s parked outside.
You asked me to tell you something true, so here is one more thing: That’s my favorite Taylor song too.
I liked talking to you last night.
Hope you have a good day.
Jeremy
I immediately fall heavily back onto the couch, note in hand, my eyes scanning the wordsthat’s my favorite Taylor song tooover and over again while my brain replays the image of gold-rimmed brown eyes on mine and a heavy arm around my shoulders and a soft smile that held all my fears at bay.
Chapter Eight
Emma
Ikept the note.
I’m still turning that little nugget around in my head a week later, as I sit at my desk trying to focus on the incorporation documents for a spin-off charitable nonprofit I’m creating for a client. As a nonprofit lawyer, this is the kind of work I can usually do in my sleep. Today, though, it might as well be in an entirely different language for all the sense it’s making to me.
I don’t know if it’s the way he came when I called him, or the fact that it’s the most time Jeremy and I have spent alone together outside of work stuff practically ever, or his casual acceptance of my decades-long fear of driving in storms, or the way he went back downtown in the middle of the night so I would have my car in the morning, or how we talked like it was easy to be around each other when for years it’s been anything but, or the way the warm, spicy scent of his cologne seems to still be clinging to the couch cushions where he sat while we were talking. Whatever it is, I can’t get that night out of my head.
I felt every inch the twenty-two-year-old girl with a crush on Jeremy Wright I once was as I read the note he left me over and over again, before folding it carefully and putting it in acarved wooden keepsake box my grandmother gave me a couple of years ago when I bought my house.For your most important treasures, she told me. It’s been empty ever since, and it’s still empty now, except for the note from Jeremy, lying not so casually at the bottom.
I probably should have thrown it away, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
Annoyed with myself, I grab a bag of M&M’s from my desk drawer and push up from my chair, stalking to the window. I throw it open and take a deep breath of the crisp September air before tearing open my bag of candy, tossing a handful into my mouth. If I’m going all adolescent angst over a man, of all things, you better believe there will be chocolate involved.
The M&M’s don’t work their usual magic, as my brain keeps cycling through images of that night. Bouncing on my heels, I wish fervently for my running shoes and the trails. If I can’t stress-eat away the memories of Jeremy and me sitting in my dimly lit living room in the middle of a storm, maybe I can at least outrun them. I’m considering blowing off work for the rest of the day to do exactly that when Julie’s voice booms up the stairs.
“I need everyone downstairs! Family meeting!”
“Thank god,” I mutter, making a beeline for the door, stopping at my desk for a second bag of M&M’s before I run downstairs, eager not to be alone with my thoughts.
I’m halfway down the stairs when I see Julie flip the lock on the front door, something we never do during the business day. Intrigued, I descend the final few stairs as Julie turns around. I’m just about to ask her what’s going on when her gaze narrows on the hand holding my M&M’s.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
I wonder for a second if my angst is written all over my face. I’m usually more of a closed book than that, but it’s been a weird week.
“What do you mean?”
She points at the bag in my hand. “Those are peanut M&M’s.”
“Yeah, so?”
“You only eat peanut M&M’s when you’re in your feelings.”
I’m momentarily speechless. That can’t possibly be true. Can it? “That’s not true. I love peanut M&M’s. I eat them all the time.”
