Taking the first swallow of the cold bottle of beer in his hand, Zain Chadwick told himself that today's drawn conclusions had been his misunderstanding, that there was no way Emma Taylor could be married and much less with a child.
She'd called that little girl 'daughter' but it had to be in the sense of 'neice'. And about that ring, it'd probably been just for fashion.
He looked at his phone beside him for the sixth time and still held himself back from grabbing it and conducting a research on her. He was just so scared of what he would find.
But eventually, when the need for clarity tore through him with a vengeance, he finally picked up his phone and searched her up on Google.
Naturally, her details on Wikipedia were the leads on the results. Scrolling, Zain mouthed her name 'Emma Taylor Lancaster'.
He nearly let himself ignore the detail in his haste to scroll down and see her marriage status, but a one's over at the name and his heart started pounding erratically.
Lancaster.
Even though he had it staring him in the face, he told himself a name was something too basic to determine the status and scrolled further.
If she wasn't married, then there would be no 'spouse' in the information, and he hoped for the life of him he wouldn't find it. He moved to the other details.
Age: 30
Occupation: Fashion designer, Model
Spouse: George Lancaster
Children: 1
For a moment, the mere shock of the last two details made it seem like he was just streaming through until it seriously dawned on him and he froze.
A jag of pain tore through his heart as the reality finally sunk in, dissipating the denial into cold dread. He told himself he was imagining everything, yet when he blinked, the facts still stared him in the face like his greatest nightmare.
He went back to the search box and typed 'Emma Taylor wedding'. When the results came, there wasn't much to find. Just results about a line of clothes she'd made for people planning to marry three years ago.
No doubt she'd wanted something private and personal and secretive, he thought bitterly.
Every second that passed after that were needles pricking into his already bruised heart, and the emotions finally tore through him in a fierce rage.
Jolting up his feet, he hurled his phone violently, and the innocent device hit and crashed against the wall.
He screamed, spinning around, feeling angry and hurt and betrayed, and it hurt even more because he knew he had no right to feel betrayed.
After all, wasn't he the one who had told her to move on with her life? Hadn't he told her to not hold on to the past? Why did this hurt so much then?
Screaming, he began throwing and crashing everything his quivering hands laid on. Flower vases shattered and the sand spilled, tables and couches tumbled, glasses smashed.
The room became a mess of pain and heartache. Amid the outburst, the bell kept on ringing as a voice screamed his name repeatedly, but in the world of insanity, it was a drone in the distance.
How could she have moved on so quickly? Did she even ever think of him in all these years that'd passed?
The drone kept getting clearer and nearer. "Goodness, what the hell is happening here?"
Zain continued to hurl whichever object fell victim to his anger.
"Zain, what are you doing?"
Reaching for the flat panel television firmly secured to the wall, he was just about to use all his strength to break the cements when a stinging slap pulled him from his trance and sent him hurtling back into reality.
Shocked, Zain held his cheek as he stared at the deliverer of that slap. It was Kevin. The man stared back at him with a hint of anger surrounding his aura.
"What the hell is wrong with you, Zain? Just look what you've done to the room." Kevin demanded, gesturing towards everywhere.
It was then Zain realized the mess the chaotic emotions forking through him had made him create, and suddenly the feelings felt too tough to contain. He cracked.
Right then he broke down, falling into the arms of his best friend as he wept bitterly.
"What the fuck is wrong with you Zain? Why aren't you telling me anything?"
Concern filled the other man's voice as he spoke. It only made Zain's eyes sting even more as the reasons for the mess he'd made came streaming through his mind with a passion.
Holding Zain, Kevin walked with him, and they sat on the only settee which had been spared from Zain's outburst. "Hey man, please tell me what is wrong. I can't see you like this."
"She's married, Kevin. Emma is married." The reply tore from his throat as a fervent squeeze of his heart sent pain shooting through it.
"She what?" There was something contrived and unsurprised about the way his best friend asked the question.
Pulling out of Kevin's embrace, Zain looked at him. "She's moved on with her life, bro. She didn't wait for me."
It was a heart-wrenching realization that while he'd been away crying himself to sleep some nights, missing her, wanting to even see her yet holding himself from doing so knowing it'll only amplify that need to be with her, she'd been here in Chicago living her life.
"You know, you're being unreasonable Zain. You never told her to wait for you. In your last note, you told her to move on. Kevin mused, but there was something almost guilty about it.
Grimacing through his tears, Zain glared at him. "That didn't give her the right to move on so quickly."
"Five years is not quickly Zain."
"Don't you fucking try to defend her. She's been married for three years and we separated just five years ago, which means it didn't even take her two years to move on after our separation. Do you know how fucking hard it was for me to let go?”
Scowling back at him, Kevin said. "Exactly what I'm talking about! You let her go and asked her to move on. You and I both know that Emma was deeply in love with you and that you broke her heart when you rejected her. Your decision would've never changed if the miracle cure hadn't been found. So now don't fucking be unreasonable.”
"I didn't reject her. I only. . . I only let go." Zain reiterated peremptorily.
"It's still the same thing," Kevin screamed back.
With a sob, Zain broke, overcome with such great sadness that it was almost hard to breathe. It really was his call. He'd convinced Emma to move on, but fuck, it hurt.
Finally feeling that it was all his fault,
"I had such high hopes, Kevin. I thought. . . when the cure was found and I began my treatment, I began to dream. We were finally going to be so happy together. We. . ."
He cried even more when his heart ached with the crumbled hopes, dreams, and fantasies, hating what all this was doing to him and how it was making him feel.
Angry, melancholy, and vulnerable, and his best friend seeing him in such a state had never been high on his hierarchy of preferences.
"It hurts. Oh God, it fucking hurts."
Kevin didn't say or do anything more, he just let Zain cry until he felt drained and couldn't do so anymore. Until his hiccups dissolved into heavy breathing.
"You didn't know anything about it?" Zain asked after he'd calmed down.
Kevin blinked, seemingly taken aback. "Zain, what the hell are you trying to accuse me of here?"
"I don't know," Zain started, blinking away the tears that blurred his sight, "but it's so hard to believe that you live in the same country with her yet despite her being so renowned you heard nothing about her marriage or her child. Not in the papers or on TV or the internet."
"She obviously preferred it private.”
"She didn't invite you?” Zain probed, refusing to believe that Kevin had known nothing. Especially when his best friend was averting his eyes and not looking him straight in the face.
"Well, she obviously didn't want you to know." Kevin stated.
He was so adamant in his denial that Zain decided to let it go and give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping he wouldn't one day discover that his best friend had lied to him.
An awkward silence settled on them as Zain tried to collect his thoughts and think of the future. Kevin's voice drifted through it. "So what are you going to do now?"
Sitting up straight, and sliding a determined hand down both sides of his cheeks to wipe away the patches of tears, Zain knew just what he was going to do.