"Keep making that face and it'll get stuck that way," Josh remarked as he walked in the kitchen in search of coffee to find Emery staring at his laptop as if it had delivered an unforgivable blow. His decision to let Emery go still weighed heavily in his heart, but Josh knew it was the right one. That didn't mean he couldn't, or even shouldn't, act as a friend. Emery was better at making those than Josh had thought — better than Josh himself, which wasn't that difficult — but their relationship was no less important because of it.
Emery looked up from his laptop and offered a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, making an attempt to ease the frown he was wearing. "If it does I'll be able to boast of having an interesting face," he replied, something in his voice at odds with the offhand remark.
"Your face is interesting enough without you looking ready to commit murder, thank you very much."
Emery's laugh was a touch more genuine. "May I suggest a good ophthalmologist?"
"You may, but I'll just ignore you. My eyes are fine, and I stand by what I said." He poured water into his electric kettle. "Coffee?"
"At the risk of increased blood pressure, I never turn down your coffee."
"Mark says that's a myth, did you know?" Josh leaned against the sink, turned towards Emery but still at a respectable distance as he waited for the kettle to boil. "The only thing that will really raise your blood pressure is salt."
"I see," Emery replied, dignified. "I'll ask you to please refrain from adding salt to the coffee, then."
Josh had a laugh wrenched out of him. Emery was the only person who could pull that off without previous notice, just say something outrageously funny with a straight face, though this time it was deliberate, rather than his accidental quips. "No salt. Got it. Why were you glaring at the computer? Any Nigerian princes wanting you to take care of their inheritance?"
"Not exactly," Emery replied, squaring his shoulders. "I am browsing apartments."
Josh felt like he'd been sucker punched. Emery was getting ready to leave. For real, this time — doing something he liked, looking for a space he could fit to himself and call home. He'd thought... Selfish of him, yes, but Josh had thought Emery had begun to think of Josh's place as home. Their home. Josh himself hadn't even thought of it as home until Emery had been in it. He'd never been as reluctant to leave for a client, or as glad to open the front door, as during the past year. Somehow, even as he'd decided to let Emery go, he'd imagined they'd still share an apartment. Until Emery found someone, at least.
The kettle was ready, giving him an excuse to turn away from Emery's expressive brown eyes. He didn't feel like being seen through to his core at the moment.
"And that's enough for murder?" he asked weakly.
"I've only just begun looking. It's unreasonable of me to expect to open the computer and immediately find a space that satisfies all the conditions I have in mind. That doesn't mean some of these offerings aren't shocking."
"Did you ever go apartment hunting before?" Better, much better. Not so forced. He started manually grinding the coffee beans, wishing he could grind all his hangups along with them. "I mean, before you got the place I knew."
"I did not. Both Emma and I lived in our parents' house even after the accident that killed them." Emery's voice always struck a particular chord in between loving and aching when the subject was Emma. "We only left once I'd purchased the house in Long Island."
"I've moved a few times. Want some help? It's fun once you really get into it." Josh saw Emery turn to face him out of the corner of one eye and risked a glance in his direction.
"Fun? Trudging through the quagmire of apartments for rent is your idea of fun?"
"This from the man who likes to talk about the intricacies of the Internal Revenue Service?"
"There are actual challenges in that," Emery replied, incensed, "Whereas this," he gestured in the direction of his screen, "is nothing but senseless exploitation."
"Okay, that's it, you need an intervention. Move over. I'm going to finish making this coffee and then I'll help."
Letting go.
Why did the right thing feel so terribly, crushingly wrong?