I tried to make this chapter longer for you guys! I know how annoying it can be waiting forever for a chapter and then only have it be 3 pages long, I hope you enjoy though!
EMERSON
The conversation fell silent for what felt like an eternity, Kimmy's sniffles and her tears stricken eyes pounding in my ears. My hands felt clammy from the awkwardness and most importantly, the guilt.
Was I making the right choice?
Of course I was. She and I both knew we weren't a match to be made. We were worlds apart, never actually together. We were never really there. In the last few weeks I had come to learn that you can either be there with a person, in the moment, really existing. Or you can be corpses, two bodies who can't be anything but that. Absolutely nothing. And I think deep down she knew that. Her heart would break now but eventually she would see that no matter how much we forced it, no matter how much we feigned interest in one another's lives, there was no life shared between us, no spark.
Spark. Is that even a real thing? I had believed it ever since I had met Ardella. A body jolts when the heart meets the thing it needs. There's tingles, blood rushing at the speed of light and all nerves are bundled together. You can barely breathe without feeling the adrenaline.
But had I imagined all that? Had I been young and naive? Had I believed what I wanted to believe for someone who seemed so perfect for me?
I was beginning to doubt it all, but aside from the doubt there was something worse. Something so cruel and paralysing that I hoped it would fade in an instance. Terror. Terrified I'd never meet another love in this life. That I'd never feel what I felt all those years ago. That she would be the only one who ever existed with me.
Kimmy was still crying when I landed back into reality again, but I couldn't sit here for any longer just listening. My lips moved before my brain even processed what to say.
"I am sorry." I spoke with the most sincerity I could muster. I wanted her to believe me, because it was true. I was sorry. I was sorry I couldn't feel something stronger, sorry I couldn't just make myself feel. I wanted to so bad. I needed to know if I could ever feel it again, and selfishly it wasn't for her, it was for me.
Her words seemed to fail her as she opened her mouth, only to shut it not seconds later. Her tongue must have been too tied.
Our waitress parked herself next to our table with a pot of coffee nestled in her hands, reluctantly offering us another cup as her eyes moved from Kimmy and I. I politely declined, knowing she'd be grateful fleeing the predicament we were in.
I looked towards Kimmy once more, my hand moving across the table to meet with hers in an attempt to comfort. She snatched it away like I imagined her to do, her arms crossing over one another as she huffed.
Running my hands through my hair, I breathed out a tired breath. "I think this is best for us. I'm too busy and it's not fair to the both of us." I lied through my teeth because I didn't have the guts to tell her the truth.
Once again silence surrounded us, the only noise being the hustle and bustle from other tables in the dingy coffee shop. The clientele mainly consisted of students overloaded on caffeine and the smitten elderly couples that would spend half of their days here drinking burning hot lattes and English Tea. It was...cosy. Maybe not my style but it was the only quiet place I could find on a Saturday afternoon. The last thing I wanted was a crowd witnessing the break up of Kimmy Jones and Emerson Hale.
When I was convinced Kimmy was going to carry on with her silence, I prepared myself for more of an explanation, hoping she would could around, but in the end she finally broke.
"It's fine." It wasn't something I'd expected to hear as I stared at her twisted lips and bundled up fists. My muscles started to grow tense, expecting her to flip the table any moment now and the burning hot coffee that sat on the table to scold me.
"It doesn't seem fine," I hesitated with cautious eyes.
She stood from her seat as it scraped along the floor, hastily throwing her bag and coat around her arm before staring me dead in my eyes. "I'm going to go now. I hope you have a happy life."
She stalked towards the door with so much sass, I knew if I let things end there I would never live peacefully again. Maybe she would pay a visit to my house, smash my car windows in with a baseball bat and flatten my tires in an attempt to feel like she won this break up.
I was not about to take that risk.
"Wait, Kimmy!" I exclaimed, grunting in annoyance as I quickly paid my tab, waltzing out of there with almost everyone's eyes burning into my back.
She was no less than two feet away before she suddenly spun around, storming back towards me with determination drowning her face. "Can I just ask you one thing?"
She was wanting an explanation. I knew it.
"Yes, of course."
"Is it her?"
I froze. My lips parted as I furrowed my eyebrows. I had never expected that question. I knew who she was on about but I had no idea how to answer it. It should have been simple. It should have been no, but all I could say was, "what?".
"Is it her? Arabella." Classic Kimmy. She knew her name, she just wanted to show how much she hated the girl.
Ever since she had met Ardella in the coffee shop, some instinct inside of her had become possessive and over protective, like I was something she had to mark her territory on. She knew Ardella and I had a past, she had stalked our socials so intrusively I was scared she might have been a part of the CIA or a hacker of some kind.
That day was not the last day she had mentioned her. Especially when she had found out Ardella was working for me, that had caused our worst fight yet in this relationship. Some thing inside of her couldn't shake her off and nothing I could say would change that.
"Ardella?" I asked, buying myself any time I could to not talk about her.
I was done with speaking about her, done with thinking about her. I wanted her out of my brain, out of my mouth and out of my life. I wanted to heal from wounds that had been left ignored for far too long.
Kimmy scoffed, her eyes rolling as she got on with her point. "Whatever. Is she the reason that your leaving me? Because you're still in love with her?"
In love with her? Why would she even say such a thing? I had done everything to prove that I wasn't in love with her anymore. Ardella had left. There was nothing else I could have done to prove that she was out of my life.
Her words kept on repeating in my brain. Over and over.
Because you're still in love with her.
Kimmy didn't know shit. She was jealous and bitter that I had loved another before I even knew her. That's all she was. She wanted me to prove her point but I wasn't about to.
She was wrong.
"And don't lie to me!" She screeched, already sensing what I was about to say. "I want the truth. You owe me that much."
"No!" I scoffed, shaking my head like she was asking something so ludicrous. "No. Don't be ridiculous. I told you that Ardella was a person of my past. She has nothing to do with this." What else could I give her to show her otherwise? What else did I have to do to escape this. I was tired. Tired of Kimmy trying to dictate my feelings, tired of her trying to force something in my mouth that I didn't want to ever say. Something that I couldn't ever say again.
"I see the way you look at her. She's in your head all the time, Emerson. I can feel it."
Because I knew that if I did. If I did say it. If the words did fall out of my lips, on accident or on purpose, to Kimmy, to Ardella or even the world, I would be lost. There was be no return for me. I knew that every ounce of care inside of me would submerge back to the surface, the intensity of bearing that kind of emotion would leave me with blisters. I would fall down the rabbit hole. And I didn't want to hurt that much again. I didn't want to blindly put my love in someone who had drowned it so slowly, so painfully, without mercy. I didn't want to have to live with the burden of love for another five years. I couldn't.
But Kimmy wouldn't stop.
"You may not want to admit it but I know. I am not stupid. You're still wrapped around her finger and I want you to tell me that I'm right. That I'm not crazy."
She harassed, she poked, she prodded, until she was too tired to carry on. She only ever had one question, she only ever needed one answer.
And she wasn't leaving until it was the one she knew was the truth.
"Do you still love her?"
My heart was beating so loud it banged inside my ear drums. New York seemed to drop in temperature and I felt every atom of it on my skin.
"Yes."
And I had to accept that. The truth. There was no denial left inside of me anymore. The words had been spilled, the wounds had been reopened to the most painful extent. And I was drowning in it. Drowning in something I didn't know would ever make me feel whole again.
That's the thing about love.
In only comes down to one thing in the end.
It either completes you, or it destroys you in the end.