“No, unfortunately.”
I sighed loudly.
“Look, Kevin and Tabitha both fucked up. They were wrong. They were…assholes. You have every right to be mad about the whole thing. Anyone would be. And you dodged a bullet not ending up with Tabitha and getting with Emerson instead.”
Emerson. She was the best thing that ever happened to me. Just the mention of her name calmed me down again.
“But…”
“Don’t you say that fucking word—”
“It’s been ten years, and they’re different people. I know Tabitha still regrets what she did. But Kevin…really regrets it. He always asks about you, always wants to know how you’re doing, asks if you would be receptive to another conversation. And I always tell him no. But he’s been just as miserable as you’ve been because this still haunts him. You guys were so close. You guys were like brothers—”
“And then he had an affair with the woman I loved.” I was exhausted, emotionally drained, and I just didn’t have it in me anymore to keep doing this. “Kevin made his decision. He’s the reason we lost our friendship. That’s not on me. It’s not on me to forgive him and give him another chance. It’s not on me to salvage what we had. I trusted him implicitly, didn’t question any time they were together, and he pissed that away. So, don’t remind me how close we were, how much he meant to me, because I would have given him my fucking heart in a transplant, I loved him so fucking much, so this is not my problem. It’s not my responsibility to change it.”I was in a worse mood than I had been over the weekend, but I couldn’t cancel on Lizzie on such notice. By the time I left Ryan, Lizzie and Emerson were already at my penthouse waiting for me.
I’d have to suck it up.
I didn’t take a ride from Ronnie and walked there instead, hoping the exercise would calm me down. But I spent the entire walk thinking about the whole thing, so if anything, it just made me worse.
I walked into the penthouse and saw Lizzie and Emerson sitting at the table, laughing about something.
With a smile on her face, Emerson turned to me. “Hey, Derek. How’s Ryan?”
I stepped farther into the room and forced myself to calm down, not to take it out on Emerson for being there when I wasn’t in the right state of mind to do this. It wasn’t her fault that I’d made this commitment, that Kevin had decided to engage with me and piss me the fuck off. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and then responded. “Good. He’s good.”
Emerson knew me well enough to know my reaction was totally fake. She left the chair and walked to me, but instead of questioning me, she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me.
That was exactly what I needed.
Her.
I hugged her back and placed my face in the crook of her neck, smelling her hair, squeezing her small waist and bringing her into me. My baby loved me with her whole heart, would never hurt me, would never lie to me, and she was home. She was my fucking home. I pulled away then placed my forehead against hers, not caring if Lizzie saw. “I love you.” I let the words escape as a whisper even though I wasn’t afraid of my feelings. I didn’t say those words often like other people because I never understood the practice. When I said something like that, I wanted to feel it before I spoke, for it to be as potent as possible. I also felt like love was a state of being, something you showed so greatly that you didn’t need to say it. I saw it with my parents, the way they visibly loved each other in everything they did, and you could just feel it in every room they stepped into. That was what I wanted.
She kissed me before she released me. “I love you too.”
I stepped away from her then approached the table. “Hey, Lizzie.”
“Hey, Derek.” She grinned at me when I sat beside her, either because she was happy to see me or my affection with her mother was something to smirk about it.
Emerson didn’t ask if we should reschedule. She just silently excused herself and left the penthouse.The longer I worked with Lizzie, the better I felt.
She was a great student, eager to learn, and that was fun for me.
It was far harder to inspire a student to try than to teach a student who already wanted to learn. But I somehow had accomplished that, invigorated her drive and ambition.
Lizzie finished the problems I made for her then slid them toward me.
I started to work through them, writing out the steps she missed on the problems she got incorrect so she could keep it for reference.