Everything After(23)

Emily’s heart plummeted. When they’d talked about it months before, it seemed like it would be a fun night out at a fancy hotel complete with plush bathrobes and a gourmet breakfast with his parents. But now Emily didn’t even want to go to the event to begin with, much less sleep over in a hotel when her own bed was only a fifteen-minute cab ride away. There was no way she’d be able to muster up excitement for breakfast in the Garden Room. She wasn’t even sure she’d be able to muster up an appetite.

The hotel really was beautiful, though. And Emily had met the hotel’s owner, Nina, a few times because Ari’s husband worked at the brokerage firm where she invested her money. She’d stopped by Jack’s fortieth birthday party last year and had been especially kind to Hunter and Tyler.

Ezra grabbed his phone and keys. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be back later.”

Emily got out of bed to hug him good-bye, knowing it wasn’t worth telling him she’d rather sleep at home that night. “Love you,” she said.

“You too,” he answered.

But Emily could tell the response was automatic. His mind was already on his patients. Hers was still stuck on the child they’d lost. The maternity clothes she wouldn’t wear. The birth that wouldn’t happen next summer. The jogging stroller she wouldn’t be pushing through the park.

She wished she could take comfort in statistics. But even when you know you’re one of fifty-three million, it’s hard not to feel like the only one.





21



Late that afternoon, Emily put down her book, packed her own duffel bag, and looked into her closet. She had to get dressed. She had to get dressed up. She had to put on enough of a show that no one would know how crushed she felt inside.

“Alexa,” she spoke to the white circle on the living room floor. “Please play rock music.”

“Accessing your Pandora rock music station.” The circle blinked at her.

“Thank you,” Emily said.

Emily and Ezra always laughed at how excessively polite they both were to this machine, an anniversary gift from Ari and Jack.

“It just feels wrong not to say please and thank you,” Emily always said.

“I know,” Ezra answered. “It shouldn’t, but it does.”

Alexa or Pandora or whoever started playing music, and Emily pulled out the three dresses in her closet that were appropriate for tonight’s event. One she remembered wearing last year, so she put it back. That left a strapless black sheath dress that she’d worn to the wedding of one of Ezra’s fancy doctor friends a few months before, and a royal blue chiffon gown that Ari had given her because she couldn’t wear it with a bra. The back was cut too low; Ari had worn it once and felt uncomfortable in it all night.

Emily didn’t mind going braless for a night, and decided to wear the blue. Then it would feel a little like Ari was with her at the gala.



* * *



—

She left the music on while she showered, even though she could barely hear it over the rushing water. She looked down at her body. In the last few weeks—the last months really, ever since they’d started trying—she’d imagined the day she would look down and wouldn’t be able to see her feet. She’d imagined rubbing cocoa butter into the skin on her stomach and feeling a baby kick back at her. She’d imagined this so frequently that it seemed like it would be a reality, and now . . . it was gone.

Emily let her tears mingle with the spray from the shower head, rinsing soap from her face as she wept. How could Ezra go back to work? How could he be okay? How could he make her go to this stupid fund-raiser tonight and pretend that nothing was wrong?



* * *



—

When she got out of the shower, Alexa was playing the Kiss song “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” and Emily felt like she was transported back to the stage at Webster Hall, when she and Rob were riding the music, before she got pregnant the first time, before she fell, and before everything after.

“Alexa,” she said, as she toweled off her hair. “Please play ‘Crystal Castle’ by Austin Roberts.”

This time, instead of his music bringing her to tears, it stopped them. It reminded her that she was strong, that she had survived so much, and that she could do it again.

She asked Alexa to play the song on repeat.





xviii



We had a gig planned for a month after my cast came off. It was a huge one. One I’m still not sure how your dad made happen. We were playing the Bitter End—one of your dad’s goals before graduation, and one of our favorite places to hang out even when we weren’t playing. It was epic. And I really wanted to be in perfect shape for the show.

But in the week leading up to the gig, I was worried. When I played too long, my hand hurt. It throbbed like nothing I’d ever experienced before. And my fingers didn’t move as quickly as I wanted them to, didn’t press down as hard on the keys.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered one night, in the dark, while I was icing my hand in bed.

“Of course you can,” your dad told me. “You’ve put in the time, you’ve let yourself heal. You’re ready for your comeback.”

I laughed, but I knew that my hand didn’t know I was ready for my comeback. My hand could only do what it could do.