Everything After(32)

Emily listened to the first few bars and then said, “Alexa, where does Austin Roberts live?”

“Los Angeles,” the machine said to her.

She was glad it wasn’t still New York City.





xxi



Even though it was my choice, even though I was the one who finally said we should end things, I missed your father desperately. The idea of never having him in my life again, never having his music in my life again, was so overwhelming that some days I couldn’t get out of bed. Some days I couldn’t bring myself to eat. Or when I did, the food seemed to turn rancid in my throat, making me gag.

I couldn’t listen to music. I couldn’t play. I kept thinking about how lonely I was. How I felt like a puzzle with a whole chunk of pieces missing. About how I’d screwed up his life, too. We were going to be Johnny and June Carter Cash. Sonny and Cher. Except then I fucked the whole thing up. A few months after he’d reached out to me, I was tempted to call him, to find him, to tell him I was wrong. But the pain in my hand stopped me. The pain in my heart stopped me, too. As distraught as I was, I knew it would never work.

I didn’t bother looking for a summer job, even though I kept my dorm room in the city. I’d saved up enough from the gigs we’d done to float until September, when my dad would help me out again.

Instead, I reread all of the books I’d only had time to skim during the semester: Candide, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote. And then the one that always comforted me: The Red Tent.

Ari was taking classes over the summer in Connecticut, living with Jack, but one Sunday she was in the city for a matinee with some of her friends and came by to surprise me afterward. It was a bad day—actually, a bad week. I hadn’t washed my hair in too long, and I was nested in a pile of blankets reading Emma. I’d also probably lost about ten pounds since the last time she saw me. And I didn’t have ten pounds to lose.

“Whoa,” she said, when I opened the door. “What’s going on?”

So I told her, through tears, how sad I was, how much I missed Rob, how much I missed playing music, how much my hand hurt, how I worried that I’d messed up Rob’s life by breaking up the band, and how guilty I felt about you. How Rob didn’t even believe you existed, but I knew. I knew you did. And I knew it was my fault that you were gone. Everything was my fault.

“I love you so much,” my sister said to me, as she wrapped me in her arms, “and I wish I could fix all of this.”

“But you can’t,” I said.

She shook her head. “But I can find you someone who can help.”

That’s what my sister—your aunt—is like. She always wants to help and is one of the few people who is smart enough to know when she can’t, and instead finds you someone who can.

The person Ari found me was Dr. West. And I truly do think Dr. West saved my life. Or at least helped me build it into something new, something meaningful, something I could be proud of.

She helped me become a person I could be proud of.





26



That night, before Emily went to bed, she decided she was going to go back to work tomorrow, Friday. So she made herself a list. It was something Dr. West had taught her. Something she did with her own patients now. It made things less overwhelming to break them down into small chunks, to be able to cross things off a list. And she wanted to be okay tomorrow. She wanted to go to work, like Ezra had suggested, to help someone. And then she’d see him afterward, for dinner, when his day was over, and they’d talk. They’d fix things, the way they always did for other people, only now it would be for each other. It would be hard, but they’d do it. And then when she reached over at night, she’d find him next to her in bed and be comforted. They’d be Emily and Ezra, for better or for worse, for now and forever.


Shower



     Get dressed



     Eat breakfast



     Go to work



     Eat lunch



     Go home



     Make dinner for Ezra



     Talk to Ezra over dinner



     Go to bed





Nine things. All she’d have to do tomorrow was nine things. She could handle that.





27



When Emily got to work the next day, Priya was waiting in her office with a yogurt and granola parfait and a cinnamon latte, Emily’s breakfast of choice when she was being indulgent.

“How are you doing?” Priya asked as she handed them over.

Emily took a shaky breath, surprised by the gesture. “I’m doing better,” she said, her voice wobbling, and then added: “Even if it doesn’t sound that way.”

Priya put her hand around Emily’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It sucks.”

Emily started to laugh, which stopped the tears that were threatening to fall. “Says the psychologist.”

“Says the psychologist,” Priya agreed. “You know, I used to try to reason things away. I’d tell myself, well, it’s not as bad as being tortured as a prisoner of war, or starving to death, or dying painfully of a completely preventable disease in a remote village without modern medicine. And that’s true. But also, it doesn’t take away from the fact that some things just suck. What was it you said a couple of weeks ago in our consultation group? ‘Sometimes shit is just shit’?”