This Close to Okay(28)

TALLIE




“I’m so sorry. Completely. How heartbreaking,” Tallie said, holding her hand to her chest. “The ring you left me earlier? That was hers?”

Emmett nodded and drank more water, took another bite of his steak.

“Bless your heart. Bless her heart. How long ago, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Three years.”

“How long were you married?”

“Four and a half years.”

“You…didn’t have children together?”

He shook his head without looking at her.

“How old was Christine?”

“Twenty-six,” he said, meeting her eyes again.

“Lord have mercy, that’s too young. Do you…want to talk about how she died?”

“No.”

“Okay. If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”

“Thank you.”

“Grief is complicated…bizarre…it can make us do all sorts of things,” she said.

Acute grief from the death of his young wife three years ago. An accident? Cancer? Can’t ask who Brenna is, but dyyyyying to know.

He stared at his plate.

“This is unbelievably delicious, truly hand-to-God the best steak I’ve ever had, by the way,” she said after waiting a respectful amount of time to mention it.

“Glad to hear it. It’s my favorite thing to cook and eat. I haven’t cooked like this for a long time, so this is nice.”

“No, really, though. It’s literally the best steak I’ve ever tasted. Like, wow.”

“My pleasure,” he said, modest as fresh-cut green grass. “I’ll do the dishes, too.”

“No. You absolutely don’t have to do that. You’re my guest.”

“Guest,” he repeated.

“Yes. Like the candle singing in Beauty and the Beast. You’re my guest.”

“Lumière?”

“Exactly,” she said, laughing. “I should’ve known you were a Disney fan. I knew I liked you.”

“Not to brag, but I’m a wealth of pointless knowledge.”

“How are you feeling tonight? Compared to yesterday?” she asked before taking another bite of food.

“I don’t have anything to say about it.”

“Are you feeling anxious or worried? Unbalanced? Like you want to hurt yourself?” she asked, realizing she was sliding into tricky territory. These were the same questions she asked her clients, carefully, in her office. Emmett put his elbows on the table, laced his fingers together. Not his energy, but deep in his spirit, hidden away—it was Vantablack, and he was protecting it. Tallie couldn’t get there on her own; he was going to have to take her hand.

“Do I seem unbalanced to you right now, Tallulah?” he asked after eating more of his steak and taking a drink of water. Each shiny gold syllable of Tal-lu-lah that escaped his mouth tingled her thighs, the top of her head.

“Not really. Does this happen to you often, these huge shifts in mood?” she asked, hoping she sounded more like a concerned friend than a mental health professional.

“Yesterday was a difficult day for me.”

“You understand why I’m asking, though.”

“Yes. You have every right to ask. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he said.

“It’s fine. We can stop talking about it.”

Tallie was so looking forward to taking Emmett to the Halloween party. Imagined the two of them there together, away from the stress of the world, not worrying about anything. The party would be a great distraction, and she knew it. And she tried not to think past Saturday night, Sunday morning at the latest; the weekend could be a hermetically sealed capsule floating in space.

“What else would you ask Joel if he’d open up to you?” Emmett asked, that gravity returning her back to earth.

“Wow. Well…,” she started. She wanted the spotlight to be on Emmett, his feelings, but she didn’t mind having someone listen to her for once, either. Pop! A ticker-tape parade of expletives and frustration went off in her brain. She took a deep breath. “I’d like to know if the love he feels for her is different from the love he felt for me. If it’s the same love, but it shifted from me to her. Also, I’d like to know how it feels for him to be a father. I know how much he wanted it. Now he has it. What happens when you get what you really want?”

“But you’ve gotten what you’ve really wanted before, right?”

“I have. But specifically this…having a baby. It was something we wanted so much…together. Now he has it without me. What’s that like? Doesn’t it feel kind of…I don’t know…wrong?”

“Heavy.”

“Too heavy.” She let out a flat, nervous laugh.

“Let’s lighten it up again. I really am going to do the dishes,” he said, looking toward the sink.

“And I’ll make us pumpkin spice tea. What else can I do?”

“You can keep me company. Keep talking to me. Do you feel like talking some more? We can take a break from the too-heavy stuff. I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

“I won’t tell, I promise. Sure. I mean, I guess. Or…I don’t know. I could read. I could read to you. Too weird?”