This Will Only Hurt a Little(43)

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A few days later, I was driving over the 405, on my way home from YET ANOTHER AUDITION, when my phone rang, I knew it was Emily’s office from the number, so I picked up, expecting to hear her voice. But instead it was her boss, who sounded shaky.

“Ummm. Busy? Hi. This is Susanne. I—I’m um Emily’s boss? Can you come to our office right now?”

“Hi. Yeah. What’s going on? Is everything okay?” I knew it wasn’t. I could tell. My stomach started sinking.

“You know Chuck? Emily’s Chuck? I—He’s dead. He, uh, died and . . . she . . . ummm . . .”

My heart fell. “I’ll be right there. Susanne. Fifteen minutes, okay? Can she talk?”

There was a pause. “No.”

“Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hung up. Chuck was dead. Chuck was dead? What? WHAT?? When someone dies young, out of nowhere, it doesn’t make any sense. Ever. I didn’t ask questions immediately, because it didn’t matter. How? Why? Who fucking cares? Chuck was dead. Emily’s Chuck. Her first love. Her only love. I loved Chuck too. He was the greatest. So funny. So cool. So weird. So punk rock. So smart. I called my mom and started hysterically crying, repeating, “Chuck died, Mom. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do—”

“Busy. Busy! Stop! Listen to me. This isn’t about you right now. Okay, honey? I’m so sorry. You need to go get Emily. I’ll call her mom and have her call you. You have to stop crying, okay, honey? You need to just go get her and take her home and put her in bed. And get her water and cold washcloths for her face. And just be with her. But you have to get it together right now.”

I did what my mom told me to do. Emily couldn’t talk. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her face was already puffy and red and there was no end to the tears. I talked to her parents and helped make a plan for her to go back to New Jersey for the funeral. Chuck had died of a seizure in his sleep. A freak thing. I sat with her while she talked to people on the phone and cried. It was a lot to handle by myself. But that’s what you do, right?

I remember feeling relieved when she left for New Jersey, because I knew she was going to be with people who had loved Chuck as much as she did, and they could grieve and cry together. My heart was truly broken for her. I knew how much she loved him. I knew she thought that if she had just moved to Boston with him and not to L.A., he wouldn’t have died, which of course wasn’t true, but I felt like I was the one who forced her to move to L.A. It was so, so beyond horrible. When she came back from the funeral a few days later, she went straight back to work. She had to. Life goes on, even when you don’t want it to. But Emily was different somehow; there was a weight that she couldn’t shake. She still carries it with her, I think. Even all these years later.

Right around then, Craig had decided to leave school in Chicago and move to L.A. to see if he could break into the business. We started hanging out a little, even though I was dating Colin and he was still dating a girl in Chicago, long distance. Brett lived in L.A. now too, so he and Craig and I would go out dancing to ’80s nights or go to Manhattan Beach and get coffee and walk along the beach. It felt like we had never been apart. Like the three of us were still in high school, best friends in the theater department.

One Saturday night, my old roommates were having a huge party. Craig and I were sitting outside, drinking and getting high. I can’t remember if Colin didn’t want to come, or was too tired, but he wasn’t there. Craig and I walked back across the courtyard to his apartment together so he could get cigarettes and as soon as we got into the stairwell, we started kissing.

Well. Okay. I know. This is a thing with me, maybe? A, WHAT DO YOU CALL IT . . . PATTERN?! Yes. It is. But you know, I’m not a quitter. So I think in terms of relationships, I often have a hard time ending them when I think I should, and instead I just sort of move on to another thing, and then that ends up being the decision that’s made for me.

We both felt like shit the next day. Not just from the hangover, obviously. We both had significant others. Colin and I were planning a huge trip to Europe in a few weeks. We hadn’t been seeing much of each other, but I knew he was really looking forward to going away with me. I was such a fucking coward. But hooking up with Craig was the thing that made me realize that Colin and I weren’t working at all.

So I broke up with him. When I told him I wasn’t going on the trip, he was fairly (understandably) upset. I didn’t even tell him about the Craig stuff. I didn’t have the guts. (Even though, you know, he didn’t have much room to talk, since I had cheated on Craig with him only a few years earlier.)

It would be years before Colin and I would be able to be friends, but eventually, he forgave me and we moved on. Now, Colin and his wife are two of Marc’s and my closest friends and our kids all go to school together. I sometimes think how amazing it would be to go back in time and show the two of us a flash of the future: all of our kids playing together, his wife, Sam, and I having wine and laughing, Marc and Colin talking about bands and artisanal coffee places. Recently, I found a birthday card Colin wrote me after we broke up the first time. In it, he wrote, “I love you and know we’re going to be in each other’s lives for a long time.” He was right in a way neither of us could have predicted at nineteen, but I am so much better for having him in my life today and feel so lucky that my kids get to know him too. He’s really just one of the best people I’ve ever known, and I’m sorry I was such an asshole to him but grateful he understood and forgave me.