The Rise of Emery James (6 page)

As promised, Cole shows up in the afternoon carrying his bag of handy tools. He's wearing low slung jeans and a baseball cap. He looks so good in a baseball cap. I've always loved the shadows it casts across his face. I love it more when he's working on something and flips it backwards. That was always my favorite. Turns out it still is.

"Did you make pie?" he asks, his eyes landing on the counter. I smile at the excited glint in his eyes.

"I did. Just for you. To say thank you for everything you've been doing to help me out. You've gone out of your way for me and I want you to know I appreciate it."

He gives me his easy smirk and sets down his bag. "I'm more than happy to help out. You don't owe me a thing, but thank you for the pie. Feel free to keep making those." He leans down to take in the scent and it makes me feel good to know that I've done something that makes him happy.

"So what are you fixing today?" I ask quietly.

"I thought I'd replace those boards on the back steps for you. I don't want you getting a splinter if you decide to go out there without any shoes on," he answers easily.

"Aren't you thorough?"

He waves me off. "Henry and I came out here before you got home and made a list of everything we wanted to do. He just wants to make sure it's perfect for you. I'm happy to help get it that way."

"It's not necessary though. You two are being awfully nitpicky."

"Do I have to remind you what your father does for a living? You think he's going to have his little girl living in a place that isn't perfect?" he teases.

"Perfect isn't everything," I say before I can filter the thought.

He cocks his head in that questioning way he does and I bite my lip hoping he lets it go. Thankfully, he does and I release the tense breath I was holding.

Cole excuses himself to pull his truck around back so he can have easy access to the lumber he brought with him. I grab a couple of waters and meet him on the back porch. I set them down and then go to help him carry stuff up to the deck.

"You don't have to help, Emery," he says, smiling down at me as I load my arms with two 2 x 4s.

"I want to," I reply, shifting the boards in my arms. They are heavier than I anticipated.

"You got that? Maybe you should just take one." I throw him a determined look and he throws his arms up in surrender laughing. "Stupid thought. Carry on."

Once we have the boards loaded up on the deck, I settle on one of the chairs to watch him work. He's precut each board, so he just has to remove the old ones and replace them. His muscles stretch as he pulls out the old nails and the sound of the metal being ripped from the wood sends a screech through the air.

With each piece he removes I feel a weird connection to the process. In some ways I feel like someone ripped away my world in the same violent fashion, just like those old rotten boards. I wish someone could replace my shattered world so easily.

I watch him for over an hour. I don’t say much, but he doesn't seem to mind my silence. He fills it with random stories, I fill it with silent memories from our past. Watching him, it’s easy to get lost in them, letting them play on a loop in my mind. I have a mountain of them. For once I allow myself to remember them all. It’s bittersweet. Each one ends at the same place.

Goodbye.

The hard truth is I walked away from him.

I thought I was saving us from heartbreak. but the moment we were apart, my heart shattered anyway.

Not that he would know that. All he knows is that I faded into the background and stopped answering his calls.

I married someone else.

I keep waiting for him to ask me why. I’m not sure what answer I’ll give him.

Cole breaks me out of my rambling thoughts when he stands up.

"All done," he announces. I look around the deck and see the bright colors of the new wood dotting the old.

"It looks good," I say.

"I figure once it cools down a touch we'll stain the whole thing. Spruce it up and get it all to match," he says as he puts the tools he has scatted around into his big bag.

"Thank you," I say again. I hope he knows how much I mean it. How much it means to me that he's here doing this for me.

"Now, do I get some of that pie as a reward?" he smiles.

I jump up from my spot. "Of course. I even bought ice cream."

He lets out a little moan of anticipation. "You always did know the way to my heart," he says, causing my own heart to stutter.

Cole follows me inside and while he disappears to wash up I go to the kitchen. I make some coffee, even though I doubt he'll want any with it being nine million degrees outside. I pull the ice cream out of the freezer so it can soften and then slice my pretty pie creation. I make sure to give him an extra big piece. There's still a part of me that wants to take care of him. Just the way I used to.

I smile at Cole as he joins me in the kitchen. "Man, that looks amazing, Em." He takes a seat at the counter and watches me as I spoon out some vanilla ice cream into the bowl with his pie.

"I made coffee, but I figured you might want something different," I suggest, sliding the bowl over to him.

He gives me a shy smile that could probably get him anything that he wanted. "Actually, do you have any milk?"

"Of course. How could I forget?" I grab a glass and the gallon from the fridge and pour him a big glass.

"You're the best," he says. His praise pulls at my heart and I quickly move to put the milk away to avoid his gaze.

I grab my own piece of pie and sit at the counter across from him.

"Shit, Emery, this is amazing," Cole says around a spoonful.

"I'm glad you like it. I've missed cooking."

"Well, feel free to use me as a taste tester anytime that you'd like. I usually grab take out or eat cereal at home," he laughs.

"The diet of a bachelor?" I ask.

He laughs and shrugs. "That and I work all the time. By the time I get home I just don't want to take the effort to make something. I can't even tell you the last time I used my stove."

"Yeah, I'm the same way. It feels good to cook instead of living on frozen dinners," I admit. This pie
is
really good.

"If you can cook like this, then why were you eating frozen dinners?" he asks bewildered.

"It sucks cooking for one," I say. The pity that flashes across his eyes has me regretting my words. "Gabe was always out of town," I explain. "And when he was home we were always at some kind of business dinner. That's all."

He nods slowly, chewing. I can't really get a read on him. I can tell he's trying to figure out how to approach the subject. He hasn't asked me about Gabe and I don't want him to, not really, but I know he must be curious.

"Yeah, I get it. Cooking for one is hard. Then again, I don't really know how to cook for two or twelve either," he smirks. He's letting me off the hook and breezing past the Gabe comment. I'm relieved. "But I'm a good eater, so we'll make a good team. You get the joy of cooking and I get the joy of eating."

I laugh and the sound is soft and foreign. "Sounds like a good plan. It's the least I can do since you're here working on my stuff all the time."

He finishes the pie and looks at me expectantly. "I worked really hard today, actually. Maybe even enough to earn me a second slice?" I'd forgotten about how powerful that boyish grin could be.

"Coming right up."

Cole

I KNEW FROM THE
moment that Emery came back to Oklahoma that she had changed. But spending time with her these last few weeks has shown me just how deep that change goes. Gone is the spunky wit of the girl from my past. Instead, she is quiet and reserved. Unsure. I'm not quite sure how to handle her yet, but we've fallen into a nice rhythm.

I work.

She watches.

She asks quiet questions and I study her every movement, filing them away to review later when I'm alone in my bed, staring at the ceiling. I stare at the ceiling a lot these days.

I’m constantly trying to put all of the pieces together. I know she’s sad. Unsettled. But it feels like more than that. It feels like there is some unspoken, important piece that would give me some kind of insight on the girl that she is now.

She occupies so many of my thoughts that if someone were able to peer inside my brain, they would probably call me obsessed. It’s just that there are so many things that I want to know, so many questions I want to ask, but I don't dare. Not yet.

She's a lot like a wounded animal. I see it in the way her eyes dart around nervously when we’re standing too close. I feel it in the tension that overtakes her at the most random of moments, like she’s afraid to trust the situation around her. So, I let her stay on the edge, testing the situation.

I can wait her out.

I watch her from the corner of my eye as I sand down some rough spots on the big front porch. She's in the swing, the chains squeaking with each movement forward. I should put some oil on them, but the sound is kind of comforting to me as I work.

"Do you want a beer? Or water? Tea?" she asks quietly. I wipe the sweat collecting at my brow, glancing up to smile at her.

"A beer sounds pretty amazing," I admit. She smiles back like she's happy to have suggested it. She jumps up and disappears into the house and I watch the space she left behind. The memory of her long legs in those tiny shorts painting a vivid image that will keep me up tonight.

Emery returns, smiling as she hands me the can of beer. I can’t help but smirk, "This is your Dad's beer," I tease. Every time I drink this brand I think of Henry and how we would sneak it from the fridge to take to the lake with our friends.

Her smile falls instantly and her eyes go round with an emotion I can't quite pin down. Her fingers twist at her waist as she shifts from foot to foot. "I'm sorry. I had it here for him. I should have asked you what kind of beer you liked. I'll get some tomorrow. I didn't think."

It hits me then. She's worried. Worried that she's done something wrong. The girl I used to know would have smarted off some retort about her daddy having better taste, or telling me to get my own damn beer if I didn't like it. The old Emery wouldn't be standing in front of me looking like she might bolt at any second.

"Emery, it was a joke. This is fine. It's perfect," I assure her.

She nods carefully and I see her release the breath that she'd been holding. She moves back to the swing and takes a seat. I want to ask her about the reaction, but I know she doesn't want to answer that kind of question. So I take a long drink of the beer and get back to my work. After a minute she asks what I'll have to do after I sand. I smile a little. She's back to her quiet questions.

Each day she talks a little more. She asks me about people she used to know. I remind her of memories from our past. She asks me about my job and about my family. I tell her stories about school and avoid asking her too much about her life since she left Oklahoma. I feel like it is information that she's going to have to volunteer. Something tells me not to push the subject.

I know that it wasn't all roses and happy endings. Her husband's death aside, I can tell there is more. It makes me tense to think about it. My imagination is probably a lot worse than the reality. It’s been working overtime trying to fill in the blanks. I need to know why she is so jumpy. The other night she spilled a glass of tea on the counter and she nearly went into a panic to clean it up. I had to grab her hands to keep her still until she'd calmed.

"Em, it's just tea."

She'd stared at me with big eyes for a full minute before I'd finally felt her relax. That's the shit that gets me. The stuff I need answers for more than anything else. Because the idea that she was afraid of him or that he might have hurt her in any way at all consumes me with an all-out rage that I'm not sure how to channel into anything productive. But I can't let her see it. If I'm right, then rage is the thing that will send her running the fastest.

So I spend some extra time pounding my punching bag and imagining it is him. I don't have to know him to hate him.

Just the thought that someone ever hurt her is more than I can handle. I can't ask her about it, but I'm dying waiting for her to volunteer the information. Chances are she never will. I may never know what happened. I know her well enough to know that she's more likely to ignore it all. But I can't handle that. It doesn't matter to me that he's not here to hurt her anymore, I still need to know.

So when Henry suggested we ride together to the site of our newest project, I had 45 minutes to contemplate how to ask him for the information that I need. I've spent the entire ride there and twenty minutes on the way back wrestling with whether or not to ask him. Part of me feels like it's betraying Emery to ask him what he knows and I don't want to do that. But I know something happened while she was gone. And my gut tells me it has something to do with her husband.

I have this need to bring this new version of Emery out of her shell, but I don't know how to do that when I don't know how she got there in the first place.