Whiskey at Midnight, page 24
It almost feels natural when Emma invites Wren over on karaoke night. Emma tells herself it’s because she’s too tired for karaoke and she wonders how Wren’s face is healing. It’s definitely not because she doesn’t want to see Cam, who might not even show up anyway. There’s no denying that it’s a little strange though. She and Wren still aren’t quite friends and they spent most of their time together at Wren’s apartment.
New beginnings mean trying things differently, Emma reasons.
Emma changes into her pajamas because there’s no way Wren is actually going to respond to her invitation. And if she were to respond, she’s bound to say no.
Emma puts on a bad reality TV show and settles onto the couch. She jumps when her phone chirps. It’s Wren saying she’s on her way. Emma fights the urge to change into something else.
Wren’s lip isn’t so swollen anymore. She doesn’t flinch when she sits down on the couch. One side of her face is yellow, the middle of it still a blue color. She chews gum and stares at the dying roses on the coffee table. Emma never picked them up again, never tried to put them in a vase.
“From my breakup with Cam,” Emma explains.
“Mm,” Wren says and turns her attention to the TV. She wears one of those tanktops she loves and shorts. It’s been getting warmer, but still not warm enough for that kind of outfit. Emma smiles at it.
“Your face looks better,” Emma says during a commercial break.
Wren’s torso shakes, like she’s holding in laughter, but she barely smiles. She pulls her cigarettes and an ashtray out of the small bag she’s carried in with her and lights up. “Your shirt looks the same,” she says.
Emma looks down at her shirt. It’s an old one she’s had forever with a frog on it. Unsure if it’s a dig at her or something else, Emma smiles uncertainly and turns back to the TV.
“Where’s Steve?” Emma asks when the silence goes on too long again.
“Probably karaoke.”
“Will he be mad?”
Wren gives Emma an amused look and lights another cigarette. “For not going to karaoke?”
“Or for being here,” says Emma.
Uncertainty flickers across Wren’s face for a brief moment. Emma latches onto it, like she always does. It’s nice how little things like that, knowing to watch out for those glimpses into Wren’s mind, never really go away.
“Steve could never stay mad at me,” Wren says.
The rest of the night is spent with Emma trying to come up with things to ask, anything to have some kind of conversation, and Wren answering in brief responses. It’s so normal that Emma feels on edge, which confuses her more. They don’t bring up Cam anymore, not that Wren ever would. The kiss from the night Wren stayed on the couch isn’t brought up either and when Wren leaves, later than Emma would have stayed up if she’d been home alone, they don’t hug or kiss.
Emma falls asleep with a smile on her face.
Wren texts her sometimes without Emma starting the conversation. Even though it’s usually something like how Wren had an amusing guest at work or how Wren’s roommate is driving her crazy, it’s more than Wren has ever volunteered on her own and Emma treasures every moment of it. They’re not together, haven’t done anything that would make it seem like that’s where they’re headed, but it feels like Wren is trying, really trying. That makes Cam’s absence, expected as it is, easier.
Just like that, Wren is hanging around Emma at karaoke again. They dance and Wren even laughs at times. She buys Emma shots and they grimace if it’s a particularly nasty one. Life isn’t so terrible alone. It’s not so bad having Wren around to make it all normal again.
Steve gives Emma looks sometimes, when Wren is off getting them more drinks and Steve isn’t dancing, that remind Emma of when she and Wren first got together. They’re part threatening, part confusion. Emma can guess what it means. Don’t yank someone around, don’t be Cam. It’s just ridiculous enough, considering Wren was the one to end it before, that Emma sets her jaw and ignores him completely when he does it.
It’s time to clean again and Emma gets a glass of wine ready to help her through it. She’s kept her apartment relatively tidy, but there’s a little spot of blood on her couch where Wren must have bled onto it and she hasn’t taken care of it. She’s not even sure if it’ll come out and she doesn’t care all that much anyway.
She doesn’t have stacks upon stacks of papers to throw away this time. Even her books haven’t gotten out of control. There are only two on the floor by her bed and she puts them away in seconds. She dusts her nightstand, picks up the lamp to make sure to get underneath it, and picks up the picture frame that Wren gave her. She dusts it off and sees, again, how the back doesn’t look quite right. She’s in a good mood, so much of one that she’s been humming as she moves around the apartment. She turns on the lamp to look more closely and sees that Wren’s untidy handwriting is on the back in pencil, so small that it’s hard to notice at first.
She puts the frame right under the lamp so that she can read it. Scrawled on the back are the words: what’s underneath is most important. Exactly the kind of thing Wren might write down but never utter, because Wren doesn’t say anything like that, doesn’t say words that might be taken as some kind of declaration.
And that’s why Wren had stared at Emma when she first gave the Christmas present, because there actually was something else to get, something that Wren wouldn’t bring attention to on her own. It doesn’t matter so much now that they’re not together, but Emma’s had all of her glass of wine and so she pulls at the frame until it opens and grabs the first thing she sees. It’s another picture, the one that Reese had taken at the bar.
How long it’s been missing from its place at the bar, Emma doesn’t know. Obviously since around Christmas. But as much as she’s gone to the bar since, sporadically, she hasn’t looked for it. She hasn’t even thought about it. Her cheeks flush.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Emma says aloud.
They’re not together. Wren didn’t fight, just gave her away to Cam like it wasn’t some kind of sick move. Besides, Wren seemed fine after she called it off. And that was the worst part of it all.
Emma doesn’t tell Wren that she found the other half of her Christmas present. It would only make things awkward right when they’re becoming friends.
The next time they’re at karaoke, Emma tells Wren about stupid Tony and his latest prank that backfired spectacularly. He’s been suspended for three days because of it. Wren giggles, something that Emma didn’t think Wren was capable of. Steve notices it too. He looks between the two of them and sighs. And right then, with Wren looking so happy and carefree and Steve’s face full of worry, Emma wishes Vicki was there to distract Steve. But she hasn’t been around in awhile.
When Wren gets up to get more drinks for the three of them, Steve scoots over so that he’s sitting next to Emma. His cologne is heavier than normal and Emma covers her nose briefly before getting used to the smell.
“So you guys are going to start this all up again, huh?” Steve asks, his eyes scanning around the room.
“We’re just friends,” Emma says, defensively.
“Because Wren does friends so well,” says Steve. “Look, I don’t care if she’s happy with it. But don’t you dare break her heart again.”
“What?” Emma croaks out the word. She clears her throat. “What are you talking about?”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Jesus, you two.”
But then Wren comes back and Steve moves to his original seat. Discussion over. Wren glares at him like she knows he’s said something he shouldn’t have and is quiet for the rest of the night. No giggles, no conversation.
It wouldn’t be so bothersome if it’d been months ago, back when Wren didn’t really talk to anyone. But on her good days, as Emma is calling them now, Wren is actually something of a decent conversationalist. She still doesn’t talk a lot. She can tell a story that would take Emma ten minutes to tell in less than two. It’s something that Emma has never seen, and she likes it.
Emma’s never been good at keeping things inside. If she had, she’d have kept herself out of a lot of trouble over the years. That’s why the next time she invites Wren over, and it’s always her inviting Wren over now, she asks what Wren did during that time they didn’t see each other so much. She can’t bring herself to say the words when she was with Cam.
Wren looks at her for a moment, narrows her eyes a little. “Not now,” Wren says finally. It’s more than Emma expects or deserves. It’s not a flat out no. Emma lets the moment pass, happy that she might know one day.
Cam invites Emma out for coffee. It’s their first real interaction since the breakup and it’s hard to admit it, that it was yet another breakup in so few months. Breakups have never felt like such a failure to Emma. In the past, it meant that Emma could move on to the next person, to the person she would find and be with forever. She’s fucked two relationships up in less than a year and somehow they both feel like her fault.
Cam’s hair has been cut. When they were together, it had reached to the middle of her neck, but now it’s back to her chin. That look has always made Cam look more professional, like the ladder climber that she is. She sits straight up with the kind of posture that demands respect, something that Emma has never mastered. Cam’s also dressed in her business attire which makes Emma feel small in her jeans and t-shirt.
“I’m glad you came,” Cam says, her tone formal.
“I didn’t think there was a good reason not to,” says Emma. It sounds like something Wren might say. She sits across from Cam and sips at her coffee. It burns her tongue.
“I wanted to see you one last time,” Cam says and takes a sip of her coffee, as if she’s pausing for effect.
“What?”
“I’m transferring. Two weeks from now. Mark moved to Chicago at a branch there and I’m going now, too,” Cam explains.
“But isn’t that the kind of thing that takes time to happen?” Emma sputters.
“Yeah.”
“So when did you ask for it?” asks Emma. Her phone buzzes on the table but she ignores it. Her coffee rests next to her phone, now forgotten.
For the first time since Emma arrived, Cam looks a little unsure of herself. It’s as if she didn’t expect the question to be asked. “Right after the wedding,” she mumbles.
The wedding might have been the beginning of the end, but it certainly wasn’t the end. Before, Emma might have blown up, blamed herself for it all. Instead of answering with anger, because how dare Cam, she shrugs and laughs. “That’s pretty bad, Cam. Even for you.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” says Cam. “You’re taking it better than expected.”
“What if we had worked it out? What then?” It’s a fleeting thought, one that Emma is kind of surprised by.
This time Cam doesn’t look uncertain at all, like she expected this one. “We never would have,” she says.
Emma doesn’t see Cam again even though Cam doesn’t leave for two more weeks. Emma may have never really known Cam at all, what with the way she looked at Cam through those rose-tinted glasses, but she knows Cam enough to know how the move will go. Cam will do well at the new branch, will probably get back together with Mark. Life will be nice enough that Cam might even settle down with Mark somewhat, as long as it doesn’t mean it messes with work. That part has always been known to Emma, that work came first for Cam. Always.
Wren keeps her face blank when Emma tells her the news, but within moments a smile appears, just for a second. “Good riddance,” she says. She doesn’t look at Emma when she says it, and it comes out of her so easily that she must have known before even saying it that Emma wouldn’t be offended.
They sit on Emma’s couch in their pajamas, drinking coffee. “Steve saw Cam one last time,” Wren says. Her voice is steady though still rough from sleep. “Cam apparently seemed radiant, like a new beginning will really fix everything.”
“Are we friends?” Emma asks abruptly.
Wren takes her time thinking, scratches at her nose and drinks some more of her coffee. She’s been around Emma’s apartment so much that Emma has had to tell her to limit the amount of cigarettes she smokes inside since it’s not really allowed at all. Wren’s hand hovers over the pack on the coffee table before she changes her mind about smoking. “Yeah, I guess we are,” says Wren.
“And friends tell each other things,” Emma continues.
It’s almost like those times after they’d fucked, when Emma would say things that she would otherwise never feel comfortable saying or asking. Only now Wren sleeps on the couch, citing an annoying roommate.
Wren looks the same waking up as she does after she’s just been fucked. The wavy hair, the raccoon eyes from her makeup. Emma shakes her head to clear her thoughts.
Wren smirks and shrugs. “Yeah, I guess they do.”
“They tell the truth,” Emma says. She holds onto her cup of coffee with trembling fingers.
Wren sighs and turns so that she’s facing Emma. “What is it, Emma?”
“Did I really break your heart?” Emma’s heart beats rapidly in her chest. Her fingers seem to lose feeling. As soon as the words are out, she’s not sure she really wants to know the answer. Too late, always too late.
Wren decides to smoke a cigarette after all. She picks out a cigarette from the pack and lights it, takes a heavy drag and lets out a ring of smoke. She looks Emma up and down. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it fucking matters, Wren. I need to know.”
Wren ashes into the tray she’s brought over and drinks from her coffee cup. Unlike Cam, it doesn’t seem like an intentional pause meant to prolong the moment. It’s like Wren is actually unsure what to say. “Why? Would it have changed your choice?”
Emma has been holding her breath, doesn’t realize it until it all leaves her body in one rush. She’s kind of peeved with the way Wren can just sit on Emma’s couch and say things in such a bored tone, so practiced and neutral. “What choice? You broke up with me. You ended it. You practically threw me and Cam together.”
Wren waves her hand in front of herself dismissively. “You needed to know for sure that things couldn’t work with her. You needed to see that just because love wasn’t what you imagined, it was still there. That just because it wasn’t rainbows didn’t mean it was less than. But you still had a choice. There’s always a choice.”
“I didn’t take you for a master of manipulation.”
“I never said I was a good person,” Wren says softly.
Emma puts her coffee cup down and touches a spot above her right eye that has begun to pound. Things never go Emma’s way and this whole conversation is further proof of that. “How do you know I wouldn’t have chosen you if you’d fought for me?”
Wren smiles at her in a pitying way. “Do you really expect me to believe that no matter who you were with you wouldn’t have run into Cam’s arms the moment she wanted you? Let’s spare each other the bullshit, okay? It’s not anything against you. It’s just how you are. Or were.”
“You’re talking a lot,” says Emma.
“Yeah, well, apparently there’s a lot to talk about right now,” Wren says. She puts her cigarette into the tray and immediately lights another. Emma doesn’t stop her.
“Maybe I needed you to fight for me.”
“Maybe,” Wren agrees. “I never said I knew everything.”
They settle into silence again. Wren smokes and drinks her coffee. Emma continues prodding at the spot on her forehead. The pounding is growing in intensity. A small spark of rage ignites inside Emma. She has work in a few hours though, doesn’t have the time to worry about it.
Before Wren leaves, wearing her clothes from the previous night, holding onto the bag that she’s stuffed her pajamas into, she stops at the door and looks at Emma. She opens her mouth, as if there is still something left to say, but then closes it and bites her lip.
“How do you feel about it all now?” Emma asks. Another question that might bite her in the ass, but she doesn’t care at the moment.
Wren looks down at the floor. There’s a bit of dust down there where Emma needs to sweep. Their feet look like an odd pairing with Wren in her boots and Emma still barefoot. “Not good,” Wren admits. “Like I’ve--just not good.”
The two have plans to hang out after Emma’s shift, but she goes home and doesn’t try to call Wren. The rage is finally bubbling over and it’s with some satisfaction Emma notes that Wren doesn’t try to contact her either.
A pawn is all Emma has been. Manipulated into going after Cam over and over again, manipulated by Wren. She throws the ashtray that Wren has brought over into the trash can.
Emma’s never done destructive well. She’s never been in a fight, doesn’t have the bank account to get drunk every day. She doesn’t even have the energy to destroy the things in her apartment. So she sulks around, stomps throughout the apartment until her downstairs neighbor comes up to find out what the fuck is going on. It’s too much to describe to a relative stranger. How Emma is such an idiot that she thought love was like in the movies, how she chased after someone for years despite the knowledge somewhere deep down that it probably wouldn’t work. How she goes around destroying people, makes them literally run away from her or hide like Wren is now. How she doesn’t deserve half the things that have happened to her in the last year and the other half she brought on herself. She looks down at the doorway and mumbles an apology instead, says that it won’t happen again.
She calls her mother in the end. Even though she hasn’t talked to her in months, despite repeated attempts from her parents, her mother answers with a cheery voice like no time has gone by at all. The tone of her mother’s voice sends another stab of pain into Emma’s chest, reminds her of how selfish she is.
