Tyler and I shared countless phone calls over the year that he was gone, but I don’t quite recall him ever reading his full speech to me. When he first moved over here to New York he was still in the process of writing it, and back then he did sometimes ask for my thoughts on the words he’d pieced together. I always told him everything sounded just fine, raw and honest and so him. I never heard the finished version. I never asked. “No,” I finally admit. “Why?”
Emily’s smile grows wider again and she leans back on the balls of her feet, passing the bottle of water back and forth in her hands. “Toward the end of our speeches, we had to talk about the after-effects of abuse. The psychological damage,” she says, and I wonder if she’s uncomfortable, but she’s not. She’s talked about this endlessly for an entire year, just like Tyler has. She’s used to it. “And so Tyler would talk about the drugs and the booze and everything else,” she continues, “and he always spoke about a girl. He never once mentioned her name, but he would talk about the fact that she was the first person in years to care about what he was going through. The first person to actually want to help, and that that was exactly what she did without her even realizing it. He told everyone that she was the reason things started changing and getting better. He spoke about her as though he was in love with her, and we always wondered why he never said her name.” She pauses for a minute, not quite smiling but not quite frowning either. Exhaling slowly, she parts her lips and says, “I’ve realized it was because that girl is you.”
Her words take a while to sink in. I can do nothing but stare at her as I try to process them. Tyler never mentioned that he spoke about me in his speech. He never once told me that he talked about me in such a way. I’m not sure how to feel about it. Uncomfortable? Not quite. Surprised? Yes. All I can think about is that I am so, so in love with him, yet he’s not even here. I desperately want to reach out for him right now. Touch him, tell him I love him. And not in French this time.
When Emily realizes I don’t have the ability to muster up a reply right now, she continues, walking around the kitchen counter as she does so. “So I thought there was something going on between the two of you,” she says, “but I didn’t want to ask, and then your boyfriend turned up so I thought I must have been imagining that there was something between you and Tyler. But then last night I found out that I was right and that I wasn’t just imagining the entire thing.”
“When I walked out on him?” I guess, pushing myself away from the counter as I turn to face her.
“No,” she says. “After that.” Moving away from me, she heads across the living room and my eyes follow her. She talks over her shoulder as she walks, raising her voice as she disappears into Tyler’s room. “Tyler took a bunch of videos of the tour, so I was emailing them over to myself,” I hear her say, reappearing at his bedroom door with a laptop in her hands, “and I found something that I think you should see. I’m not sure if you know about it or not.”
My curiosity peaks and I rush over to join her on the couch as she places the laptop down on the coffee table, tilting open the screen. I interlock my hands anxiously in my lap as she starts it up. Neither of us relaxes back into the couch. We both sit right on the edge, leaning forward, staring at the screen. Emily doesn’t take long to log in to Tyler’s account, to pull up his files. She scrolls straight to the most recent video to be transferred onto the laptop, and she opens it. It’s nothing but a dark screen. She quickly pauses it before the video can even start, and she turns to look at me.
“So I opened this video by accident and I swear I only watched the first ten minutes or so and . . .” Her words taper off as she glances back at the laptop. She reaches for it, picking it up and gently placing it on my lap. “Well, I just think you should watch it. You might want some space, and you might want to get comfy.”
I furrow my eyebrows at her as she gets to her feet, feeling curious yet slightly suspicious at the exact same time. My eyes follow her as she heads back over to the kitchen to fetch her water, her loose ponytail swinging around her shoulders. She’s always been so nice to me. Always.
“Emily?” Anxiously, I bite down on my lower lip as I wait for her to turn around. When she does, she raises her eyebrows at me and listens. “I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She tilts her head slightly to one side. “What?”
“For the way I treated you at first,” I say, and then I shrug rather sheepishly as I admit, “I thought you and Tyler had a thing.” Embarrassed, I throw my head into my hands and groan.
Now Emily laughs. Really, really laughs, and I join in with her. “Don’t worry about it,” she reassures me. “I can’t blame you.”
It feels nice to be laughing after everything that’s just happened. Despite the fact that Tiffani is most likely storming her way back to her hotel suite to tell Dean the truth and despite the fact that Tyler’s disappeared to God knows where, I’m still smiling. I’m smiling because our secret no longer seems so wrong or so scandalous or so terrifying.
I stand up, the laptop resting on my arm as I look back to Emily once more. “And thanks,” I add.