Push

chapter Forty

Emma—Present Day

When I hear the alarm go off, I am lying on my side, and David’s body is nestled behind me. His arm is draped over my waist, and I can feel his breath on my neck. I switch off the clock, trying hard not to wake him. I want to lie here with his quiet body for a few minutes before I have to peel myself out of bed and get ready for work.
I don’t smell whisky or stale cigarettes. I just smell David. For some reason, his “sleepy smell” reminds me of honey—mellow and earthy. I’m reminded of how, as a small child, I used to enjoy the scent of our little dog when she uncurled herself from a nap. Her “sleepy smell” was reminiscent of a newly opened bag of corn chips, and when my father died and my mother sent her to live with another family, I missed that smell more than anything else about her. She was a little rough around the edges. I smile at the silly comparison between David Calgaro and Sasha the Sheltie: intoxicating “sleepy smells” and a little rough around the edges.
As I inhale David and think of my childhood, I wonder about his. I wonder if he had a pet. I wonder if he liked school. I wonder what his mother was like. I hope she loved her bright little bird. I hope she protected him from his alcoholic father better than my mother protected me. It brings me a little comfort knowing that, even though all of David’s girlfriends have somehow failed him, perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps, when she was still alive, he felt loved. Perhaps she hugged him and ruffled his hair and kissed him on the cheek before he stepped onto the school bus every morning. Perhaps she made him dinner and laid out a pair of freshly washed pajamas every night. Perhaps she took him to the movies and out for ice cream and did all the beautiful, loving things a mother is supposed to do. All the things my own mother did before my father died. I hope David was happy then. But somehow I doubt it. He told me a few days after we met that he didn’t believe his parents wanted the child they already had. Still...maybe he was loved and just didn’t know it.
I feel his legs move behind mine, his hips press into my back, and his hand swipe slowly across my belly.
“Good morning,” he says quietly. “Are you going to get up and go to work?”
“Nah,” I say, “I think I’ll just stay here with you all day.”
“That would be nice,” he says, running his hand up to the top of my hip and resting it there. “I thought maybe you had fallen back to sleep.”
“Nope. I was just lying here thinking.”
“About?”
“You and your sleepy smell.”
“My what?”
“Your sleepy smell. You know, it’s what you smell like when you’re asleep. Everyone has a sleepy smell.”
“Really?” he says, keeping his voice quiet and his body still. “And what is my sleepy smell?”
“Well, on Wednesday mornings you usually smell like a drunken gambler, but your usual sleepy smell is like honey.”
“Seriously?” I can feel his head draw back when he says it. “Honey?”
“Yep. Honey. It’s a good smell. I used to have a dog that smelled like corn chips when she slept, so at least your smell is better than that.”
“I don’t think so. Corn chips are more manly than honey. Can’t you say I smell like something more masculine? I don’t know, like motor oil or exhaust or something?”
“Okay, then I’ll take back the honey smell and replace it with sawdust. How about that, carpenter man? Is that manly enough for you?” I am smiling from ear to ear, and I’m nearly laughing as I say it. But I feel him tighten after the words are out. I roll over, and I can see on his face that I have said something wrong.
“No. Not sawdust,” he says as I lift my hand to brush his cheek. “My dad used to smell like sawdust. And Scotch. A whole lot of Scotch.”
“Well,” I say with a forced smile, “then maybe we should just stick with the honey. It can be our little effeminate secret.” His lips curl into a small, tight grin, and he nods his head slightly.
We lie face-to-face in my bed for a minute or two before he speaks again. “My dad smelled like sawdust, and when I was really little, my mom smelled like fabric softener. I used to love the smell of dryer sheets because of her. I used to think we were rich because of that smell. But then, when she started to get sick, her smell changed. For a year or so before she died, she smelled like dirty skin and stagnant air. I think our whole apartment might have smelled like that.”
I take a breath. “Did she have cancer or something?” I ask, and before I can stop it, the sadness is welling up in my chest again. Compassion and sympathy and sorrow cram into my heart. I swallow hard in hopes of keeping my emotions to myself.
“No,” he says, still looking into my eyes. I think for a moment that he might stop talking, that he might not offer me anything else. He blinks a few times and touches my arm. “She wasn’t that kind of sick. She was just broken inside.”
“Oh.” It’s all I can say. He regards me for a moment or two. I think he is waiting for me to say something else. But I can’t. I can only mentally shove my tears back into my eye sockets. David closes his eyes and snuggles his head down into his pillow.
“You need to go to work, Emma, and I need to go back to sleep,” he says softly. “We can talk about it later. I’ll pick you up at work, and we’ll go get something to eat. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, kissing him on the forehead. I know that I will spend the entire day thinking about David’s mother. About what he means by “she was just broken inside.” I steady my breath and consider asking him outright, but I know from his closed eyes that he is done talking. “Good night, David,” I add, lightly brushing his cheek with my hand as I climb out of bed.
I gather my things and head to the bathroom, pulling my favorite green dress from the closet as I go. I was wearing this dress the night I went up to his apartment and straddled his lap in front of his friends. When he picks me up tonight, I want him to see it and remember our first night together. I want this dress to remind him that I was the one who made the first move. I was the one who wanted us first. And I hope seeing it serves as some sort of confirmation for him. Proof that I love him. Proof that I want to be with him, despite the wounds the past has fashioned for both of us.
* * *

Instead of thinking of David and his mother all morning, I am surprised to find myself engaged in an all-too-lively discourse with Matt and one of my supervisors. We are debating the merits of several different schematic circuit designs and having trouble coming to a consensus about it. I’m eating this shit up—not only because I’m presenting an intelligent and accurate argument, but also because they are listening. I think I may be right about this, and it is so f*cking satisfying just to be heard. When lunchtime arrives, we still haven’t settled on the specific design, but we are making great progress. Their openness to my ideas is thrilling, and I can’t wait to tell David about it.
Matt ends up grabbing us a quick lunch from the cafeteria, and we eat it as we work. It is nearly four o’clock before I am able to head back to my cubicle and check my cell. When I flip it open, I find a message from David. It was sent nearly two hours ago.


Hi.


Hi back.


Sorry about this morning.


Sorry for what?


Leaving the conversation so open-ended. Didn’t want u to be late for work.


No worries.


Thanks for not pressing it.


Sure. Like I said before, only share what u want 2. The rest is NOMB.


But it is your business, Emma.


What is?


This part of my past. My mother.


Why?


Because it’s the reason I’m so f*cked up.


More f*cked up than me and my stepdad?


Yes.


The word stops me in my tracks.


Impossible.


It’s true.


I’ll still love u no matter what kind of f*cked up it is.


Promise?


Promise.


That is the best word ever.


His response makes me smile.


Will it be the last f*cked up thing u tell me about yourself?


Yes.


Promise?


Promise.


That IS the best word ever. :)


See you at 6:00. I’ll wait by the car.


I love you.


Promise?


Promise.
* * *

At six o’clock sharp, I gather my bags and head down the elevator alone. When I see David standing by his car, I instinctively reach up to my chest and pull the dog tags and raven pendant up and out of my dress. I am sliding them back and forth along their chain as I walk toward him. His eyes follow my fingers, and by the time I reach him, he is wearing a smile.
“Hey,” he says, pulling his hands from his pockets and reaching for my hips. “Nice dress.”
“Glad to know you remember it,” I say.
“How could I forget?” he says with a lopsided grin.
I put on my best puckish smirk. “I kicked some ass at work today.”
“How’s that?”
“I argued some design points, and they listened to me and made a bunch of changes because of it. It felt pretty damned good.”
“That’s excellent,” he says just before he plants a kiss on my mouth. It is deep and incredible. Just like always.
“It kinda was,” I say after he pulls away. “I feel like it was the first time I could really prove that I’m good at what I do. You know?”
“Yeah,” he says with a grin. “I’m proud of you, Emma. And I hope you brought Matt to his f*cking knees.” I laugh out loud, knowing that it was more of a compromise than a slaughter.
“Let’s just say that by the time I was done, everyone was begging for mercy,” I tease. His face lights up, and a small laugh escapes his throat.
“Atta girl!” he shouts as he jumps up on to the hood of his car. What the f*ck is he doing?
“David, what are you doing?” I shout up at him. He spreads his arms out wide, and he lifts his face toward the sky.
“My girl kicks ass,” he yells up into the sky. Everyone on the street is looking at us, and I want to sink my face into my hands out of embarrassment. But instead, my cheeks flush, and my mouth rips into a gigantic smile. “And...” he adds, looking down at me and quieting his voice, “she promised she will always love me—no matter what kind of f*cked up I am.”
“It’s true,” I say to a lady walking past me. I give her a little nod and add, “I did say that.”
“Good for you,” the lady says, picking up her pace. “Bunch of crazies,” she adds when she thinks I am out of earshot.
“That’s true, too!” I shout over at her.
David is laughing at me as he hops down from the hood of the car and opens my door for me. His smile is deafening.
We drive across the river to one of the neighborhoods just outside the city. In the car, David asks me to recount all of my stellar arguments this morning, as well as the reactions from both Matt and my supervisor. I have a good time embellishing the story with a few obvious fabrications. At one point in my story, my supervisor even offers me a job as chief operations officer just because I am so f*cking smart. David knows which parts are true and which are not, because he laughs at precisely the right moments. By the time we get to the restaurant, I feel swollen with pride.
The lovely little Italian place has brown craft paper and a votive candle on every table. We eat our meal and talk more about work and the end of last night’s poker match. David tells me about how Carl scorned him for missing most of the game because of a girl. Then he said he played Carl under the table for an hour or so before they packed up and headed home. David settles the bill, and we walk to his car.
“Let’s go sit somewhere outside and look at the stars,” I say, knowing that at some point he might tell me more about his mother. David says that it’s a great idea, and we drive to Addison Park again. We park in the same gravel lot and walk the same dirt trail until we reach the big rock pile and climb to the top to overlook the city. I’m thankful to be wearing flats today instead of his shit kickers. The view is even more beautiful than it was all those weeks ago.
“I know I said it in my text, but I really am sorry that I left you hanging this morning,” he says as we sit down. “I wanted to tell you about my mom, but I knew there wasn’t enough time and I shouldn’t have said what I said and then cut off the conversation. It was stupid of me to have brought it up like that, but you were talking about the whole sleepy smell thing and it just kind of came out.”
“It wasn’t stupid, David. I was stupid. I shouldn’t have called you my bright little bird last night. That wasn’t fair, especially since I don’t know anything about her. You looked so...I don’t know...so disparaged when I said it. I thought you might run the hell away and never come back. But then you lay down in my bed, and I didn’t know what to do. And then this morning, when you said that she was broken inside...I don’t even understand what that means. I am hurting for you, David, and I don’t know why.”
“Don’t say that,” he says emphatically. His voice sounds a bit angry, and I’m not sure where it’s coming from. “Don’t hurt for me. I can’t stand the thought of you hurting. Especially because of me.” His knees are folded up against his chest, and his arms are wrapped around them. He looks straight out over the city.
“I can’t help it,” I say quietly. “That’s what happens when you love someone. Sometimes you hurt for them. Sometimes you want to take the pain they are feeling and put it on yourself instead.” The sun is just starting to go down, and I can’t take my eyes off of him, even though I know he won’t look back at me.
“But you can’t, Emma. You can’t make it better. It’s impossible. Because it isn’t hurt and pain I feel about my mother. It is seething anger. I am angry at her and at my father and at myself. I am angry that I couldn’t fix things for them, no matter what I did.”
“Fix what?”
“Everything,” he says, resting his chin on his knees. “Emma, my mom spent a good part of her life in a deep depression. That’s what I meant when I said she was broken inside. I watched her sink so deep into herself that she stopped caring about everything. I watched her stop eating and washing and talking. I tried to take care of her, and I tried not to rile up my dad. I tried to turn chaos into control. I tried to make it better for both of them, but I couldn’t. And then I watched her die right in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening.” I hear a mixture of sadness and hatred in his voice. David unfolds his arms and reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out his wallet and takes out a piece of paper. I watch him unfold it and smooth it down flat on the rock before passing it to me. It is warped and cracked and watermarked. I can’t read most of what it says because the ink is runny and splattered, and the sun is too low in the sky.
“What is this?” I ask as I look back up. His eyes are on me now. Watching me.
“It’s the note my mother pinned to my shirt just before she committed suicide. I was supposed to be asleep in the car.”
“Oh, David. Oh, no. No.” I look down at the note. I can see that it starts with “My bright little bird,” and I can make out something about whatever his father said not being true, but that’s all. She signed it “From your loving Momma.” I want to cry so badly. I want to crawl over to him and hold him against me. He was only eight f*cking years old. Eight. Who does that to a child?
“I woke up just as she was about to jump off a bridge with sandbags tied to her feet,” he says. He curls himself up again, into a ball, and hugs his legs.
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that two women in David’s life met such a brutal and tragic end—and each at their own hands. Both Anna and his mother jumped from a bridge. Both drowned. And both of their choices made him suffer far more than any man should. I want to squeeze myself in between his thighs and his chest and melt into him. I want to erase all the bad. I want to erase Anna and Lucia and Jenny and Kelsey and everyone else who has ever hurt him.
“I got out of the car and asked her what she was doing,” he continues, his voice soft and husky, “but I think I already knew. I think I knew for a long time that my mom was going to leave me somehow. I tried to grab her when she jumped, but I missed. And then I screamed at her. I think I told her to try to fly, to flap her arms or something. And when she didn’t, I jumped in after her. I felt around in the water for her for a long time, but it was dark and I couldn’t see. She died right in front of me, Emma, and I couldn’t save her.” By the time he finishes, he is crying. His body is heaving with sobs, and I wrap my arms around him. His face presses against the front of my shoulder, and I feel his tears seeping through the fabric of my dress. I am crying now, too. My skin is hot with anger—so much anger—for this woman and what she did to her own son. I should feel sad for her—like I do for Anna—but for some reason I can’t bring myself to pity her. He was a child, for Christ’s sake. A child. I am mad at David’s father for not being there for him, and I’m mad at David because I know that he feels as if it was his fault. But it wasn’t. How could it be? How could he think he was responsible for “fixing” his parents? How could he blame himself for his mother’s choice?
A few minutes later, he pulls away and wipes at his face. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry to lay this on you, but...it’s f*cked up, right? I never told anyone that I tried to save my mom because I didn’t want anyone to know that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t save my mother.”
I look at David’s face and think about how people all over the world are walking around with massive secrets bound to their backs, weighing them down until their knees scrape the ground. It isn’t just David and me. It is everyone. We all suffer at the hands of secrets, whether we are the cause of them or not. And we are a world of self-made martyrs because of it. We try so hard to hold on to our secrets because we are afraid that no one will understand or that we’ll somehow be judged because of them. People steal and lie and cheat and murder and ignore and deceive, and their victims wear the burden of these wrongs like some kind of godforsaken badge. I am guilty of it, and so is David. But I think David is ready to give up his martyrdom. I think, like me, he is ready to slough off his secrets and move on. He already recognizes that, without them, he wouldn’t be the man that he is. But now, I think he’s finally recognizing that maybe he’ll be a better man without them.
“It’s okay, David,” I say as I brush my hand against his hair, stroking his head as if he were still the small child I am picturing in my head. For once in my life, I know the right thing to say. “You know what, she didn’t want to be saved. It wouldn’t have mattered what you did or said. She had already made up her mind. She saw you standing there, watching her, and she still chose to jump. She chose to do that to her own child. She was gone before her feet even left the bridge, and nothing was going to change that.”
He looks at me as if I just smacked him in the face. “She was sick. I don’t think she saw it as a choice.”
“She had a choice,” I say ardently. “Even if she saw suicide as her only way out, she could have made the choice to leave you out of it. But she didn’t. She involved her own child in a terrible thing—a very grown-up thing—and no child deserves that. And now you are the one who has had to think about it for all these years, and that is really f*cking unfair.” He reaches over to me and pulls me toward him. I climb on to his lap, straddling him and wrapping myself around his body. When I hear him start to sniff back more tears, I want to weep again—but instead, I keep talking. “You’re right. It’s f*cked up, David. You’re f*cked up. And I can totally see why. I can’t imagine how all this has affected you for all these years. Hell, you already know how messed up I am. You know what Michael did to my life. His choices influenced everything I did for years. And your mother’s choice did the same to you. But you have to find a way to move on. You have to stop punishing yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. We both have to.”
His hands move up to my head and bend it forward, until I am face-to-face with him. He kisses me, and it is deep and lustful. The burn in my skin turns from anger to passion, and I feel loved and needed and right.
“I can’t move on by myself, Emma. I need help. I need you to make it go away,” he says when he pulls his lips from mine. His voice is scattered and nervous.
“Listen, you already know I love you, David, and I always will. If you need me to tell you those words every f*cking day for the rest of our lives, I’ll do it. And I don’t ever have to hear them back. I’m not going away. We can move on together.”
David blinks up at me. His eyes are warm, roaming over my face carefully. He seems to be strengthened somehow. His back straightens and his mouth sets into a straight line.
He snakes his hands around my waist to the small of my back, weaving his fingers together and resting his palms against the base of my spine. “I know something you can do right now that will make everything better,” he says, the nervousness disappearing from his voice. “I know what I need.”
I look down at him and cup his face in my hands. I see the crazy current whipping through his body and vibrating in his eyes. I feel his skin start to warm beneath my hands, and because of it, I know that whatever he’s about to ask me to do is energizing and inciting his body far more than anything we have done before. There is utter and absolute ecstasy in his face.
“What is it?” I ask. “What do you need me to do?”



Emma’s Epilogue

I am standing on the bridge, and in a rush of brutal and beautiful clarity, I know. I know that I am not the only one. I know that he has done this before. With other women. In other cities. On other bridges. But it doesn’t matter. They weren’t me.
How could he have been so careless?
The green fabric of my dress is clinging to my skin, and the air is calm and humid. My hands are tied behind me, but I’m not crying. I’m not fighting. My skin is not burning with anger or fear. My brain is in charge of my body, and it is telling my instincts to go f*ck themselves. As I look out over the dark river, it is all falling into place. The picture is whole.
His breath is steady, deep. He’s always been the calm that feeds off my turmoil, is thrilled by it even. But not today. Today there is only peace. I know what he needs from me, and even as I stand here on the edge of everything, I love him. If he asked me to jump, I would. There would be no hesitation. I know that now, and he knows it, too. I suspect he always has.
I can feel the remarkable beauty in his anticipation. Doing this one thing is going to make him very, very happy, far happier than anything else we have ever done together. It is going to make everything better. I know it.
I will not fail.
I suddenly feel his hand on my face. I quietly sigh and push my head into his palm, feeling the softness of his skin. Inhaling his scent. His smile is small, sheltered. But if I do this, if this happens, his face will open with joy and his teeth will show and his eyes will brighten. He will be unstuck.
His hand falls from my face, and he drops to his knees. The sacks of sand at my feet—on my feet—feel dense. I stand still as he knots them slowly to my ankles. I am quiet because I am not afraid. I am not sad.
Right after we met, he brought me to this bridge. He showed me the colorful graffiti painted across the trusses and told me that this illicit art had turned a simple bridge into a masterpiece. It was someone’s opus, he said. The fact that some kid, probably unaware of his own talent, could create something so moving obviously touched him deeply. At the time, I wondered why he was so captivated by it. But now...now it is clear. He knew, even then, that all this would come to be. Because it had happened before. With the others.
Still, none of it matters.
Because I am here now, and I am the one.
He pushes me, and I fall, falling for him a second time. But this time, I am not falling in love. This time my descent is not in sweetness and metaphor. It is real. Bruising and literal. I am falling from the sky because I want him to love me as much as I love him. I want to put all of his broken pieces back together. And this is the only way to make that happen. I love him, in spite of all this. In spite of the son of a bitch that he really is. In spite of myself.
The fall is not as I anticipated. I thought it might be a rapid rush, but, instead, I feel light. As if I am floating. I struggle to see the riotously painted bridge trusses as I pass, but the darkness makes it impossible. My mind is moving slowly, thoughtfully even, but before I can take hold of another breath, I hit the water. The bubbles rise around me, tickling my body in a frothy, hard caress.
The weight of the sandbags pulls me down faster than I expected. I am under the water, and yet I can finally breathe. And I grin because I know that he is up there, on the bridge, smiling. His perfect teeth exposed. His eyes alight. He is elated. And maybe, I hope, filled with a deep, appreciative love. For me.



David’s Epilogue

The sandbags are the last thing to fall from the ledge, and, as they do, I hear a sickening swipe. It licks at my heart. I watch her fall. She is falling for me. Her body tilts softly in the air, and she hits the water feet first. I know the sandbags will pull her down fast. They always do. The bubbles rise, and the ripples widen, and she is gone. Gone because I am a goddamned son of a bitch.
I put my face in my hands and drop to my knees. I am crying. I am sobbing. I am screaming.
Shit. What have I done?
To be continued...
* * * * *



Acknowledgments

The blame for this book is to be placed squarely on the shoulders of my friend Melissa. She is the one who encouraged me to write David and Emma’s story, and her enthusiasm for this book led me through both the dark spots and the bright. Thank you, Melissa, for leading me down this road and for being such a kick-ass cheerleader. Your faith is mind-boggling.
To N.A., L.S., B.O., M.S. and M.K.: I still can’t believe I suckered you into reading an entire ream of paper full of my words. And I didn’t even have to ask twice! Your trust and confidence gave me an instant pair of “author legs” and a firm push in the right direction. Without your feedback, I would not have had the courage to put this book out into the world. You are my “fab-five,” and I will be forever grateful to have you in my life.
I feel blessed to have a set of parents and a sister who always offer me their support, no matter what kind of harebrained idea I fling at them. They have my back, and I am thankful for all their positive energy and love. My chin is up because of them.
To my agent, Nalini Akolekar of Spencerhill Associates: I knew from our very first phone call that we were going to be a perfect fit. Thanks for your patient ear, your steadfast enthusiasm, and your practical (and emotional!) advice. Your faith in this book, and its author, is so very appreciated.
Emily Ohanjanians, my editor at Harlequin MIRA, had no small task in bringing out the best in David and Emma’s story. Emily, your gentle guidance, kind words and professionalism did not go unnoticed. I know I can be a little overly passionate sometimes (okay, let’s call it what it is, kids: I can be an opinionated b#tch); your ability to corral that passion and help me turn it into a string of perfect words was more vital than you know. You deserve a medal.
And last, to my rock-solid husband: Thank you for tolerating all my neurotic outbursts, for encouraging me to take risks, for inspiring my creativity, for always allowing me to be myself, and for being the strongest person I know. You and that beautiful boy of ours are the best parts of me.