After All

“And these are my friends Jackie and Will,” I tell her wearily.

“Oh, Will the boss,” my mother says, fixing her attention on him now. “My, you’re a handsome one too. I suppose I should thank you for keeping my daughter employed for this long, I know what a pain in the ass she can be.”

“Yes, she is, but we love her anyway,” Will answers with a wide smile. “I suspect she gets her tenaciousness from you, though.”

“You have no idea,” she says with a wink and then starts back to the house, waving her hands in the air for us to follow, her bracelets jangling.

I let out a heavy sigh. I think I forgot to breathe that entire time.

Jackie looks at me, shaking her head while biting back laughter and then pushes me toward the house.

This isn’t the house that I grew up in. My mother had that until I left home and then promptly sold it. This place is a small two-bedroom, located far up on the hills above town. It’s at the end of a cul-de-sac too so it’s extra isolated and has beautiful views of the town and both lakes. I worry about her living alone all the way up here–though my mother acts bossy and tough, she’s really quite fragile at heart–but she’s stubborn and says she’s going to stay here until she dies or she gets bored. Whatever comes first.

Because the house and property are small–the backyard is just a slice of yellowed grass and porch before it drops off down ragged clay cliffs and gullies–there isn’t much of a tour. Thankfully my mother has already prepared dinner for us, so there isn’t a lot of sitting around and having small talk.

We eat in the narrow dining room, my mother at the head of the table, and she calls us to say grace before we feast on her famous lasagna recipe. My mother has never said grace a day in her life, so I think she just decided to do it for the sake of Emmett.

Then I know it’s true when she tells him she hopes it reminded him of growing up.

“Come again?” Emmett asks as she passes him a dish.

“After your mother died, you were raised by your aunt, were you not? She was very religious and you went to church a lot.”

I exchange a look with everyone else. How did my mother know this?

“Don’t look so shocked, dear,” she says to me. “I told you I know all the dirt.”

Emmett clears his throat, looking uncomfortable. “You’re right. She was religious, we did say grace a lot.”

“Such a shame what happened to your mother, you poor boy.”

“Mom,” I warn her, though I’m practically whining. What is it about being with your parents for five minutes that turns back the clock to when you were a petulant teenager?

“Oh, come now. He’s your boyfriend, sweetie. There are no secrets here. If he wants to know about everything your terrible father did to us, he’s welcome to it. There’s no shame in it, it’s just the reality. Everyone has something, don’t they?” She looks at Will and Jackie. “You’re both the perfect looking couple, but he’s far older than you. I bet that caused problems at some point.”

Will and Jackie look at each other, brows raised. My mother doesn’t even know the half of it.

“I’m not ashamed,” Emmett speaks up. “It’s all true. And it was horrible. And…it’s caused problems. In my personal life. In my professional life.”

Now we’re all watching Emmett. It sounds like he’s about to go into confession time. I don’t want him to say anything he doesn’t want to though, not for the sake of my nosy mother because she’s putting him on the spot.

“But as you say, that’s the reality, isn’t it?” Emmett goes on. “And the truth is that it’s taken a lot for me to realize what’s real and what’s not. Being an actor, you’re used to living in the grey zone, the space where you start to believe your own lies.”

At that he looks at me. And it hurts. It hurts because I feel like I know what he’s trying to say.

That we’re a lie. We’re a lie that he started to believe.

And now he’s realizing that it’s nothing more.

Even though it’s absolutely everything to me.

I swallow hard, my pulse kicking against my veins, preparing for the worst.

“That’s probably why you like my Alyssa,” my mother says delicately. “She’s very honest. Just like me. She’ll tell you the truth. She’s not your fake Hollywood actress or flavor of the month. She’s real.”

A small smile tugs at Emmett’s lips. His eyes soften as he stares at me.

“She is real,” he says, his voice low. “She is the most real thing in my life. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without her. What I do know is that I am deeply, madly and ridiculously in love with her.”

Beside me, Jackie gasps and kicks me under the table.

But I can’t feel anything at all.

Because it’s all a lie.

It’s a lie I want so desperately to believe.

“I tell her this all the time,” he goes on, and each word is like a kick in the teeth, “how much she means to me, how much I love her. Sometimes I don’t think she hears me, or knows it, but it’s true. She has my heart and always will. And there is nothing more real than that.”

The worst part of this all is the way he’s saying it.

With so much passion and conviction and disarming tenderness that it’s rendering me stupid. It’s fileting me apart. It feels so fucking good to hear him say this.

And the reality of it all, of how cruel this is, is too much to take.

“Will you excuse me,” I say and abruptly get to my feet, leaving the table.

I don’t know why but the urge to cry and run and scream has taken over.

I’ve got to get out of here.

I head straight out of the house and up a ragged path that skirts the hill. I’m gulping for air, the sagebrush and desert shrubs pulling at my dress as I walk.

Everything inside me feels hollow and sick and I keep rubbing my chest, my stomach, trying to make the feeling go away, the horrible, misleading, teasing feeling that keeps building and building.

I know I shouldn’t have left, I should have just stared back at Emmett and given him the fake smile and gone on pretending as I have.

But I’m so fucking tired of pretending.

I don’t want to do it anymore.

I’m so close to the end but being with Emmett in this way is starting to kill me.

“Alyssa.”

And there’s his voice.

I figured someone would have come to check on me, but I thought it would have been Jackie. I wanted it to be Jackie.

Instead it’s him.

I stop and turn around and see him approaching me, his eyes wild and filled with concern.

“What happened?” he asks me. “Back there, what happened?”

I shrug. “Wasn’t feeling well.”

He grabs my arm, his eyes growing more intense by the second. “Why are you lying to me?”

“Why are you lying at all!” I yell at him. “Why did you have to tell my mother that?!”

“Because I wanted her to see that you were happy. That you had someone. And that I wasn’t like your father.”

“But you are like my father!”