"Emery, please go home."
"I'm warning you now, Celia, if you don't let me in, I'm staying here all night and I’ll keep tossing pebbles at your window. If it breaks the window, that's on you. If Annalisa calls the cops on me, that’s on you too."
"You're a crazy son of a bitch."
"You make me crazy, Celia. Just let me in. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
"Fine, come on up."
A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door. Annalisa wouldn’t let me get up, so she begrudgingly opened the door for Emery. He was dressed in a crisp suit and bowed politely to Annalisa. A giant tabby immediately started to rub herself all over his pant leg. Up close, I could see that he felt like shit. His eyes were puffy, and he looked like he hadn't slept for days. I wanted to run to him and embrace his fuddy duddy disheveled self, but Emery comported himself with style and grace no matter how awful he felt. He took off his impeccable jacket and folded it over a chair. Then he began to roll up his shirtsleeves and I admired his gorgeous forearms.
“Celia, tell me, how is your shoulder?”
“It’s healing fine. I’m worried about boxing,” I told him.
“I’d thought of that too and I found a very reputable physical therapist who specializes in conditioning athletes. I made some calls and she does have availability.”
“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say athlete.”
“The status is in the mind as much as in the body, Celia. Boxing means a lot to you and I understand that on a personal level.”
“Did you lose your job?” I can barely ask without sobbing.
“Your father shot you, and you might have lost your boxing arm, and you care about my job? Celia, there will be other jobs.”
He rushed in and pull me to him. He crushed my body to him, my head on his chest, and I could hear the beating of his heart. I felt at home, safe and content cuddled into him.
"Castlebrook started an investigation into the incident and I’ve been suspended with pay. It’s a small price to pay. But I can't lose you, Celia. I love you. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone else in my entire life. Fuck, you're my whole life already. Please don't walk away from me. I wouldn't make it. Losing you would end me completely. A job I can live without, my beauty quark, I cannot."
Hearing him say those words, his voice shaky and broken, made me break down too. Tears streamed from my eyes, while sobs escaped my lips. But all the while, a smile never left my face. This is what it felt like to be loved. This is what it felt like to come first, to be someone’s priority and not their second thought.
"Baby, please don't cry," Emery said, his thumbs wiping my wet cheeks. "Please don't cry. I can make it better. I promise I'll fix everything."
I took his hand and brought us to the couch that was covered with my bedding. We sat and he held me and investigated the dressing over my graze wound.
"Can you tell me how you met my dad and what he was like before Joplin got to him?" I asked. Emery nodded. He reclined back on the sofa, and then pulled me on top of him, my back to his chest as he curled his body protectively around me.
"I met Kevin when I was six. We hit it off right away. I was a kid without any friends, and he was the kid that everyone wanted a piece of—energetic, outgoing, truly fun to be around. He was a good kid, was kind, honest, not a cruel bone in his body.”
“Don’t tell me you were a bully, Lawson?”
“No, but I’d been hurt badly as a child, so all of my bones were cruel. I had my Nana, but no one else, and I felt like an outcast because my family was fractured. And what I liked best about Kevin was his stable, seemingly perfect life. Your grandparents were hard-working people and they took to me like a stray pup. Fed me meals when I was hungry and let me sleep on the couch when Nana worked late. You should know, you've met your grandparents."
"They were always good to me."
"What Kevin and I shared was acute poverty. We were all functioning on a shoestring budget, families managing paycheck to paycheck, as one does in Little Burgundy. The main difference being that Kevin had a caring family and no one besides Nana gave a fuck about me.”
“Your dad cared, he wanted you to go to college.”
“He cared when he wasn’t drunk. But I think his academic superstardom aspirations for me were self-serving if you know what I mean. He died of liver cirrhosis.