Heart Heavy
Her mother would have liked her in this outfit.
She looked the part, even if she felt a million light years away. She looked up from the polished table, and immediately regretted her decision to do so. Apparently, the law student seated across from her also liked her in this outfit. She returned her gaze to the sandy shades of dark wood making up the long conference room table as another minute of her life went by.
About a month ago, she’d dragged Ben with her to the right stores. She knew this meeting was coming, and at the time, she found it in herself to care about presentation. Her entire life had been built on presentation. In this office, in front of these people, she was simply and entirely an extension of her parents. And her parents would never be in last season’s suit fashions. So here she was, in an appropriate-length skirt and top, running her toes on the smooth floor beside her less-than-comfortable choice of shoes, hopelessly waiting for a break.
She’d been drifting for a couple of weeks, feeling it build slowly, the way it always did. At first, it had concerned her, and she felt like she should fight that whisper of sadness that lingered, seeming to grow stronger with time. After another couple of days, she was too tired to care. She hid it as well as she could from the two people who loved her exceptionally, not because she didn’t trust them, but because she didn’t want to worry them. They were so good to her, and they deserved a happier version of herself in return. Still, she saw the knowing looks that flickered into their eyes, like they saw it despite her best efforts.
It made her stomach knot.
She’d been here before. It built until it overtook her, and then, in time, it would subside again, before the cycle started once more, spreading itself over long stretches of time. It bothered her at the beginning, when she’d faced how truly fragile she was. She had taken on the world in her sleep in the past, and now there were days when she couldn’t meet a stranger’s gaze. But then it would pass, and she would be herself again, and she’d make her friends laugh, and she could forget about the feeling that waited for her when she woke up in the mornings, and crawled in beside her when she lay down to rest at night.
With her eyes on the file lying open in front of the man across from her, she tried to focus. She blinked out of her daydream, chiding herself for not paying attention to the last few sentences that came from his mouth, but before she could help it, she tuned him out again, like her brain was actively overriding his voice, and his words, and, most importantly, their meaning.
Even her brain thought that she was too fragile.
The first few times she’d met with this man on her own had been in his company’s office up north. She hadn’t minded the trip. Now he was coming to Cologne to meet with her at his sister-company’s office. It made her feel somehow guilty that she was pulling him away from his life just to meet with her about something she didn’t want to talk about. But her father had been clear, and she was in no position to argue.
“Are you following along?”
Her heart raced at the sound of a deep, unwelcome voice intruding on her thoughts. She gave a singular nod to the older man seated across from her, and sat up taller in her seat.
Presentation.
As he nodded back and resumed reading from the file in front of him, her gaze drifted to the large windows at her side. She looked at the sun beginning to set, pulling washed out colors along the glass buildings nearby as a few birds flew past. She wanted to be there, weightlessly suspended between earth and sky, enveloped in air, and rid of the dull ache in her chest.
She looked up again when the man with the tired eyes cleared his throat and took a sip of his drink. She watched him glance down at his watch before continuing to shuffle the papers in front of him and speak words she was supposed to be listening to. She wondered who he was hoping to get home to tonight, by the way he kept checking the time. She tried to picture him as a father, imagined him walking through a front door at the end of a long day to see a young girl happily run into his arms after yet another business trip. The thought dried her throat instantly, because suddenly in her head, she was the girl, and this tall, polished, slightly balding man became her father. She looked away from him quickly and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The building pressure in her chest began pushing something that felt like tears up the length of her throat. She tried to swallow them back down. She needed air.
“…and I think this is a suitable compromise, and not much of a departure from your father’s yearly contracts in the past. It is more than fair to the organizations on the list. Alright?”
She looked up in a meager attempt to focus, and nodded again at the man with the tired eyes. “Thank you,” she tried to say, but only a scratch of sound left her lips. She quietly cleared her throat and tried again. “Thank you,” she spoke, her voice now too loud for the otherwise quiet room, and sounding foreign to her own ears. She wrung her hands against the smooth fabric of her skirt and curled her right ankle behind her left.
The man’s eyes softened for only a moment, which confirmed to her that he was, indeed, a father. “How about we break for a few minutes? You can take a little time to think about all of this, and then we’ll finish up,” he suggested, not quite waiting for her answer as he began to gather up the papers.
“Yes,” she answered with perhaps too much enthusiasm.
“I’ve got to check in on a meeting,” he added, and glanced down at his watch again, “but Fredrick here can keep you company.” He rested a hand on the law student’s shoulder for a moment, before picking up the file and leaving the room.
In a way, it helped that her father’s lawyer still saw her as a child who needed accompanying, because it meant that she didn’t have to always know what he was talking about. She wasn’t particularly interested in the responsibility that came with it anyway. She slipped her left foot back into her heel as the young man rounded the table.
“Hey,” he greeted her smoothly, standing tall in his fancy suit.
“Hi,” she answered distractedly as she pushed her right foot into the heel she wished she hadn’t of taken off in the first place. He seemed nice enough, if she’d look past the suggestive smile on his dry lips and the arrogance dancing in his right eyebrow.
“That sucks about your parents,” he said, in the way one would comment about a spilled drink. She stopped fussing with her shoe to look up incredulously at his lack of (even feigned) compassion. She’d learned how to control her pattering heart at her parents’ mention when it came from the lawyers, always in a formal, composed voice explaining about their assets. She’d learned to blink without flinching when she read their names on the paperwork she signed. Once or twice she’d even managed to say their names out loud and still breathe afterwards, but her defenses hadn’t been notified with sufficient time in advance that a spoiled law student continuing in his father’s footsteps would dare mention them, and in such a tactless way at that. She watched him glance down with mustered sincerity for a moment. “You know,” he added, out of a need to fill the void, “that they died.”
Yes, I do know, she wanted to spit at him, but disbelief at the nonchalance in his shoulders caused the pressure from her chest to grip at her throat and silence her. As her heart pulled against its restraints, she felt tears gather behind her eyes. She quickly dropped her gaze back to her lap before she’d spin out of control.
“So, do you maybe want to go for a drink after?”
She rose from her seat, her heel finally secured on her foot, and grabbed her jacket. She turned away from him as she pushed her arms through the long sleeves, and wondered if he had any clue as to how much of a moron he was just then, but she was too exhausted to waste her energy on him. “Excuse me,” she said instead, without any slight hint of interest in his continued existence, and hastily made her way toward the balcony of that posh office.
The lawyer had suggested she think things over before signing, but she didn’t want to think about anything anymore. As she stepped out into the cold, her lungs burned for a moment from the crisp, cold air. She slid the glass door shut behind her without facing the office, and smudged the hot, salty tear that had fallen from the collection balancing unsteadily on her eyelids. She reached for the small weight of her mother’s locket, resting against her chest, and wrapped her hand around it. The cool surface warmed almost instantly at her touch, but she quickly tucked it into her top, suddenly angry that she’d worn it.
In that moment, she hated her parents. She hated them for leaving her, for her father’s impatience to return to his life, and her mother’s silent agreement to his plan. They were supposed to be the adults. They were supposed to know the risks of flying in such weather. Anger boiled in her veins. All of this, it was all their fault. And her father…she absolutely hated his money, which she was left responsible to organize, as it left a part of him in her life that continued to shake the already fragile foundation she was standing on.
She sucked in cold air and held it in for a few moments before releasing it in a sigh. She didn’t hate her parents. The guilt of such a heated statement upset her as she stood there in her grown-up business clothes, in that grown-up business world. She really only hated how her father had always managed this type of stuff with that air of confidence she couldn’t find anywhere inside herself. It had surprised her at the beginning, when his lawyer had read out her father’s wishes, to find that he’d included a clause, that if she kept her life on track, then over the period of a few years, the responsibility of managing his and his wife’s assets would become their daughter’s, with the help of both Stephan and her father’s trusted lawyer. So she was to attend more meetings with the older man with the tired eyes, and learn about her father’s previous contracts, and, yes, she hated him for it. She wanted him back in that moment for the sole purpose of making it all go away, and letting her hide out from the world for a single afternoon.
She pressed her fingertips to her collarbone, feeling the small pendant of her mother’s necklace through the thin material of her top. She swallowed roughly and wrapped her hand around it again. She wondered if she was making the right decisions with all of it. The lawyer thought so, and Stephan too, when he’d reviewed the paperwork a couple of days earlier. They were mostly about renewing or discontinuing contracts, like the many charities her parents supported.
All of the committee boards her mother had been on had expressed their sincerest condolences for her loss.
‘Sincerest condolences.’
There was a combination of words that couldn’t sound emptier if they’d tried. Of course, they offered her her mother’s seat, which was a backwards step in her mission to avoid the world until further notice. She’d politely declined their offers, but a few of them kept the seat open in case she changed her mind. It didn’t take much to realize that part of their empathy was to the money they feared they’d lose. Or maybe she was just bitter. Or perhaps it was both. She confirmed all of the charities for another year, because her parents had done so in the past, and she didn’t want to deal with it anymore. She quite desperately just wanted to go home.
She exhaled shakily as she let go of the small pendant and reached into her bag to find her phone. She swallowed again, feeling how dry and grainy her throat was, and looked down at the screen for a short while before dialing a number.
Emma picked up halfway through the third ring. “Hello, my favorite person in the world,” she greeted her warmly.
Jenny smiled weakly, and turned further away from the lobby as tears rose in her eyes again at the sound of that voice. She felt her shoulders curl inward bashfully as she released a sigh she’d been holding in, and watched it turn to fog. “Hi,” she answered back quietly, and took in a slow breath as Emma’s presence, even over the phone, anchored her. “How’s your day going?” she asked then, because she needed Emma to remind her of that other world she lived in, the one that had nothing to do with uncomfortable fashions, charity donations, and lawyers reminding her that her parents had left her forever.
“It’s good,” Emma answered happily. “Claude, that shoe is for your other foot.”
“It’ll fit,” Jenny heard the little girl insist in the background of the call.
“Claudia’s going to the movies with her grandmother tonight,” she told Jenny, and Jenny pictured Claudia grinning up at Emma, and the thought helped her breathe.
“Is that Jenny?” the little girl asked. A smile Jenny wasn’t prepared for tipped up the corners of her lips in the moment before she heard a little high-pitched voice whine, “I wanna talk to her! Please, Emma? I just wanna say hi.”
“Do you have a minute?” Emma asked her quietly, and Jenny hugged her arm around her waist to pretend it was Emma’s warm embrace she was in.
“Yeah,” she replied, striving to sound even remotely close to cheerful. She pulled her jacket closer to fight off the cold, but the sweetness of a conversation was beginning to warm her up better than the layers of cloth.
“Hi, Jenny,” Claudia sang excitedly into the phone a moment later.
“Hi, honeybee,” she replied, trying very hard to match the little girl’s energy even though she felt like crying.
“Jenny, do you have to wear your right shoe on your right foot and your left shoe on your left foot?”
Jenny looked out at the tall corporate buildings surrounding the one she was in and pondered this delicate question. “I guess you don’t have to, but it’s usually much more comfortable,” she reasoned. She’d learned to supply Claudia with thoughtful answers to her ingenious questions.
“Okay,” Claudia replied in a slightly deflated voice. “When are you coming to see me?” she continued with returning brightness in her words.
“Soon,” she promised, wishing she could simply close her eyes and be there right at that moment.
“Me and Emma drew a picture today,” the little girl stated proudly.
“You did?” she asked as the tears in her eyes started slipping away from her control. She quietly cleared her throat after hearing her words come out watery with emotion.
“Yeah,” Claudia confirmed. “We drew a zebra, and a monkey, and three butterflies with different colored wings.”
Her lips pulled up in a quivering kind of smile and she brushed at her eye with her free hand. “That sounds wonderful,” she replied around the tightness in her throat.
“I can show it to you when you come to see me,” the little girl suggested.
“May I have my phone back now?” Emma’s voice floated into the conversation.
“Emma wants you again,” Claudia informed her before handing over the call.
“Hey,” Emma’s warm voice returned, and Jenny closed her eyes to better take it in, feeling tears stick to her eyelashes. “I’m just heading out.”
“Is Ben picking up you?” she asked, gripping onto this other world for dear life.
“Yeah, he might actually be here already, can you hold on a minute?”
Jenny only hummed her answer, swallowing again as she didn’t trust her shaky voice. Unlike Claudia, she knew that Emma would pick up on the quiver hidden inside of it. She looked to her left, over the city’s rooftops, in the general direction of where Emma was right now.
“Bye munchkin, see you soon,” she heard Emma say before a high-five was exchanged.
“Bye Emma,” Claudia replied in a sad kind of murmur. Jenny heard her whimper, and figured that the rustling sounds she heard were from Emma bending down to give her a hug. She smiled when she heard them exchange noisy kisses on the cheek. “Bye Jenny!” Claudia called from a distance, and Jenny almost yelled goodbye back.
“Okay, sorry, hi,” Emma said in a softer voice as she began her way down a few flights of stairs.
“I miss you.” She hadn’t meant to let those words escape, because she needed to keep them in if she was going to make it through her day. She felt her heart race at the possibility of things to say now that she’d started. When her knees trembled lightly, she leaned her weight on the rail of the balcony.
“I miss you,” Emma replied in a voice that made Jenny smile. Leave it to Emma to diffuse any emotional tension she couldn’t deal with at the moment.
She released a heavy sigh, feeling words rise out of her that she couldn’t stop. “I just want to go home, pull you close by your hips, and kiss you into tomorrow,” she confessed on that empty balcony above the city. Her eyes burned with the tears she refused to acknowledge.
Emma was quiet for a moment as Jenny watched a few clouds glide across the sky above her. “I’m in,” she offered playfully. “Do you want me to come meet you?”
“No,” she replied after seriously considering it for a few moments. “I don’t know how long I’ll be, there are still a few more things to finish.”
“Okay,” Emma said quietly.
Jenny could tell that she’d heard the purely dejected nature of the words she’d spoken. “Is he there?” she asked instead of all of the things she suddenly wanted and needed to tell her. When Emma hummed in confirmation, Jenny took a breath to settle her thoughts. “Tell him to drive carefully,” she heard herself say. I need you safe, she desperately wanted to add, and mouthed the words silently in a plea.
Emma chuckled softly, and Jenny leaned into the sound. “Don’t worry,” she assured her, “little kids on bicycles pass us when Ben drives me anywhere.”
“Good,” Jenny replied proudly. “I have to head back in,” she added, not entirely sure if that was the case, but she couldn’t risk falling apart in saying goodbye to Emma, not now. “I’ll see you soon,” she said simply, and replenished her lungs with cool air before walking back into the office.
Her whole body felt slow and sluggish as she fell into a seat on the bus, and it hummed to life beneath her feet. She pulled her mobile out of her bag and sent Emma a quick message that she was on her way home, before refocusing her attention to the cityscape passing at a steady speed outside her window. Her eyelids felt heavy as exhaustion began to settle from the day’s events. She neatly folded her hands over the bag resting on her lap as she admitted silently to herself that this built up exhaustion wasn’t from one day. In the solitude she earned on a crowded bus that evening, she let herself sit with the thought that she usually knew better than to indulge.
She was falling slowly.
Perhaps it would have been nice to sit across from someone at a pub, and tell that complete stranger about her parents. The idea of watching someone listen to her story for the first time, of seeing their eyes and the corners of their lips express the emotions she couldn’t feel anymore, was strangely alluring. She remembered that law student from earlier, and his words and his eyes and his complete disposition ruined the entire thought. Or maybe not ruined, but painted the scenario more realistically. She didn’t want a stranger’s eyes, some off-putting mix of grey and brown and sickly yellow, to show her the emotions she couldn’t express in her dry words. There were those eyes, that unique blend she’d decided to claim as her very own gift to observe, that traveled a spectrum of browns and greens that changed with sunlight and danced under streetlamp spotlights. They were soft and gentle, but could stop her breath in a second, without even trying. She pictured them against the dark window of the bus now, effectively erasing all residual images of that law student from her thoughts. Those eyes her mind had captured carefully were patient, so very patient, and still lit up just for her. She wanted them in front of her when she’d share whatever mess was presently spinning out of control in her heart. She wanted that soft blush that never truly went away, and to see that bottom lip below slip between two lines of teeth.
She jerked forward as the bus stopped abruptly at an intersection. She quietly cleared her throat in a pathetic attempt to pull herself together after a day like it had been. She rolled her shoulders back, but the invisible weight that had settled on them had them slumping inward again within moments. That was the thing about trying to keep from falling. The energy needed to support such a worthwhile decision was greater than she could muster. Her attempt was as impossible as it was admirable. She smoothed out the already smooth fabric of her skirt, and looked out at the city passing her window again.
The sky was as black as midnight, though it was only evening, like it was trying to hurry this day along against time’s dictation. She didn’t mind, she even preferred it. It meant that the day was that much closer to ending, and sometimes things were easier at night.
By the time the bus turned onto the street she needed, most of the crowd had gotten off. She made her way to the doors, and gripped the bar for support as it made another jerky stop. Her gaze was on the ground as stepped off the stairs and onto the concrete, with her hands in her pockets to hide them from the cold wind. She had another five minutes before she’d get home, since her legs didn’t intend on carrying her anywhere quickly. As the few people in front of her dispersed into the evening, she noticed someone wearing a familiar pair of shoes beside the bus stop.
Her gaze rose from the ground slowly, and there Emma was, standing in the cold and smiling between the blush coating her cheeks. Jenny saw her breath escape in the form of white fog as she released an inaudible sigh of relief, and exhaustion, and sadness, and pure love, and it left her lungs completely empty.
The bus roared back to life behind her, its tires heavy on the cold street, and within moments, had turned the corner, leaving them alone. She looked down again, because all of the words she wanted to say wouldn’t leave her lips, and as soon as she’d set her eyes on that one exquisite person standing not close enough to her, a part of her wanted to fall apart right there, on the cold, grainy concrete beneath her feet. Her heart beat against her ribs, so she filled her lungs with air, and took a step forward. Her hands found Emma’s hips blindly, and her fingers curled to bring her closer, until they could wrap around her waist. When Emma was close enough, sharing warmth in their embrace, she tilted her head enough that their lips pressed together without hesitation.
There was urgency to the question Jenny posed in silence, searching for balance, trying to hold onto dry land. Emma answered it when her hand cradled that distance between Jenny’s jaw and the base of her ear as they kissed with the low hum of city traffic in the distance.
Her eyes were wet when their lips pulled apart to mix warm air between them. She felt her grip loosen on the many things she’d been carrying with her all day. “You’re perfect,” she thought she might have whispered with her eyes still closed, as Emma’s hands reached into her coat. She felt a little weak on her feet as they stood there at that empty bus stop.
Emma simply smiled softly, and let her hand slip down Jenny’s arm until their fingers laced. Jenny gripped onto that hand as they fell into step and began the walk back to the Bergmann residence.
Emma looked up when Jenny gently tugged on her hand a minute later.
“Hey,” Jenny said in quiet greeting, minutes after they’d first seen each other, but it didn’t feel belated at all. It was validation that she’d made it through another minefield successfully.
Emma raised their clasped hands and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Hi,” she replied just as quietly, and watched Jenny smile honestly into her scarf. She then released Jenny’s hand and leaned into her, continuing their walk arm in arm in the cold.
Five minutes had passed since Jenny had stepped off the bus, and they’d spoken less than a handful of words, and the calm silence that wrapped them felt like home.
Jenny unlocked the front door and watched Emma hurry inside to escape the cold. She toed off her shoes, and dropped her bag at her feet to shed her jacket. She’d quickly gotten used to the fact that Stephan hated the cold, and kept his house at a comfortably warm temperature during the fall and winter months. She felt a little silly in those clothes now that she was home, but the thought disappeared when she noticed Emma waiting for her, leaning casually on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. Jenny dragged her bag along behind her as she slipped her hand into Emma’s and climbed the stairs. She smiled softly when Emma’s fingers squeezed her own, like she didn’t want them to let go again.
She came to a stop three steps after leaving the staircase, and watched Emma trail a few more steps into the room before turning around and clasping her hands together in front of her with a hopeful little smile on her lips.
She looked at the table, then back at Emma, and a wave of calmness washed over her. She felt it delve far deeper than she could have foreseen, like her body was preparing to heal. “You made dinner?” she asked quietly.
Emma nodded bashfully. She looked like home, like everything Jenny had been fighting to get to all day long.
Ben rounded the corner with tomato sauce speckled on his white shirt, despite the wide expanse of his apron. “I helped,” he chimed in somewhat proudly, and Jenny thought it better not to mention the obvious fight he’d lost to some defenseless ingredients along the way.
She felt tears behind her eyes, ones that stung from being held in all day. “Thank you,” she whispered to them both, and was glad when Emma leaned forward to take her hand again and pull her to the table.
Nighttime found the three of them in the living room, with a movie playing in the background that mostly Ben was watching. Jenny had been quiet throughout the evening, unsure of what to say, and afraid that if she’d start talking, then everything would simply spill out in some incoherent, raw mess. She hoped to avoid it for a while, so she’d shrugged and told them she was tired, and thankfully, neither of them pressed on. With her heavy head resting on Emma’s lap, she let her thoughts run through her. Her eyes closed when Emma’s fingers brushed through her hair, in a motion that both calmed her and brought back that unshakable urge to cry. Those heavy, heaving, crushing sobs waited behind her ribs, ready to strike. She reached up every minute or so to dry another touch of wetness that had slipped from her eyes, unable to call them tears, in case it opened up an entire dam.
She knew that Emma saw her do it, and a warm feeling of gratitude coursed through her veins that she hadn’t said anything, only continued stroking her hair as she wept silently. Her hand began to hurt from gripping her locket so tightly, but she didn’t dare let go. That one small weight held her past and her present in some delicate balance.
After a while, her tears stopped as numbly and soundlessly as they had started. She focused on Emma’s touch, which told her that she wasn’t on her own through her sadness. Gentle fingers trailed through her hair, warmed the curve of her neck, and pressed at the meeting point of her shoulder to fight the pressure building there, before starting again. Her motions were languid and unhurried, and wordlessly comforting, telling Jenny that they had time to figure this out.
She released a quiet sigh as she relaxed into the couch, wrapped in part around Emma’s warmth. Another week had ended, and she was still alright.
“Look,” Emma whispered after a little while, and gently nudged her shoulder.
She rolled slightly away from the television, and her gaze followed where Emma pointed. On the couch beside them, Ben’s head had rolled to rest at an awkward angle on the arm rest, and his mouth hung open as he slept. For his sake, Jenny pretended not to see the beginning of drool at the corner of his mouth. The sight made her smile warmly. Instead of returning to her earlier position, she rolled further, until she was on her back, her head still resting heavily on Emma’s warm lap. She looked up into those eyes she’d missed.
“Hi,” Emma murmured sweetly, as her fingers trailed across Jenny’s hairline to clear the few errant strands from her face.
The light in the room was warm, and slightly dimmed, a compromise between Ben’s need for a ‘movie theatre experience’ and Emma’s smart, thought-out insistence that the light was better for their eyes. The golden hue made Emma’s eyes soft and deep, like they could go on forever. She felt her eyes close when Emma’s thumb touched her temple, like Emma knew that she had a headache there. As she opened her eyes again a moment later, there was the soft beginning of a smile on Emma’s lips. She reached over and took Emma’s hand in her own, brought it to her lips, and kissed her fingertips.
She thought about the words she wanted to say, and even opened her mouth a couple of times to say them, but looked back down at Emma’s hand in her own and felt her courage escape. Emma let her quietly work herself out, until their moment broke when Ben choked on his own breath from the couch next to them and snored for the length of one breath. Jenny took the crumpled up tissue she’d used to dry her tears earlier and flung it at him, hitting his arm. “I’m trying to have a moment here,” she said to him quietly, not to wake him, but to make Emma laugh, which she smiled proudly at accomplishing a moment later. Not that she could have woken him, by the intensity of his sleep. She slowly pulled herself up to a sitting position and turned to face Emma. Her exhausted muscles groaned at having to hold her up, and the ache that was spreading from the base of her neck to her forehead trickled pain into the muscles behind her eyes. She gathered Emma’s hands in her own again and tugged on them.
“I’m sorry,” she spoke softly with her gaze on their hands. It was as good of a starting point as she could find. She blinked a few times as tears returned to her eyes from out of nowhere. With her back to Ben, and Emma looking at her with such love and adoration, she kept going. “I…” she trailed off, the sound scratching as it rolled from the back of her throat. That dam she’d thought about earlier was starting to give, and she had nowhere to hide from it. The tears blurred her vision, but she pushed through it anyway, intent on getting this out. She felt wet trails pave the length of her cheeks, streaming downwards quickly before falling away from her jawline to hit her wrists. “I’m falling, Emma,” she tried to say, but managed mostly to mouth the words breathlessly. She looked down at their hands, and only then noticed how much pressure she was using to keep hold of Emma’s unmoving ones; she gripped them like she was drowning.
She sat up taller, and felt blood rush to her face as her tears fell, but other than the tears, she was too tired to be anything but numb, at least on the outside. She pulled her hands away and placed them in her own lap, not bothering to try to wipe away evidence of her tears.
“I, I hate that he left me…with…all…” she continued in shaky whispers. Her shoulders rolled into a helpless kind of shrug as she released air from red, parted lips. “I don’t think I’m doing this right,” she confessed in a voice that had Emma leaning forward to hear. This time she did reach up and smudge away at the wet trail under her left eye. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” she said, like she was begging; begging for forgiveness, and patience, and help.
She slowly moved her gaze up from the couch as she worried her lip, and saw Emma reach forward until a hand settled on her neck. Jenny watched silently as Emma leaned in and pressed a kiss beside her eye, then on her cheek, still wet with tears, then on her lips. Jenny pressed against that kiss, curling her mouth around Emma’s bottom lip to hold onto her.
Emma stayed close when they parted, close enough for Jenny to feel her warmth roll comfortingly against her cheek. “I don’t want to go through this again,” she breathed. “I feel so…weak,” she added, and closed her eyes to push through the sentence clawing up her throat to escape. “I don’t want to fall anymore.”
“I know,” she heard Emma whisper. She sucked in air and lowered her hands to her lap again, no longer strong enough to hold them up. She closed her eyes tightly to try and stop the tears, and when she opened them, she was pressed against Emma, feeling a hand holding her at the back of her neck, and another stroking comfort up and down the length of her spine. She pressed her forehead into Emma’s neck, and let herself be held through her moment of quiet despair.
By the time the credits rolled, she’d returned to her earlier position, her head on Emma’s lap, and Emma’s hand in her hair. Neither of them cared much about the movie, but it filled a need to calm their minds.
She felt dismantled, like she’d been taken apart and put back together, and all of the parts were still getting used to where they needed to go. She rolled slowly onto her back again when Emma clicked off the television. Her eyes burned from the tears she’d shed, and those she hadn’t, and from a need for sleep, to just close her eyes until tomorrow could take over and give her a chance. She looked up at Emma, and goose bumps rose on the skin beneath her clothes at her beauty.
Emma met her gaze lovingly. “Can I take you to bed?” she asked softly.
“Yeah,” Jenny replied as she sluggishly sat up again. She felt her gaze fall to Emma’s lips, and time slowed, because she was so tired, and felt so lost, but there was this one thing that at all times made such perfect sense, so she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Emma’s in a hesitant kiss. When Emma’s hand settled warmly on her neck, she did it again, and then again, until she stopped counting, because it was like coming up for air.
They pulled away when another half-snore sounded in the otherwise quiet room. Jenny looked behind her, finding Ben still fast asleep at an angle that he would curse the next morning. When she looked back at Emma, there was a strange little smile curling the corners of her mouth.
“What?” she wondered quietly as she worried her bottom lip.
Emma’s smile grew a little as she pointed to the time displayed beneath the large television screen. “You kissed me into tomorrow,” she said with delight in her eyes.
Jenny swallowed, unbelieving that she could cause such a joyful emotion in a person that day. Before she could reply, Emma leaned forward and kissed her again, just once, making it count.
A few minutes later, Jenny walked over to where Ben was sound asleep, pulled the thin, folded blanket from under his socked feet, and spread it over him. She wiped at her eyes as she turned around to where Emma was waiting for her, feeling quite ready to end this day. She gripped Emma’s hand as they made their way upstairs, and Emma let her, running her thumb over the back of Jenny’s hand in a simple gesture that was able to convey the true meaning behind ‘I’m here,’ far better than words ever could.
Jenny wasn’t blind to the fact that the mess that had once again accumulated in the space behind her heart would still be there when she awoke, but for that moment, as Emma led her to a quiet room, to a warm bed, to the beginnings of a weekend, that mess felt okay, felt conquerable, like even if it was planning on tearing her apart, she’d still come out of it in the end.
She closed her eyes and burrowed into Emma’s side as a blanket was draped over her, coating her in warmth.
“Sweet dreams,” Emma whispered to her in the darkness before sleep took her.
Emma held her close for a long time after she’d fallen asleep, as though a simple embrace could protect her from her demons, never mind the fact that they were coming from within. “I love you,” Emma whispered into her hair, in case those demons were listening, so that they’d know that she was there too, sword wielded and ready for battle.
Emma repeated those words again a few minutes later, because she and Jenny had been here before, and the growing realization of how little she could do to prevent it was daunting. The only thing she could do was remind Jenny that she was loved, and safe, and to promise that anyone, or anything, who dared to try and rip this perfect girl from her life would have to go through her first.
She held onto her for the rest of the night.