Sweet Imperfection (7 page)

Emma navigated party detritus on her way to the community bathroom, travel case of toiletries and towel in her arms. She wouldn’t be so upset or so angry if she didn’t feel so strongly about Nate. He wouldn’t have been able to hurt her if she hadn’t started caring for him so deeply, more deeply than she should have after a night of fucking, a day of hanging out, and yes, more fucking. She’d let the incredible sex, their easy camaraderie, and their overlapping goals and values fool her into thinking they were destined for more than a one-weekend fling. Well, if that’s all it was, fine. She could find someone better than Nate Hirsch in a New York minute.

She started the shower in the bathroom that was identical to the one in Nate’s building, scrubbing herself briskly as if hot water and vigorous exfoliating could make her feel warm and new and all right. Then the tears started falling again and Emma sagged under the flow of water.

Damn it. Damn
him
. She wouldn’t find anyone with his combination of smarts and humor and sex appeal and kindness. Why did he have to go making her feel all happy and tingly and…in
love
?

It had been a while since she’d considered herself in love with someone, but she recognized the signs. Tingles in her stomach. Goofy grin. Insatiable sex drive. Imagining their darling multiracial babies.

She’d pack up her stuff and get a cab to the train station first thing in the morning. Why stay for commencement if she wasn’t going to sit through it with Nate at her side, trading whispered quips and sarcastic commentary? Emma took her time drying her hair and brushing her teeth, nodding absently when a few people came and went around her. Yeah, it would be better to go home, get away from Weston and the happiness she’d thought she’d discovered here. She could do some work on the train, get a head start on Monday morning at the office. Her mother’s visit was something tangible to look forward to. She’d plan out some activities for them to do together, even though they usually ended up spending their days shopping and their nights drinking a lot of red wine.

Avoiding the mess in the hall, she made her way to her room and quickly shut off the light. Longing for a bit of oblivion, she slid on her eye mask, popped in her earplugs, and fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.

Nate walked until the rain, which had long ago plastered the shirt to his back and made his sneakers sodden, poured into his eyes in rivulets. He marched forward, unable to see more than a few feet in front of him. He had no destination; he’d had an overwhelming need to put distance between him and Emma. He’d felt so close to her all day, and then her bombshell had made him look at her and see a stranger.

Wasn’t that what she was? Sure, they’d hung out back in the day, but he hadn’t seen her for ten years, and here he had thought a couple of orgasms meant they had a future together. He didn’t know if he could handle being with someone who’d made the same selfish decision as his ex-wife.

Of course, Emma had a right to make choices about her own body. And she hadn’t been with the guy who’d impregnated her when she’d made the choice to have an abortion. Undoubtedly, she’d made the decision she’d had to at the time. He sighed. He stopped walking and noticed he was in front of the track field, a good mile from where he’d started out. He slowly turned around, shuffling back toward the heart of campus.

Even with Alison, it wasn’t the abortion so much as how cavalier she’d been about lying to him, about everything from having an abortion to wanting to have kids in the first place. He saw now they hadn’t been right for each other. He’d gotten to a point in his life when he had been ready to settle down, and Alison was the one he’d been with at the time. Marriage was the next logical step. He’d never been obsessed with the idea of finding a soul mate. His parents had been happily married for years, but he wouldn’t describe their marriage as a passionate love affair. He’d never found anyone who had made him feel more alive, more in tune with himself and his surroundings, or who had given his heart greater pleasure or more pain than he’d ever known before. He’d thought that person didn’t exist, and he’d been willing to settle for someone he loved in a quiet way, someone he could raise a family with.

Until Emma. Her words in the tent had shocked him, hurt him more than they should have. Why should it matter to him what this person did half a decade ago when he didn’t even know her? It shouldn’t, except it did, because she mattered to him, more than a woman he’d effectively been with for twenty-four hours should.

All right. He was being unfair. And he’d probably wounded her with his lack of compassion. He thought about her smile and how eliciting one from her made him feel like a million bucks. He thought about how she wanted a family, marriage, and kids, and so did he. He’d been carrying around the burden of his failed marriage for a year, and he’d unfairly dragged Emma—the smartest, sexiest woman he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing—into his quagmire of emotional baggage. Damn. He deserved to be cold, wet, miserable, and alone in the dark.

At least the rain seemed to be letting up a bit. He crested the hill overlooking the green and the main buildings of campus. The Ashworth dorm complex was downhill and off to the right. He thought he heard a moan coming from the direction of the observatory, whose dark stone presence perched on top of the hill like a sleeping bird of prey. He took a step toward the building, the noise worrying him for a moment until he heard the distinct sound of someone saying, “I love you,” followed by another moan that was more of a grunt and an unmistakable one at that. He smiled. He wasn’t the only one getting off in strange places on campus this weekend. The words came again. “I love you.” Suddenly Nate knew why he’d been so devastated by Emma’s past actions, why he’d felt everything so intensely from the moment he first laid eyes on her again. She wasn’t perfect. He’d needed the reality check; she had flaws like everyone else. But he suspected she might be perfect for him.

Would she forgive him? Hell, he didn’t care if she forgave him as long as she’d let him try to make it up to her. He aimed for Ashworth 10 and started running.

The dorm was sealed shut, and he waited, the rain finally slacking, for five agonizing minutes before a couple of women coming out of the building held the door open for him. In those five minutes, he fully felt the consequences of his hike in the rain. He was freezing and every layer of clothing he wore was drenched. He passed the common room, climbed the stairs to the first floor, and stopped. He didn’t know Emma’s room number. Perfect.

He called her cell. Unsurprisingly, it went directly to voice mail. Well, what worked for her could work for him. He started down the hall, calling her name. She must have been really determined to find him to do this the previous night. He felt like an idiot, especially when the floor was silent and not a single door opened to reveal a possibly crying, probably angry, half-Chinese, half-French beauty.

His sneakers squelched irritatingly on the vinyl stairs to the second floor. Ahh. Signs of life. Strewn about the hall were the remains of a party, empty cups, a few abandoned Ping-pong balls, and even an overturned keg. Must have been the site of the rager Emma and Cory told him about. Which meant this was Emma’s floor.

He called her name as loudly as he dared. His heart leaped with anticipation when a door finally opened then sank when a beefy guy in a Weston T-shirt poked his head out of his room. “Shut the fuck up.”

Nate stepped back, startled, and stumbled over the keg. It was empty, but just as painful as a full one to his foot and his knee when he hit it, then the ground, hard. “Shit.” The guy in the Weston shirt shook his head and slammed the door.

“I’m all right; thanks for asking,” Nate said to the closed door. He rubbed his sore knee, kicking the keg with his other foot for good measure. It made a hollow thump and rolled a few inches toward the wall. This was turning into one hell of a night. Still sitting on the ground, he pulled out his phone and tried Emma again. Voice mail.

He took a deep breath. “Emma, it’s Nate. I’d like to talk with you. Call me anytime. I’ll leave my phone on.”

He took his time walking back to Ashworth 9, grateful to be able to strip off his wet clothes and step into a piping hot shower. He kept his cell phone within reach at all times even as he stood under the spray of the water as long as he could stand. He felt as if he’d been hit by a truck, and it was because he wanted to clear the air with Emma and couldn’t. The things he’d said to her, the stricken look on her face when he’d backed away from her, kept rolling around in his brain. He lay in the bed they’d shared together not so many hours before and contemplated the fact that he may have irreparably messed up the best thing that ever happened to him. Sleep didn’t come for a long time.

***

The next morning, as he surveyed the green filled with crowds of graduates’ families and other well-wishers, Nate felt awful and knew he must look worse. He was limping, his eyes were red from lack of sleep, and his throat felt unmistakably scratchy, as if he’d picked up a bug and all the wandering around in the rain had turned it into a full-blown cold.

Emma hadn’t returned the two messages he’d left on her phone, and now, though his calls no longer went directly to voice mail, she wasn’t picking them up either. He’d texted her, too.

Please call me.

How much more desperate could he sound?

The more he dwelled on the interaction with her the night before, the more he understood she was probably upset, if not pissed, at him. Perhaps they’d been moving too fast, and neither of them had been able to withstand the first real pressure on their fledgling relationship. As he searched the green in vain for her petite form, her straight black hair, her beautiful wide face, he couldn’t fight off the suspicion that this debacle had happened for a reason. He wasn’t ready for all of this. He wasn’t over Alison in the sense that he was still broken, still healing. He’d rushed things, thinking that he was better. This was a sign that even if he hadn’t screwed things up now, he’d only be screwing them up down the line. He wasn’t cut out for a real relationship; at least not yet. Emma was probably right not to respond to his overtures. Maybe they could both leave this weekend with a few good memories mixed in with some of the bad.

He carefully turned the ringer off on his phone and turned back to Ashworth to pack.

***

“We’re here, lady,” the cabbie barked. Emma realized he’d been idling in front of the train station for a good minute, waiting for her to stop staring at her cell phone and get out of his cab.

She got out and hoisted her bag, handing him some bills, not waiting for the change. Her movements were mechanical, her body at the train station, but her head and heart back at Weston, wondering what Nate was doing, how he was feeling, why he kept calling her. He’d been pretty clear in his messages and texts. He wanted to see her, and the tone of his messages made him sound worried, even apologetic, rather than angry.

The part of Emma that knew she’d somehow fallen in love with him over the last forty-eight hours wanted to return his calls, to see him, to hold him, to talk it all out and put this whole thing behind them. The part of Emma that had been burned by too many guys she’d thought she had feelings for and were worth the pain and the hurt stood strong. It was that part that forced her to ignore the messages, ignore the texts, and get on the train heading south.

She’d give herself some space, some time. She didn’t like leaving things so unresolved, but she couldn’t imagine what he could say to her that would erase the wounded feeling she had inside.

She stared blankly at the presentation open on her laptop for the entire ride to New York, blinking when the travelers around her began gathering their belongings as the train pulled into Grand Central. From there, she’d take the subway into Brooklyn then walk a few short blocks to her brownstone.

Her overnight case dragged like a bag of bricks by the time she dropped it heavily inside the doorway of her home. Home. It had never felt so much like an oasis of peace and calm.

She walked through her house, taking it in with fresh eyes. The entryway was small, but light and airy, especially with the late-May sun streaming in unchecked through the mullioned windows that surrounded the front door. The ten-foot ceilings retained their nineteenth-century carved details, and she’d turned the main front room into a functional dining room. She usually worked on the large wooden dining table instead of at the desk she’d installed off the master bedroom upstairs. She’d used lots of cool colors, creams and lavenders, some grays and blue-greens. Even though everywhere she looked she saw a project waiting for her time and money, she also congratulated herself on making the once dark and depressing space into a fresh and livable one. This was her baby, and she could make it whatever she wanted. She worked hard, and her house was what she had to show for it.

She tried not to think of the two smaller bedrooms, the attic that she thought would make a perfect playroom, or the modest backyard with its concrete patio where she’d envisioned putting a plastic kiddie pool in the summer and building snowmen in the winter. She ignored the pang of inexplicable longing when she thought about Nate’s offer to come in and do some work, imagining him scruffy and sweaty, surrounded by tools as he stripped away the old, moldering wainscoting in the downstairs hallway.

It hurt, much more than it should, and the hurt brought back some of her anger. This was her home, her refuge, and no man would make her feel less than comfortable here. How could he affect her so much here when he’d never even set foot over the threshold?

Damn him. She’d survive this, as she always had before.

Five days. Five days, he’d been back in Brooklyn, five days in which there had been absolutely no word from Emma. He reminded himself it was better this way, but couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong to leave so much unspoken. He was worried about her. How did he even know she’d gotten back to the city safely after the reunion? He hadn’t tried her since Sunday, but he couldn’t bring himself to call only to be consigned to voice mail.