Tethered (46 page)

“I thought it through enough,” he said defensively.

“Emmet, you can’t…” I said, shaking my head. “Your parents will have a fit for one, and you’ll lose your trust fund money if you drop out.”

“I don’t care what my parents say,” he frowned. “And money isn’t everything.”

“No, but it sure is nice to have when you want to go to a prestigious law school,” I said. “And if you take a year or more off, you may ruin your chances of getting into the law program. I can’t let you do that.”

Emmet scowled now. “You’re not
letting
me do anything, Donya. It isn’t your decision, and I can get into some other law school later.”

I wanted to smack him in the head and wake him up. He was on track to graduate with honors and was almost guaranteed a place in Harvard’s law program. He was willing to throw away all of the hard work and money spent on his education and go to some community law school just so he could be with me. In theory, it was a romantic gesture, but in reality, it wasn’t a great move.

“I think you should think about this a while longer before you make any permanent changes,” I said.

“You don’t want me to be with you?” he asked with a disbelieving look on his face.

“Of course I want you to be with me,” I snapped, though I didn’t mean to. I took a breath before I spoke again. “It’s just that I really want you to live your life, too, Emmet. Law school is important to you.”

“Donya, you
are
my life,” he said. “And you are the most important thing to me in the world. My mind is made up.”

He got off of the couch and went into the kitchen. I sat on the couch staring out of the floor to ceiling window at the Eiffel Tower in the distance, with a feeling of dread.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Weeks later, Emmy and I sat in a busy New York café sipping cappuccinos after a small salad with no dressing for me and an enormous cheeseburger and fries for her. I had put on a couple of pounds absently eating all of the wrong things over the weeks. I wasn’t anywhere near fat, but one designer disagreed. He told me to come back Monday with a smaller ass. I was lucky that he didn’t replace me instead, so I took the hint and got to work on minimizing my ass.

Emmy was telling me about the colleges she had applied to and the responses she got. She was really excited about getting accepted to Penn State. She and Fred had visited the campus last spring and she had really liked the atmosphere and the course selection, but she wanted to get her bachelor’s degree in business administration as soon as possible and was already considering ways to cut some time off of her four years. She seemed very motivated and I wondered if she would ever give up her education to be with someone she loved. Fred and Sam would probably blow gaskets if she did.

That was another thing to worry about. I worried that Fred and Sam would blame me for Emmet dropping out of college and subsequently derailing his future. They were the only family I had and I worried that this would put an enormous rift between us. Fred and Sam didn’t put a lot of demands on their kids, but a college education was a must, and though none of the other kids ever attempted it, I was pretty sure that dropping out to follow your girlfriend or boyfriend around the world wasn’t an acceptable reason not to go.

My biggest concern, however, was Emmet. He took his education seriously, and he put in three hard years already. I worried that later, when it was too late, he would regret his decision. I understood what he was trying to do, but he needed to live his own life. He needed to finish his schooling and get his career on track. His life couldn’t be just about me. For the first time since Sam and Fred discovered our relationship, I started to consider Sam’s words. I began to believe that maybe…this was a mistake…

Emmet would eventually get tired of following me around. The romanticism would fade and he would start to rethink his decision to drop out of college. He would get tired of sitting in whatever hotel or temporary home we were in for the week and waiting for me to come home. The Graynes were loaded, it’s true, but they were hard workers. They liked to have a purpose. Fred still worked hard to keep his businesses running. Sam worked hard to take care of her home and family and was putting more and more of her time into charitable organizations. Freddy Jr. was working with his father’s businesses. Though Charlotte was pregnant with her second child, married to a man with deep pockets and she still got a piece of that Grayne pie, she had a successful consultant business that she ran out of her home. Lucille’s husband was in medical school and didn’t have deep pockets, but even though they had enough money between them for her to lounge at home and do nothing, she worked hard in a large marketing firm. Emmy was in her last year of high school, but she had a part time after school job and I knew she would work her butt off in college and work hard thereafter. I was one hundred percent positive that Emmet would not be okay with sitting at home doing nothing while I was out working. It may be okay at first, but eventually it would get to him, and the regrets and resentment would begin.

“Hello?” Emmy said, waving a hand in my face.

I blinked a few times and focused in on her face. “I’m sorry. I’m listening,” I promised.

“You are not,” she argued. “You haven’t heard a word I said for five minutes.”

“It took you five minutes to realize I wasn’t listening to you?” I asked dubiously.

“See, you just admitted you weren’t listening to me. What’s going on with you? You’re completely preoccupied and you’ve been quiet since I got here.”

After hurting Emmy with the secret of my relationship with Emmet, I stopped withholding anything major about me. I was still more or less a person that kept a lot to myself, but nothing big, and this was big.

“Emmet wants to take a year or two off of school so he can be with me,” I said, leaving out any bush beating.

Emmy’s face went from curious to dismay. “He can’t do that,” she said, shaking her head adamantly.

“I have been trying to talk him out of it for weeks, Emmy. He won’t listen to reason.”

“Mom and dad will flip out,” she said, staring at me incredulously. “He’ll lose his scholarship. He’ll stop getting money from his trust fund. He may not get into law school.”

“I know, and I’ve told him all of that, and he doesn’t care. So, now I’m worried about it all of the time. I’m terrified that he’s going to give it all up to be with me and then resent me for it later.”

Emmy sighed deeply. She looked at me as if there was something she wanted to say, but she was reluctant to say it. She bit her bottom lip to keep herself from blurting it out.

“What?” I asked tiredly. “Just say what you have to say.”

“It’s just…” she started, but stopped to release what sounded like a sigh of defeat. “I didn’t want to say this, but this is one of the reasons why they didn’t want you and Emmet dating. They thought he would eventually do something like this.”

I thought back to the conversation Emmet and I had with my mom what felt like half a life time ago at the dinner table in L.A.

The paths you will follow separately will slowly take you apart, piece by piece.

I was so sure that she was wrong. I didn’t think we were naïve and I didn’t think there could be anything to pull us apart, but the very thing my mother said would ruin us was ruining us. Though she was gone, I had the sudden urge to yell at her for bringing this upon us with her negative words. Sam’s words to us the night after my mom’s funeral weren’t any more warming, but also hit their mark.

“Sam and Fred will hate me,” I said, staring down at my cappuccino.

“They won’t hate you,” Emmy said soothingly.

“They will blame me, Emmy,” I quietly snapped, turning my gaze upon her. “Maybe not out loud and maybe not directly, but they will know that I am the reason and no one else.”

She wanted to argue, but she didn’t have an argument. Every word she started to say in objection never made it past her lips because she knew I was right. Finally she gave up on arguing and asked me what I was going to do.

“Maybe I should quit,” I said so quietly, I wasn’t sure if she heard me over the other diners in the café.

“Quit what?”

“Modeling.”

“So you can be with Emmet?” She asked incredulously. “You would give it all up for him?”

“You say that like it’s a terrible thing,” I snapped.

“Well, for someone your age, it is,” she snapped back. “You’re eighteen years old. Even though you’re more mature than me, you’re still very young and you’re still growing as a person. You’re going to hand yourself over completely to a man who is barely a man, who is still between being a boy and being a man, and lose yourself completely? You won’t even know who you were
supposed
to be or who you
wanted
to be in ten years because you will only be what Emmet wanted you to be.”

Those were the most serious words I had ever heard come out of my friend’s mouth, serious and true, but I wasn’t ready to concede just yet.

“People give up their careers for the person they love all of the time,” I pointed out. “In a way I understand where Emmet is coming from.”

“Sure, people give up their careers to be with someone they love,” Emmy nodded. “But how many of those people are eighteen years old? How many of those people are in the unique situation that you are in? You are an in demand high fashion super model, Donya. You aren’t a twenty-seven year old system’s analyst or a thirty year old school teacher.”

Emmy leaned forward and grasped my hand in a death grip as she looked at me with earnest.

“When we were younger, I had all kinds of dreams and aspirations. I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be news reporter and I wanted to be a whole list of other things before I finally settled on going into business administration. You never joined in with my schemes to become Miss America or a princess or any of that. Instead, you just played a supportive role. Not too long before we first met Max at the beach, I asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up. Do you remember what you said to me?”

I closed my eyes for a moment. I remembered the conversation. When I had answered Emmy she didn’t even know what to say to me for a minute. She finally had just hugged me because there was nothing to say.

I opened my eyes and looked at her across the table. I let out a shaky breath and nodded that I remembered. Recalling that conversation changed everything and we both knew it, but Emmy still felt it necessary to say it out loud.

“You told me that you didn’t have any desire to be anything,” she said quietly with tears in her eyes. “You just said that what you did
not
want to be was your mother.”

Emmy released my hand and dropped her hands in her lap. The realization of what I had to do slammed into me hard. My hands balled into tight fists and I swallowed hard repeatedly to keep my emotions from overtaking me right there in the restaurant.

“Can we cut his weekend short?” I asked her in a haggard whisper.

She nodded solemnly as she looked at me with sad eyes.

“I know I said a lot of things in the past to discourage you about Emmet,” she said quietly. “But I know you love him and I know he loves you. I don’t want to see either one of you hurt. I didn’t say the things I just said to hurt either of you.”

I nodded once. “I know,” I managed.

I took money out of my purse and left it on the table even though the bill had not come yet. I put down more than enough to cover it and a very generous tip. Following my lead, Emmy stood up and together we walked out onto the busy city street.

*~*~*

Emmet knew there was something wrong when I called him and told him I was driving up to see him. He asked me what was wrong repeatedly in the short conversation, but I gave nothing away and told him I’d be there as soon as I could.

Since getting my license a couple of weeks after the spring break fiasco, I rarely drove anywhere. I didn’t feel the need to drive in the city and I always took the train to Emmet’s, but I didn’t want to have to rely on a long wait for a train later, so I borrowed one of Felix’s cars and started the drive to Cambridge.

Emmet opened the door to his apartment before I could even get out of the car. I saw him standing in the doorway waiting for me and had to take several deep breaths before getting out of the car.

“Is that Felix’s?” he asked, eyeing the flashy car as I approached him.

“Yes,” I answered and hit the key fob to engage the alarm.

Emmet’s eyes met mine and I knew that he knew that something bad was coming.

“Why did you drive and not take the train?” he asked. He hadn’t moved out of the doorway yet.

“I didn’t want to deal with the train today,” I answered quickly.

He looked at me with unease for another moment before stepping aside to let me in.

Usually we met with embraces and sweet kisses, but this time I walked into the apartment and stood on one side of the living room and Emmet took his stance on the other side.

“What are you about to do, Donya?” he asked quietly.

I held a hand to my stomach as I tried to calm myself, but I couldn’t. My breaths were short and labored as my heart hammered in my chest.

“What are you doing?” Emmet asked, but his voice cracked on the last word.

“I’m ending this,” I managed to say, and then to clarify, I added “I’m ending us, Emmet.”

And then I burst into tears.

Emmet rushed over to me and tried to hold me, and I wanted him to hold me. I wanted to melt into his arms and never leave, but as much as it hurt, I had to stick to my guns. I pushed him away from me and took a step back. My whole body shook with sobs and tears gushed out of my eyes, nearly blinding me.

“Why?” he asked pleadingly. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because we’re going two different places,” I said through my tears. “We’re on two different paths in life. They don’t parallel and they don’t converge, they go on in opposite directions.”

“That’s why I’m leaving school, Donya,” he nearly yelled. “So that I can be with you.”