Page 1 of Open Water
Chapter 1: Liam
My throat tightened. Cold ran through me like ice water dumped down my spine.
This was exactly what I'd been running from.
Emily's eyes met mine. Not the way they used to — not warm or wanting. Something sad moved behind them. But fierce. She was always fierce.
Twenty-four hours ago I'd been on the Charles with Alex. I'd felt more alive in the past day than I had all year. The race, the scouts, his hand finding mine under the covers. Even with everything it complicated it was right.
And what I'd done to Emily was wrong.
Those two things lived in me at the same time: the joy and the debt. I couldn't have what I wanted with Alex if I kept running from what I owed her. She needed this conversation. And if I was honest — I needed it too. I couldn't live with the guilt of hurting Emily anymore.
"Yeah," I said. "Okay."
She didn't come in. Glanced past me at the room—at Noah pretending to organize his desk, at the duffel bag on my floor still packed from Boston.
"Not here," she said. "Downstairs."
The common room on the first floor was empty. Sunday night, late. Everyone was studying, or asleep, or out doing things that didn't involve having hard conversations with their ex who they cheated on.
Emily sat on the couch by the window. I took the chair across from her. The coffee table between us had a ring stain from someone's mug and a campus newspaper from two weeks ago with a headline about the dining hall's new hours.
She kept her coat on. Arms folded.
"You look tired," she said.
"Just got back from Boston. The Charles."
"How'd it go?"
"Fourth place."
"That's good, Liam."
The way she said it genuinely and it made my throat close up. Because that was Emily. Even now. Even after everything. She could still be kind to me when she had every reason not to be.
"Thanks."
"I'm seeing someone," Emily said.
The words came to me, almost as a relief, like she was okay and she was moving on after what I had done.
"His name is Jordan. He's in the education program. We've been going out for about two weeks."
I nodded. Didn't know what to do with my hands, so I put them on my knees.
"That's—I'm glad, Emily. Really."
"I'm not telling you to make you jealous. I'm telling you because—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "Because heasked me about you and what happened. And I realized that I'm not over what happened."
She looked at me straight on with steadiness in her eyes.
"I need you to be honest with me," she said.
Pain cut through my chest and I let it. That was the new part. My whole life, when something hurt, I tensed against it, squared up, found the angle, made it somebody else's fault before it could land. Punch first. It was the only way I'd ever known how to take a hit. But Emily wasn't a hit I got to throw back. She was a girl I'd lied to for months, sitting across from me asking for the one thing I'd never once given her, and I'd promised myself on the walk over that I wasn't going to flinch this time.
So I didn't. I didn't tense. I didn't defend. I just let it sit there in my heart and hurt, because I'd earned every bit of it, and she'd earned the right to watch me feel it.
