Page 2 of Open Water
"Okay."
"I need to know what was really going on. And I need to say some things that I've been holding in..."
Her voice didn't crack. She'd rehearsed this. Probably on the walk over, probably in her head for days before that. Emily was like that—she thought before she spoke, prepared before she acted.
"Say whatever you need to say. I'm not going anywhere," I said.
She unfolded her arms. Set her hands in her lap. Looked at the coffee table for a second then back up at me.
"I loved you," she said.
Loved.
"I saw a future with you. That sounds stupid now. But I did. I thought about what it would be like after college, you rowing somewhere, me doing research. I thought about introducing you to my parents. My dad would have liked you. He's a stubborn asshole too."
Emily's eyes got wet, not streaming tears, just around the edges. Enough to make my chest ache for her.
"And the whole time—" Her voice tightened. Here it came. "The whole time I was building this thing in my head, you were somewhere else. You were thinking about him. I spent months thinking it was me. That I wasn't attractive enough, that I was too needy, that I was doing something wrong."
"Emily—"
"Let me finish."
I shut my mouth. I just wanted to make her feel better.
"Do you know what that does to a person? Thinking you're the problem?"
Heat behind my eyes. My hands gripping my own kneecaps hard enough that the knuckles went white.
"Nothing was broken in you," I said.
"I know that now. But I didn't know it then. Because you let me think it."
My eyes started to get wet too. I didn't argue because she was right.
The radiator clanked.
"How long?" Emily asked.
I knew what she meant.
"The feelings started the summer before freshman year. At the lake. I didn't mean for it to happen, I didn't even know I could have feelings for a guy."
Her face changed slightly, a recalculation behind her eyes.
"Why didn't you just wait to figure it out?" she said.
"There was nothing to figure out. When the summer ended, he ended it with me. And I was just trying to move on. Then we met."
"And when we were together were you thinking about him?"
The honest answer. Not the comfortable one. Noah's voice in my head from months ago:you didn't handle it well.
"Notat first. When we started dating I was done and over with him. He wasn't even part of the equation most of freshman year."
"Most?" Her voice flat.
"It wasn't until the second semester during the race we had against Kingswell."
