Egomaniac

If I could have just cracked open my skull and let a few of the little trapped drummers out, I might have had a chance of getting up off my couch.

It was a fucking miracle I’d gotten onto the plane at all. Would never have happened had it not been for Roman, who dragged my hung-over ass from that hotel room this morning at six a.m.

Now it was noon. I’d been home for more than an hour, and I finally grew a set of balls and responded to Emerie.

I texted back.

Yeah. Balls. Sure.

And I lied.

It wasn’t the first time. Certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Drew: Sorry about last night. Was sick as a dog. Food poisoning. Bad sushi, I think.

The little dots started jumping around immediately.

Emerie: Just glad you’re okay. I was worried. What happened in court?

Admitting the truth would mean dealing with it, and I wasn’t ready yet.

Drew: Judge adjourned handing down his decision until next week.

Emerie: Sigh. Okay. Well, maybe that’s good. He’s really giving it attention.

I couldn’t be a dick when she was trying so hard to remain positive.

Drew: Maybe.

Emerie: When are you coming back?

That was when I started to feel like a real shithead. It was one thing to hold off telling her about the decision. In my head I could justify that as avoiding hurting her, but sitting upstairs lying to her when she was probably downstairs answering my phone…that was just being a coward.

That realization didn’t make me any less of an asshole though.

Drew: Probably get the last flight out tonight. It’ll be late by the time I’m back.

Emerie: Can’t wait to see you.

I finally said something that wasn’t a lie.

Drew: Yeah. Me too.

There was a mirror in the lobby that reflected the hallway leading back to the private offices. I halted when I caught sight of Emerie—so fucking beautiful. So sweet and honest and everything good. My palms began to sweat as I stood there watching her. Her door was closed, and she was writing something on the whiteboard, probably something positive about making things work that would make me feel like an even bigger scumbag when I read it.

I’d spent the last twenty-four hours thinking of how it should go down, what would hurt her the least. There was no reason to tell her what had happened in court. She believed relationships could endure anything if two people worked at it. There was no doubt in my mind she’d want to try staying together while we’d be separated by almost nine hundred miles. At first, it might even seem to work. But eventually shit would start to fall apart. It always does. We probably wouldn’t even realize how bad things had gotten until it blew up in our faces. Emerie had just settled into her life in New York, letting her live it was the right thing to do.

So all I could seem to come up with was getting it over with quickly. Don’t drag this shit out and try to do the long-distance thing—because that will just waste more of her time. She wasted three years of her life hanging on to that asshole Baldwin; I wasn’t about to lead her on like that. Fast and complete detachment—like ripping off a Band-Aid. The sting hurts like a motherfucker, but then when you let the fresh air in, you go from covering up a wound to healing.

She capped the marker and took a step back, reading whatever she’d just written. A slow smile spread across her face, and the headache I’d finally just gotten rid of rushed back with a vengeance.

I took a deep breath and headed to my office.

Emerie stepped out of hers just as I was about to pass.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “Too bad you didn’t take a little longer. I was about to go upstairs to wake you.” She kissed me on the lips and added, “Naked.”

“Emerie…” I cleared my throat because my voice was pathetically cracking. “We need to—” I never got to finish my sentence, because before I could even add the word talk, both our phones started ringing, and the UPS guy yelled from the lobby. Instead of ignoring it, I jumped at the reprieve like the no-balls jerk I was.

Then, after the UPS guy left, the building super came to talk to me about some work they were going to do where they’d need to cut the water for about two hours tomorrow. By the time I’d extricated myself from that conversation, my client had showed up twenty minutes early for his appointment. I couldn’t very well make him wait in the lobby while I dumped my girlfriend, so my conversation with Emerie was going to be delayed for at least an hour.

But one appointment ran into the next, and one hour ran into two, and suddenly it was almost seven o’clock at night. Emerie had done nothing but smile and look happy to have me back all day. She’d even ordered me lunch and sat in the lobby bullshitting with one of my clients for ten minutes so I could gobble down the food. Now all of my excuses were gone, and the office was quiet.

I stared out my window, drinking the coffee that had magically appeared on my desk a half-hour ago, when Emerie came into my office. I knew this because of the click-clack of her heels, not because I turned around.

She came up behind me and wrapped her hands around my waist. “Crazy day.”

“Yeah. Thanks for everything. For lunch, coffee, answering the phones and door all day. Everything.”

She leaned her head against my back. “Of course. We’re a good team. Don’t you think?”

I closed my eyes. Damn. Just rip the Band-Aid off, Drew, you pussy. Rip it the fuck off. I swallowed and turned around to face her.

“Emerie…I’m not cut out to be on a team.”

She laughed, probably not yet fully understanding what I was saying. Then she looked up and saw my somber face. Her smile wilted.

“What are you talking about? You’re a great team player. I pick up where you need me to, and you do the same for me.”

Rip the fucking Band-Aid off. Fast.

“No, Emerie. That’s what an employee does for their employer. We’re not a team.”

She looked like she’d been hit with a physical blow. Her plump bottom lip quivered for a half a second, and then she regrouped—her entire demeanor changing. Arms that had been casually at her side folded into a protective stance over her chest, and she straightened her spine. The fucked-up thing was, for a brief second, I got turned on watching her jump into fight mode. After all, arguing was how we’d started this mess to begin with. But it was definitely not the time or place to think with my dick.

“Every relationship goes through periods where one person needs to lean on the other more. There will come a day when I’ll need to lean on you.”

The relationship counselor in her kicked in, and I realized I needed to be blunt. So rather than ripping off the Band-Aid, I sliced open a new wound.

“I don’t want you to lean on me, Emerie. I need to end things between us.”

She took a step back, so I stepped up to the plate again and slammed home. “My son is my priority, and there isn’t room for anything else in my life.”

Emerie’s voice was a whisper. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry.” Force of habit, I reached out to touch her shoulder, give her comfort, but she backed away like my hand was fire.

Looking down, she said, “I left your messages on the desk, and your first appointment was moved up to seven-thirty.”

There was so much I should have said, but all I did was nod. Which she didn’t even see.

Emerie walked to the door of my office, and all I wanted to do was take back the last five minutes—rewind time and tell her I didn’t just want to be her teammate, I wanted to be her whole fucking team. But instead I stood there and watched her walk away. Because it would only be harder a month from now or a year from now—long-distance relationships don’t fucking work. One of us would be a hell of a lot worse off when time passed and someone cheated.

Emerie disappeared into her office and came back out a moment later wearing her coat with her laptop and purse slung over her shoulder. She gently pulled her office door closed—so gently, I almost didn’t even hear her leaving. Maybe that was the point. But I did, and when I looked up to catch one last glimpse of her, I saw that she was crying. I had to grip the chair in front of me in order to keep myself from going after her.

Then she was gone.

And as I stood in place for the next hour with shit whirling through my mind, all I could think was—who was I trying to protect here?

Her…or me.