Oh God.
He came to my side of the bed, his hands going above my head, his lips finding mine. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
I exhaled. It ached. It ached so hard. But I did it. “I missed you, Emery.”
“You have no idea how much I missed you.” He pulled away and when he got to the door, he looked at me from over his shoulder. “No more nightmares, baby.”
Once he left and the lock clicked into place, I reached for my phone to distract myself from everything that was happening inside of it. If I focused on those thoughts and feelings, they would only get worse.
Worse would be intolerable.
I clicked on the pictures, flipping through every one. Most were of the kids. Lots were of our dog. Randomly, I would come across ones of Emery and me. Our heads would be pressed together and he would be smiling, showing teeth. Not me. Although my lips were pulled wide, they stayed shut and my eyes were lifeless. In fact, I wouldn’t call it a smile at all.
I went through two years of photos, desperate to find one where I was really grinning, my finger swiping the screen as fast as it could. I looked the same in each one.
When I’d seen enough, I opened the last text I’d sent to Bay and I started typing.
Me: Do I smile?
Bay: Of course you do.
Me: But it doesn’t really look like one. It doesn’t even look like half of one. Or a quarter. And it never will again … God, what happened to me.
Bay: None of us are what we used to be, Jesse. We’re all changing.
I stared at her response. At the truth behind it. At the terrifying reality of how much my life had changed since even … yesterday.
I needed happy, that was why I had texted her, so I brought up a subject both of us loved.
Me: I started the book you told me about last week. You’re right, the passages in the diary are extremely harrowing.
I looked up from the phone and my eyes fell onto our wedding photo that was sitting on my nightstand. That picture had been next to our bed since we’d gotten married and it had moved with us to all the places we’d lived. The smile in that shot was nothing like the one I wore now.
It had dulled.
And I knew exactly when it happened.
Bay: I miss you.
Those three words were like a sledgehammer to my throat. Bay knew how much they affected me and that was why she had sent them.
I set my phone down and rolled away from it.
It hurt too much to look at.
Everything hurt.