Heartbeat

Thirty-Two

EMMA

I’d barely been able to function over the weekend despite Logan’s best efforts to get me to open up to him.

I’d known as soon as I let Jordan go that I had made a terrible mistake, but I knew that it was too much to ask for him to forgive me, and that’s what cut the deepest. I thought I had been doing the right thing. Ever since Alex’s death I had acquired a self-preservation mechanism that meant that I would always self-sabotage anything good in my life. I had told myself for years that it was to stop me from getting hurt, but I was wrong because every cell of my body was slowly dying. I had hurt myself more than Jordan ever could or would.

I knew I had been in a trance since Saturday morning and had barely eaten let alone sleep, but nothing mattered to me anymore. Whenever Logan spoke to me his words didn’t register and so we had sat in excruciating silence. I knew his patience was slowly running out but my mind was still too clouded to think clearly.

“Right,” Logan finally announced Sunday night as we sat in frosty silence in his apartment. “School tomorrow.”

I wasn’t sure if he stated it like a question or a command or something else entirely but I knew from the tone that I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I was going to school in the morning whether I liked it or not.

I wasn’t ready to go back to reality and needed just a few more days to wallow in self-pity, but I also knew that if I didn’t go back tomorrow then I never would. I had to see my friends; that is, if I still had any. I knew Zoe and Jordan had become friends in the last few weeks, especially since my hospitalization, and I guessed that she knew what had happened. I judged from the messages she had sent me that she was slightly confused and angry by what was going on and so I could only hope that she was still my friend.

Holly was also questionable. She was dating Jordan’s friend, and while she and Jordan weren’t friends themselves there was an element of loyalty there. Yes, Holly was my best friend and we had weathered many storms together, but did our friendship trump her relationship?

Sunday night had been a restless night and when I woke on the Monday the last thing I wanted to be thinking about was school and Jordan. I had stumbled into Logan’s kitchen, dressed and as ready as I would ever be, when my cell began to buzz on the counter, my father’s number flashing on the screen.

“Emma?” My father’s voice filed down the handset. I could tell that his voice was shaky and my gut dropped instantly. “You have to come home straight away honey. We need to talk.”

My face whitened and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.

“What’s happened?” Logan was at my side within seconds, his hand holding my face to stare directly at him. “Emma?”

“I have to go home,” I whisper dejectedly. “My parents are back and it doesn’t sound good.”

Logan offered to drive me home and all the while I was imaging all the worse scenarios. My parent’s marriage had long been dead in the water and their union was more of a formality than anything, but there had always been a part of me that thought they would work it out. Maybe not any time soon, but one day.