Page 104 of Anything for You
I give her a look full of gratitude and head straight out the door.
I feel both relief and a deepening dread when I see Jeremy’s car in his driveway. Relief that he’s here, and dread that whatever happened was bad enough that he’s home but hasn’t been in touch.
There’s no answer when I ring the doorbell, but the door is unlocked, so I walk right in, my need to see him overriding any kind of politeness I possess. We’re long past that.
I see him as soon as I open the door.
Jeremy is sitting on the living room couch, elbows on his thighs and hands clenched into fists. He’s hunched forward, head hanging low, an untouched glass of brown liquid on the coffee table in front of him.
The room is heavy with defeat, devastation, and a sadness so acute my breath clogs in my chest, and an invisible weight drops onto my shoulders. I make a conscious effort to stand straighter and breathe deep so I can help him without letting his feelings take me down with him.
I make it to the living room and Jeremy still hasn’t looked up. I think he’s too lost in his head to even realize I’m here.
I take a second to glance around the room. I’ve never spent any time here over the years. Since we’ve been together, he always comes to me because of Maddy, and now that I’m here, I’m struck by how sterile it feels. Cold, almost. There are no pictures or knickknacks. No books or magazines or the clutter of living. The furniture all matches and looks practically new even though I know he’s lived here since his playing days.
Jeremy lives four blocks from Julie and Asher, Rachel and Steven, but the contrast couldn’t be starker. This isn’t a home. This is a house that belongs to someone who doesn’t think in permanence.
Well, that’s just too damn bad because permanence is what he’s getting.
Walking towards Jeremy, I drop down in front of him. It’s my hands on his knees that has him finally looking up, surprised to see me.
“Emma.” He hasn’t used my full name in years. The fact that he uses it now, while looking at me with eyes that are somehowboth shattered and vacant, has fear curling in my belly. I shove it away for later because this isn’t about me.
“I’ve been worried about you,” I say, tightening my hands on his legs, offering him an anchor when he seems so adrift. “I hadn’t heard from you since this morning, so I thought something was wrong.”
Jeremy lets out a short laugh, but there’s no humor in it. Dropping his head back down, he fixes his eyes firmly on the floor. “Something was wrong alright.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
His sigh carries the weight of the world, but when he speaks, his voice is curt. Angry.
“He knew. My whole fucking life, he knew about me.”
I think I know what he’s saying but I say nothing, just wait for him to continue.
“He’s my brother. Brian. There’s no way he isn’t. We look exactly alike. We have the same fucking freckle under our eyes. And we both look like him.”
“Your father.”
Jeremy looks up then, and his eyes are ablaze. In them is an inferno of anger tinged with a well of grief so deep I wonder if there is any bottom to it.
“My fucking father. He had an affair with my mother. He had a wife and then he had a whole goddamn family. A happy fucking family in a beautiful house in the suburbs with pictures everywhere that show exactly how happy they were and a file folder in a locked drawer in his office documenting the entire life of the bastard son he knew about but never bothered to help. I grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home, where no one loved me. Jesus fucking Christ, I would have settled for someone caring whether I was even there or not, but no one ever fucking did. And the one person who should have cared, my own fucking father, gathered all kinds of information aboutmy life and left it in a locked drawer for his real son—the son he cared about—to find after he died. God forbid he try to help me when he was alive and I was a kid and needed someone, literally anyone, to care. But no. It would have ruined his perfect suburban image, so fuck the bastard son, right?”
Jeremy pushes up from the couch, locking his hands behind his head as he paces the living room, his breathing coming in ragged pants.
“My mother died. My own fucking father didn’t want me. None of the families I ever lived with wanted me. My teammates didn’t want to stick around once I couldn’t score goals for them anymore. No one fucking stays.”
Jeremy turns to me, eyes wild.
“You should just go, Emma. You’re going to leave eventually anyway, so you might as well just go now. Nothing lasts forever. Not for me.”
Jeremy’s anger is alive, and all the words swirling through my head about how I love him and I’m not going anywhere and I’ll never leave him aren’t going to reach him right now.
I’m not surprised that the angrier and sadder he gets, the calmer I feel. My gift has always been to give the people in my life the emotional support they need. And here in Jeremy’s stark house, in his darkest moment, I have never been more confident in my ability to do this thing. I know this man down to his deepest depths. He has been mine for a decade, and he will be mine until there is no longer breath in my lungs and far beyond that. I want to fight every person who has ever hurt him. Rage against every demon he has. Banish every single thought in his head that he isn’t enough to stick around for.
He is enough. He’s everything.
Now, to make him see that.
