Page 43 of Heartbeat

“I know it would ultimately come out as further proof of my inability to do just that.”

She laughed. “We can settle on it not being serious and also not casual, necessarily.”

“Yes! Let’s not make sense!”

We both laughed.

“Liam would love this.”

“Please. Liam would give me so much shit about it—”

“No, he wouldn’t. Not about this,” she said, serious.

“He was always going on about Summer.”

“That’s because he knew Summer wasn’t right for you.”

“Here you go.” The bartender replaced my empty double vodka glass with a fresh one I would finish in the next three minutes.

As I looked at Emma, somewhat dumbfounded, the music changed. “Ballad of Maxwell Demon,” by Shudder to Think, started playing. Two years ago, back at the lake, Liam had been obsessing about Velvet Goldmine and was absolutely addicted to this song. Emma and I went immediately silent, remaining that way until Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” came on, and she and I could finally breathe.

I noticed how pale she looked. “Emma—”

“I didn’t know,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“Know what?”

“I didn’t. I swear,” she said, looking borderline afraid. “Otherwise, I would’ve come back.”

“Yeah, I’ve no idea what we’re talking about.”

“My mother told me about you. How you just got back from the hospital—”

“Oh, that—”

“Today!” she said, almost yelling. “She casually mentioned it as she drank a fucking mimosa. I almost slapped her.”

I shrugged. “Emma, it’s—”

“Today, Thomas. It’s not okay. I can’t believe they kept something like this from me all this time.”

“I don’t think they meant to—”

“Oh, they meant to. This is just the sort of twisted shit they’d pull. It’s so fucking typical—”

“Emma.”

“I would’ve come back. Had I known, I wouldn’t have stayed away for all this time.”

“That’s great, Emma, but—”

“What?” she said, still mad.

“It’s been years.” I tried to sound as kind as possible. “It’s okay.”

“You could’ve told me.”

I gave her my best are-you-fucking-serious? look.

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