About Emma . . .

The Intro: The Breakdown







_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



I have an extremely hard decision to make. I've been sitting here for the past three and a half minutes, staring at the peeling white wallpaper, and wondering when I'd suddenly become so indecisive. It's funny how long it's been for him and me, Emma and Damien, Romeo and Juliet. It's been a year and six months since we'd first met. I normally don't count out days or weeks or months. I normally don't remember such little details for things like that. Somehow though Damien made me feel loved; he'd made me feel absolutely beautiful. Although now, today, with the waning  light burning into my skull, I'm starting to rethink things through: The sticky hot summer days that we'd spent cuddling, snapping black and white photos, and finishing off melting ice cream cones . . .



The first time I'd met his parents had been terrifying but only slightly, since he'd already informed me about how laidback and comforting they were. I remembered staying at their cozy three-bedroom ranch house out near Pennsylvania. Damien's mother had loved me so much that she'd called me her second daughter.



Things like that--little memories that I normally would've taken for granted in my celibacy, I now kept like secrets and I locked them away for safekeeping.



What pushed me to sit on my threadbare comforter, letting the springs from my bed prick into my thighs through the covers, was what Damien had asked of me: 'How do you feel about open relationships?' His question played through my head like an echoing record. I'd tried to banish the sound of his warm voice from my mind. I didn't wander into negative thoughts that way, if I didn't think about what he'd asked.



'I'll give you as much time as you want . . . You can contact me and then you can say, 'Damien, can we meet in private? I've made my decision.' It really doesn't matter to me . . .'



'I won't pester you or call you. I just wanted to know how you felt about it, Em.'



That was the problem, I realized that I didn't know how I felt about open relationships, and it felt as if someone had doused me with chilly water. No, I wasn't going to believe my friends--the ones who'd all vehemently believed that our relationship would crumble like dust. Damien and I would get through this and I would tell him--I could tell him that I was fine with pursuing an open relationship. The more I thought about it though, seconds afterward, the more it started to get to me. Someone else touching him, kissing him, holding him, someone else stealing that intimacy, that heat, and that passion. The idea of someone else sharing that warmth and that body with him had started to get to me.



The silver phone felt cool to the touch when I picked up the receiver. I hesitated for about four more minutes, running possible scenarios of how I'd go about talking to him in my head. Finally I swallowed the lump in my throat and told myself to just take the plunge and do it. If I didn't force myself then I'd never call him and he'd have to sit out another week of not knowing how I felt.



One ring, two rings, three rings. The sound of a phone being picked up clicked audibly in my sensitive ears. I breathed and prayed that he didn't hear my nervousness through my shallow breaths.



"Hey," I choked out. My voice was hoarse from three hours of misuse.



"Em, what's up?" He sounded tired and I glanced at the clock. The red numbers bled together as my vision momentarily blurred, it read: 3:50 am.



"I was bored . . . and I um . . .," I took an exhale, let the bottled air out, and absently scraped off a chip of wallpaper from my adjacent wall.



"--I made my decision about the uh . . . the open relationships," God I was twenty-one and I was sounding more and more like an adolescent around him. Three months without speaking suddenly made me completely awkward at socializing. Wow.



"Really?" He sounded generally interested and I heard the distant clink of a filled glass being placed on a side table. Damien had probably taken a glass of water to bed; he normally used to do that, even when he'd slept on my cheap fold-out futon. The guy was insistent about his ritualistic stuff: taking water to bed, sleeping with one CD on repeat, the list went on and on . . .



"Yeah, um I decided that uh . . . I'm not ready for that stage yet and I think we should just be exclusive. The thought of you touching someone else, holding someone else, and just being with someone else--well it sounds like cheating to me. I know, I know it's not it's just--"



"Em . . .," Damien's voice sounded gravely serious, it had went a tone lower than it should have. I swallowed hard, almost choking on my own saliva. If Damien really was like how my friends had made him out to be then he was probably going to discard me now and forget about me.



"Yes?"



"I found someone else. I wanted to tell you earlier but I thought that asking you that question would sort of uh . . . clarify it. I guess it was stupid of me to put you through this. I do love you Em, I really do." Damien's words came together in a rush of jumbled words and my mind was working hard to sort things out. Why did this happen to me? What did I do wrong? Wasn't I good enough? The clichéd questions shot through my mind and I struggled to hold back the tears. Damien was serious, I knew he was. He never joked about things like that--about relationships and marital statuses. No, he meant every last word.



My world just shattered around me.



"I-I met her about three months ago--after you and I hooked up and . . . I mean, it was so hard--"



I hung up. The receiver clicked quietly as I placed it back on the cradle.



I could hear my friends now, their faces melting into view. Meredith with her solemn green eyes and freckled nose saying, "I told you he was a jerk but you never listen."

Mary clucking her tongue and wrapping her blond hair around her golden hued fingers, while she cursed him out under her breath. Thomas with his silky black hair would probably tell me that I didn't deserve him at all. I wanted to cry out and curse and scream. I wanted to say such hateful things to him and to that girl. A part of me wanted to pick up the phone, call him back, and scream at him for putting me through such emotional torture. My fingers twitched yet as I collapsed unto the bed, almost lifelessly, I couldn't call him back. So I just sat there and cried because I'd just lost my stupid Romeo . . .



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------