Chapter 37

Emma is still soothing, while I just stare numbly at the floor. Suddenly nothing but emotional exhaustion consumes me, making me too tired to sit back up as numbness overtakes, and yet I know I cannot stay face down on her kitchen floor like this. I move to try weakly as she helps me slowly and surely and nestles my head against the curve of her breast, against her throat. Arms around me tight and stroking my hair back off my face, the tears still running down my cheeks as heat floods my skin.

“Emma?” I cry brokenly.

“You’re okay. I got you, Sophs … I got you. We’re okay.” Emma soothes while rocking me back and forth in her arms, like she would Mia, with gentle soothing words and I have no energy to do anything but cry. Lost in this maternal embrace, I start to sob, hopeless silent tears.

“You don’t get it … it’s him … it’s Arry.” I whisper brokenly, burying my face in her neck not wanting to go anywhere else but right here, right now. I cling to her desperately. Like my world has just come crashing down.

“I do get it. I’ve been there. I know what this is like.” She still rocks me to and fro, a soothing motion of a momma rocking her child, and it’s lulling me into submission, despite the torrent of chaos inside my head.

“Jake was crazy in love with you too when you figured it out. He was all for being ‘the One’. Arrick walked away from me this morning. He left me again. He’s in love with someone else and I’m supposed to do what?” I burst into heartfelt sobs, pain overtaking where panic was and I wrap my arms around her bump securely, inhaling the perfume and comforting smell that is uniquely Emma. My second mom, my savior, my hero.

“It’s okay, we’ll get you through this, and we’ll find a way. You’re strong and you are surrounded by love. We will find a way, my precious girl.” Emma’s trying to keep me here, console me, but I’m already unraveling. That inner wall that protected me from years of pain is slowly growing inside and the urge to push her away is starting to expand. I hate that I am this way, but I can’t help it. The inner me is taking control, and even clawing onto her with my fingertips cannot stop that younger me from pulling out of her arms and scooting away towards the kitchen unit on my butt backwards, to be alone with myself and my raw pain. It’s a defensive instinct to be solitary, to protect myself this way and not share my anguish. Emma lets me go, knowing me, knowing my needs, and stays seated in her own slumped position on the floor, watching me with genuine heartbreak in her eyes.

“How can it be okay?” I ask her pleadingly. “How can it ever be okay again? You don’t get it … If I am, then what chance do I have of ever getting over him? Arrick isn’t some stupid teen crush, or a boy I dated who hurt me. He’s been my everything, my world, and my support. He’s my best friend, and he would never do anything to make me want to stop loving him. He isn’t capable of doing anything to me that would make me do anything but love him! I’m doomed. There’s no way out of this and I can’t see how I’ll be able to get past this.” I cry out, in both rage and sadness, a crazy mix of desperation.

I am in love with Arrick Carrero.

Not a childish, teen crush that involves butterflies and flowers and silly girl fantasies, but the real, complete dependency and inability to exist without the other half of me kind of love. The kind that’s been ripping me apart into tiny pieces and sending me down a long, dark tunnel of hopeless oblivion with the absence of him. This isn’t some empty hole of nothing that has been eating me away, it’s the all-consuming ache of knowing the one I want to be with is never going to be within my grasp, even if I have only just realized it.

Emma slides across the floor towards me awkwardly, considering her bump, as I crumble once more. Tears and overwhelming pain hitting me from every direction, and I cannot fight it. I don’t stop her from tugging me into her arms again. I don’t fight when she pulls my head into her lap and strokes my hair soothingly. She sits silently and lets me sob out every single piece of heartbreak I have been carrying around for as long as I can remember, now that I can put a label on exactly what this is.

Maybe it was better when I didn’t know.