22
As I draw closer to home, I wonder how to approach things with Emmett. I consider gentle hint dropping or just coming straight out and asking him. I still haven't come to any decisions when I get home. At least his car isn't on the driveway.
I head straight upstairs, avoiding the kitchen where I can hear my mom preparing dinner. I lie down on the bed and call Rosalie to fill her in on the Izzy and Whitlock saga.
"I'm having kind of a hard time processing something Whitlock said to me," I tell her. "You're probably going to laugh and tell me to stop being stupid." If anyone can calm me over this, it's Rosalie. "He said Izzy told him she slept with Emmett." I pause and wait for her to laugh her ass off at me.
She doesn't.
"Rose?"
"Okay," she says. It's a pretty weird response and the way she says it makes my heart beat just a little faster.
"Okay?" I sit up.
"Do you want me to come over?"
"What does okay mean?" I ask her, ignoring her last question as I climb off the bed. "If you know something you're not telling me …"
"I don't know anything."
"But?"
She pauses. "Rosalie?"
"I may have heard something about it. I didn't say anything because I didn't think there was any chance it was true." I sit back down heavily on the edge of my bed.
"I want to know."
"Edward …"
"Just tell me what you Goddamn know, Rose!"
She's quiet for a moment.
"You remember Tyler Crowley's New Year's party?
"Is that a fucking trick question?" I was on edge before, but now I'm on the verge of losing it.
Rosalie and I didn't go to the party because we already had plans in La Push, but it had become the stuff of legend. It was also the night Izzy was picked up for public intoxication on her way home. I didn't even get to see her before her dad sent her away again.
"I heard Eric Yorkie went upstairs to find somewhere to crash out and walked in on … them."
My throat constricts. She keeps talking. "I really never thought there was any truth in it. You know how Eric is? He always exaggerates and twists the truth. Edward?" She seems to suddenly recognize I've fallen silent. I open my mouth to speak at least twice before the words finally work their way free.
"She did fuck someone that night. She told me herself."
I've never told a soul this before. My skin chills as I remember the call.
"But you two were …"
"I fucked up, Rose. I knew exactly how she was. I'd been so careful and then she just caught me off guard and I told her I loved her. The words just kind of fell out."
The panic of the moment when I realized what I'd done still flips my stomach to think of it. I watched the shutters come down and did my best to break through them. I think I knew it was too little too late.
She stayed for around an hour after my confession, but she barely spoke or looked at me. I could see she was fighting an internal struggle, and finally her anxieties won out. She made her excuses and left.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I told her on the doorstep. She turned and looked right at me, and I knew then.
Regardless of the fact her plane to Phoenix wouldn't take her out of the state for another week, that was the moment she left me.
~S~