Part Three

monachopsis: the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

XVI.

i'm sorry but i fell in love tonight
i didn't mean to fall in love tonight
you're looking like you fell in love tonight
could we pretend that we're in love?

Leah always caught Emily in the worst of times. She knew it was becoming a habit; she just didn't know if it was a good or a bad one. Divine intervention or horrible timing.

Emily thought that calling out for help was a sign of weakness, so she had never called Leah when she was suffering. Only pure luck and probably some familial instinct were involved. Leah had just been over like the usual when she had found Emily on her bathroom floor of her parents' house in Neah Bay, crying because she had miscarried. And hadn't been invited when she had found Emily laying her bed a couple springs ago, bleeding at the wrists because she had cut herself again.

Finding Emily in times of weakness was a good habit. It had to be. Leah was a beacon for Emily. They both knew this because it was Leah who had been there for Emily when she had miscarried her second child at fourteen weeks, the child she had actually been ready to have. It was Leah who had decided to pay Emily a visit today, to make sure she was still taking care of herself, and just so happened to find her on the cold bathroom floor of her new house in La Push.

Emily didn't deny the hug this time. She embraced Leah like the sister she should have had and sobbed her heart out, not worrying if she looked ugly or not.

She had always been weird about crying in the same way that she was weird about calling out for help; she thought it made her look weak. But it was now that she knew it was okay to ask for help, and it was especially okay to cry. It was perfectly okay to cry. It wasn't a sign of weakness or even softness. It wasn't a sign of giving up or being overwhelmed, either. From birth, it had always held the same meaning: it meant that she was alive.

"Sam and I were so ready for this baby," she said into Leah's shoulder. "We got a new house with a baby room and everything. He stopped drinking and got a job and I fucked this up. Lee, I'm only nineteen and I've fucked up so bad."

Leah just held onto Emily, and it was then that she knew Emily was too good for the world. She had been pure and talented and bright before something happened to make it all fall out of place. Now she was depressed and self-loathing and knowledgeable of nothing but sadness. How was that fair? Emily was thinking the same thing.

"I've never hurt anyone," Emily sobbed. "I've never done anything to anyone, yet all this bullshit happens to me. I should just give the fuck up."

"You can say that all you want," Leah said, "but you're not gonna give up. And I know I tell you this a lot, but you have to keep it moving. You have to take care of yourself."

Emily badly needed the time to think before she moved on, but that step towards self-care wasn't in Leah's nature. Leah didn't know what it was like to pause and evaluate her feelings; as far as she knew, she had no more feelings. Leah was as heartless as can be. Moving forward without a reflection was all she knew.

Emily appreciated the gesture, though. It just didn't do much to help her. "Thanks, Lee."

"No problem, Em. It's no problem."

Sam Uley had never been a man of many words, but Emily could tell when he truly had nothing to say.

When she told him about her miscarriage, he was silent. What could he say? What was he supposed to say to fix anything? All of this means nothing now?

They stood in the living room of their new house and La Push, and even as the house was big, it felt even bigger. It was huge and lonely and all sorts of hot and cold. They didn't know what or how to think anymore.

Silent, they got into his blue pickup truck and drove out. They needed to escape the badlands for a little while; it was caving in on them. This was when they still thought it was a physical place as opposed to a constant mental state.

Bright highway signs flashed across Sam's focused eyes as Emily stared at him. When she registered the fact that he wasn't a stranger, she rested her head upon his shoulder. It was strong and solid, just like him.

She tried to not let it show that she was scared of them and everything they had going on for them, that she was scared of what they were running afraid from. She focused on the road, just like he did. In reality, he didn't know where they were going, either. He was good at acting like he knew everything, though. Since his father left Sam and his mom, he'd had to grow up fast. He still had to be tough and a know-it-all and supportive all at once, all the time. He didn't know how to stop.

With nothing but beer for days and the keys to the truck, they quietly entered their motel room that was far, far away from La Push. It was Room 93, and it was on the edge of the world.

They sat on the pullout couch and drank in the dim light. She didn't bother swiping her poorly cut, nearly grown-out bangs out of her eyes, and he played with her long, straight, black hair like they were teenagers again, like innocence was no longer a ghost of what they used to be.

She wanted nothing more than to feel his lips against her skin, and when he finally kissed her, she tasted nothing but worry and fear and lots of alcohol. She tasted everything that they were and everything they were going to be.

He moved her bangs out of her eyes so he could look at her in the dim lighting of the motel room.

"Wanna start over?"

She remembered the last time he asked her that, and she still nodded.

"I'd like that."

She was dancing in her tube socks in their motel room like nothing was wrong.

Three days after the first night, they came back to Room 93. It was their new beacon, just outside the badlands, and it was the safe place they went to when they were scared or stressed out.

Emily continued to dance and dance, drinking beer after beer. Whenever she was with Sam, she always turned back to her old habits. He was the worst damn influence, and he never even had to say anything; he'd just give her one look and everything she knew would be out the door, running far away from her.

It was cute at first. In fact, it was amorous. She had fallen back in love with Sam because after a few beers and temporarily forgotten memories, he became the inquisitive yet fun guy she had loved since high school. He could never fully let himself go, but when he did it the best he could, Emily knew, and she was in love.

And when she was drunk with him, she didn't hate herself as much. When she looked down at her left wrist, the scars were blurred. And when he wasn't obsessed with hating himself; he was in love, too.

"Let's just not go back," he told her that second night.

"To La Push?"

"Yeah. Fuck La Push."

"Fuck it."

They came back, though. Even though Room 93 was a beacon, La Push was an even stronger one. They couldn't deny it even if they tried. People were starting to worry, too.

When they got stressed out or worried at home, they tried to recreate the carefree atmosphere of Room 93 to their house in La Push, and it worked at the beginning. The beginning had been just as beautiful.

Emily still loved Sam. She still did, drunk and sober and everything in between, but especially drunk.

The only thing worse than loving Sam was loving his bad habits just as much. Emily should have known they would deteriorate from the first time she ever escaped with him to Room 93. Drinking had been fun, but the party had to end somewhere, and the love wouldn't last forever. Nothing lasted forever with Emily; it was her fault for testing that. The number of times they retreated to Room 93 didn't matter because even if they slept on new sheets, they still had the same old problems.

Sometime in November was when they started to fall out of love and into the darker depths of who they really were.

With time, their carefree nights with laughs and secrets and booze had turned into forgotten groceries which turned into forgotten condoms which turned into forgotten bills. She would never forget the panic.

Over the course of two months, half-empty glasses had turned to dropped glasses which turned into glasses shattering at a hundred miles against the wall. Emily had the scars to prove it, and on her worse days, when the memories permeated her mind, drunk or sober or anything in between, she could feel the shards piercing into her all over again. Sometimes they hurt more in her memories than they did the first time, when it physically happened.

Sam was fond of running off when he felt guilty. They were both cowards, but Emily was stunned and static, and Sam kept moving. That was just in his nature. She tried not to take it personally whenever he disappeared for days on end, but it never worked out well because it was so inevitable for her to blame herself.

The third night that Sam was gone after the glass accident, she knew she had her mind made up this time. Emily ripped the strings off her cello and threw all the physical notes and excerpts of her novel into the garbage. She had six different notebooks with hundreds of different scenes in each of them, and they would soon be gone.

Nothing is the same anymore, she realized. So why am I still pretending?

A/N: Sorry for disappearing like that. School's been crazy. I hope I can update again soon. Chapter 18 is a personal favorite.

Thanks as always,

HS