Something

Friday, 11:07

"How could you say that?" Emma yells, storming out of the room toward the front door. "I can't with you. I just fucking can't." She turns back to look at Ethan who is following her.

"Well, what do you fucking expect? When you come home and act like this!" he yells back, arms flailing like everything she had said was in the air between them.

"I don't know, maybe I expect a fucking partner.  Someone who won't jump down my throat at any moment. I'm done. I have to get out of here." She turns and grabs her keys off the hook. She flings the door open and pauses, just for one second, ready to resume the rage, but with no more coherent thoughts to do it.

"You're just going to leave?" Ethan asks, incredulous and not knowing if she is leaving for good, or just for the moment.

"Yes," she glances at him one last time, and the sight of his incredulity only makes her slam the door harder on her way out.

Friday, 11:26

Emma has been driving for long enough that her rage has started to settle. As she approaches the bridge that leads her out of town, she thinks that maybe she should turn around, but she can't yet. She has nothing to say yet, the feelings of guilt starting to consume her thoughts as the bridge looms ahead. She hates the bridge, always panicky when she drives over it, but, thankfully, it is almost completely free of cars at this time of night. She speeds up, trying to make the car rip away from the feelings that are closing in on her and trying to get over the bridge before the panic sets in. As she approaches the center, the old impulse roars back into her. She could just turn the wheel. Just turn. If she just turns the wheel, everything would be over. She wouldn't have to deal with it all anymore. She would just fly over the bridge into the river, far below and be done. She knows that she won’t, but the impulse always nags at her on this bridge. 

She thinks of Ethan's angry face, his terrible words, her terrible words and tries to see the river in the darkness below. Suddenly, she jerks the wheel to the right. The noise of the crash as she hits the guard rail is deafening, but it is followed by silence. The car flips over the guard rail and glides toward the river below. It lands with a booming splash and then she is gone. She is nothing now, but ripples from the impact, fading into stillness.

Friday, 11:27

Emma brakes and stops on the bridge, just before the middle, the spot that always makes her want to fly off the bridge and disappear. She’s not sure if she can make herself get past it. The bridge is quiet, only one car passes her on the other side, blinking their lights at her as they slow to see why she is stopped. She raises a hand to wave off the car and it continues on, out of sight. She closes her eyes for just one minute and leans her head back, torn between going home and getting out and just escaping off the bridge into the abyss below. She misses the headlights behind her, not that she could've done anything fast enough to change things. The truck sounds its horn, she opens her eyes and sees only lights as the truck hits her, obliterating her small car and her. She's nothing now, but a pile of rubble to be cleaned up.

Friday, 11:27

Emma is trying to take deep breaths as she drives over the bridge. She realizes, suddenly, that it isn't the bridge that she fears, it’s the impulse to fly off of it. She's never thought about that before, never connected the fear with the impulse. She suddenly realizes that if she fears it this much, she must not want to follow that impulse. She slows her breath and the car a little and manages to force her way past the mid-point, where the impulse always grips her the most. Once she passes the center, she lets out a long breath that’s filled with everything the night has held. She lets go of the rage filled words she and Ethan threw at each other. She lets go of the angry looks and the unnecessarily acidic retorts. She releases the old resentments made fresh by the night’s fighting. She makes it to the end of the bridge, feeling like she has accomplished something and that, in turn, makes her feel like maybe she can go back. Maybe they can fix it. She pulls to the side of the road and pulls out her phone. She turns off the engine and opens their text chain. The last message sent was, "Ok, love you. See you tonight. <3" from Ethan to her. The sweet simplicity of it after the night of anger makes her explode into tears. She sobs violently for a long time, finally settling into whimpers that put her to sleep. She wakes as the sun peaks just over the horizon, disoriented for a minute. Why is she in the car? Where is she? The memory of the previous night washes over her and she feels like she has to get home as quickly as possible.

Emma pulls into the driveway. The neighborhood is quiet and so is her house. She runs in, feeling like she’s too late, though she doesn’t know what she’s late for. The lights are all on and she thinks Ethan might’ve waited up for her.

“Ethan?” she calls into the silence. She checks the living room and then the kitchen.

“Ethan?” She starts to feel panicked and runs up the stairs. “Ethan?” He’s not there. She stands in the middle of their bedroom searching her mind for where else he could be and notices the dresser drawers pulled out. She walks over to them timidly, filled with dread. His clothes are gone. He’s gone. And the nothingness consumes her as she crumbles onto the floor. She knows that it's over. They're nothing now. 

11:28

As Emma passes the center of the bridge, she lets out a long breath, filled with everything the night has held. She lets go of the rage filled words she and Ethan threw at each other. She lets go of the angry looks and the unnecessarily harsh retorts. She releases the old resentments made fresh by the night’s fighting. When she gets to the end of the bridge, she tries to reach for her phone, in her back pocket, but can't get to it while she's driving. She flips on the radio instead, needing something to keep her company. She wants to stop and just rest for a few minutes, but there’s nowhere safe to pull over, so she continues. 

Peggy Lee bursts out of her speakers with "FEVER" the moment she turns it on and for the first time in hours, Emma smiles a sad, pathetic acknowledgment to Peggy. As she starts to tentatively sing along, "Fever all through the night..." she remembers. 

She remembers the first time she had gotten really sick after they had moved in together. At first, she thought it was just a cold, but by the time afternoon came, she was shivering in bed with a fever. Ethan had come home, tucked her in, brought her tea and found medicine to help her sleep through the night. He curled up next to her, to try to keep her warm.

"No, you're going to get sick, too. You have to sleep in the other room," she mumbled in her weakened fever voice.

"Nah. I don't get sick. I'm going to stay right here and keep you warm. You've got a hell of a fever." And then he started singing, "Never know how much I love you. Never know how much I care." He sang it slowly, quietly like a lullaby and she gave him a weak smile and drifted off into a fever filled sleep.

Ethan did get sick. But at least it was after the worst of her flu, so that she could take care of him, as he had taken care of her. And she sang to him, just as he had. Ever since then, it was their go to song. When they were feeling goofy and happy, they'd break out in it, dancing with ridiculously exaggerated gestures to each other. When they got a cold or were having a hard time, sometimes they would just hum the first few phrases. It would cheer them both, no matter what was going on.

Emma had turned the radio on after the first verse, but she, now, can't help but to replay those first words over and over in her head, willing Peggy to go back to the beginning and let her hear them, but she won't. The song ends with an annoying commercial following it. She flips the radio back off, looks in her rearview mirror, and makes a sudden, decisive U-turn. It is almost too fast, and she nearly loses control of the car, but she manages to right the car, she settles into her seat again, preparing herself to be home and to face Ethan.

Soon, she is back on the bridge, but it looks different to her this time. She flies over it without the slightest impulse to do something stupid. She is going home, and this thought keeps her focused as she passes over the bridge that has always tormented her. They could work this out, she thinks, humming the entire time.

Friday, 12:01

Emma pulls back into the driveway. Ethan is sitting on the front porch steps waiting for her to come back. She gets out of the car quickly and makes two steps of a run before she starts to worry about where his head is at and slows to a more deliberate walk. When she is standing right in front of him, all he says is, "I was worried."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just had to clear my head." Ethan gets up and stands in front of her. They both look at each other with so much uncertainty, it is almost like they are strangers. They hear nothing but their beating hearts and the crickets in the night.

"What are we going to do?" he finally asks.

She looks at him. “Never know how much I love you,” is still playing in her head. 

"I think...I..think we should try to fix it. Fix us. I don't want to give up."

Ethan lets out a huge sigh of relief and his eyes filled with tears. 

"I don't think it's going to be easy," he says with worry.

"Probably not."

They stand silently again, for minutes. She reaches out her hand and he looks at it for a minute before tentatively taking it into his own.

"I think we've got something, though. Something that we shouldn't just give up on."  Her mind tries to finish it with ‘yet’ but she feels like she shouldn't say it, hoping with all her heart that the last word can be ‘ever’.

"I think you're right," he pulls her forward a little, so they are closer. They look into each other’s teary eyes and finally sink into a long, tight hug. As they stand there, locked in their own little world, she starts to sing it into his ear. She feels his face change, pressed against hers, his jaw relaxing into a smile, and she holds him tighter. She knows it is going to be hard, but there is something here that she can't throw away. And whatever that something is, whether their relationship survives, or they move on, having learned enough about themselves to know that they have to let it go. Whatever that something is, it is better than the nothing that haunts the back of her thoughts.