that night at my house. When I asked her where Louis was, she said he didn’t come home. I asked if the kids were okay and then I hung up. I had it all figured out; Louis left me and didn’t come home. My parents came to stay with the kids because Louis was MIA. At that point, I just wanted my life to end on that beach in St. Lucia.”
Em tells me this whole story without looking at me. Her eyes are closed and I know she’s beating herself up inside. She no doubt blames herself for Louis’ heart attack, and I’m not sure what I need to say to her to make it better.
So, I decide the best thing is for me to be me, and say what Em expects me to say, “Where is the part about you ending up in bed with the manager of that hotel?”
She finally opens her tear-filled eyes and smirks. At that moment I know she needs me to be me. “Will actually owns that hotel. He gave me his room and I agreed only because he explained that he would be staying at his parents’ Villa a few miles from the hotel grounds. His family owns half the properties in St. Lucia.”
This Will manager-owner-dude is starting to sound very appealing. Not so much for me, but I can see how he could woo Em into spending the night with him on some remote island while she thinks her husband left her.
“I’m still waiting for the bed part. You really are milking this shit. What have you done? Spill it!”
She lays on her side, facing me, and we’re finally eye to eye. When she looks at me, I know she will tell me everything. This girl couldn’t lie if her life depended on it. When you look into Em’s eyes, you see right through to her heart.
“He was a stranger and I needed someone to pour all the crap that was clogging my head. I was holding things in for months. I told him everything that happened with Louis in the past four months leading up to how I caught him cheating, and as I was telling him all this, he was getting all worked up. He then told me that his fiancée cheated on him with one of his friends, so here I go again, thinking that his reaction to Louis’ actions made perfect sense. I thought that the cheating thing hit close to home for him. I was still crying and he decided that liquor would be the cure for my broken heart. Sara, I got obliterated to the point that I can’t remember a whole entire day.” Emily! Drunk! This story sounded so far-fetched…my best friend plastered to the point of no recollection is something I’d pay big money to see.
“Everything you’re telling me is very hard for me to swallow. I can’t believe you had the balls to get on a plane—wait, a commercial flight!—and just leave. Then you slept outside on a dirty bench, then you tell your business to a perfect stranger, and then you get piss drunk with the same complete stranger to the point of amnesia.”
“I know, it sounds like one of your stories, but it’s really mine. I woke up the next day in a room I’ve never seen, in a huge bed I don’t remember going to sleep in, half naked, and I hear Will’s voice next to me. Relax! He told me we didn’t have sex and I think if we did, I would’ve remembered. Yes, you don’t have to ask, you already know he was naked. He offered to help me forget about Louis and I said ‘N.O. No!’ I explained to him that I’m madly in love with my husband, even if he’s not in love with me anymore. He kept saying that he gives Louis two days and then he’ll show me how a man should treat a woman. It was all very sweet and chivalrous, but I had no intentions of being intimate with him, I swear! Yes, he was cute but he wasn’t Louis.”
I listen to Emily, but we’re still in wonderland with this story that sounds nothing like the girl I grew up with. “So that’s it? No hanky panky, no playing with his peen, no naughty secrets you’d like to share with Sara?” I ask, knowing full well that she just told me everything she thinks she knows. I wouldn’t mind getting Will’s side