Free Gift With Purchase (33 page)
“Thank you again, Claudia.”
We shook hands. I pressed the elevator button and watched Claudia walk away. When she was a few feet away, she turned around and said with a huge grin, “By the way, I love Bradley Cooper, too!”
I got in the car and literally screamed. While driving home, I called Laura and left a message, saying that I needed to talk to her. I then did the same with my mother, my father and Alice. Where was everyone?!
There was one other person who I was dying to call. I wanted to share my news with him. I knew he would be so happy for me, and I knew he’d be proud of me, too. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, though, because I was scared. The next conversation he and I were going to have was going to involve the Tootsie Pops and our future. And I was terrified of that. Everything was going so well. I was on top of the world. I had a new job, a new career, new money. Did I really need to risk my happiness by getting into another relationship?
That night, I ended up having a dinner party. With a little help from
Casa de Michael,
or I should say,
all
the help from
Casa de Michael,
I fed my mom, my dad, Laura, myself and Izzie. I also invited Alice. Everyone seemed quite enamored with my beautiful, smart friend, and Laura monopolized her time for most of the evening.
When I announced the sale of my business and my job offer, my mother let out a huge scream. My dad told me he was proud of me, Laura hugged me so tight it actually hurt, and Alice simply smiled and gave me a wink, as if to say she knew all along that things would turn out this way.
Isabelle then did something I will never forget. She walked up to me and in a very businesslike way, she shook my hand. “Emma, I’m very proud of you,” she said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thank you, Isabelle.”
“Mom, you rock!” Then she hugged me tight.
At the end of the night, when Izzie was in bed and my parents had left, I said good-bye to Alice.
“How did I get so lucky to cross paths with you?” I asked her.
“I think your sister likes me,” Alice joked. Then she handed me an envelope. “Open this later.”
I gave her a hug. “Thank you.”
Alice blew me a kiss and left.
When I walked into the kitchen, I found Laura at the sink doing some dishes.
“I thought you went to bed,” I said.
She exclaimed, “I loved Alice.”
“Isn’t she the best?”
Laura smiled. “Yes, she is.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied unconvincingly.
We sat down at the kitchen table. “What is it?”
“Well, the thing is…”
“What? Please tell me.”
Laura’s eyes filled with tears. “Alan and I reached a settlement. I guess he and Maggie found another place, so he’s giving me the house. I can move back in anytime after Monday.”
“Laura, that’s great! Aren’t you happy?”
A tear rolled down my sister’s cheek when she answered, “Yes, I am. But I’m going to miss you.”
We hugged for a long time, and my heart was actually aching. I was so happy for Laura because I knew it made sense for her to go home. That being said, I would miss my goodie-two-shoes, judgmental, polar opposite sister more than anything in the world. I was one way, she was the other. I had an opinion on something, hers was always different. I was the wild, fun, ditzy sister. She was the giving, selfless, serious, smart one. We drove each other crazy. But we truly were best friends.
Through these tough times and through living together, Laura and I had learned to see things through each other’s eyes. We’d realized that having such vastly different viewpoints on things can be healthy, and we learned to take each other’s points of view as valuable gifts, not judging so much, but appreciating a different outlook. And I felt so fortunate for that.
“Good night, Laura,” I said when my sister decided to head upstairs to bed, “I’ll miss saying that to you in person.”
She smiled at me. “Me, too. Thanks for being my best friend.”
“Same to you.”
“You coming up?”
“In a minute.”
Once Laura went upstairs, I opened the envelope Alice gave me. To my surprise, inside were several cut-up pieces of paper with writing on them. I smiled as I dumped the contents onto the kitchen table. ‘Leave it to Alice to write me a letter and cut it up into a puzzle,’ I thought, turning all the pieces right-side-up.
It took me a minute to put it together.
“
Dear Emma
,” it began, “
I want to let you know that I am truly happy for you. What you have done professionally is amazing and well deserved. I respect and admire you a great deal. Your life has been like this letter, a puzzle, and you’ve had to figure out how to put the pieces together. From the looks of things, you’ve accomplished that and more. You now have everything you want: your health, a healthy, wonderful child, a nice home, a great family, and a wonderful career. And you can take credit for all of it because you bought into putting the past behind, thinking positively, working hard, and doing the right things. But there’s a piece missing in your puzzle. Go out and get him, Emma.”
On the verge of tears, I read the last line.
“He’s your free gift with purchase.”
The letter was signed
, “I love you, Alice.”
“Go out and get him, Emma. He’s your free gift with purchase,” I read out loud, tears welling in my eyes.
At that moment, I thought to myself, “What am I waiting for?” I could actually feel my fear of romantic love leave my body, with exhilaration and self-empowerment taking their place. I was like a sky diver at twenty thousand feet, waiting to jump, and focusing on the beauty of the blue sky rather than the trepidation of how high up I was. What I had to do next was very clear.
.
I
t was cold and windy and the sky was dark. Rain would inevitably be coming down soon. There was no question about that. And here I stood, shivering at the entrance of the jogging path at 5:55 in the morning, waiting for a certain runner, who I knew was here every morning at 6:00.
Suddenly I heard a dog barking. I turned and looked. There was Lucky. And Luke. They were walking toward me. I took a deep breath. Luke let his dog’s leash go and Lucky ran to me, continuing to bark and wag her tail while showering me with licks.
“Hi!” I greeted my good pooch friend, bending down to return her warm reception. Then I looked up at her owner, who was now standing in front of us. “Hi,” I smiled.
“What are you doing here?” Luke asked me. He motioned to my jeans and added, “You’re not here to run, I see.”
I stood up. “No. I’m not here to run.”
“Then what is it?” he asked, “Are you okay?”
There was so much to say. I wanted to tell Luke how sorry I was that I hadn’t called him. I wanted to tell him that I loved the fact that he sent me a box of Tootsie Pops. I wanted to let him know that I understood his decision to try to work things out with his wife. I wanted to tell him that the day I spent at the beach with him was in my top five of my all-time favorite days in life. I wanted to tell him that when he rescued me from my fall and put band-aids on my scraped up knees, he wasn’t just rescuing me physically. I wanted to tell him that he’d rescued me. Period. And now, I wanted to rescue him. I wanted to tell him all of those things, but I didn’t. I said only one thing.
I looked him right in the eyes and with the bold courage I learned from Preston, I declared, “Luke, I want you to kiss me.”
Without any hesitation whatsoever, he leaned in and obliged. His lips and his touch felt so natural and so comfortable, and it was like I’d been in his arms a million times before. At that moment, I felt my entire core transform instantly from cautious and reserved to gutsy and unabashed. I was now a girl who wasn’t afraid to put the past behind her and go after what she thought could be her future.
A few moments later, Luke pulled away from me and said with a chuckle, “How was that?”
“It was good,” I smiled.
“Emma…” He put his head down for a second and then looked up at me. Softly, he continued, “You’re like the girl I’ve known since I was three. You’re the girl who lived next door, the girl who I always felt was mine.” He took my hands and kissed them, and then he finished, “I feel like you’re mine. Is it wrong to say that?”
“No,” I whispered, fighting back tears, “Nothing’s ever felt more right.”
“Uhibuk,” he said softly.
Tears sprung up instantly. “What?”
“You heard me. I’ve been brushing up on my Arabic.”
I smiled and whispered, “Uhibuk,” which means I love you in Arabic.
Luke put his lips on mine and began kissing me again in the middle of the Willow Ridge jogging path with the wind blowing brutally and Lucky seeking shelter in between us. And as we stood there embraced, I realized something. Alice helped me see it, and so did Laura and my mother, and Preston, and Denny, and even all the Matts.
People with a past, people with baggage if you will, are still capable of finding love again, and the difference between those who do and those who don’t is pretty simple. The ones who end up happy are the ones who put the bitterness and the anger bags down, the ones who stop thinking like a victim and find the guts to go out and grab the life they want, the life they feel they deserve. And not only do they hold onto, but they cherish the pieces of significance that give their lives true meaning.
In the arms of the man I loved, I now realized I possessed more self-worth then I’d probably ever had in my life. Grace, acceptance and gratitude were part of my mantra. But most importantly, I was carrying the most precious piece of baggage on earth: my daughter. And at this moment, I felt like I had more free gifts than I’d ever dreamed possible.
.
O
ne month later…
At
Stella’s,
the little wine bar where I’d had my first drink with Alice months earlier, four couples plus my daughter sat at a big round table, eating and drinking, and celebrating my birthday. The crowd included my new boyfriend, Luke Sullivan, my almost nauseatingly in love parents, and Alice and her new girlfriend, a tall, thin, nice looking blonde woman who wrote children’s books for a living. Laura was also there with her date, a man she’d gone out with a few times, who seemed like a great guy, other than the fact that his name was Matt.
“How did you guys meet?” Alice asked her during dinner.
“Well,” she gushed, “Alan got our TV in the settlement, so I went shopping for a new one.”
“I sold her a fifty inch flat screen,” Matt said proudly, putting his arm around my sister.
“He was my free gift with purchase!” Laura joked.
Just after we finished eating, I looked up and noticed a couple seated at the bar, not far away. My heart skipped a beat when I recognized the guy’s big sculpted shoulders and gorgeous dark skin. Preston Christiansen, the man who had given me memories that could still cause the hair on my arms to stand up, was sitting no more than twenty feet away.
To my initial dismay, his date was gorgeous. And young. Her long blonde hair and perfect body, complete with fake (but beautiful) boobs caused a tinge of envy in me. I smiled to myself as I realized that Preston was with the person he was supposed to be with right now and so was I. My incredibly strong, smart and sexy older guy was by my side. His arm was around my chair and he was in a conversation with Alice about her job. Everything seemed as it should be.
Still, I felt I needed a little closure, perhaps one more conversation with the womanizer who affected me so deeply. So when I saw him get up to go to the bathroom, I decided to follow him in hopes of stealing a minute of private conversation. Although a very high school-ish move, I stood inside the women’s bathroom, holding the door open just a crack and waiting for my old boyfriend to come out of the men’s room. I hadn’t spoken to him or seen him since the night we were about to have sex and then didn’t.
The second I saw him walk out of the men’s room, I pushed the women’s room door open and feigned surprise. “Preston?”
He turned around, his face lighting up the second he saw it was me. The expression of happiness was so genuine, I instinctively threw my arms around him. “Hi!” I exclaimed, hugging him tight.