Page 39 of Modern Persuasion

She left me to have this. I had always thought she had made the wrong decision, but listening to Christi and her team made me reconsider. Maybe she had made the right choice? I wondered if she ever thought of me. There wasn't a day that went by that she wasn't in my thoughts. Every single woman I dated after Emma was an attempt to forget her. My friends, none of whom had ever and would ever meet her, think she's the devil. To be fair, when I wrote a movie about how I tried to get over our breakup, I lied a lot. Not just about her, but about the fact that I got over it. I demonized her so I could forget her. It never worked.

Patrick had been with me every step of the way from the moment I had sent the book to an agent. Now I would be away for a month promoting this book, and he would join me after the publishing convention. This book was older than anything else I had written. Christi knew someone else had edited it. She had seen the draft Emma had given me with her edits, which I had never made. I didn't have the will to tell her that her favorite colleague actually edited it already. I wasn't surprised when she came back with only a few changes. Patrick assured me New York would be fantastic.

"New York is Emma," I said to Patrick.

Patrick sat on my bed with a sigh.

"If you need me to come early, I can. I don't have to wait until the actual tour starts."

"I'm going to see her. I know it. She will be at this conference. She will be the belle of the ball."

"You are being an idiot."

"She probably told everyone about her evil ex-Fredrick who wanted to pull her away from her dreams and force her to live in hot and vapid Los Angeles. They all probably know the movie was about her. They are all probably pretending to be nice to me."

"You changed her name. I am sure nobody knows," Patrick said, waving his hand to dismiss my concerns. "Don't you think they would have refused to publish the book if she had told everyone all these things?"

He was right.

I saw her almost as soon as I arrived. I knew her from behind. Her long brown hair pulled back in a clip. The way she sat in the chair talking to one of the most famous writers in the world. The way she laughed. I love the way she laughs. She throws her head back, and it's a mix of a belly laugh with a little tinkling laugh. Hearing it was like a punch in the gut. Hearing it put me back to where I was when I met her ten years before. The moment I saw her was when I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life looking into her eyes, kissing her lips, and touching her face. I wanted her to smile at me that way forever, and she hadn't even met me yet. There was a huskiness to her voice that sent shivers down my spine. I had never reacted this way to a woman.

I was jello every time I was in a room with her. I couldn't talk to her until I had something specific to say. Once I started talking, there was no limit to what we could talk about. The more I learned about her, the more positive I was that she was the only woman I would ever love.

She made the first move, but we were drunk, and I couldn't do what I wanted. She insisted I sleep in her bed that night even if I wasn't going to have awkward first-time sex with her. She smiled as she fell asleep. I lay in her bed, which smelled like cherry blossoms, and never wanted to get up. I promised myself if she still wanted me in the morning, I would never deny her anything ever again. I woke up as soon as I felt her lips and breath on my neck. She was still asleep. She had rolled into my body. She had wrapped her arms around me and pressed her body to mine. I closed my eyes and thought of dead puppies and baseball, not opening my eyes until she woke up. There she was, looking right into my eyes with her bright green ones. I remember the sex being awkward. It was only awkward that once. Once I knew her body and made a point of learning it quickly, I knew exactly what to do.

I shouldn't have proposed at graduation. I knew what she wanted from life. I knew her goals could really only be achieved in New York. I didn't care. I thought I could make her happy, and she would find new goals if she gave up everything she had ever wanted. When she refused to answer, I thought it was because she wanted me to propose in front of her father. I never got a chance to do that. As soon as Walter Shaw met me, he had no use for me. I was beneath him, and he clearly did not want his beloved daughter with me. Her mentor and mother's best friend, Karen, accompanied Walter to graduation. Neither of her sisters came. She didn't seem to mind either. In fact, I think she was annoyed that her father had come. She shut me out soon after they arrived. I realized when my parents insisted they join us for a joint graduation dinner that she would refuse me.

I felt like an idiot. I had ignored everything she had ever told me. I hadn't even considered other ways to be with her in two different cities or going to New York with her. By the time I realized I could have lived in New York, at least until a better solution had presented itself, she was gone. I spent my first summer at home in my childhood bedroom, depressed, high, and hungry. I don't know why I wrote the movie, but it was the only way to cope with everything. When I watched the completed movie for the first time, a few years later, I realized I had been cruel and childish. I regretted it, but there was no way to take it back now. I waited for a lawsuit, but nothing ever came.

Now she was there and so close. I decided to change my entire prepared speech. When Louisa introduced us, as if we had no idea the other ever existed in the world, Emma just looked at me. She had changed and looked worn out and faded. Her green eyes had lost their playful sparkle. I was angry at her for becoming a shell of herself. If she had stayed with me, this never would have happened. She showed no emotion as I spoke to a room of people about how important she had been to this book I had written. I didn't mention her name, but she had to know. She waited until her friend Tom spoke and then left right away. I asked him about it.

"The book is about her mother," Tom told me when the panel was over.

"Really?"

"The family has never gotten over her death," he said, giving me a copy of the book.

I scanned the pages quickly. I had never considered the impact of her mother's death on Emma. Life in Chicago must have been a way to escape her grief. She never wanted to talk about it beyond the basics. Her father's arrival at graduation would have been like a shock to the system after years away from it. I wanted to run up to the convention floor, find her, and wrap her in my arms. I wanted to make her better, but there wasn't time. I had to do a book signing.

She was everywhere. Every time I looked up, I saw her face. Every time I walked into a room, she was there. Sometimes she didn't even see me, but I always saw her. Sometimes she was alone, but occasionally she was with that woman who had convinced her to give up our life together. Seeing Karen with Emma brought back the anger I had felt eight years ago. Emma was still under her influence, and I let my anger flare where everyone could see it. I forgot that anger again when Emma sat across from me at my signing. For a while, she just stared blankly into space. Eventually, she looked at me and smiled. It was my smile, the smile that made everything ok and made me feel like there was nobody else in her world but me.

I got back to my hotel that night and dreamt of that smile.

My book was the source of all the trouble that followed. They underestimated the demand from the public attendees on the last day. Louisa, who had been there when the attack happened, found me at my hotel right away. She said the people who came that day were not part of the publishing industry. They were just people who had been allowed to buy tickets.

"Like Comic-Con?" I asked her when she came to my hotel after it happened.

Louisa was like many women I had dated since breaking up with Emma. It was clear, although she seemed to know Emma well, Louisa didn't know about our relationship.

Louisa put her hand on my arm. "Totally like it. Except nobody seems to have understood what that's like."

"The security at a Comic-Con is intense. You have to pay for items at a comic con, even an autograph."

"Right, so they told people they would get free books. Christi was worried that we didn't have enough, but we had no idea how many people to expect. We thought they would be grateful for what they had been able to get. One man just wouldn't take no and attacked her."

I hadn't been there when it happened. I was mystified by the intensity of the situation. These people weren't even getting my autograph or a picture.

"So, the tour is canceled?" I asked.