She stared back at him. She had no idea what to say.

“I feel like I don’t know you anymore,” he said.

She felt exactly the same way. What they’d experienced so recently had changed them, and it seemed they hadn’t yet figured out how to love these altered versions of each other. She didn’t respond.

After a moment of silence, Ezra said, “Maybe we need a break. From each other.”

Maybe he was right. What was true was that this conversation was going nowhere, and there was no way they’d be able to coexist comfortably together in the apartment right now. “I’ll spend the night with Ari,” she said, picking up her phone and heading to the bedroom to throw some things in a bag. “Let’s both take some time and come back with clearer heads.” Clearer hearts, she thought.

When she got into the bedroom, she saw her journal where she had brought it earlier when she retrieved it from the couch. She went to stick it at the bottom of her T-shirt drawer, but then had an idea. She wasn’t sure if it was a good one, but before she could second-guess herself, she grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from her night table drawer and wrote: This might help you understand me better. She was sharing every secret, every fear, every hope she’d had for the last decade-plus. If he read it, he would truly know her.

And maybe then he would understand.

48

Emily walked through Grand Central Terminal toward the ticket machines to buy one on the next train to Ari’s place in Connecticut. As she walked, one of her thoughts put itself to music. He has compassion in his heart for everyone but me. That had never happened before. Like Rob had reminded her, she’d never written the melody to a line of lyrics. She’d always written harmonies, added to what was already there. But she’d never created a song from scratch. She sang the line quietly under her breath. “He has compassion in his heart for everyone but me.” A second line came. He drops his anchor in the ocean while I swim in the sea.

Did that line make sense? She wasn’t sure, but she did know that she was writing a song. Her own song. A song born of the love and pain and confusion she was feeling. A song born of herself.

Emily fished her phone out of her bag to type out the lyrics. She found Rob’s text from earlier, which she’d forgotten about in the midst of her fight with Ezra, and responded to his apology with the words: I’m writing a song.

In an instant, her phone was ringing. She picked it up and Rob was on the other side. “You’re okay?” he said, the moment she answered.

“Not completely okay,” she responded.