Waiting for Emily: When the Truth Finally Hits Home

“Roman, are you even listening to me?”

I heard Zosia’s voice, but it sounded like she was underwater. My eyes were glued to the laptop screen, but I wasn’t reading anymore. I hadn’t really read a thing for days. The cursor blinked on the empty white page, a silent metronome marking time that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Emily wasn’t here.

Zosia huffed and dropped onto the edge of the kitchen table, folding her arms. “You’ve been like this all summer. I’m starting to think you’re a mannequin.”

I forced myself to look at her, my little sister with her legs tucked under her, that old denim jacket she stole from me draped over her shoulders. She was trying to get me to laugh, but I just couldn’t. Not this time.

“Did she text you?” she asked, softening. Zosia had never liked Emily, but she knew how much she meant to me.

I shook my head. “No. Nothing.”

Zosia glanced away, and for a second I thought she might cry. But then she squared her jaw, that stubborn look our mom always said she got from Dad. “Maybe she’s just busy. Summer jobs, college stuff, you know.”

But I did know. Emily and I had plans. We’d mapped out our summer in May: long bike rides, midnight movies, swimming in the quarry even though it was technically trespassing. Then, two weeks into June, she stopped replying. No calls, no texts, no random Snapchats. At first I thought her phone was broken. Then I worried she was mad at me. Now… I didn’t know what I thought. I just waited.

I waited every day on the bench behind the library, the way I promised I would if she ever needed me. The sun would beat down, sweat soaking my shirt, but I stayed. I brought my phone, a book, sometimes my old Walkman just for the nostalgia. But Emily never showed up.

Mom noticed first. “Roman, honey, you’re barely eating. Talk to me. Is this about Emily?”

I shrugged. “She’s just busy, that’s all.”

But Mom didn’t buy it. One night, she cornered me after dinner. “Her mom called. She said Emily’s been staying with her uncle in Texas. She left suddenly. Maybe she just needs space, Roman. People change.”

People change. The words echoed in my head like a curse. Emily promised me she’d never disappear like my dad did. But here I was, counting the days since her last message, hoping for a miracle.

Zosia tried to distract me. “Let’s go to the lake, Roman. Or the festival downtown. I’ll buy you a funnel cake.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t leave, not in case Emily came back. I sat on that bench every afternoon, even when it rained, convincing myself that today would be the day she’d appear, hair frizzy from the humidity, grinning and apologizing for making me wait.

But summer slipped away. The fireflies came and went. My phone’s battery died a hundred times. Still, I waited.

One day, late July, Zosia sat beside me on the bench. She didn’t say anything, just handed me a can of Coke and stared at the clouds. After a while she spoke, so quietly I almost missed it.

“I heard Mom talking. Emily’s not coming back, Roman.”

I wanted to yell at her, deny it, but I couldn’t. My throat felt like it was closing up, and I blinked hard, refusing to cry in front of my kid sister.

“I just don’t get it,” I whispered. “She promised.”

Zosia put her head on my shoulder. “People break promises. Doesn’t mean they never cared.”

That night, I sat with Mom on the porch. The cicadas droned in the July heat, and the air smelled like cut grass and regret.

“I know what it’s like to wait for someone who’s not coming back,” Mom said. “Your father—he left, but I kept hoping he’d walk through that door. I wasted years, Roman. Don’t do that to yourself.”

I stared at the stars. “What am I supposed to do?”

She squeezed my hand. “Let go. Live your life. Don’t let someone else’s absence define you.”

I didn’t sleep that night. I thought about Emily, about all the times we’d laughed until we cried, about the promises we made under the old oak tree. About the emptiness she left behind.

School started in August, and Emily’s name was on everyone’s lips for a week. Rumors flew: she’d run away, she was pregnant, she joined a cult, she got sick. I ignored it all. The world kept spinning, but I felt stuck in place.

One afternoon, I found myself back at the bench. Zosia joined me, older somehow, like she’d shouldered some of my grief.

“Ready to go home?” she asked.

I looked at her, my little sister who’d grown up too fast. “Yeah. I think I am.”

As we walked away, I realized I’d never really see Emily again. Not the way I remembered her; not the way I needed her to be. I’d have to let her go, piece by piece. Maybe that was growing up: learning to live with unanswered questions.

Sometimes I wonder: why do we wait for people who’ve already left us? And how do we forgive them—and ourselves—when they never come back?