Never Going Back Again || Jemma
Berry.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into a month, and enough was enough.
Five people were seated around at the dining room table when Jay entered for breakfast that morning, pulling an highlighter to finish the chapter of Jay and Emma’s adventures in Vegas. He couldn’t wait to get her opinion on it. It was, after all, her story too. His mother, Carlos, and Emma’s parents. Yip slept at their feet. A taller African American man with large glasses held a manila folder. They all stared at him with monotone eyes.
“May I help-”
“Jay.”
His mother stood up from the table.
“Did you see Emma yesterday morning?”
Jay’s eyebrows instantly furrowed in confusion at the mention of Emma. Her face, bright eyes and weak smile that she’d carried for months of being back, appeared in his mind. They talked books and memories, hugging coffee cups as they circled town square.
“Of course. We had coffee. What’s this all about?”
Jay’s voice dipped as the foreign man stood forward, speaking up with a booming voice in their small dining area.
“Detective Otis Warren.”
“Jay Bryant the-”
“The third, I’ve heard.”
“Though Emma Miller is technically an adult...her parents have declared her as missing.”
Jay’s first instinct was the thought was silly. Emma? Missing? It was laughable, even. Emma was always just..there. Even when they went to different schools, she was a mere phone call away. It took Jay the full day of making sent to voicemail phone calls, unanswered texts and emails, and searching around town to process that she was...possibly gone. Maybe she decided to take an out of town trip by herself. It wasn’t likely, at least without a heads up, but she’d return the next day.
Or the next day.
Maybe the one after that. Jay was hopeful.
He was hopeful until he wasn’t hopeful, as if her lack of presence was bringing out the childish coward in him. Where was Emma? Where was his best friend?
Berry’s population consisted of two hundred and sixty people. Within the small population, Jay could feel every millimeter of Emma’s absence. With every breath he took and word he muttered, he missed her immensely. He felt it in every part of his body that he wondered how he managed to stay standing. Berry felt it. Anywhere he went, he could hear the people muttered her name under their breaths, as if his lonely presence was the reminder that Emma Miller had vanished. Berry was like a monarchy, of sorts. When the infamous Emma Miller, daughter of the town dentist and the runaway bride, goes missing, things change. The town shifted.
Every morning at dawn, Jay went and stood outside of Emma Miller’s house, waiting for her bedroom light to switch on. It was something they used to do in high school, Emma’s bad habit of not setting an alarm leaving Jay to save the day, and her tardiness record from being tarnished. He waited, longer and longer everyday, until Mrs. Miller came out behind Emma’s brother as he went to catch the bus. Both of them looked to Jay with worisome eyes, as if they wished to give him hopeful information that they did not hold. They all knew the equal amount of information. Emma was just gone.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into a month, and enough was enough.
He didn’t know how and he didn’t know where but Jay had to find Emma. He couldn’t eat, sleep, let alone live until he at least knew her existence was continuing on. He had to find Emma Miller, wherever in the world she could be.