Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, owner of her own two-bedroom apartment, appeared to want for nothing, having reached the age of twenty-one with little besides the occasional blinding hangover to distress or vex her. Vexed, however, she was as she lay in the centre of her queen sized bed, nursing the mother of all headaches, and conscious only due to the sheer unpleasantness of existence and its twisted sense of humour.
Snippets of the night before swung at her like well-aimed blows, and wincing, she saw herself alternately sobbing and laughing in the arms of her best friend, Taylor, as her engagement party really kicked off. The evening had started as all such events must- with happy smiles from the couple, and awkward eyeing of shoes from everyone else, but as the free bar had come to ease the social anxieties of the collected loved ones, all sense of etiquette had rather gone the way of the dodo. Taylor and her fiancé, James Weston, had felt no need to curb the spirits around them- it seemed rather the cruel thing to do as James' friends had attempted to discover a new method of tiddlywinks that involved beercaps and coins. That game and the seeming hilarity of a joke about a duck were Emma's last clear memories. The rest came in great waves of nausea and seemed all to include the words 'settling down, commitment,' and, strangely, 'aluminium.' Emma did not care to look into whatever Freudian meaning there might have been behind that one.
She felt almost as if she should be in mourning. The last of Taylor's boxes had left the apartment the pair had shared since the age of 18, and her dearest friend was really, truly growing up. Growing up and leaving her. With a noise that was a close relative of both, but distinctly resembling neither, a sob and a retch, Emma burrowed herself into a ball in the very middle of the bed, snuggling herself under the duvet and resolving never again to come out. It was then that she heard the knock on the door.
"Sod off!" came the slightly muffled greeting of the beleagoured lump beneath the pastel patchwork duvet cover. Surely there was a rule of etiquette about waking the dead or near-comatose. When the knocking ceased, and was followed by the unmistakeable sounds of fumbling about beneath over-the-door ornamentation, mumbled cursing, and a lock clicking, said lump seemed to twist about to face in the opposite of whatever direction it had once faced, and brace itself.
After a few moments of delicious silence, the door of the bedroom was flung wide, and a distinctly un-lumpy figure strode into the room. Tall, well-built and irritatingly clear-headed, Geoff Knightley managed to fill up a good portion of the small amount of bedroom not filled with bed, chest of drawers or assorted knick-knacks. He had been a friend of Emma's family for as long as she could remember- their respective siblings had fallen in love and raised a brood of three children, two cats, and seven psychotic chickens since their wedding four years previously. If a childhood spent teasing each other had not made Geoff and Emma close, two minutes of sheltering atop a cupboard from a chicken with murder in its eyes had forged a bond that only arctic explorers who had been trapped in the same tent could rival. However, that bond was rather tested when he managed to reach a volume Emma could only label as 'belly-wobbling' and demand that she shift herself out of bed.
"Shan't!" she replied, making sure to latch onto the duvet that was presently her only protection from a world of noises and smells. She was right to do so, in the next moment she felt the great rush of cold air as Geoff tugged at it.
"Shall!"
"Shan't!"
"Shall!"
"Shan't, or your office sees the photos of the treehouse incident."
This resulted in a pause from her tormentor- she had hidden the pictures of a childhood game of dress-up gone all Dame Edna from him and held them as a last resort for many years. Those photos were a blessing, and had saved her from being the one to tell Belle, her sister, about how the eighth chicken had wound up in the back of a car going anywhere else. What she had not expected was to find a new, larger and fresher lump to meet her in her cocoon.
"So, who cried most, then?" the rather clumsily folded new member of the hangover haven asked, fixing her with a smug grin.
---
With her dark hair forming a knotted halo about her head, and her hazel eyes bloodshot and ringed by a mixture of purple bags and last night's mascara, Emma was hardly a sight for sore eyes, and Geoff was kind enough to point this out as he delivered her second cup of coffee to her little nest of blankets and cushions on the couch. She settled into the chaotic arrangement and breathed in the warm scent of the abrosial brew.
"Don't you look at me like that! I need no pity! You forget, I set them up."
At his ease on the other side of the couch, Geoff looked up from his inspection of a cushion that had apparently been fashioned in the vague anatomy of a pig and quirked an eyebrow. "Set them up? I seem to remember James asking Taylor out after staring at her across a crowded lecture hall for two semesters."
"She wouldn't have taken that class if I hadn't told her to," Emma fired back, spearing her tormentor with a glare, and making a valiant grab for her piggie-pillow.
"I hardly think bullying your best friend into taking a class you avoided ninety percent of the time and made her take notes for is deserving of bragging, Em."
"I never brag. But I will happily take credit where credit is due."
Geoff rolled his eyes at the mess perched like royalty in her scruffy little nest, grinned, and launched himself back into the kitchen for more coffee.
As she listened to the sound of more glorious coffee being made, Emma cast her eyes about the living room of her home. It looked so empty, so forlorn. She had all the basics, and of course the necessities such as exercise equipment that had become so used to disuse that any real exercise would probably cause more pain in the mechanical brains of the things than in the muscles of the user, but it had always been Taylor that thought of things like potplants, or tidying. Without her, the apartment had the vague feeling of a hospital staffed only by doctors. Without the nurses, sure the work got done, but it was all hard edges and bad handwriting. She needed a project. She needed distraction.
"What do you think of Elton?"
She watched Geoff blink at the sudden question, then suspicion dawn in his eyes.
"Why?"
"I think he's been single for too long. He could do with a nice girl."
Groaning, he placed the steaming cups on the coffee table, just out of Emma's easy reach, and grimaced at her.
"No, Em. Don't try it, he's not the type to fall into line with your schemes."
Reluctant to leave her comfortable position, Emma flailed her hand pathetically, hoping to give Geoff the hint and be allowed to remain at her ease.
"I'm not scheming, just... helping."
"Well maybe some people don't need your help. Now stop waving at your coffee, it's getting cold."
