Emma Pilsbury's head was a mess. She was in love with her co-worker, Will Schuester and his crazy wife had just taken the vacancy as the school nurse and was spying at every given opportunity. On top of that, Ken had just asked her to marry him. She enjoyed that she could just let her life melt away for a few minutes as she enjoyed being sat next to Will watching the girls sing their mash up.
Will didn't know what to think any more. His wife was spying on him at work and the woman of his affections had just been proposed to by her boyfriend who wasn't even allowed to touch her because of the germs. When he and Emma were at lunch and she got the mustard off his chin... it was the greatest thing since he discovered Finn could sing and was easily confused.
Once the girls had finished and left the room, Will turned and walked towards her. "Haaa! Emma, can you walk with me?" He leaned towards her over the table and grinned a crooked smile.
Emma's head swam a little and she managed to mumble a "...yeah"
They wandered out of the classroom together and started walking down the hall slowly.
"I think your uhh, I think your plan worked"
"Yeah..." he grinned to himself.
"Instilling a sense of good, clean competition into these kids, I think you really motivated them" Emma smiled up at Will, and he smiled back.
"Actually, I consider you a co-conspirator, we came up with the idea together." He paused ant turned towards her. His mind was instantly rushed with the image of taking her into his arms and never letting go.
Instead, he said "So... is it true about Ken asking to marry you?" He looked at her hopeful that the answer was going to be somewhere along the lines of "yeah but I shot him down"
"Yeah, yeah it is" was not the answer he had hoped for. He couldn't kid himself, his heart sank a little. Emma thought she caught a little bit of hurt on his face. She didn't want to over-excite herself into thinking such things though.
"What're you gonna do?" She looked up into his big blue eyes and instantly saw everything she had ever wanted – she even thought she could hold hands with him without having to wear latex gloves. Then she remembered Terri and the baby and everything fizzled away as fast as it had crept up on her.
"I dunno, can you um, can you think of any other options I might have?"
She answered, hoping for an answer somewhere along the lines of "screw my wife, she's a psycho bitch anyway, let's elope."
What she received, however was "Is that a reason to marry someone?" He looked down at her big doe eyes, and his heart skipped a beat.
She sighed at the man she truly loved. "That's not what I'm asking" she said, and with a last lingering look, walked away. He simply stared and watched her go.
Later, after a visit from Terri warning her off Will and practically threatening her into marrying Ken, Emma went to the gym – despite it going against every clean fibre in her body – and accepted Ken's proposal on her terms. She then went to seek out Will to tell him the news.
Emma walked slowly to find Will. She had to come to terms with the fact that her fantasy had to remain just that – fantasy. She finally located him in the hall.
"Will? I wanted you to uh, to hear this from me. You know Ken um, asked me to marry him?... I said yes." Emma cringed internally at the word.
Will felt a sense of loss in his stomach. He had no right to feel that way about the petite redhead, as she was never his in the first place. He had a wife and a baby on the way. Even so, he wanted to tell her she was better than Ken – Ken was a good guy and all, but Emma deserved the best. Hell, she deserved him.
Emma waited for him to say something to her. In that moment of silence, she felt more for Will than she had for Ken their entire relationship. Ken was a good guy, but he was no Will Schuester.
"That's... That's great..." Will said, a pained smile on his face. Emma smiled up at him, a little in disbelief. She turned to walk away from him, but he grabbed her by the wrist.
"You can't marry Ken." he said in a low voice.
"What? What are you talking about?" She said. Butterflies in her stomach caused her face to flush a little.
"He doesn't deserve you Emma. You're an amazing girl, and you deserve the very best. I love you Emma. I've known it for a while and I couldn't keep it to myself any more. Hearing that was the final straw for me. You can't marry Ken because I love you."
Emma flushed again and looked down at her shoes. The man of her dreams had just finally told her everything she had ever wanted to hear from him. This didn't solve the matter that he was married though. She knew what she wanted to do, and she knew the right thing to do.
"Will, you're married. Terri's having your baby. I love you too, but I can't break your marriage up, as much as I want to. If things were different, who knows what could happen, but for some dumb reason we are who we are in the situation we're in." She looked up at him again and gently removed her arm from his grasp. She tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek.
She continued to walk away, and he walked in the opposite direction. The sound of the silence between them spoke volumes, and the look they shared turning back was filled with an unrequited dream of a love they couldn't share.