Emily couldn't believe that she was driving her Toyota, packed to the brim with all her worldly possessions, through the Arizona desert in August. When she graduated from UC Berkeley in May her parents had begrudgingly agreed to support her decision to remain in California. They agreed to help her financially for three months; however, if after three months she were unable to be self-sufficient she would return to their home in the Dallas suburbs.
So there she was—driving through the desert in her old Toyota in order to move to a place that had never been her home. The August after Emily graduated from Rosewood High she moved to California and never looked back. That September her parents sold her childhood home in Pennsylvania and moved to Texas. After high school Emily's friends had also left Rosewood—Spencer was accepted at Oxford and had been in the UK ever since; Aria followed Ezra to a small liberal arts college in Iowa; and Hanna spent two semesters at Penn State. After spending two semesters studying business, Hanna made the decision to move to New York City in order pursue her passion for fashion. Amazingly she was able to convince some famous designer to give her an internship that actually turned into a permanent paid position.
Paige had been Emily's only other tie to Rosewood. Paige had been recruited to swim for the University of Michigan. They had tried to make the long distance relationship work, but after one semester it became abundantly clear that the physical distance was too difficult to manage. For the first month or so, Emily and Paige would spend several hours each day either on the phone, or chatting on Facetime. Paige even flew out to Berkeley over the fall break. The visit had been amazing—they spent most of their time together holed up in Emily's dorm room reconnecting physically. Once Paige left, Emily felt incredibly alone. She had made plenty of friends on campus and in town, but she missed the intimacy she had with Paige.
After fall break Emily and Paige tried to make the distance work, but as time wore on the separation became untenable for both of them. As Emily began to grow closer with some of the girls in her dorm and on the swim team, the amount of time spent talking to Paige began to decrease.
The summer before they left for university they had made plans to spend winter break together. Emily had let her parents know that she would be with them in Texas for Christmas, but she had planned on spending the rest of her break in Rosewood with Paige and the other girls. Those plans fell through after Thanksgiving once Paige's father informed her that the whole family would be spending Christmas break with their extended family in Colorado. She tried to talk her way out of it by saying she already had plans, but Mr. McCullers would not budge.
The reality of not being able to see one another until spring break in late-March was too much for Emily to handle. She ended up spending that winter break with her parents in Texas. Being with her family had been nice, but because she had no friends in Texas, Emily had too much time to think. The result of all this thinking was the decision to end things with Paige. She knew that she loved Paige, but she could no longer deal with the distance.
Emily got back to Berkeley the Friday before her spring classes were scheduled to start; her roommate was not due back until Sunday, so Emily decided to have the talk with Paige that Saturday afternoon. In some ways their conversation was easier than Emily had imagined. In her head, she had thought Paige would freak out and insist that they try to make their relationship work. In reality there were a lot of tears, but Paige ultimately agreed that being apart was not working for her either. They agreed to remain friends and keep in touch with one another.
The next few months were difficult for Emily. Intellectually she knew they had made the right decision, but she felt emotionally devastated. Emily's new friends tried their best to distract her and get her to meet new girls, but she wasn't ready. For the first two months after the breakup, Paige and Emily continued to call one another weekly. Hearing Paige's voice always comforted Emily, but after the call ended she would feel empty once again.
Hanna was incredible after the breakup. She would call or Skype Emily nearly every day to check in on her. She could see that Emily was not getting over Paige and suspected that it was due to their decision to remain "friends". Hanna was constantly telling Emily that she needed to let some time pass before they work on becoming friends. Hanna would repeatedly tell Emily that she should impose a two to three month period of no contact in order to heal. When Hanna would mention the no contact period Emily would close off and say that was the exact opposite of what needed to occur.
Everything changed at the beginning of March. Emily was having a particularly bad day—she had bombed her Calculus II midterm and the swim coach had called her into her office because her swim times had been on the decline. Early into the breakup Paige and Emily had decided to try to Skype every Sunday evening at six; sometimes they would have to reschedule due to school commitments, but they had never missed a week. Without thinking, Emily called Paige in tears after leaving the coach's office.
After a couple of rings, Emily heard an unfamiliar female voice answer Paige's phone. Emily stammered, "Umm, hi. I'm trying to reach Paige." The girl responded, "Just a sec, let me see if she's out of the shower." Emily heard the girl say, "Hon, are you out of the shower? You have a call." She then heard a muffled Paige say, "Not yet. Tell them I'll call them back later." Before the girl could get back to her, Emily hung up.
Emily dropped her phone on the ground and stood in front of her dorm sobbing. Paige was clearly seeing someone new and hadn't told her. Emily's mind was going a mile a minute; Paige had clearly been seeing this girl for a while because she called Paige "hon". Had she started seeing her while they were still together? Was she in love with her?
Before her mind could go any farther, Emily noticed her phone ringing on the ground. She froze when she saw Paige's picture on the screen. She stared at the phone and let the call go to voicemail. After the phone stopped ringing she picked it up and threw it in her bag. Emily wiped the tears from her face and made her way into her dorm. She was relieved to find that her roommate was not there. She kicked her shoes off and threw herself on her bed. She buried her head under her pillow and started to sob once again. Eventually Emily fell asleep; by the time she woke up, it was completely dark outside. She looked at her roommate's alarm clock and saw that it was after nine—she had slept for more than three hours. She noticed her roommate was still absent, so she got up and looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her face was blotchy and covered with dried snot and tears.
She grabbed some reasonably clean sweats, a t-shirt, and her shower kit and made her way down the hall to the communal showers. Thankfully the showers were empty, so she made her way to the one she knew had the best water pressure. She closed and locked the stall door in the small changing area outside of the good shower and slowly got undressed. Instead of folding and stacking her dirty clothes into a neat pile, she just left them where they fell.
Emily turned on the water and gave it time to heat up. Once it was warm enough she stepped in and let the water flow over her body. She stood there without moving for quite some time. She was jarred out of her trancelike state when she heard another girl enter one of the other stalls. Emily got out her shampoo and began washing her hair. She quickly finished showering and stepped back into the changing area. She dried off and hurriedly put her sweats and t-shirt on, grabbed her shower kit, and darted back to her dorm.
When she got back she found that her roommate had been there and had left a message for her on the dry erase board saying that she would be spending the night in her boyfriend's room. Although she liked her roommate, Emily was relieved to have the room to herself. Emily threw her dirty clothes in the hamper and tossed her shower kit back in the closet; she pulled a brush through her hair and pulled it back into a ponytail.
Emily took a deep breath and decided to check her phone. She pulled it out of her bag and saw that she had several missed calls, texts, and voice mails. Most of the calls had been from Paige, but there were also a few from Hanna. Emily summoned all of her courage and began to check her voice mail. The first message was from Paige—she wanted Emily to call her back. The next message came about ten minutes later—Paige sounded more frantic and was begging Emily to call her back so she could explain. There were five more voice messages from Paige—each growing more frantic.
The final message was the longest. In it Paige said that she had started seeing Marni—the girl who answered the phone—about a month ago. She said that she wanted to tell Emily, but didn't know how. She said that she had met Marni the first week of school and they became quick friends. Paige kept saying that she wanted Emily to know that nothing had happened with Marni until after they broke up. Paige kept saying that she never meant to hurt Emily and that she would always love her. The last thing she said was that she wanted Emily to call her when she was ready to talk.
The next several messages were from Hanna. Apparently Paige became worried when Emily wouldn't respond to her calls or texts, so she called Hanna to let her know what was going on. Hanna said that when Paige told her what happened; she laid into her and told her in no uncertain terms to leave Emily alone. Hanna sounded much more concerned in her second message—she said she was worried about Emily and wanted her to call or text ASAP just to let her know that she was okay. Emily was overwhelmed by all of the information she just received. She just wanted to wallow in her solitude, but knew that if she didn't call Hanna, she would freak out and call Emily's mom.
Emily took a deep breath and called Hanna. Hanna picked up on the first ring and berated Emily for not calling sooner. Emily was right; Hanna had been about five minutes from calling Emily's mom. Once Hanna calmed down, she started asking how Emily was doing. Emily said she really didn't know—it was a lot to process all at once. Before Emily could say anything else, Hanna informed her that she would spending her spring break in Berkeley with her. She said that she was going to force Emily to get out and have fun. Hanna also mentioned being excited about going to the beach to soak up some of that California sun; Emily didn't have the heart to tell Hanna that the beaches in northern California were not really sunny this time of year—in fact, she would probably be more comfortable in a wool sweater and boots than in shorts and a tank top.
By the time she got off the phone with Hanna she was feeling a little better. She had convinced Emily that she needed to give it some time before she talked with Paige. As hard as it seemed, Hanna was probably right—she needed to get herself together before she could deal with Paige.