Emma could see the skyline growing clearer the closer she got. The big city, it had been a while since Emma had spent any time in a place like this. She was looking forward to a change of pace. It had been a long couple of months. She and Neal had fought so much before she finally decided to move out. Of course she probably should have lined up somewhere new to live before she stormed out, but planning had never been one of her strengths.
And so she was stuck living in her car until she could find an apartment and a job to pay the rent. Luckily this was something she was used to. She had lived in a car off and on for months before she settled down with Neal, if you could call that settling down. Life with Neal had never been calm. He had never done well at holding a job for long and the fighting was a common occurrence. But finally she'd had enough. She needed stability, something she knew she would never have with Neal. And so she'd set out on her own once again.
Perhaps it was better this way; letting people into her life had only brought her pain, pain she wanted so desperately to leave behind. She dreamed of being someone else, someone who had lived an easier life, a life free of the heartbreak she'd endured. Perhaps that was the answer, becoming someone else. She was starting over in a new place. Nobody knew her here. She could be someone new, someone who was still hopeful. Yes, she liked this idea. She would reinvent herself, start over as completely as she could. Now she just needed to decide who she wanted to be.
The first thing she would need in order to reinvent herself would be a new name. She would never be able to escape her past completely if she was still going by Emma. But there were thousands of names to choose from, so many ways to go. It should be something short and simple, she would have to be able to remember it after all. She thought back to the people she'd met and the stories she had been told throughout her life and one person seemed to stick out.
The memory of the last time she saw her was just as clear in her mind as if it had been yesterday. It was the day before she finally decided to run away from the group home she had been in. She was standing outside as yet another little girl got adopted instead of her. She could still remember how completely unwanted and alone she had felt that day. But she also remembered how she put herself into that little girl's place, how she imagined what that girl must be feeling. She imagined the feelings of hope and joy that must have been running wild in her head at that moment, finally feeling wanted and loved.
That event had actually been the final push Emma needed to leave. She was sick of watching from the sidelines while more and more of her friends got what she had always wanted, a family. Maybe she could use that girl's name to start her new life. Maybe doing so would bring her a bit of the luck she so badly wanted. At the very least, it couldn't hurt. So it seemed she had made her decision. She would start this new era in her life as Ruth.
She spent the next several days looking, first, for a job and then a place to live. Both pursuits proved more challenging than she has expected. She needed a job to get an apartment and there was a noticeable lack of available jobs, especially in what she wanted to do. Despite what others thought about her based on her often hard exterior, Emma loved working with and helping kids. For a while after she set out on her own, she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. She wasn't even sure if she had what it would take to make something of her life. But she couldn't stop thinking about how she wanted to do what she could to help keep other people from having the same life she had been forced to endure. She wanted to help make a better life for children in the system.
And so she looked and looked until she found someone who would hire her. She wasn't exactly the most eligible candidate for most jobs; she was just a young girl with no family, no diploma and no real skills to speak of. It was nothing much, just a maid job at a local hotel, but it allowed her to make a small life for herself and even get her GED. The next step had been a little more difficult. College was expensive, but she knew that if she wanted to be a social worker, she would need a degree. She put every penny she could towards paying for school. It wasn't enough, but with a few loans she was finally able to graduate.
She was lucky enough to find a good job almost right away and she worked as hard as she could to pay off all of her student loans. She didn't want that to hold her back now that she was finally making something of her life. She was actually starting to feel happy about where she was, something she had wanted for so long. She felt like she was making a difference, no matter how small it was, in the lives of foster kids. The idea that maybe just maybe she was making their lives even a little bit better was more than she could have hoped for.
But now that she had decided to leave her old life and start over, that meant leaving the job she'd had since she was just out of school. That job had been an anchor of sorts for her and now that it was gone, she felt a little lost. It certainly didn't help that none of the offices in this city seemed to be hiring at the moment. She would have to look for something else.
She spent three days driving around the city looking for somewhere to work. Finally she found something. There was a day care that was looking for someone. It was not at all what she was hoping for, she would much rather have been working with kids who were stuck in the system like she used to, but she supposed it was better than continuing to live out of her car. At least if she took this job, she would be able to rent an apartment to live in while she looked for a job she really wanted.
She went in to the day care office and talked to the woman there. They were desperate for help. The woman took one look at Emma's resume and told her she could start next week. Emma was relieved to finally have something in her life to begin to rebuild the stability she was missing more and more as time went on. Now she just needed a place to live, which hopefully would be easier to tackle now that she had the promise of money to pay the rent. By the end of that day, she had found a place and signed a lease. She would have to wait a few days to move in so it looked like she would be stuck living out of her car a little longer. But she didn't mind so much anymore knowing it would be over soon.
Monday evening, she walked up the stairs of the building where she would now be living, tired after a long first day at work ready to finally start settling into what was now her apartment. She was too focused on her phone to notice that while she was walking up the stairs someone else had just entered the stairwell from the doorway she was headed for. She looked up just in time to notice him as she bumped into him, almost falling backwards down the stairs in the process.
"Woah! Watch out." the stranger asserted instinctively.
"I'm sorry. I really do need to be more careful about watching where I'm going. But I hardly think it's completely my fault. You came through that door pretty quickly."
"I'm not the one with their nose in their phone, love."
"Love? Really?" He was one of those guys, full of himself. He was handsome and well aware of that fact.
"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend. It's an old habit."
"Whatever you say." She was very ready for this conversation to be over so that she could get inside and finally sit down. She started back up the few remaining steps and reached out to open the door. But before she could open the door and step through, the man spoke to her again.
"The name's Killian. Killian Jones."
She ignored him. She had no desire to start a relationship of any kind with anyone at this point. She just wanted to go about her life. She moved to go through the door to exit the stairwell and find her apartment. But it seemed he wasn't going to let her off that easily.
"What? Do I not get to know your name too? We are neighbors and we will probably run in to each other again and it would be nice to be able to use your name when that happens. Although, hopefully next time we won't literally run into each other."
"Fine." she said, realizing that he wouldn't let her leave until she gave in. "The name's Emma."
She quickly stepped through the door pulling it closed behind her so as to keep him from trying to continue to conversation further.
But as soon as she stopped on the other side of the door to figure out which way she needed to turn, she realized what she had said. She had been so distracted by the stranger, by Killian, that she had completely forgotten her entire plan, she'd given him her real name. She headed off to find her apartment, hoping that she would never have to see him again and she would just be able to follow through with her plan and move on.