Standing alone at Gate 23 watching Paige walk away, Emily's heart shattered. She stood blankly replaying what had just happened in her head. The tears that she determinedly held back in front of her girlfriend were now running uncontrollably down her face. She stumbled onto a ripped blue chair afraid that her body was going to give out like her heart just had. Starring out into the starry night watching the planes depart taking people on-board far away from Rosewood she thought to herself: Paige was gone, Alison was gone, Maya was gone. She was officially the girl that everybody left.
A few weeks passed and as per normal, or at least what Emily now perceived to be normal, the A drama persisted. A change fell over Emily in the weeks following Paige's departure. She seemed stronger, spoke with more conviction, and was more hell-bent on ending A's game. When her friends questioned her change in demeanour Emily simply responded that she needed to protect the only people in her life that didn't leave her. But through this new-found strength a sense of hurt radiated. Emily was not lying to her friends. She did mean to protect them. Everything felt more important now, like there was more on the line. Ending A's reign over her life was no longer a game, it was the only way to make Rosewood a safe place so that Paige could come back home.
Across the country, Paige was beginning her third week in California and she was completely overwhelmed. She remembered Emily telling her stories of her constant moving due to her Dads job in the armed forces; stories of new schools and new friends. Unlike Emily she had never moved before this, this was supposed to be her new beginning … her fresh start. Since she had enough credits to graduate she didn't have to attend high school in her new city. Instead, to keep from going crazy unpacking all of the boxes in her family's new house, she got a job lifeguarding at a YMCA pool. It was a very big town, nothing compared to Rosewood, and it was hot year-round so there was pretty much always somebody in the pool. She had already saved two old ladies doing pool aerobics from drowning. But no matter now busy her job keep her, her mind never wandered far from what Emily was doing at any given moment. She had been too afraid to call her girlfriend, merely the sound of Emily's voice let alone the hearing her beg Paige to come back would immediately break her resolve and send her right back into the dangers of Rosewood. It had been a couple weeks though, Paige thought to herself as she adjusted the bright red lifeguard bathing suit that they only had two sizes too small. One small text just too see if she is okay. How bad could that go? Immediately determining that her intuition was correct, Paige pulled out her phone from her backpack she kept near the edge of the pool. She carefully composed a text to Emily that read, Hey. It's been awhile. How've you been?
It was 3:21pm and Emily was just getting out of school. After saying goodbye to her friends she walked to the school parking lot, got into her car and plugged her phone into the USB drive in her speaker system. Just before pulling out of the lot, she heard a beep on her phone. Texts nowadays were usually a means for concern so she put her car back into park and braced herself for the next insult from her nemesis, A. But instead she found a text from Paige. Her heart raced, which she immediately found strange considering the amount of texts that they had exchanged between the pair of them over the years. It was a simple text, nothing special, no news of her new life or confessions of love. Just a simple greeting. Emily's mind raced and she figured that she should conduct herself a bit before responding so she continued on her drive to work trying not to completely overreact. Once she got to the Brew, the coffee shop she was barista at, she noticed a line of angry customers circling the inside of the shop. Apparently her co-worker had a bit of an accident with the cappuccino machine leading to a trip to the ER and they were running short on staff since this morning. It remained busy until around 8:00pm when Emily was finishing her shift. It was then that her mind stopped thinking about iced mocha lattes and chai green teas that she remembered the text from earlier. Without thinking she pressed her speed-dial to call her girlfriend just as she had done a thousand times before. A few seconds later she had realized what she had done and went to hang up anonymously when she heard a familiar sound on the other side of the call, "Hello?"
Paige hadn't had the heart to let the phone call from her girlfriend go to voicemail, so instead she snuck outside onto the front porch steps of her new Californian home, took a deep breath and answered the call. Emily seemed startled when Paige first answered and Paige imagined that she didn't think she would pick up. Immediately regretting her decision, Paige heard Emily say "Ummm … Hey". And with that Paige knew she was screwed.
