The apartment they find isn't amazing- it's pretty cramped, shares a wall with a neighbor with at least four small noisy dogs and has hideous shag carpeting. But it's clean, and quiet, and came at a very reasonable rate with a kind landlady who looked at the two of them with the gaze of a doting relative. Compared to the rat hole Emma lived when she first was on her own, it's downright liveable.
And there is a public pool, a few blocks away.
Emma buys a drugstore camera the day they move their meager possessions in. The apartment came with a small wire framed bed and mattress and an especially ugly (but extremely comfortable) couch. Between those, and the mess of things that have been living in the trunk of the bug it's already begun to look more like a home. The picture she snaps of their bedroom just before sunset, when the big window that usually just showed the corner of another building became filled with golden sunlight that flowed in onto the soft flowered comforter she'd rescued from a dumpster, is clipped to the second page of the notepad that Neal's taken to carrying around.
And if Neal sees her tape the picture in, he doesn't say anything. Possibly because she grabs him by the arm and drags him into the apartment's shower even thought it's not even dark outside yet.
"We don't NEED to share the shower anymore, but we CAN" she says, and she strips him and turns the water on hot.
The water stays hot fairly long, and the two scrub the grease and dirt of the street from their bodies, let those days run straight down the drain.
If it goes lukewarm as Neal has her bent over, arms around her belly and mouth on her neck, Emma doesn't notice a bit.
After, when Neal's toweling himself off, and complaining to Emma about how he smells like her cheap apple blossom shampoo now, he asks
"Hungry?"
Emma's stomach growls, even as her brain starts to drift, they ate their pie this morning, and now it's close to dusk
"Already?".
"Always" she says bitterly. She wonders if this is going to be a thing. Getting used to eating regularly again.
They have a small fridge and stove, but no kitchen table or chairs. That first night they sit in the middle of the floor eating straight from containers of Chinese takeout from the restaurant down the street. This lead's to a problem Emma hadn't really foreseen.
"Uh...can you cook?" she asks over a bite of noodles.
"Sort of" Neal says slowly. But even that answer seems to be uncertain.
And the truth itself seems to be more complicated than it should. Emma discovers the next morning when he goes down to the corner store and attempts to cook them both eggs.
The smoke takes almost an hour to completely dissipate, and the landlady almost calls the fire department on them.
Emma doesn't quite understand- Neal had seemed perfectly fine stirring the eggs and pouring them into the pan, but when it came to controlling the stove's heat it seemed as though he had never seen the appliance before!
Later she heats them up soup for dinner. They mostly stick to take out after that.
The bed that came with the apartment is a double, with an aging mattress that's a little lumpy, but clean. It's more than twice the space they're used to sharing in the car, even when they push the front seats forward.
And while Emma still sleeps curled on her back, Neal it turns out is fond on splaying out on his stomach, face first into the pillow.
The third day, when Emma slips out early to go get breakfast, Neal awakens almost immediately, already used to the feel of her body beside him. After a moment's worry, he slides over into the middle of the bed to try to go back to sleep.
He wakes up again when Emma returns with a box of pastries, snapping a picture of him face down into her pillows.
"That's one for the book" she says, setting the camera aside, and climbing back into bed.
She's still wearing the shorts and shirt she sleeps in, apparently having just slid her shoes on to walk to the store.
Taking a bite out of her bear claw, she pulls out a piece of paper and a pen.
"What is that" Neal asks, leaning over her shoulder and grabbing a cheese danish out of the pink cardboard box.
"The market down the street needs a cashier" she says, downcast.
"Do you want to work there?" Neal asks cautiously. Emma's never really discussed what kind of work she would want to do.
She bites her lip. "I was a waitress back in Maine. Always got stuck with the sucky shifts, and people are horrible to you. I hated it. But it's a job they'll give anyone, even someone with my record."
"Wasn't that the job that you left after emptying the register and catching the bus out to Portland?" he does remember her talking about this vaguely when the topics of how they ended up on the road came up before.
She laughs. "They have no proof I did that, so many of the other girls couldn't close the register right, the counts were always off, drove the manager nuts. There was barely enough there that night for my ticket, they could blame it on human error easy. Besides, that was over a year ago, right after I turned 17. I'm 18 now, that and the rest of the stuff will matter less and less as time goes by. I could even get them sealed away if I wanted to." She taps the pen after writing her full name in the space.
Neal blinks "So I guess it's just me who's going to have to get a new identity?"
She looks at him, thinking. "Yeah...if you're going to get a job especially. Those wanted posters had your name and picture, date of birth, everything, use your social security number, and they'll all come right up".
"I don't have a social security number" Neal admits "or a birth certificate, shot records, anything. The birthday and middle name on my ID are made up. I didn't take anything with me when I ran away. The guy at the jewelry store paid me under the table."
Emma has one of her hand's curled up in his hair.
"You're a true man of mystery. Too bad you let them get your picture, otherwise you could always insist it wasn't you. If he didn't have records there would be no way to prove you were that Neal Cassidy."
She tosses the paper and pen off onto the floor, and slides her hips over Neal's lap, pinning his shoulders to the bed.
"Forget getting a job. I'll just keep you as a house slave instead. What do you think? Spend your days cleaning and servicing me sexually"
Taking his cue from her playfulness to stick with the change of subject, Neal grins wickedly, sliding the fingers of one hand under the waistband of her shorts
Even through their mirth, a shadow has been cast over Neal's mind. Emma's plan for moving here and leaving their past's behind had seemed so easy. He didn't know how to admit that he really didn't know where to get a new identity. A new driver's license maybe, but there was so much more to a life in this world. Papers, documents, records of everything. And this isn't exactly the kind of thing that he could go down to the corner store and ask "hey anyone know where I can buy a new life, one crime free?". He'd have to do some digging. There was always someone around willing to buy anything he had, and people who weren't that choosey often knew others who were even less scrupulous.
Later in the week, he takes the day to explore his options. Emma's gone out in search of shoes to wear to her interview. She has a dress that she says should do, but that going in her tights and Doc Martens might send the wrong message.
"No one wants to see the real you in a job interview, they just want to see that you can kiss ass properly and answer their questions exactly the right way."
So, Neal's day follows the paths of the neighborhood's pawn shops, junk shops and vague questions given in the neighborhood dives. Disappointingly, it seems that Tallahassee is extremely upright. He truly doesn't really have much experience in seeking out others of the criminal persuasion. Marcus Weller, the kid who'd gotten him his fake driver's license, had just been one more of the lost and wayward teens at the group home. The six foot five, chain smoking Marcus had been surprisingly soft spoken for his mile long rap sheet. But he'd been a fountain of useful information and connections, ranging from where to get beer without getting carded, to how to slip out of handcuffs. Which may have been the reason that the last time Neal had seen him he'd been making a mad dash for the Canadian border.
Though, while Neal could definitely use a Marcus Weller right now, the day's journey is not entirely unfruitful. By the time he gets home that evening, he has scrounged from various places; a folded up card table and chairs, a microwave with a few sauce stains, and a slightly broken, beat up dresser.
None of them the best, but they'll all do.
Emma shows back up right as he finishes dragging up the dresser into their bedroom and is emptying the last box of their stuff. She's muttering something about heels being torture devices designed by the patriarchy to keep women weak, but she's holding a bag, so Neal guesses she found what she was looking for.
"Hey" he says, "Found a couple of things shopping today. There's just this box left stuff left from the trunk"
Emma tosses her bag on the counter, and grabs the box from him.
Said box is their meager collection of personal possessions. Emma has a pile of tapes and CDs, and a couple of books (she favors true crime and thrillers). Neal's things take up less than 1/3 of the box. From looking at his things, one would think he had sprung up into the world a fully grown adult.
He had some books of his own, more than Emma. She'd teased him to death when she'd found the box in the trunk. Fat, old books written more than fifty years ago. Books she'd only seen in libraries and schools. And she pretended to fall asleep whenever he tried to read to her from any of them, even though she secretly enjoyed it. Especially the one he'd
said he'd been named for.
He pulls out the dreamcatcher from that day in the motel.
"Can always use some flypaper for nightmares" Emma remarks and she takes it and hangs it in the kitchen window.
Neal doesn't tell her that he hasn't had a single nightmare since they've moved in.
The last thing in the box is a fluffy blob that Neal initially mistakes for a car towel until Emma snatches it away, turning slightly red.
"What?"
Emma's clutching the blob, Neal can see now that it's a soft knitted blanket.
"This is the blanket they found me in when I was a baby" she says, eyes gazing at the floor.
"You kept it all these years?" Neal asks, quietly. He knows that Emma doesn't like talking about her past. She's hardly ever mentioned her parents, wherever they are now.
She nods. "It's the only thing I have from my birth parents. I spent so many years wondering. They abandoned me, left me by the side of the road like a piece of trash. Didn't even take me to a hospital where I would be safe. No sign that they loved me at all. But they, or someone they knew, gave me this handmade blanket that has my freaking name sewn into it. It was the only thing that kept me going sometimes. Awful foster home to awful foster home. It was something, anything, that was meant for me alone, even if I didn't know why."
She's near tears now. Neal reaches out and takes her wrists.
"Find a safe place for it. This place is our home, and all of you is part of it. Even the bad parts".
Their faces are so close together that Emma can feel his breath.
"I love you, know that right?"
A smile finally quirks its way back onto Emma's face.
"You damn well better"
The blanket lays, almost forgotten, on the table as the two embrace. Emma has a fleeting thought, of another small, wriggling, creature wrapped up in it, being held by her and the man currently running his lips down her neck.
But it's a thought that she lets drift off, like an early morning dream.