Twists Of Fate
By Comparison
So it's been two months since I've written anything. Final papers for class took away all of my creative drive and then I was stuck in a Christmas Break haze that didn't seem to want to let me accomplish anything. I'm not sure how this turned out but I started this fic in the first place because I wanted to write about Emily and now I'm finally getting around to it. Outside of Mike and Sam she's definitely my favorite character. Not sure if I'm completely on the Emily/Jessica train but they worked well here for my purposes. I was listening to Monument by A Day To Remember while writing this. I hope you like it.
Emily leaned back against the brick wall that had been supporting her weight almost singlehandedly for the better part of an hour. She was at the very back of a large group of people surrounding a small podium and she liked it that way. Initially she had tried to give the appearance that she cared about the event she was attending and pay attention, but by now the cigarette in her hand was far more enjoyable than whatever political jargon that Washington's newest State Senator was spouting during his victory lap. Jessica had come with her, partly because she had been the one to convince her to show up in the first place and partly because since everything that went down on Mount Washington they seemed to be spending much of their free time together, not that she was complaining. Jessica was nowhere to be found now though and she was resigned to waiting until they met back up at her car to see her again. She took a quick drag and sighed, he was still talking.
Another twenty minutes and his speech was finally wrapping up. They brought his new fiancé out to the podium and had her stand at his side, the perfect image of a power couple ready to take the political world by storm. A look of determination and calm professionalism dominated her features but Emily could tell that beneath it all she was nervous. Fake smiles were plastered on, pictures for the newspapers were taken, and Emily found her cigarette dwindling down to nothing. She flicked it to the side and leaned back further into the wall. A few more quick photographs and the people of the hour exited the stage. The crowd began to disperse and Emily found herself relaxing, it was almost over. She stuck her hands into her jacket pockets, felt for the knife she kept on her right side, closed her eyes, and began counting backwards from fifty.
"There you are," Jessica's voice disrupted her calm at 35.
"I'm in the same place I was when you left me," she said not bothering to open her eyes.
"I didn't leave you," Jessica said. "It's just, someone had a dog."
"Right," she said. "You're the one that wanted to be here and you didn't even watch."
"I watched," Jessica said. "And regardless of what either of us wanted we needed to be here as a show of support."
"I would have been fine with just hitting the after party," she said.
"It's not every day someone you know gets elected to political office," Jessica said. "What do you think it would have said to Mike and Sam if we only made the after party."
"That we're happy for them, but want to use the opportunity to have fun too," she said. "That's how it works Jess."
"I'm sure Chris and Ashley were here somewhere," Jessica said. "Matt too."
"And," she questioned.
"And I shouldn't have ran off on you like that," Jessica said resigned. "Clearly you didn't have a good time without me."
"Crowds and political speeches are two of my least favorite things so yes the whole event took a nosedive without you," she said.
"Right of course, you said that before," Jessica said.
"Don't blame yourself," she said. "Though I will certainly blame you for dragging me here in the first place."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better," Jessica said.
"Only if you have something to feel bad about," she said smirking. "Now, how about we make it to that after party before the political bigwigs get there and ruin it."
Mike and Sam's apartment wasn't exactly the kind of place one expected a decently sized party featuring the state's political elite to be held, but this wasn't the kind of party where people stuck around long and Mike and Sam were far from the typical political class in any case. Red brick, which was becoming all too familiar to Emily this day, surrounded a sturdy wooden door that may have been mahogany. A similarly sized building with peeling white siding stood on the right side as she approached it and a smaller one with a lot of front window space that may have once been a storefront adorned the left. She had seen the scene multiple times before of course, the first being the day they bought it, but rechecking one's surroundings to make sure that nothing sinister was going on was a survival skill that she figured more people should develop without the help of a crazed friend and urban legends come to life.
A quick ring of the doorbell and Mike, dressed in a suit and tie that didn't look entirely out of place on him, motioned them in. The inside of their place was simple enough, carpeted floors and white walls. A set of stairs heading up sat to the right of the door and a main hallway that led off to the majority of the lower floor's rooms was just left of that. There were a couple of unfamiliar, similarly well-dressed, people nursing drinks in the hallway itself but for the most part it was empty. The majority of the party's "guests" as it was were congregated in the kitchen and adjoining dining room where the food and drinks were. Chris and Ashley arrived shortly after them with Matt also making an appearance after an hour. She made friendly conversation with them and tried not to be too much of a bitch to Matt's new girlfriend with limited success on both fronts. Someone introducing themselves as Mike's campaign manager made several haphazard attempts at hitting on her which she politely turned down. Overall it wasn't that bad considering the majority of the company. Eventually though the party died down and there were only a few stragglers left.
"Look at you Mr. Class President," she said when she found herself standing next to the man of the hour. "You've finally made the big time."
"Having to pretend that I like people that I actually despise for the majority of my day," he said. "Can't say that I completely love it."
"But you like it just enough to keep coming back which is all that's really required," she said. "I didn't just mean the new job though."
"Oh," he said nonchalantly.
"Don't play dumb with me," she said. "You know I'm talking about you and Sam."
"Oh yeah," he said with a hint of nervousness. "I guess things are going well between us."
"You're engaged now," she said a smile breaking out across her face. "I certainly hope so."
"Why do you have to say that like it's a big deal," the nervousness was palpable now. "We've already been living together for three years."
"Are you trying to convince me or yourself," she said smirking.
"You of all people should know that I don't have the best history with commitment," he said. "I didn't even want them to bring it up at the event today but they said it would help my continued appeal or something stupid like that."
"I of all people also know that Sam's different for you though," she said. "You love her and she loves you so it's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I never thought I'd see the day where Mike Monroe settled down to the quiet suburban life, but now that it's here it's a good look on you," she continued.
"You're not doing too bad yourself," he said indicating Jessica and she knew immediately what he was implying.
"It's not like that," she said.
"Look," he said downing the drink in his hand that she hadn't noticed before now. "I know you've never had a girlfriend before or even really a girlfriend for that matter, but that doesn't mean you have to be afraid of it happening."
"Just something to think about," he added before moving to talk to someone else on the far side of the room she didn't recognize.
He was going to make an excellent politician with that kind of smooth talk, not that she was surprised. Three years removed from the events that could have easily resulted in all of their deaths on a frozen mountain top never to be found again and he had his life together better than he had had it before they went to the mountain in the first place. By comparison her life both personally and professionally was nowhere near where she wanted it to be. She longed for the control of her life that she had once enjoyed. A 4.0 GPA and a clear idea of what she wanted to do with it made it so that she could enjoy her last year of high school as much as she wanted to without feeling the weight of an approaching college education. She could still apply to any college she wanted to now and get in, but something about it just didn't feel right anymore. Whatever was going on with Jessica meant that her personal life wasn't faring much better. She had known from the beginning that what she and Mike had had wasn't the kind of thing that would last and that what she had had with Matt wasn't much different, but both had been fun while they lasted. She didn't have a good track record with commitment either and she was afraid that if she gave it a try she might screw it up. That probably made her a hypocrite after everything she had just said to Mike, but she had always been better at dealing with other people's lives than her own.
It was just like on the mountain all over again, Mike and Sam were taking whatever life threw at them in stride and becoming leaders while the rest of them were all scrambling around like chickens with their heads cut off. She made her way outside and fumbled with another cigarette, it was all too much to think about at once and she needed something to calm herself down. She took a drag, closed her eyes, and tried the number counting thing again. A tap on her shoulder that turned out to be Jessica pulled her out and she mindlessly passed the pack from her jacket into her waiting hands before returning to what she had been doing. She didn't know what the future held for her, in fact the possibilities scared her more than the nightmares that visited her every night. Mike and Sam were getting their shit together and she had once been the kind of person that would have sprung into action to match or outdo them just because she could. She wasn't that person anymore, wasn't sure who she was at this point, but for now she was content with the cigarette in her hand, the numbers in her head, and the person next to her. Maybe that was enough.