Chapter Four: Peepholes, Kinky Briefcase, and the Girl in the Rainbow Scarf
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Life hurtled by after that, faster than even a hare could comprehend. Nineteen-eighty-nine brought with it their impending nineteenth birthdays as well as Spencer graduating from two of his degrees as he moved into full-time post-graduate studies, now with a cemented position among the faculty staff.
Emily fell in love, fell out of love, and fell back into it once more with a regularity that was comforting to the people around her. Her crush on Spencer faded, although never truly went away as it settled into a deep, lingering appreciation of his presence in her life that she'd never really had before, when he'd just seemed like a natural part of her existence. This had mixed outcomes. On one hand, she'd never been gladder for him. On the other, she was now tortured by the thought that, one day, he would leave. Fall in love, get married, move away… any of the above. And she'd be alone. Growing up suddenly seemed more than just independence—it also felt like impending heartbreak, and thus she decided early on that she wasn't going to have a bar of it. Until she was given a reason, she was going to stay exactly as she was and hope that maybe, just maybe, he'd do the same.
Spencer declared himself—after two months of moping, Emily was quick to remind him—healed of heartbreak although, as no one but himself knew, Emily's hand-me-down Walkman remained hidden among his bedding with the one tape within it played almost to death. When no one was there to see him, he listened to the music within and felt sorry for all the things he'd said goodbye to.
And life in the dorms continued much as they always had, with some notable standout points.
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Spencer's moping at some point frustrated his dormmate so much that his response to him, with no warning to anyone, was to walk in with a vase continuing a smuggled kitten, of all things, dumping it on Spencer's lap and informing him that, "No one can be sad with a pet cat, enjoy."
The cat, who took an immediate and firm dislike to Spencer despite the fast that he spent three hours trying to hand feed it pieces of kibble one at a time, thanked them for his new home by sinking his sharp, kitten teeth all the way into the meaty part of his thumb. Four hours later, after receiving a phone call from Emily that was only less worrying because the whole story was recited between giggles, Elizabeth went to the hospital room to find a miserable looking Spencer waiting for a series of shots for his newly swollen hand.
When Elizabeth drove Spencer back to the dorm with his hand freshly lanced and bandaged, the cat was nowhere to be found. Incorrectly, she assumed this was because her nonsense children had gotten rid of it. This assumption would be proven false three weeks later, when the RA of Emily's hall found the kitten—now with a neon-bright collar complete with metal studs and a tag declaring that its name was 'Kinky Briefcase'—fast asleep in Emily's hanging-open underwear drawer.
The animal would have to go, they were told, despite Elizabeth's wry response that at least it was only a cat they were sneaking into the building, since precedent had suggested any pet those two brought home would be far less litter-trainable. Eventually, after a four-month game of cat-and-mouse with the college authorities, as the kitten was whisked from room to room on a hall-wide quest to 'Keep Kinky Safe', this command would come to fruition: for now, however, Spencer and Emily—and the collective floors of their respective dorms—were momentarily united in their honourable pursuit to retain their strange, orange, often-volatile cat.
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Right before graduation, Spencer—on a whim—wandered over to Emily's dorms, finding the place crawling with police for no apparent reason. No one seemed to notice him standing there looking as puzzled as every other student, so he continued his wandering right into the dorm—later he would assume perhaps it was his staff pass pinned to his vest that got him disregarded—and up to Emily's room, where he found her happily chatting to the police woman searching her room.
"Emily," he said warily, staring in.
"Oh, hi, Spence," she said cheerfully. "This is Amy. Amy, this is Spencer."
'Amy' gave him a short look and told him to remain outside the room.
"What did you do?" Spencer asked, already envisioning how fast Elizabeth—who was preparing to leave the country in just under a month and was already tetchy because of the stress of that—was going to pull them out of school if Emily got herself arrested.
"I didn't do anything," Emily said with just as much delight. "I saw them searching rooms and wanted in on that, so I asked."
"She did," said the police woman, looking vaguely amused now. "Apparently it's part of the 'college experience'."
"Wouldn't her asking to have her room searched suggest that there's nothing in here to hide?" Spencer asked, already resigning himself to this madness.
"Or," Emily said with a wicked grin, "I could just be saying that to throw them off my scent and I actually have a ton of drugs in here."
Amy looked at her.
"She doesn't have a ton of drugs in here," Spencer said hurriedly.
"Hey, do you get to always carry a gun?" Emily asked, suddenly zeroing in on the officer's gun belt. "Do they teach you to shoot it? Do they teach you to kick people? Wow, my mom would hate me getting a job where I can kick people. What's the pay like?"
Oh no, thought Spencer, seeing a gleam in Emily's eye that he didn't like.
"Yes, I always carry the gun and, yes, they teach me to shoot it. I've also been taught how, and when, to kick people. I don't recommend working as a police officer purely for the people kicking though." Amy looked like she was hiding a smile, closing the cupboard door and then pausing to open it again. "Why is this coffee can filled with… are these peepholes?"
Spencer looked at the door beside him and the neat round hole bored right through where the peephole should be.
"Apparently they twist right out," Emily said matter-of-factly.
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Doesn't it?" To her credit, Emily really did look puzzled by that. "Are you sure?"
"Are these… your peepholes?"
Spencer began counting backwards in his head, a trick he'd learned from Elizabeth in order to calm himself down when his anxieties were showing.
"I mean, do peepholes ever really belong to anyone?" Emily paused for effect, before adding, "If I promise to put the peepholes back, will you tell me what being a cop is like? I'm considering a career."
Amy, to her credit, obliged.
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The end of the college year rolled around, bringing with it Spencer's graduation and a meeting between Emily, Elizabeth, and the head of dorm residence that basically amounted to them asking politely if Emily would consider off-campus housing the following year. As Spencer would discover later, they were unable to pin Emily for any of the 'misbehaviours' they'd recorded over the past few months, and Emily certainly wasn't admitting to any of them, but she was most definitely suspected.
Elizabeth, deciding to approach this politically, asked Emily to leave and them lashed the Dean with the sharp side of her tongue for insinuating without proof that her daughter had—after consulting the list—been responsible for flooding the entirety of her own floor after stopping up the shower drains with towels or for, as quoted exactly, writing 'Quoth the raven, fuckface' on the RA's door using a can of EZ cheese. And, as for the accusation that Emily had stolen the entire fourth floor's peepholes, that was just utterly ridiculous! Despite this lecture, as soon as she left, she began looking up apartments in areas she felt safe storing Emily in. She was protective, not stupid, and she knew her daughter.
Emily, later, would say to Spencer how offensive it was that they'd accuse her of flooding her own floor. "Honestly," she said with a roll of her eyes, "do they think I have no class? I shower on my floor."
Spencer refrained from asking what was classy about EZ cheese graffiti, wisely deciding that he didn't want to know. And, at least, Emily finding her own apartment would solve the problem of the freshly-rediscovered and re-evicted Kinky, currently asleep in one of Spencer's shoes.
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The dorm, upon being told that Emily was leaving, held an alcohol-fuelled candle-light vigil in honour of her, one that was ended promptly when the long-suffering RA walked out to find that the third-floor boys had 'poured one out' in Emily's memory, right into the carpet outside of her room. Twenty-three write-ups later and following the removal of thirty-nine fire-hazards, the RA was glad to be finally shot of one Emily Prentiss, pain in his ass for two years now… only to return to his room to find another twenty-nine lit candles set up around his room circling a framed photo of a raven, and a sad face made of EZ cheese drawn on the linen of his bed.
The photo, after some deliberation, he decided to keep.
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Emily, despite all attempts by Elizabeth up to and including offering to bankroll her entire rent for her so that she didn't have to space-share, forged ahead determinedly on her own path to independence, finding herself the seediest possible looking apartment in the worst neighbourhood she could find to share with a girl from college and her brother who were both looking for an excuse to leave the dorms. Elizabeth, upon looking at the place, utterly refused to assist financially, operating under the assumption that this would force Emily into leaving and finding somewhere more suitable; somewhere without masking tape holding the window-sills on and a brick acting as doorman on the barred front door of the building.
"I'm not supporting this madness," Elizabeth said, looking around at the interior. The fridge door that didn't fully shut—just shove it a bit, Emily suggested to her roommate as he fought the door for a can of soda—and the blankets used as curtains and the deck chairs instead of a couch. "Honestly, Emily, if this is some kind of rebellion, aren't you far too old—"
"To sponge off my mom, yeah, probably," Emily said fiercely. "Mother, seriously, it's fine. I like it here. The bugs are cute. And fine, don't give me money. I'll get a job."
Elizabeth looked at her.
"I'll waitress or something," Emily added, scowling at the clear disbelief on Elizabeth's face. "Or get a job in a kitchen."
"You can't cook."
"I'll learn!"
Elizabeth threw her arms in the air, before retracting them quickly before they touched a wall, and turned her back on Emily to stalk to the door. "Fine!" she snapped. "Spencer, come on. We're leaving this insanity. Emily, enjoy catching the plague."
Spencer, his nose buried in a book he'd been reading this whole time while ignoring the war going on around him, popped his nose out of the book for a single moment to wish her goodbye, point out that there was a mouse on the counter eating her bread-rolls which Kinky seemed to be ignoring, and to add, "You're probably going to get scurvy from malnutrition."
"Bet I don't," Emily snapped in return, slamming the door shut behind both the meddling nannies, determined to prove them wrong.
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Absolutely no one was surprised the day that Emily sheepishly appeared two weeks into the new college year on the doorstep of Spencer's new post-grad dorm-room, both to ask for a loan to cover sudden electricity bills— "honestly, Spence, I didn't know that they turned it off, what's with that?"—and to question him on the symptoms of scurvy.
Spencer, with a sigh, put aside his grading he was working on and instructed her to drive him to the store. Three hours later, they returned with food to her apartment, where he worked on getting their power reconnected before cooking her a meal he didn't really know how to cook but figured he could work out from the meal-prep booklet he'd been given for free at the deli counter.
They both quickly adjusted to life as it was now. Emily would continue on attempting whatever job she found here and there, waitressing and ushering at a cinema and even one time working at a pet-store, right up until she told the wrong person to do something anatomically inappropriate in a fit of peevishness and ended up right back at Spencer's doorstep guiltily admitting she was late on rent or bills or that she hadn't eaten more than a bread sandwich in two days.
"What's a bread sandwich?" Spencer asked curiously.
"Two pieces of bread around another piece of bread," Emily replied with a certain amount of humour. "And if you think that's great, you should try wet cereal, or sad eggs. Sad eggs are a staple."
Spencer pulled back a little, mouth twisting.
"Honestly," Emily added, "sad eggs aren't bad. They're when you only have eggs so you put them in the pan and just kind of optimistically shove them around. Sad eggs!"
"Oh my god," said Spencer as he vastly readjusted his opinion of whether Emily would survive on her own. He didn't really understand; Emily was so capable when she wanted to be, he couldn't fathom how basic survival functions seemed to be beyond her.
Emily, who was refusing to be anything her mother wanted her to be, including capable, was perfectly content to continue to be a disaster right up until she was given a valid reason to be otherwise.
And that continued.
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The highlight of life in the apartment came about when Emily realised that she could throw her own parties, her roommates eagerly assisting her in doing so. Before long, most weekends were lost to a delicious haze of alcohol-fuelled teenagerdom, with Elizabeth now long settled in Russia and with no adult eyes upon them. Spencer, far from being a calming influence on Emily in this time, placidly allowed himself to be drawn into the madness.
"We're going to get you laid," Emily declared this evening as she placed the finishing touches on her makeup and then turned on him, eyeing his cheekbones thoughtfully.
Spencer turned another page of the magazine he was reading and hummed noncommittedly.
"Come on, Spence. It's been forever since Ethan and you're too pretty to waste. Use your looks before you lose them!"
"I'm not sure that's a valid reason for rushing a sexual encounter," he responded, finally lowering his magazine. "Emily, leave it. I'm happy as I am. Let me be."
"And you can be happy as you are, but while getting a little action." She leaned over, offering him the eyeliner and earning a grumble in return as he tried to wiggle out of the way of her artistic endeavours. Emily was utterly determined to make sure that Spencer lived, sometimes lying awake at night imagining him growing up nerdy and alone and eternally sad, like he always seemed to be ever since Ethan. "Look, fine. I won't help you pick up… on one condition."
"What's that?"
She beamed, Spencer's heart sinking a little at the happy smile. Emily smiling like that always meant that she'd gotten the upper hand on him, somehow, and he only ever sometimes realised in time before she sprung her trap on him.
"If you see someone you're into, you have to tell me," she said with a fierce kind of passion. "Promise?"
Spencer, who was sure he wouldn't, warily agreed.
And Emily sprang into action.
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"Spencer, this is Art," Emily said, dragging a guy through the throng of guests at this party to where Spencer was quietly stacking cups into a pyramid at the kitchen table. "Art, this is Spencer. He's into musical dudes."
Spencer peered through the gap in his cup mountain, groaning a bit when he saw 'Art'. Art, for want of a better description, looked incredibly like Ethan, from his hair to his eyes right to the shy-almost-smile Spencer got when he looked at him. If it wasn't for the fact that this guy was dressed in a far more Emily-esque way than Ethan ever would have, they could have been brothers.
"Emily, no," Spencer whispered, but too late. Emily was already bouncing away, yelling back at them to 'have fun, boys!' "Uh. Hi. Art?"
"Arthur, actually, but people just call me Art." The guy stood there for a second, looking astoundingly awkward before speaking again. "I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be saying? Emily just told me to talk to you…"
Spencer resented her deeply for a moment, before deciding to approach this like Elizabeth: with raw honesty.
"She's trying to hook us up because she thinks I need sex to be happy," he said bluntly, steadying his cup mountain as someone walked past and banged their hip on the table, each cup tottering precariously. "You look like my ex, so she's clearly approaching this from a visual angle."
"Oh," said Art, blinking a bit. "Oh, well. I mean, is that a compliment? A bit? No one's ever approached me from a visual angle before, that's exciting."
Spencer looked at him for a moment. "Sorry, it's not happening," he said finally. "You're very attractive though, if that helps."
"It does," Art answered with a confused kind of grin. "I'm not gay, though. But thanks."
And then he was gone.
"I know," Spencer muttered to his cup mountain, only to sigh two moments later when a flying beer can took the lot out. Weary, he picked up his soda and went to find Emily, who was examining a broken light-switch. Spencer leaned beside her, stating, "It helps if you find people who are actually sexually attracted to me."
"Hey, I'm doing my best with what I have," Emily retorted. "Do you think if I poked that with a screw-driver, it would be fixed?"
Spencer looked at the light-switch, which was cracked so neatly down the middle he could see bare wiring underneath. "I think you should give me every screwdriver you own so I can forestall any attempts at poking that," he said firmly. "And not try any electrical work until you're sober. Also, I'm taping that over."
"You're no fun," she complained, but obliged.
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Three weeks later, it was a guy who Spencer couldn't immediately judge the age of just at a glance.
"I checked his ID, you're good," Emily said, shoving the guy at Spencer and then vanishing into the crowd. Spencer was beginning to doubt her wing-womaning abilities.
"Uh," said the guy, eyes going wide and terrified. "What are you doing?"
"The dishes," Spencer said honestly, lifting his hands from the soapy water and shrugging. "I don't like parties."
The party, heedless to his distaste, went on around them nonetheless.
"Do you live here?" the guy asked.
"No. I'm a friend of Emily's. She complains at me if I don't come."
"Oh." There was an awkward silence, broken only by the yelling and music around them. Spencer waited for him to talk again. "Do you want me to dry?"
Spencer turned and stared, but the guy seemed completely sincere. "Sure? I mean, okay."
Nine hours later, Emily rolled over in her bed and hung over to look down at where he'd made a comfortable bed of couch cushions and blankets on the floor. "When did you get there?" she asked him, frowning and then groaning as her head thumped. "What happened to… what was his name?"
"No idea," Spencer replied honestly. "But we fixed your windowsills and replaced the washer in your bathroom tap, so you're welcome."
Emily blinked owlishly at him. "I don't understand you."
Spencer just shrugged.
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Emily took a different angle next time, pouncing on him on an agreed-upon movie night between the two of them, which he thought wasn't exactly sporting of her. But here they were, and here was Klara, and he was most definitely not enjoying that Klara—with a K—kept using the blankets over them as they watched Terminator as an excuse to try get her hands down his pants. However, out of a desire to 'not rock the boat' as it was, he said nothing.
Emily, who was pretending focus on the movie while actually hyper-focusing on the fixed silence of the couch Spencer and Klara were on, wondered what the hell was going on over there. Her roommates were sprawled on various deck-chairs around the room, narrating the movie as it went and flinging popcorn at each other, and her 'date' for the night, a man named Tom she'd found splattered with paint and stoned out of his mind at a local wine festival and who had hands to die for, was happily discussing the merits French photography on her other side… but the couch was silent.
Finally, on the pretext of offering Spencer popcorn, she turned and looked at them, immediately recognising Spencer's 'help' face when he hit her with a woeful stare that told her where Klara-with-a-K had her hands.
No one complained when she tossed her out, least of all Spencer.
"Honestly, Spencer, you could have said and I'd have kicked her out sooner," she said later when Spencer was eating the pizza she'd bought him as an apology for getting him groped and all seemed to be forgiven. "Not suffered in silence like some kind of martyr."
"I didn't know what to say," he responded through a mouthful of cheese. "But new rule—movie nights are off-limits to your insane schemes, okay?"
Really, she owed it to him to agree. So, she did.
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Two weeks later, she asked him to a group movie trip and he said no, which wasn't unusual. What was unusual was that he didn't give in to her coaxing.
"What could you possibly be doing that's more important than complaining about movie anachronisms while everyone in the cinema tries to shush us?" Emily asked him.
After a moment, he decided to answer, keeping an air of snootiness around his tone so she knew he was only telling her to keep her off his back.
"I'm going out to dinner with someone," he said, waiting for her to demand details.
Instead, she just seemed surprised. Not excited, not curious, not teasing… just, surprised.
He'd wonder about that later.
"Well, have fun," she said. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
And that was the last she said of it.
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Emily didn't know the specifics of how Spencer's mysterious date had gone, and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted them. It was one thing when she was actively encouraging his re-entry into the world of love and heartbreak, but to have him independently meeting people? That felt dangerous. That felt too much like a reminder that one day he was going to meet someone, move on, and forget her completely.
And maybe she was a little jealous, but she'd never admit that.
However, two weeks after when she decided to have a party just for the hell of it, there he was without her even asking, wandering around and answering various trivia questions for the group engaged in what looked like a vicious game of Trivial Pursuit, with shots.
"I didn't even drag you out tonight," she teased him when he made his way over to her and accepted a can of soda. "Look at you, seeking social companionship." And it was killing her not to ask, so she added a nonchalant, "Not seeing your mysterious date tonight?"
Spencer shrugged. "Wasn't a date," he said, avoiding eye-contact. "I might have someone coming tonight, dunno."
That brought a rush of uh oh into Emily's gut as she realised that this guy hadn't just popped in and out of Spencer's life like a candle—that he might not be temporary. Suddenly, she was regretting her plan to get him hooked up with someone—suddenly all she wanted was the Spencer post Ethan, who'd been happier once his heart and healed and, more importantly, with her as his only real sole social outlet.
As soon as she thought that, she paused. Was that really what she wanted? Spencer stuck with hanging with her, because he didn't have other options?
Was she really that small?
But those thoughts vanished ten seconds later, when Spencer tensed by her side with his gaze fixed on her front door. She looked.
And she groaned.
"You're a fucking idiot," she snapped at him, ignoring his spluttered 'Emily, no, wait!' as she put her cup down and stalked over there, ready to unleash unholy hell on them both. "Ethan, get your ass out of here."
Ethan cocked his head at her, giving her a tired smile that had her pausing. It wasn't really an Ethan smile, it just looked worn and sad. "Hello to you too, Emily," he said. "Don't worry, I'm not staying."
"You're not?" Spencer said from behind her, the disappointment in his voice audible.
Idiots, the both of them, Emily decided right then as she jabbed her thumb at the front door and followed them both out. They ended up on the stoop of the stairs, with Spencer sitting on the top, Ethan leaning on the railing examining his thumbnail, and Emily standing beside Spencer with her arms crossed.
"Tell me you're not getting back together," Emily said firmly, ready to be disappointed.
"We're not getting back together," the boys both chimed, Spencer sounded glum and Ethan oddly okay with it.
"Even though you're going on sneaky dinner dates?"
"That wasn't with Ethan," Spencer said. Emily glanced at Ethan, but he didn't seem shocked. "Phil's here with him and wanted to talk to me before we met up, mostly to ensure we weren't going to be stupid. She wanted to invite you too, but I didn't want you to hear what we were talking about… I'm sorry."
For Emily, none of this really made sense. It all felt so clandestine and made her feel fraught, as though there was some whole level of something she was missing and had missed to do with Ethan and Spencer's breakup. Like she was on the outside looking in… like, just as her mother had told her, maybe their story wasn't her story and she wasn't a part or a consideration, at all.
But, looking at her friends, she made the first of what would prove to be a series of very adult decisions.
"Okay," she said simply, deciding that she was fine not knowing if it was important to them that she not. "I guess I'm a little confused as to why you're here, Eth, but I believe you."
"We're leaving tonight," Ethan said quietly. "I'm going back to DC with Phil for a while, taking some time off of college. Maybe focusing on my music for a bit. And I'm going to therapy for… things. Things I should have dealt with a long time ago and I'm sorry I didn't, Spence. I should have done better by us both."
"I just want you to be happy wherever you are," Spencer said. Emily looked from her best friend to Ethan, and saw something between them that landed deep… something she'd never had with any of her exes. Something more.
"Same to you, buddy," Ethan said. "But I'm not worried. You've always been remarkable, and you're always going to be. Right, Em?"
"Right," she said, settling her hand on Spencer's shoulder. "Remarkable."
And, for that moment, he really seemed to believe them.
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It wasn't a remarkable night, the night it happened. It wasn't like it had been for Emily, on a night filled with fireworks and bonfires, a night of celebration. There was no alcohol, no drugs, no regret. It wasn't planned and it wasn't anticipated, but it was special. To Spencer, at least, it was special, despite the fact that it was nothing like he'd expected and maybe, just maybe, it was better because of that.
Five months into Emily's quest to 'wing-woman' for him and he was beginning to suspect she was giving up on him, especially after the last girl. This suspicion was compounded by tonight, when he arrived at the Halloween party they were throwing at her apartment with a feeling of longsuffering commitment to this friend and some hopeful books in his bag; Emily, who'd never let him wallflower before when she was committed to improving his love life, only rolled her eyes at him a little when he found a corner, tucked his headphones on, and began happily reading to the tune of one of Ethan's songs while the party raged around him. The party-goers, well used to him, left him alone except to occasionally drunkenly offer him alcohol, which he declined.
Emily staggered over to him at one point, clumsily tugging his headphones from his head and earning a wry look as he tried to avoid being strangled by them as she listed violently to the left.
"You're a book," she declared, pointing at him and almost jabbing him in the eye. "This is Alice, she also likes… books. So you can book together."
And then she was gone, leaving Spencer sitting there with his books and tangled headphones, looking up at the girl she'd left behind. His first thought about her was that she was plain and nervous-looking, tipping back onto her heels to study him.
Then she smiled and he quickly and irrevocably adjusted that opinion, because there was something in that smile that was utterly captivating. There was nothing shy about it. It was an Emily smile on a face that wasn't like Emily's at all… somehow.
"Well, hi there," Alice said. Spencer sat dumbly, noticing everything: her straight, dark hair and her rainbow scarf and the way her jeans stopped before the feet so he could look down and see a thin, golden anklet blinking light at him every time she shifted her foot. Her smile was crooked and she had a mole under one eye, the eyes that crinkled a bit when she smiled with her entire expression. "Sorry, Emily didn't tell me your name? Just said something about you being a book…"
"Spencer," Spencer said, remembering his manners and standing in a cascade of books and his Walkman, shoving his hand out to her while trying to stoop to catch things at the same time. It failed, he over-balanced and tipped, and she grabbed his hand to stop him falling.
In that quiet space he'd marked out as his in the middle of Emily's chaos, suddenly there was another. And, when he was safely on both feet and no longer in danger of falling, she didn't let go of his hand.
"This is blunt of me," Alice said with that same all-consuming smile, "but I really don't like parties… I got dragged here kicking and screaming, except I'm not quite as resourceful as you about it apparently. Do you want to bring you, and your books, outside with me, maybe? I'd love to talk about them."
"I'd love that," Spencer said breathlessly. It only took a moment to find Emily and tell her he was leaving, earning an uninterested wave as she cheered on someone drinking alcohol from a shoe.
As they walked out the door, Alice took his hand.
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They did end up outside, for a short time. Spencer read to her from the book he had been reading, before asking her her favourite book and then reciting that from memory just to see her smile with wonder. She wasn't shy, perched on the wall near Emily's apartment building with one leg crossed over the other, the anklet catching light with every car that passed, quizzing him about his memory and his studies and his life—but in a way that made him feel real, somehow, like he really was fascinating to her. Like he was someone she was connecting with, not just a person passing by.
She asked about Ethan's music and he, for some reason, told her about Ethan. And then he told her more, feeling that something deepen between them as the night darkened and made it solely them. He even told her about that night, the night that had torn them apart.
She was quiet for a bit after that. A cool breeze kicked up and she shivered. It felt like the most casual thing in the world to slip his arm around her, letting her curl into his coat just like Emily would, except she was different in so many intangible ways to Emily. There was none of Emily's insecure need to please; Alice just seemed sure that he was talking to her so he must be interested, without trying to gauge for disinterest like Emily often did. She didn't flaunt her individuality like a shield, she just was. And she wasn't confident on the top but frantically overcompensating underneath, she was just confident, something Spencer recognised and envied deeply. When Alice told him about her studies and her interests and her life, she was focused and assured and dedicated, and that combination was alluring enough to leave him dizzy. He was reminded, forcefully, of how heady it had always felt to watch Ethan sing, when the man had been well and truly in his element and revelling in it.
When she wrapped her rainbow scarf around him and her both, he let her, just as he let her kiss him when she initiated that too. She was a stranger, someone he barely knew, but it didn't feel like it right now.
"You fascinate me," she murmured against him. He'd never forget the scent of her scarf, or the way her eyes looked at that moment. "If I asked you to come home with me, would you?"
He hesitated, but only for a second. "I've never…" But it felt like assuming, despite her hand on his chest and the leftover warmth from her lips on his. What if he was misreading her interest?
Really, deep down, he was just as insecure as Emily, even if he'd discovered tonight just how much this actualised confidence in another person captivated him.
She paused, looking at him and cocking her head.
"I don't mind," she said, "if you don't. I get if you don't want to, but if you're up for sex, I'm really into you. You're cute as hell. But it's no commitment, I'm just looking for a night—it's not like it was with your ex, I promise. There's no pressure, but hey. Your choice. Maybe it'll be good for you, to not have to perform up to this standard you've set in your mind about how it should be."
He was also beginning to suspect that he'd been wrong when he'd told Emily how disinterested in casual sex he was; as soon as she confirmed that it was just a night, far from being disinterested, suddenly the prospect felt a thousand times less dangerous. Just a night—it wouldn't, couldn't, be like Ethan. There was nothing here to ruin except a single, forgettable night with one brilliant woman, this girl who enchanted him so completely with all her easy competence. And maybe, just maybe, it might not be so forgettable. Whatever had gone wrong with Ethan, whatever horrible mistakes he'd made… they wouldn't be repeated with her.
"I don't think I want just sex," he stumbled out, trying to understand what his brain wanted and didn't want and what was a product of this pretty girl who really liked him and who he really liked in return.
"Good," she replied. "I'm not offering just sex. Just because we're never going to see each other again, doesn't mean it's worth nothing. Sex doesn't need to be some passionate endeavour with your one true love to be important, you know? Maybe I'll forget you, or maybe I'll be eighty-eight and still talking about the cute guy with the wavy hair and the gorgeous eyes. Isn't that important too?"
In the end, where she went, he followed.
And it was gloriously okay.