About three or four hours of traffic and country roads alike, David pulled his truck to the curb of their apartment building. Storybrooke, Maine, as it was, was the quintessential American town. Small enough for everyone to know their neighbors, white picket fences, family-owned and run shops, Emma's hometown was little more than the blinking traffic light on Main Street. That was about 80% of the reason she'd decided to even apply to a university further away: Portland was the closest city, and it was at least an hour's drive on a good day. Sure, she'd always be the small town girl she was raised as, but everybody's should experience more than that in their life, shouldn't they?
The car ride was spent ignoring the elephant in the room, (or, rather, vehicle) but not in silence. David inquired into other aspects of his daughter's life, from her professors' attitudes to the basketball team's season thus far. She, in turn, asked about the cases he was working on and the well-being of the officers and staff she knew he worked with. It was nice, just catching up with her dad. It was something she wished she did more often, but never thought about until after the phone line had gone dead.
He insisted on carrying all but Emma's handbag up the three flights to their door ahead of her. Normally, she would've protested, but after his persistence in front of Killian and their traveling conversations, she despaired to ruin the moment.
From the second she glimpsed the bronze 3 on the green door, Emma, in a biological mystery, felt herself simultaneously tense and relax. Her father unlocked the door and it swung open, revealing the old-style loft she'd grown up in. The kitchen table she'd done hours of homework on sat just to the right of the entrance, across from the stairs she'd embarrassingly tripped up multiple times a day. The living room, petite though it was, was beyond that, the television turned on but muted. Her mother had the habit of keeping it on while she was cooking dinner, if for no other reason than to keep her on her toes.
That's where she was now, fluttering from the oven to the stove and back. When Emma closed the front door, Mary Margaret halted in her fussing and, completely ignoring her husband's outstretched arms, hurried over to her daughter. Emma didn't even have time to drop her bag on the table, and she stumbled backwards at the force with which her mother enveloped her.
"Emma, honey," she mumbled into her neck. Emma eagerly returned the embrace. Mary Margaret pulled back and surveyed her, rotating her by her shoulders and barraging her with questions. "How are you? How are you feeling? Are you hungry? How's your morning sickness? Do you have any? I remember when I was pregnant, it wasn't so much morning sickness as it wa-"
"Mom," she laughed out. "I just got home. Give me a little time and I'll answer all your questions." Mary Margaret stopped, but, after finishing her inventory of Emma, soon opened her mouth to continue. Emma grasped her mother's arms and solaced her. "I'm fine. Really. I'm starved, in fact." Leaving her mother's embrace, she walked behind the kitchen island to see what was on the stove. It smelled heavenly, whatever it was. "What's for dinner?"
"Spaghetti," she answered, finally welcoming her husband home with a chaste kiss on the lips.
"How much longer do I have to wait for real food?"
Both her parents laughed. "You're actually right on time," Mary Margaret happily announced. "The noodles'll be ready in three or four minutes." She looked to the bags still in her husband's arms. "Honey, put those down. Emma can deal with them after dinner. Both you go wash up."
After some grumbling, Emma took some of her stuff up to her room, allowing her father time to brief her mother on the situation. They had no secrets, either because they simply knew when there was something to say or her mother couldn't keep anything hidden. She turned the knob to her room, and opened it up to find the dying sun's rays stretching like a cat on her carpet. Nothing had changed since she was home last, at least not at first glance. Emma dropped her bag to the ground and washed her hands in the adjoining bathroom.
When she returned, she wrenched open her cedar wardrobe (10-year-old Emma thought it was a brilliant idea to stick her diary in between drawers and the storage unit never really recovered from it) and dug through it for something comfy she could spend the rest of the night in. Finding a pair of ragged pair of sweatpants and a high school track shirt, she quickly exchanged her school clothes for their more comfy alternatives. Then she flopped backwards on her bed, waiting until her mother yelled for her.
She remembered being a little girl in this room: the dollhouse in the corner, covered in dust, and the stuffed animals above her head stood as a testament to those long-gone years. She'd lost her first tooth in this room, precariously placed it under her pillow and prayed the Tooth Fairy would appreciate it. The number of nightmares and dreams she'd had in this room were infinite, but she always woke in the morning comforted by the familiarity her warm walls had offered.
This was her home if there ever was one. It reflected her evolution from a girl to a woman from the variety in the titles on the shelves to the clothes in her closet. It had been a subtle change, one that she only fully recognized now that it was about to change again. From the safe haven of a little girl to the home of a mother and child.
Lots of changes coming.
"Dinner!"
Emma sighed and, just as she did when she was younger, struggled to get up from the fluff of her bed. She hopped down the stairs, keeping a tight grip on the railing (she was famous for tripping both down and up them) and slid gracefully into her seat at the table just as David placed a steaming serving bowl of spaghetti in the center. The trio served themselves and all stayed quiet for a little bit, except for the clacks and scraps of silverware against plates.
Mary Margaret was the one who finally broke the silence. "So you've got an appointment tomorrow at noon. You'll be up by then?" she asked.
"Yeah, of course," Emma assured her. Setting her fork down, she added, "Thanks again, Mom, for calling them."
Lips pursed, her mother nodded, focusing intently on the swirl of pasta on her fork.
"You're going with her?" her father inquired, a twirl of noodles halfway to his mouth.
"Of course."
Silence ensued once more, Emma picking at her plate, until David sighed and asked the question that had been on his mind since he pulled into the parking spot at the university. "So do we get to know anything about this entire situation or are we going in blind?"
His daughter groaned. "Look, I want to tell you about my sex life as much as you want to hear it," she addressed them. She put her fork down again, this time permanently. This conversation was inevitable, she knew, but still. It ruined her appetite. "It was just a mistake."
"Emma," Mary Margaret reprimanded her, "how did this happen? Did you forget to use a condom or something? Could this have been prevented?"
Alarms rung throughout her head. Lie, lie, lie. She was already disappointing her parents to an immeasurable degree. Knowing that she had put herself in this situation would be the nail in the coffin. LIE.
"It just happened," she settled for. "It could've been prevented, but apparently the condom thought otherwise." Not a complete lie, she thought. That'll do for now.
David harrumphed in vague satisfaction. "So long as you were being safe."
"Don't worry," she guaranteed them, her hands coming up in place of a white flag. "No chlamydia or the likes here."
Mary Margaret groaned at her daughter's crassness. Emma internally smiled. Her style of speaking had gotten a bit more vulgar since going away to school and sometimes she just forgot to censor it when she came home.
All business, David asked "And the father?" In between bites of salad, he added "What about him?"
Emma shook her head. "We just hooked up a couple times, nothing real serious. I haven't told him yet, and I'm not sure I'm going to."
Her parents shared a look before Mary Margaret gently said, "He deserves to know, Emma."
"And I deserve to get a college education without worrying about a child of mine somewhere else," she replied. Anger rose up in her. This was typical of her mother: never knowing the entire story, she judged that everyone deserves a second chance. Always believed the best in everyone. It's how she and her father even ended up together. Mary Margaret also had this naïve idea that you only ever fell in love once, and that person was always your first love. And, honestly, if Neal was all Emma had to look forward to for the rest of her life, maybe she was better off without one. "If I judge that this picture will be better off without him, then he can take his pity and use it for some other girl."
Both sets of eyebrows shot up across the table from her, as did the tension level in the room. She had to repress a smirk, her lips rolling inward, because the motion remind her so much of Killian. Who, suspiciously, always seems to come to my attention at the most inopportune moments. "How very decisive and adult of you," her father commented.
"Really though," Emma agreed. Waving her hand like royalty dismissing court, she decreed, "No more decision-making for me today. I've filled my daily quota."
The table burst into laughter, successfully diffusing the tension temporarily. "I think we can agree to that."
"Good," Emma smilingly said as she got up, dirty dishes in hand. She walked to the kitchen and stood with her hipbones against the sink. Her parents had always been the kind who, even though there was a perfectly good dishwasher right underneath the counter, made their daughter 'build character' and 'learn discipline' through the action of hand washing dishes. It was medieval, sure, and it had been one of her most frequent childhood complaints, but when she realized she was one of maybe a handful of freshman on campus who could properly do so, Emma let it go.
She vaguely heard the murmurs of her parents as they finished eating over the rushing of the spigot water. Her father cleared his throat and she tipped an ear to hear what he said. "However," David said in a low voice, "I'm going to force one last decision out of you."
Emma moaned and whirled around to regard her parents at separate ends of the table. "What now?" she asked exasperatedly, remnants of soap suds still on her hands.
They caught each other's sights and shared a secret smile before her mother said, "Will you do us the honor of choosing tonight's viewing pleasure?"
Shaking her head and chuckling, Emma replied, "Yeah, I think I can handle that."
That night, safely flanked on the couch by her mother and father, Emma enjoyed the cinematic excellence of Captain America: The First Avenger, if for no other reason than she got to discuss battle tactics with David and gawk at the mancandy with Mary Margaret. They talked and laughed and had she not know otherwise, Emma wouldn't have suspected a shift in the way they lived. It was normal. It's nice to be home.
When the credits began to roll, she stood up from the couch and stretched. Despite her father's insistence that she stay for the ending scene, we all know it's there, but I saw this in theaters and saw it then, she bid her parents goodnight with a kiss on each of their cheeks. She left them in the living room, the volume of the credit music fading away as she stepped higher toward her room. Just as she had earlier that evening, she sagged onto her bed and thought. About school, about the future, about the impeccable physique of one Christopher Evans (man, oh man. If only he was the other half of my predicament).
But just before she went to bed, another man, darker hair, eyes more blue than gray, and, though she hate to admit it, less muscular. Always showing up at inconvenient moments, but always thankful you're there.
She lay staring at her ceiling, covered in glow-in-the-dark stars from god knows how many years ago. Real quickly, she grabbed her phone and sent off a text. Hopefully he'll get the reference. Throwing her phone to some dark corner of her room, she then turned over and went to sleep with a giddy grin on her face.
Even if you were to cross my father, I'd still pick you to win.
a/n: yayyy ten chapters! thanks so much for reading and commenting and liking and favoriting this so far. i've never published or even written something this long and the story's not even half over yet. thank you, all of you, who're sticking with it. words cannot express how much you all mean to me.
remember, i'm just borrowing these characters from ABC, Adam Horowitz, and Eddy Kitsis. just putting that out there.
last thing, im currently writing the Captain Swan alphabet series. since there's going to be 26 chapters, i plan on posting a letter a day leading up to the fall premiere on September 28. so September 2 is when i'll start with A. if you have any ideas or words you want to see as part of that series, go ahead and tell me.
now i'm going to go back to my post-wisdom teeth haze. as always, feel free to leave a word telling me what you think. until next time :)