On Saturday morning Emily wakes up at 10 am. Which is about half an hour to forty-five minutes earlier than she normally wakes up on a Saturday. She likes to sleep in when she can because most mornings, she wakes up early to attend swim practice. Though, she doesn't even think about going back to sleep.
When Emily considers the fact that she had a late night yesterday, she gives herself credit for waking up at a decent time. She's still thinking about what happened last night with Alison while she goes through her morning routine.
After showering, brushing her teeth, getting dressed and putting on light makeup Emily is ready to start her day. With it being that odd time where breakfast has passed and lunch is fast approaching, Emily decides to go and get some food. Emily grabs her car keys and heads off in the direction of The Grill. It takes Emily 5-7 minutes to drive to the grill and when she arrives she parks her car in the first available spot she sees and walks inside.
She scans the restaurant and counts about ten people. Nobody she really knows, thankfully. She doesn't want to run into anyone from her school this early in the morning. Emily orders her usual brunch meal, scrambled eggs, fries, toast and some assorted fruit. Spotting a table set for two, Emily sits down and she waits as they make for food.
She plays on her iPhone for about ten minutes before she sees a middle aged man walking towards her table with her brunch on a large white plate. Emily smiles politely at the man and thanks him.
When the man has returned back the way he came Emily picks up her fork and eats her food. The food is great and she has a few unread messages when she accidentally pulls out her phone and her wallet to pay for her meal. She ignores the still unread messages in favour of chatting a little bit with the woman behind the counter.
The conversation is fleeting and only lasts a few minutes, at which point Emily pulls out her phone to read the messages she knows are there waiting for her. The first text she reads is one from Hanna, asking if she's doing anything since it's the weekend.
She texts Hanna back that she doesn't have any plans for the weekend despite Hanna apparently knowing something more than she's currently letting on to Emily. It makes the brunette feel like she's behind or missing out on something but she doesn't know what that could be. Nobody has said anything to her that would even give her an idea about why Hanna seems so smug about something she's entirely unaware of.
Emily is texting her mom while leaving The Grill so she doesn't notice the platinum blonde walking towards her until it's too late. "Well, well, well," Alyssa says while eying Emily up and down. "If it isn't Emily Fields. I didn't expect for us to see each other so soon after the last time."
Emily sighs quietly. She knew that their first meeting wouldn't be their last but she was definitely hoping that she'd go longer than 5 days without seeing this girl again. Monday seems both so long ago and yet, not long enough ago at the same time.
Emily is looking at her phone as a way to avoid the blonde standing across from her. "I guess I'm just that unlucky," Emily mumbles.
Alyssa laughs and Emily doesn't get it at first. However that's short lived because Alyssa makes it clear why she laughed. "Being in a relationship with Alison DiLaurentis definitely has that effect on people. It's funny actually. Your swimming performance has gotten better but your dating life⦠that just keeps going backwards and downhill."
Emily puts her phone down at the comment about her dating life. What the hell does that even mean? "Excuse me?" Emily inquires sharply.
Alyssa smirks and puts her hands in the pockets of her blue jean jacket. She nods her head in the direction of the grill and tells the two girls standing beside her to go and order their food before she addresses Emily directly. "All I'm saying is that your first girlfriend was sent away for a drug problem. Your second girlfriend tried to drown you before the two of you dated and then hid you away the first time you got together. Now you're dating Alison and it's like your taste in women is getting worse and worse as time goes on."
Emily can feel her heart shatter all over again when Alyssa mentions Maya. Her death happened over a year ago but it still hurts and she has nights where she breaks down and wishes she was alive. There's not a day that goes by where she doesn't think it's unfair that she was killed. "Don't you dare talk about Maya," Emily exclaims angrily while feeling like she might lose her shit if Alyssa says anything out of line about her first girlfriend.
Alyssa shrugs as if she's indifferent to the comment but on the inside she decides that Emily's anger at her bringing her up is best not to challenge or push. "I guess we shouldn't speak ill of the dead so why don't we talk about how much of a mistake Paige was?" Alyssa notes that Emily doesn't take kindly to the comment about Paige either but she presses on with another jab. "How about we go get a table and compare our notes about how awful of a person Alison is?"
Emily knows that Alyssa is only trying to rile her up and get her pissed off as paying back for what she said to her on Monday. Emily pushes her anger down as best as she can and she evens her voice out. "How about you just accept that Alison and I are a better and more suited couple than she and you were? There's no way in hell Alison and I aren't meant to be together. She might not have always been the nicest person but nobody's perfect and Alison has owned it. She's done better and she's worked hard to change."
Alyssa shakes her head. "If you think that Alison's changed then she's an even more talented liar than I thought. That girl has and always will be a bitch. Regardless of if you're her girlfriend or not." The venom and distaste for Alison tells Emily how much Alyssa really thinks about Alison. Alyssa wouldn't be so set on trying to convince Emily that Alison isn't a good person if she didn't care anymore. If she herself had moved on from everything that happened between them. "She uses people and drops them when she's gotten everything she wants out of them. You're just the next fool to think that you can be the reason she stays."
If Alyssa weren't so rude and jealous, Emily would actually feel bad for her. However, she has no pity for the other girl. Alison isn't perfect. She'll never be perfect but everyone has their faults and those faults are only half of the story.
Emily has seen both the best and the worst of Alison and that hasn't stopped her from caring. Alison didn't leave this girl for no reason and Emily knows that toxic relationships are no way to live. She's glad Alison could see that and break the pattern.
After all the trash Alyssa talked about her, Emily can't help but defend her since she isn't here to do it herself. "I've loved Alison for a long time and there's nothing quite like being in love with someone that you've known for years. Alison and I have a seasoned love. You treated her like crap and I don't really think that she loved you. Not in the way that makes it hard to move on at least. I'm nobody's fool." Emily crosses her arms over her chest. "It seems to me like you're the one using people. As soon as Alison wouldn't have sex with you, you called her a bore. You said that she dressed like a slut and had no use to you if she didn't put out. Alison and I will last because I trust her and don't try to control her. Alison was right to wish you luck on finding another girl to date after she told them that story. You've been single for a while now and it certainly doesn't look like anyone is interested."
Emily decides that she's said everything she's going to say to Alyssa and she begins to walk past the blonde girl but while Emily is doing so, Alyssa grabs her forearm firmly. "Break up with Alison," Alyssa exclaims forcefully. Her grip on Emily is tight and the longer that Emily doesn't reply, the more Alyssa starts to squeeze.
Emily quickly overcomes her shock at being grabbed and aggressively pulls her arm out of Alyssa's grasp. "No," Emily tells her harshly. "You must hate that Alison wants me and not you but I don't care. If she was more than just a toy to you, you would have treated her like the princess she is. You wouldn't have tried to push sex on her if she mattered to you. It's all for the best though because Alison is in good hands now." Emily's face hardens as she looks directly into Alyssa's eyes. "Don't you dare touch me again or I'll call the police and tell them about more than you grabbing me."
Emily swiftly walks away and doesn't look back until she's reached her car. She knows now more than ever why Alison felt the need to go to the extreme of getting someone to pretend to date her. Alyssa Clark clearly has some issues and it makes Emily wonder if those problems are anything that could land her in a place like Radley.
Meanwhile Alison is one the other side of town hanging out with CeCe. CeCe showed up at her house to take her to go shopping. CeCe uses it as a good excuse to come over but Alison knows her friend well. It's less about shopping and more about what happened yesterday. After their phone call the day before the other girl had become way too involved in her love life with Emily. Not that her love life with Emily was even real, yet.
Alison hopes that something real can come out of them pretending to be together but it's hard to predict if that will be the case or not since the two of them haven't really bonded like they used to as of right now. There's so much to consider when it comes to what she should or shouldn't bring up to Emily because of the situation she dragged them into.
When Alison created this lie, she never thought that it would bring up her past feelings for Emily. In fact, she hadn't even thought about the possibility of her old feelings resurfacing. It might have been a bit of a reckless move but gosh, Alyssa needed to see the proof. She'd been bothering her for months since they broke up and nothing else short of someone else saying that they were dating would help get the message through her head.
Alison doesn't really tell CeCe more than she did while they were on the phone because not much has happened or even developed since they last talked but she promises to keep her up to date in everything Emily.
Alison buys three new outfits at Rosewood Mall and CeCe gets four outfits that they both know she doesn't need. She looks killer in all of them though. Like she always does. Alison can't lie and say that she got them specifically because she needed them. She knows that the reason she bought them was because she wants to impress and look good for Emily.
It almost feels weird to be trying to get Emily to look at her in that way. Both of them still have their walls up with each other and Alison wants to see if maybe they can break those down for each other again. She knows now more than ever that she wants to be friends with Emily and do better than they did the first time.
She wants to fix the issues they had and if Emily is interested, she wants to see if they can go any further any being just friends. They've been into each other for a long time so it's not all that unheard of for them to be attracted to the other. The hardest part for them would probably be the transition periods. They would first have to go from not being friends to being friends. Then from being friends to being more than friends, if they ended up getting that far along in the process.
Alison sighs to herself at the thought of what she and Emily must have missed out on in each other's lives while they weren't friends. She can't even begin to bring up the topic of actually dating Emily until Alyssa is completely out of the picture. There's no telling when or if that'll ever happen unfortunately. It would also kind of help her cause if she and Emily could connect on a level that felt like it was more than the surface.
They can't start new if the old stuff is still present and blocking the path towards their new future. It's something that needs to be taken step-by-step and Alison plans to take advantage of the time they have together to implement said steps while she can. There's no time like the present and Alison can't afford to waste any more time not fighting for what it is that she wants. Right now, she wants Emily and she's going to do everything she can to accomplish her goal of winning the brunette back.
/
I'm sorry this took so long! I felt super unmotivated when it came to writing this chapter and I kept putting it off. After months of waiting, it's here.
