One Eighty by Summer

Go on, just say it: you need me like a bad habit.

"You look like hell," were the first words out of Paige's mouth when Emma reached The Dot nearly an hour late for their meeting. The second ones were: "So what took you so long?"

Emma almost smiled as she slid into the booth across from her friend. There was really no cure like Paige Michalchuk for self-pity. With her around, it was pretty damn sure you wouldn't have a spare thought to spend feeling bad about yourself.

"Sorry," she apologized, grateful for the long sip of vanilla frappe Paige offered up. "I got caught up with … something."

Paige's eyebrows nearly hit her hairline. "Oh, reallllllly?" she drawled, rolling the word off her tongue. "Do tell."

"Tell what?"

Paige refused to buy the innocent act. "Hon, contrary to popular opinion, I'm not just a pretty face. So where were you and, more importantly, who were you with?"

"I … am really lost," Emma laughed, her fingers playing with the delicate silver chain that adorned her neck. "What are you talking about?"

"You're doing that thing," Paige informed her. "With the necklace? When you're nervous?"

She was. Emma dropped the jewelry as if it had burned her. "Just a habit."

"A nervous habit," Paige stressed. "Em, seriously, you cannot keep me waiting almost an hour, then withhold all the juicy details. Spill!"

Just do it and get it over with, Emma advised herself. She'll drag it out of you if she has to.

"Okay, I give up," she relented, knowing that Paige could flog a dead horse for hours and not tire. "I was with Sean. Satisfied?"

Paige squealed. "Emma, you're kidding! Well, of course you're not, you wouldn't, but – that's fantastic! That's fantastic!" It took a few minutes for her to realize she was the only one celebrating, then she quieted. "It's … not fantastic?"

"I'm the other woman. He has a girlfriend, Paige. A live-in girlfriend. A girlfriend who could kick my ass, and rightfully so."

Paige disagreed. "You could take her. Besides, Ellie knew Sean had baggage. Honestly, haven't you heard of women's intuition? She must have known, deep down, that he loves you more than he could ever love anyone else."

Emma was silent. Yes, Sean had been hers first, but that didn't automatically give her any and all rights to him, did it? And even if it did, they were only in high school, for Pete's sake! Just because they thought they felt a certain way right now didn't guarantee it would last the rest of their lives.

"I'm too young for this!" she burst out, slamming her palms down on the table's Formica surface. "Too young and too tired and way, way too goddamn independent to spend months drooling over the guy who's broken my heart more times than I care to count!"

"Okay, hon, you're killing me," Paige groaned. "Close your eyes. Breathe. You calm?"

"Getting there," she said without opening her eyes. If she could float through the rest of her life with her eyes closed and her breathing steady, she'd be just fine. "Why am I meditating?"

"Ew, meditation's so early nineties. You're clearing your head, that's all. Take a sec, here, okay? Think about a regular, ordinary day. School, work, home, whatever. Got the picture?"

Jack is crying for Spike as she rushes out the door, late for another double shift at the salon. Emma wants to scream her own lungs hoarse, but instead waves good-bye to the mother she barely recognizes and soothes Jack with whispers that can't compete with his ear-splitting, all-consuming turmoil. And not even his powerful pipes can drown out the sound of Snake retching, horribly, painfully, in the bathroom down the hall.

He stumbles out a few minutes later, a paler, thinner version of the man who once brought laughter and lightness to the Nelson household. "Em, I know you had plans," he mumbles, already walking away from her, towards the bed he rarely leaves. "But I'm not doing …"

"Gotcha," she says, not wanting to hear the grim news. None of them are doing so well, and there's a modicum of peace in not acknowledging it. "I've got Jack, no worries."

"Yep, I sure do," Emma tells Paige. "It's not very pretty."

"Okay. That's fine, that's life right now. What's the one thing in the world that, if you had it, could make things better?"

Snake doesn't hear her, he's already lost in his private pain again. Jack, still crying, writhes in her arms, wanting attention or reassurance or maybe just a bottle. It's hard to tell what someone needs when they can't just outright tell you.

The doorbell rings and she's suddenly, unreasonably angry. What nerve someone has, to crash into her comfortably catastrophic life and upset the delicate balance. She goes to answer it, to send them away as quickly as she can, but they've let themselves in.

"I come bearing pizza," Sean says importantly, offering up the box as if it contains an olive branch or his heart. She wants both, but she'll settle for double cheese. "Here, you take this and I'll take him …"

They swap, so that Sean is cradling a miraculously silent Jack and Emma is breathing in the aroma of freshly baked pizza. Her anger fades as her stomach growls. "How did you know …?" she asks in wonderment, because he always knows what she needs before even she herself can realize it.

"Just did," he shrugs. "Jack looks hungry, too, I'll grab his bottle while you pick out a movie, okay?"

"Sean, I can't go out today, I'm baby-sitting. Snake's not …"

He understands the whole 'don't mention it' thing. "I know, it's cool. There's a whole stack of DVDs in your living room. Just don't make it a chick flick, Jack hates those."

They settle down on the couch, the three of them, and Emma feels the world shift back into place. Her house looks familiar again, Sean's chest rumbles with his laughter and her own heart lights up in response, she's home and she's happy.

"Em? Did you fall asleep on me? 'Cause that would totally kill the spiritual mood."

Paige's voice brought her back from the fantasy and Emma's eyes opened reluctantly. She met Paige's gaze starkly. "I need Sean," she confessed.

"I knew it!" Paige clapped and cheered. "So what's the hold up?"

"I can't have him."

"Hon, in the words of Cecile Michalchuk: You can have everything you need and then some, as long as you're properly armed."

Emma thought about that for a minute. "Your step mom's scary," she decided.

"She was talking about shoes," Paige laughed. "I think."

"So how does that help me?"

"You're already properly armed, hon. You have what Sean wants. All you have to do is be willing to give it, and he's yours like that." Paige snapped her fingers to emphasize her point. "Open up to him, Em. Tell him how you feel. That's your secret weapon."

"Tell him how I feel," Emma repeated softly. She wasn't so sure that would do the trick. "Even though all our old problems still exist? Along with some new ones?"

Paige waved off the potential obstacles. "Take a chance for once in your life, Emma Nelson. You're always so ready to fight for everything you believe in. Don't you believe in you and Sean?"

"I … want to."

"Then prove it."

"How?"

Paige finished off her frappe with relish. "Do what you do best, Em. Fight for it."

-X-

Sean had been driving around aimlessly for hours before he finally ended up parked at the ravine. He left the car running so the headlights could illuminate his surroundings and got out, ready to pace out some built up steam.

He'd gone over and over the day's events in his mind, enough times to make any normal person dizzy. A fight with Jay, a kiss with Emma, a breakup with Ellie. If every week started turning out as his homecoming had, he was going to run screaming back to Wasaga as fast as he could. Or maybe just check himself into an asylum. Or a monastery, that'd be safer.

The hours of thinking had brought him to only one conclusion: he wanted to be with Emma.

He really, really wanted that. There'd never been a better time in his life than the days he'd once spent with her, talking and laughing about nothing at all. Those sacred hours had meant everything to him. He just hadn't known how to deal with that, then.

He thought he'd be better at it now. They'd both grown up a lot in the last few years. With age came maturity, right? Wasn't that the general consensus? No one was more mature than the two of them. The things he'd seen and done, everything she'd gone through recently. They were adults trapped in eighteen-year-old bodies, screaming for release.

She was his release. She calmed his temper, soothed his fears, touched his heart with her honest words and simple gestures. She was his other half, his better half, his conscience, his pride, his sense of belonging in the world.

He didn't just want to be with her, he decided. He needed it.

So now here he was, walking in circles through the grass, trying to decide on a course of action. He needed to convince Emma to give him another shot. But how? She was so wrapped up in all the drama he'd created for her in years past. Plus, her situation at home didn't exactly fill her with confidence in love and the ways of the world.

He had to make her see how right they were for each other.

"Well, well, well. What's this I see?" Jay's mocking drawl seemed to come from the sky at first, so blinded was Sean by the glare of his own headlights. Finally, the other boy stepped forward and was lit up by the glow. "Sean Cameron, cowering in the ravine. This gives the phrase 'sinking down to my level' a whole new meaning, my friend."

"I'm not your friend, Jay," Sean said, struggling to keep his voice neutral and his fists clenched at his sides. He didn't want to fight again, but if pressed, he definitely had the frustration for it.

Jay shrugged. "Your loss, I guess. So tell me, how's the view from that moral high ground you've found? Does everything look shinier from way up there?"

Sean feigned pleasantness. "Well, Hogart, I can tell you one thing. From up high, you look like an even smaller person than you really are."

"Ooh, direct hit." Jay mimed being pierced in the heart with an invisible dagger. "I gotta say, Cameron, now that Blondie's back in the picture … you're boring."

"I don't like to think of it as 'boring.' I like to think of it as … better than you."

"And what makes you think that, man?" Jay was getting angry now. It'd been amusing for a little to watch Sean do cartwheels and back flips in the name of love, but now, the entertainment factor was wearing thing and it was mostly just annoying. "You're just like me."

There was a scary thought. There were a lot of scary thoughts, actually. One of Sean's biggest fears was the truth in that statement. What if he was, on the inside, where it counted, no better than Jay and the other pathetic losers he hung around? Wasn't that why he'd so willingly gone with them all last year? He'd thought he'd belonged there.

"I'm not like you," he denied. "I'm nothing like you."

Jay laughed. "You're not? Why not? Because you love a girl who's way too good for you? Or because, once upon a time, she might have loved you back?"

"Don't run your mouth about things you know nothing about, man," Sean cautioned. "What me and Emma have is between the two of us."

"How romantic," Jay sighed, fluttering his hands above his heart. "You make me sick, actually."

"Jealous much?"

"Of you and the Naturefreak? Need I remind you, I've been there and done that? She's good, but not that good. You can have her."

Sean saw red. Literally. He didn't think anger had ever enveloped him as fast and as furiously as it did when those words left Jay's mouth. Practically before the sentence had ended, his fist had landed on Jay's jaw like a hammer on a nail.

Jay stumbled and swore. After feeling tenderly at his newest battle scar, he swore again and backed up a few steps. "I'm not gonna fight with you again, Cameron. Not over some dumb chick. It's not worth my time."

"You're not worth my time," Sean dismissed. "But I'm gonna say this once more: Stay the hell away from Emma. Don't touch her, don't talk to her, don't even so much as glance in her direction. She doesn't need your crap anymore than I do. Are we clear?"

"Yeah, yeah," Jay brushed off. His mouth was screaming for medication. "Whatever you say, Whipping Boy."

Sean raised an eyebrow. "I'm serious, Jay."

"Hey, man, I won't touch your precious Barbie Doll if you swear to never, ever punch me in the face again. What's with you, going after the same target twice in one day? That could cause permanent damage," he complained.

Sean stifled his laughter at the other boy's whine. "Deal."

"Fine, then. We're done here." Jay started to walk away, then stopped and turned back, hidden once again in the shadows. "And Cameron? Good luck with Cause Girl."

"Thanks," he managed, after nearly swallowing his tongue in surprise.

"You're gonna need it," Jay muttered and with that, was gone.

Sean smiled to himself. He didn't need luck. He didn't need anything but Emma. And he was going to win her over if it was the last thing he did.

Starting now.