Author's Note: I want to thank people for ALL the reviews, along with the follows and favorites. If it is any consolation to the reviewers who expressed frustration with the characters so far, this chapter might start to help.
This story is really two parts, and while the first has largely focused on Emily and Emison, the second will focus on Emily getting her shit together for lack of better words. And Paily. So thank you for your words and your implied patience if you are still reading.
My stomach felt hot and irritated as I walked up the stairs to my room. I half expected her not to be there. To have simply vanished, somehow knowing what was coming. I had half-expected Alison to disappear throughout our whole relationship. Dating her has always felt like cupping a frantic butterfly in my hands, feeling it constantly trying to slip through my fingers.
But when I walked into the room she was there. Sitting on the bed and reading a copy of Wuthering Heights. She looked so blissful and relaxed; I almost disregarded everything I needed to say.
"Alison…" She held up a finger as her eyes continued to scan the page, effectively ignoring me. She had a tendency to become engrossed in literature.
"Have you read this one before? It's Emily Brontë." She said quietly, still not looking up from the page.
"No but…" She shook her head and told me to listen.
"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Healthcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being." She quoted. She then grabbed the bookmark sitting beside her, marked her page, and sat the book down to give me her full attention. "What's up?" She said, noting my fidgeting and the fact I hadn't sat down yet.
"We need to talk." I quietly said. The room suddenly felt too quiet and small. I felt trapped in it, in this conversation I was starting.
"That doesn't sound good." She frowned.
"I ran into your dad this morning." I walked over to the window, looking over at her house. I couldn't stand to look at her, or I would lose my courage to do this.
By this time, the moon was full and hanging heavy and bloated in the night sky. My parents were probably out at dinner somewhere. For that I was relieved. I didn't want them around for this.
"Oh?" Her voice betrayed a small ounce of fear.
"Mind explaining why we have been looking and looking for the perfect apartment within our budget, when we don't actually have a budget?" I turned around and faced her, trying to gauge her reaction. Her face remained passive.
Alison was after all, nothing if not a naturally talented actress. But her eyes told me she was afraid, or at least caught off guard.
"Em…I can explain." She looked down at the bed, biting her lip. I shook my head.
"After you are done explaining that, tell me about the night Paige stopped by to see me last summer. To refresh your memory, you told her I wasn't home and failed to give me a letter she asked you to deliver." At this, Alison's eyes glazed over in a familiar look of cynical indifference.
"So that is what this is about. Paige." She flatly concluded, pushing herself off the bed and standing to face me. But I wasn't going to fall for it this time.
"This has nothing to do with Paige. This has everything to do with you lying to me. Manipulating me. Still. To this day." I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to quench the surprising level of anger I was feeling.
"If this has nothing to do with Paige, why did you kiss her?" She fired back, crossing her arms and standing tall. Alison had officially just entered the arena, and this sort of sport was her specialty. But when her words hit me, I felt like she had punched me in the neck. The anger seemed to drain, replaced with a heady feeling of guilt and fear.
"How'd you know?" I wondered out loud.
"I didn't till just now, but I could assume. I saw the way you two kept looking at each other at Hanna's engagement party." She had been hoarding this. It was her trump card to anything I could be righteously angry for. It didn't even seem like she was upset by me cheating. She just seemed content to have something to hold over me again.
"Okay fine. I kissed Paige. And I feel terrible. But that doesn't change the fact that you lied to me about wanting to move forward. You don't want to have a real relationship with me at all, not in the open. You can barely look at me or touch me except in this room. I'm not your doll anymore. I can't just be picked up and put down when it suits you." I spat out. I realized this was about more than just being lied to. This was about being partially closeted again. Alison would never go to a gay bar with me, let alone get a house with a white picket fence and a bunch of cats. Alison couldn't be tamed or domesticated by anyone for long.
And she knew it too. She just didn't like being called out on it.
"You told me no pressure. You told me I could be myself and be safe when I was with you! Why do you need to get this apartment together?" Her face still remained passive and blank of any micro expressions, despite her obvious anger.
"When I said no pressure or promises I lied. I lied to appease you. I lied because I thought after two years you might entertain the notion of being in a real relationship with me. I wanted to protect you. God help me Alison I still do." I reached my hand out, trying to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away from my touch.
"I don't need your protection. And maybe I wasn't ready to U-Haul with you but that doesn't mean this relationship isn't real to me. I've been in your bed for two goddamn years Emily. In the meantime, Paige has been in any woman's bed except yours, and one letter could have dismantled us in a heartbeat. That's why I kept it from you!" There. She had finally said it.
She seemed surprised at her own outburst, breathing heavily to try and regain control of herself.
"It wasn't your choice to make. With or without the letter, you aren't ready to be out with me in our own place. You can't take that next step in our lives. And I…I have to." My face felt wet, and I realized I had started crying. This seemed to break something down in Alison. She looked down at my trembling lips then up to my eyes.
"Em I don't want to fight…" Her blue eyes were so brilliantly captivating in that moment. Clear and true, despite how easily they could hurt me with one glance. She could be so kind and generous, but it took so much to get her to break down her defenses. I couldn't keep fighting for scraps of her love.
"This isn't going to work." My voice cracked as I said it, but I knew Alison had heard me. For a second, the whole world seemed to stop. I could hear the silence, blood pounding in my ears. She opened her mouth to say something a few quick times, but stopped herself each time.
"Okay." She said finally. She hadn't shed a tear so far, but she turned to hide her face from me. A wave of guilt hit me. Because even though I was upset, even though she had lied and hurt me, I still felt like I was abandoning her.
I sat on the window seat as she packed the clothes and toiletries she had here. Most of her stuff was at her dad's house, which she still had her key to. I willed myself not to change my mind and give in. Because now I knew where our road ended. We would never have a life together in the open. We had hidden in the shadows for so long because of A that we only thrived in it. Alison and I weren't meant for the sun.
She sighed, picking up the suitcase. She regarded me with that same unreadable expression.
"Alison? Will you be okay?" I asked, panicked I was sending her to her doom even though I knew better.
"I always am." With that she walked out the room and that was it. Our relationship was over. My parents hadn't been home, I would have to tell them soon. For now I just cried, grieving over a necessary but tough loss.