"How about this one?" Mary Margaret comes out of the dressing room with so much hope in her voice it almost sounds like desperation. The dress is beautiful, but not quite what they've been looking for within their budget range. Emma gives her head a curt little shake, plunging Mary Margaret into a deeper state of exasperation.
"What's wrong with it?!" Mary Margaret huffs.
"Feathers? The entire skirt is made of feathers." Emma says simply.
"It's feathers over silk taffeta, Emma. Silk. Taffeta." She snaps.
"It's horrible. I think you're just desperate to find a dress to the point of choosing an awful one just to get this over with. As maid of honor, I cannot let you walk out of here with that dress."
"Thank you, Miss Tact. Why don't you pick one?" Mary Margaret snaps again.
"I did, you didn't like it." Emma can tell that her calm demeanor is further pushing Mary Margaret over the edge.
"I said no flowers." She replies hotly.
"Mags, you said you'd behave." Emma says plainly.
"I am behaving! I have four months till my wedding and this is the third store we go to and I need to find my dress today! Today! Come on, Linda! Get me out of this dress." Linda, the sales rep, follows dutifully clearly accustomed to brides on the verge of nervous breakdowns.
Linda comes back a couple of moments later telling her that Mary Margaret has changed her mind and she'll try the dress Emma pointed out earlier.
Mary Margaret walks out of the dressing room a few minutes later wearing the dress. It's a crisp white net-over-satin ball gown with a lace bodice of organza apple blossoms with shimmering rhinestones and crystal centers. The skirt has scattered blossom details and on the waist a satin sash with a back bow. Personally, Emma thinks its perfect for her.
Mary Margaret is quiet, cocking her head at her reflection, inspecting every inch of it.
"What do you think?" Emma offers.
"I don't know-" she starts.
"Linda, bring the veil!" Emma cuts her off quickly. Moments later Linda scurries forward with a two-tier fingertip length veil featuring the same organza flowers like the ones Mary Margaret has in her dress and a beaded embroidered edge. As she pins it to Mary Margaret's jet-black pixie, Emma can see in her friend's reaction that they didn't need to look in any more stores.
"How about now?" she offers.
"I feel like Snow White." Mary Margaret replies, a shell-shocked expression still gracing her delicate features.
"Well, considering she's your favorite I'm gonna say that we can check dress hunting off our list?"
"Mhmm." Mary Margaret replies absentmindedly.
"Are you going to take it off or…?" Emma prods.
"What? Oh! Yeah." Mary Margaret replies through a laugh.
"Well, hurry up! I'll buy you lunch."
"Emma!" Mary Margaret exclaims loudly mid-conversation, eyes wide, making the waiter at their favorite bistro, Granny's, look at her concerned.
"What?" Emma starts.
"I forgot to tell you! Guess who David ran into like three weeks ago?" She continues excitedly.
"I couldn't tell you." Emma replied simply, not in the mood for guessing games.
"You're not even going to try to guess are you?"
"Nope. Who'd he run into?" Emma asks, her mouth full of roast beef and bread from her French Dip.
"Killian!" At the mention of his name Emma feels her entire body run cold. Her throat runs dry and she has trouble swallowing the rest of her sandwich, causing her to choke and nearly die in the process.
"Well I expected you to react badly to this but nearly dying wasn't something I envisioned." Mary Margaret tells her, her voice somewhat concerned but she still speaks between laughs.
"I'm sorry, what? You better be kidding, the last thing I need is my ex showing up in the middle of my midlife crisis." Emma sputters anxiously.
"I'm curious. Can you have a midlife crisis when you're 29?" Mary Margaret teases.
Emma just waves her hands at her. Instead of whipping up a snarky remark, she knits her eyebrows together and bites her lip, her mind running a mile a minute. She and Killian didn't exactly end up in the worst terms when they broke it off and she knows she has nothing against the guy. She doesn't really know why she's so worried about him being in town. It's just been so long. How many years? Seven? Eight? Eight. Shit, that's a long time.
"How long is he in town for?" she asks.
"He lives here now." Mary Margaret answers simply.
"What? Where?" Emma feels the edge of a panic attack quickly approaching. Her heart was beating faster and faster by the second.
"Jesus, I don't know Emma. David talked to him, not me." Mary Margaret shrugs.
"When did he move here?" Emma is relentless. She needs information. She needs to know where he lives, what bars he frequents, where he works, what he works in. She needs to know everything so she can avoid him successfully. If he looks anything like he used to eight years ago, she does not need him anywhere near her in the state she's in.
"I don't know. A couple of months ago, probably, David said he looked pretty at ease with the subway system to have just moved in."
"This is ridiculous. Why is he here?"
"Emma why don't you ask him yourself? David and I are going to dinner tonight, you're more than welcome to come with."
"Are you insane? Really, are you? Because you sound insane." Emma snaps.
"Emma, it was eight years ago. It was a fling that you had when you studied abroad. Plus, I think he's married. Why are you freaking out?"
"He's married?" Emma doesn't know why the piece of information makes her heart sink down to her stomach. It's not like she's available either. "And I'm not freaking out."
"I can't remember if he just got married or if he just got divorced. Something happened not so long ago, David said." Mary Margaret says nonchalantly, stabbing her Cobb salad with her fork and a shrug of her shoulders. "And you're absolutely freaking out."
"That's quite the difference." Emma says matter-of-factly.
"Are you coming tonight? David said he asked about you." Mary Margaret continues.
"I don't care if he asked or not! I'm not going. I have no interest of seeing the man I thought I was in love with and then lost contact with all too easily. I have no desire to see him, ever." Emma answers defiantly.
"Well you're shit out of luck then. He's coming to the wedding."
"WHAT. No! No. Nope. No. Why? No. Just no."
"Emma, don't start. It's my wedding, I can invite whomever I please."
"I'd rather you invite Cora, the crazy girl in our floor from sophomore year." Emma whined.
"Emma, Killian is going to the wedding. He already RSVP'd. He's going." Their lunch ends sourly. Not that it's any damage to their relationship, Mary Margaret knows just how grumpy Emma can get. They part ways when the subway stops at Madison Avenue and Emma gets out on her way back to work.
Emma arrives at her empty apartment at a quarter to six later that evening, her mind still reeling about her conversation with Mary Margaret. She's going to see Killian for the first time in exactly three months and twenty-five days if she manages to avoid him till the wedding. She doesn't really know why she's freaking out about him being in town. If anything, she decides, she's worried about what he'll think about her drastic life change. She's nothing like the girl he met eight years ago in Dublin. She decides that that's what she's afraid of, as a way of coping with the fact that she hates that she's nothing like the happy, carefree, person she was eight years ago like she wishes she could be.
Dropping off her bag at the foot of her bed, she slips off her shoes and undoes the zipper of her white pencil skirt. She proceeds to continue with her afternoon routine: she takes a shower, heats up leftovers, pops open a bottle of wine, and watches the evening news. After she finishes she decides to do something different other than getting drunk watching TV. She stands and looks in her and Walsh's record collection and pulls out her favorite Janis Joplin. Soon, psychedelic guitar riffs and Joplin's soulful voice fills up the entire apartment. Taking sips of her wine (White Zinfandel today) she starts to sway to the rhythm, the music taking her back to that year in Dublin.
She walks back to her room and further back to her closet, standing and swaying on top of a little stool she reaches the weathered wooden trunk where she stores all her old keepsakes. She finds the old photo album she was looking for and makes her way back to her living room. Sitting on the floor, Emma pours herself more wine and opens up the album. Looking through the pictures, she smiles despite herself.
There are pictures of everything. She sees pictures of her, Mary Margaret, and David at the airport, on the airplane, prank pictures of them asleep. She laughs along with their past selves. There are quintessential pictures of trying Guinness, and one of Mary Margaret gagging over black pudding. Emma laughs again, memories flooding back to her. And then suddenly, there's Killian smiling up at her from the album, stopping her dead in her tracks. He's in basically every picture in the rest of the album. Looking at her, kissing her, making her laugh, posing with her in leather jackets.
She stands up and runs back to her closet, sifting through each and every article of clothing. There's beige after beige, white after white, navy, black, solid sensible colors that the personal shopper Walsh suggested to Emma had arranged for her. She can't find it. She goes straight to the back, clamped, dusty part of her closet, praying against hope that there's where it would be, and it is. It's old, dusty, and cramped because of being pressed up against the wall for a couple of years, but it's there. The red leather jacket that she bought in Dublin, her style staple for the years following studying abroad.
She slips it on, knowing that even though it's a little too tight right now, once it's aired out it will fit as well as it used to. She walks back to her living room with the jacket on and sits back down. She had left the album open on a picture of herself, Mary Margaret, David, and Killian in O'Donoghues, their favorite Dublin pub. Emma remembers that night perfectly. That was the night she and Killian kissed for the first time. The rest was history after that night. She shuts the album closed and shakes her head to rid herself of thoughts of Killian and their year in Ireland. She wakes up next to Walsh the next morning, his arms draped across her belly and their legs intertwined with each other's. This was real. Walsh was her husband, and no ex-boyfriend returned from the grave was going to diminish the love she had promised Walsh on their wedding day.