I left for home as soon as I'd gone through my arrows, the air tense between me and Snow, my hackles up. Snow made a point of trying to lead the conversation back to all the improvements she had planned for the Enchanted Forest. I didn't want to get into it with her. I couldn't trust my temper.
Snow doesn't know Belle very well. She doesn't know that Belle left Mr. Gold after the curse broke- or at least tried to. That her feelings for him, in my opinion, were basically Stockholm syndrome to begin with. That Gold made Belle sleep in a dungeon back in our world and deep down, he scared her. Truly scared her. I think about this as I watch Belle jotting down orders at the diner, smiling at customers, master of her own world. She saw me looking and made a bee line over to the counter, her eyes bright.
"It's eiiight thiiirty." She trilled.
"You're obsessed."
"I just want to see how the morning after went." She made a goofy, exaggerated wink at me that pulled me out of myself enough to laugh.
At 8:55 Emma came in. My jaw almost dropped because she was wearing a dress. A red, figure-hugging dress and heels. Paired, in true Emma style, with her leather jacket. She leaned on the counter and gave me an embarrassed smile, her stance pleading with the world not to make too big a deal of it.
"Well, YOU look nice." Belle almost sang, sliding a blue plate special towards Marco, whose jaw was also on the floor.
"I get in those moods too sometimes." I gave Emma a smile. "Sometimes I pull out all the stops just to remind myself I can. Back booth?"
Emma nods. "Yes please."
Before I can walk her over, the bell clangs again and Snow steps in, all smiles. Oh. No. What is she doing here? She squeezes my arm and pecks Emma on the cheek and I try to hide my surprise. "My gosh you look nice Emma. I thought I saw you stepping out all dressed up but I never dreamed you'd just be going to Granny's!"
The bell clanks at the end of her sentence as Regina walks in. If she's wearing anything special its hidden under her trenchoat, but I notice her hair is up. I expect her to react but she's been hiding her feelings for too long and she sweeps past Emma and Snow with a most dismissive sneer. I grab a menu, smiling apologetically at Snow, and follow Regina to the back booth where I know she's headed. She slides into her usual seat, her back to the rest of the diner, and for just a moment puts her head in her hands. Then she turns to me, mask back in place.
"Earl Grey?" I say.
"You guessed it."
Snow has parked herself across from Emma at an open table. She's taking off her coat, pulling off her gloves, making herself at home. Emma darts a look over her shoulder at me. Her face is pale. That crease is back between her eyebrows. After I drop off two sodas at their table Emma follows me back to the counter, her glass in hand.
"Hey Ruby. Could you put a shot in this?" she looks over her shoulder. "I told her you accidentally gave me diet, if she mentions it. Also…" she leans closer, "could you give this to Regina when you bring her her bill?" she extends a folded up note, clenched between her fingertips. I feel my face turn red.
"You know I'm Snow's best friend, right?" I say through gritted teeth. Emma looks abashed for a moment and backs away, but I catch Emma's arm and palm the note. Without another word I slip it in my front pocket and her grateful look melts my heart enough for me to soften my tone. And go heavy on the shot in her coke. "Look." I whisper through gritted teeth. "You need to figure out what is going on before someone gets hurt. Regina maybe evil but she no one deserves a broken heart, and that's what's going to happen with this whole beanstalk thing."
"Beanstalk thing?" she looks puzzled.
Snow hasn't told her yet!? "Ask Snow- now." I growl.
But before Emma can even make it back to her table, the door clangs again and Neal walks in. Snow waves hi, and gestures for him to come sit with them. Emma's face goes slack and she looks at me helplessly.
"How do I get out of this?!" she whispers. I shrug.
"Tell your mom the truth?" You're dating her worst enemy. I grab a merlot bottle and a glass and walk it down the diner to Regina.
"Here's the vintage you asked for." I say, slipping the note under the bottle. I make a big show of uncorking it at her table, while I wait for her to read the note. She looks up at me, her eyes wet.
"Quite the upgrade from Earl Grey…Who's he?" she asks at last, a gloved finger pointing discreetly behind us.
"Neal? He's…Henry's biological dad."
"Right." She grimaces. I can hear her heart thrashing at my words.
"Snow asked him to meet her here. Emma had no idea he was going show up. I think she's truly embarrassed he's here."
Regina is glaring at me. "It's a matter of supreme indifference to me."
"Right." I hiss back at her.
I was about to flounce off with the corkscrew still jammed in the cork- let her Majesty open her own wine- when I hear her say my name, so low that if I didn't have wolf ears, I wouldn't have heard it. Maybe she was hoping I wouldn't. I turn and she's holding out the note, with a response written on the back.
"Thank you." Regina says the words like they're a foreign language and she's not quite sure of the meaning. Because I'm a complete idiot, I take the note. I think that was officially me being a bad friend to Snow, taking that note. After that moment, I knew whose side I was really on.
Fifteen, twenty minutes later, I can smell Snow tailing me. She smells like forest, the stale feathers of her arrows, sweet soap and the soft, personal smell of a hand-knitted yarn scarf. I can sense she's anxious to talk to me. It's almost my changing time, and the wolf part of me is higher on nights just before.
"Red…" I turn at her plaintive voice. "I'm sorry about today. I hope you know how much I love and value you." She turns and looks at Emma and Neal, who are pushing pie pieces around their plates. "I'm going to get out of their hair, let them enjoy their pie together-" she twinkles at me, clearly playing matchmaker, "but I thought I'd surprise them by paying their bill."
"Sure…Snow…" I lean toward her. "How much have you told Emma about the beanstalk plan?"
She looks a little irritated. "She knows we're growing the beanstalks."
I get close and drop my voice as low as I can. "Does she know you want to burn them and stay in the Enchanted Forest forever?"
Snow looks very guilty. "I was hoping we could get her used to the idea once she was up there."
"Snow!" I hiss. "Snow, that's messed up and you know it."
"She runs." Snow's eyes go dark. She clenches my sleeve in her fist, and I can feel her panic. "Red you've seen it. She ran from Henry. She tried to run from Storybrooke. She ran from being the Saviour. She doesn't know how to handle getting what she wants. You think she'll let herself accepting being a Princess? I know she won't, at first. But it's her destiny. It's her happy ending."
"Snow if Emma ran then what is she doing in Storybrooke right now?" And, I remember, she hasn't gotten her note. Crap. "If you don't tell her Snow, I will."
Snow looks stunned. "You wouldn't do that to me. You know I can't lose her again."
Grumpy intercepts me before I can head over to Emma's table: he asked for pepperjack cheese on his burger, not cheddar . I feel Regina staring at me, I hold up my hand with the note in my fingertips so she knows I haven't passed it yet. I should probably spin some plates and juggle some spoons while I'm at it, I'm keeping so much up in the air right now. I look down at the note as I fetch out my order pad to jot down a quick order someone calls at me and see written, in Emma's stark, architectural block printing:
I meant everything I said last night. I want us.
I force myself to stop reading and walk to Emma and Neal's table. Emma grabs my hand and I hear her heart jump as the folded paper with Regina's response presses into her palm.
"Ruby, meet Neal!" she's suddenly bubbly. "Neal, this is Ruby, my mom's best friend."
"And the co-owner of this diner, who's working a shift right now." I say pleasantly, but she yanks me down to the bench and before I know it we've swapped places. I see her hurry down to the back booth and grit my teeth, staring across at Neal, who is giving me a smile.
"So who did you used to be?" he asks. I sigh.
"A werewolf. Still am." I say curtly. I look across the room and see Belle, her eyes cutting to me as Grumpy gestures angrily toward his burger. Yikes.
"Wow. That's…really sexy." His eyebrows shoot up. Emma, I hate you. I so hate you. Without a speck of manners, I train my hearing on the back booth. It's not hard because Regina can barely keep her voice down, and it shakes with rage.
"It's pretty obvious what's going on there with that little family reunion. Snow wants Henry's mommy and daddy back together." Regina's voice crackles with pain. She's clearly been doing some stewing n her booth.
"Wow. I really thought you could let go of your…insane, obsessive hatred of my mom, but clearly-"
Regina laughs bitterly."I never said I could. You really don't know who you're in bed with, do you?"
Emma's whisper, hurt: "What happened to our clean slate?"
"Our clean slate. You, and me, and Henry."
"You can't ask me to choose between you and my mom. Snow would never ask me to choose between her and you." That's right Emma, she has no intention of asking you at all, I think.
"That's because you would never tell her about me." Regina's voice snaps and I hear the quick click of her high heels. In another moment she passed through my peripheral vision, the trenchcoat falling open with her stride and exposing far up her leg, and I realize she's been naked under the trenchcoat the whole time. Talk about a sexy date gone wrong. She sweeps out of the diner into the night and I decide to put the wine on Emma's tab.