Beneath those eyes
Chapter 3
It was a tense day with Alison ignoring me and me anticipating the call from Paige. If it was that important, surely, she'd call by now. I shook the thought of Paige and tried to focus on Alison. My pregnant girlfriend(?). I walked over to Alison's classroom, knowing that it was her free period and wanted to give her a peace offering. "Ali?" I walked into the classroom and looked to the direction of the noise. Alison was sniffing, she was crying. "Hey, what's wrong?" I walked over and tried to get her to face me. She turned her chair around and looked up, blinking back the tears. "Alison DiLaurentis, look at me." I demanded and she caved. She turned back around and faced me, her eyes blotchy and face swollen. "What happened? Is something wrong?" I scanned her face to look for any answers. She just shook her head as the tears fell. "Baby, what's going on? Tell me, please? We agreed to go through this together, no secrets." Alison scoffed at that and I looked at her confused.
"You're the one to talk about not keeping secrets." It took a moment, but it dawned on me. She thinks that I was- "Are you cheating on me with Paige?" My heart broke. She sounded so fragile and vulnerable. As if she was broken. "Ali, babe, no. Don't think like that, please. I told you that I got a call and couldn't answer it on time. I figured if it was important she'd call back and she did but I was busy when she did. I didn't even look at my phone last night. You saw the amount of calls and texts she left before I did. I love you, I always have. I'm not seeing her or talking to her or anything. Paige is a friend and if something is happening with her, I want to be there for her. I'm still waiting for her call but I'm not together with her or whatsoever, okay?" Alison looked a litter wary, but she accepted it anyway. "Paige loves you, though. I'm sure she still loves you. Before she left, she came to see me and she wanted to make sure you were in good hands." I nodded and pulled her close to me, and we stayed like this until it was near the time of her next class and she had to go clean up.
The bell for the last class rang for the day as I walked back to my office. I ran my fingers through my hair and let out a sigh. It was going to be a long process if Paige was going to start talking to me again. Alison caved and started going on about how her pregnancy hormones was affecting her emotions and she felt pent up. We were starting out in the relationship and was only one second base. Lame, for two mid-twenties that has been in love since they met. I walked into my office and stopped at the sight of the familiar brown shoulder length hair. Paige. "Paige?" She turned around when she heard the door opening. Oh for Christ's sake. Paige's eyes were red and blotchy, dried tears staining her cheeks. "Paige, are you okay?" Stupid question. Way to go, Em. "What happened?" Paige said nothing as she threw herself into my arms and hugged me tight. I could feel her shaking against my body and hear her cries as clear as day as she sobbed into my jacket. "My dad, Em. He's dead."
It took a while before Paige calmed down and explained to me what was going on, well it took a while for her to calm down enough to explain to me what was going on coherently. Paige's dad was on his way to surprise her as he was planning a church camp in Iowa. Knowing that she'd moved over to Iowa after what happened with Emily, he felt that she needed someone at that moment and needed advice from her old pops. That was when it went wrong. He stopped by to get take out for them both in the early evening, but was mugged on his way to his car. There was only a thing he wouldn't give up, and that was Paige's grandmother's ring. He brought it along with him this time, after sharing with his wife the idea that he had-for Paige to give this ring to Emily in remembrance of what they've been through, what they've become and that Emily would always be in the family. Emily, to them, was always the person that you can seek forgiveness from.
Emily was to safe keep the ring and only pass it to Paige when she found someone that was worthy of it. They knew that Emily would have wanted to do it. Emily always wanted to look out for Paige after what happened with Alison all those years ago. What happened next would always be a child's worst nightmare. Paige got off work early and went to the same place her dad did to get take out, only to hear a familiar voice in the middle of a commotion. Being batman Paige, she went over to see if she could be of any help. Of course, seeing your parent in the middle of a quiet alley, with a masked mugger pulling a gun on them wasn't the best sight. The worst sight was seeing the mugger shoot said parent after calling out to them. Paige caught the mugger and called for help, but it was too late. Her dad said his last words to her, the plans he had for the ring, in that exact alley while he slowly bled to death. She held him as he breathed his last breath.
The hole that the mugger left wasn't just in the chest of Paige's dad, but also in the hearts of the McCullers family. Nick McCullers have come a far way. He didn't deserve to die. He didn't deserve that fate. Tears poured out of Emily's eyes when she heard the story and they sat on the office floor, holding each other through the last period, until the one and only Addison came into the office. "Woah, this is epic. Lesbo coach can't keep it in her pants for one girl, and settled for the ex? This is going to make a nice word to go around." Emily couldn't believe her luck. She took a breath and stood up. "Addison, it'd be nice of you to actually have a soul for once. Ms McCullers is going through some family emergency and came to be about it, respectfully and as a friend. Now, if we can both step out of the office, I can run some drills and leave the captain in charge."
After telling the captain that I wasn't going to be available for practice for at least the next few days until further notice, I went back into the office and took Paige back into my arms.