A/N - To any Iowans who may read Paily fanfics, please know that I don't share Nick's opinion... ;)
Thanks for reading!
"Iowa?" Nick McCullers screeched when Paige broke the news to him. "Iowa?" His stare was piercing right through to Paige's soul. He was shivering in rage. "Now, you know, Paige, there are only two reasons to move to Iowa. Either you're running after someone, or you're running away from someone."
Through the years, Paige's father had come to terms, more or less, with her sexuality. They had struck an uneasy truce. He knew that she wasn't going to change, and he was pragmatic enough to know that he would have to learn to deal with it.
But he had never come to terms with Emily.
From Nick's perspective, Emily had taken everything from his daughter: Her shot at making captain of the swim team; her competitive edge; her heart. No father wants to see his daughter's heart broken. It's the one thing a father can't fix – so, instead, he takes it out on the one who broke it.
Paige stood silent before him with her arms at her waist. She'd known him long enough to know how to respond to this kind of reaction. It was best to wait it out; let him blow off some steam and settle down.
"Well," he sighed at last, "it's probably for the best. Getting away from that girl is probably the best thing for you."
It wasn't just her father's musings about why people move to Iowa that haunted Paige as she sat in the hallway, worn out by her unexpected encounter with Emily at the bar and by their conversation afterwards. Paige was also having trouble letting go of Emily's words: "I left everything."
Paige was used to being the one whom Emily left behind. Paige was the one who had to leave everything – and even change who she was – to follow Emily. She wasn't sure what to make of the change. She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed, content to remain seated on the floor a little while longer and think about it.
When Emily got back to her room, she tossed her purse and keys on the counter and ran to the bathroom, where she grabbed a big box of tissues. From there, she ran to her tiny bedroom and flopped down on the bed to cry it out.
The room was too small. The bed was too small. Her life was too small. It was okay, she thought at first. After all, it was only temporary. Pretty soon, she and Paige would be looking for an apartment – or a house. She had approached it exactly as she approached competing on the swim team: She only had to put in the work and trust that the results would follow.
That had been the plan, anyway. After the conversation in Paige's apartment, she was no longer sure.
After a good cry and a few moments to get herself together, she retraced her steps to where she had tossed her purse and pulled out her phone.
"Emily?"
Hanna sounded groggy, as if she'd just been interrupted from sleeping, even though it wasn't that late. Emily looked at her clock. Somehow, it had gotten to be a little past 11 – in Iowa. That meant that, back in Rosewood, it was a little past midnight.
"Hi, Hanna," she sighed.
Hanna could tell by the tone of Emily's voice – and by the time – that it wasn't good news. "She wasn't there?" Hanna asked, assuming that Emily was getting discouraged by all of those trips to the bar without running into Paige.
"No, she was there," Emily said, her voice curiously lilting up as she spoke, and with an ironic chuckle.
Hanna misinterpreted her tone. She sat up in the bed with her legs crisscrossed, suddenly wide awake. "Well, all right!" she said eagerly.
"Yeah," Emily said, scoffing slightly. "Came right up to me, and we even hugged."
Hanna gasped. She was shivering with excitement. "No way! Emily! Is she there with you now?" Hanna almost whispered the question, in guilty delight over the fact that Emily might have been calling right before she and Paige re-consummated their relationship - or right after.
"No, Hanna." Emily suddenly realized how badly Hanna was misinterpreting things. "It wasn't like that at all. She…" Emily pulled the phone away from her ear for a moment and pressed it against her forehead in defeat. "She shot me down."
"Shit, Emily!" Hanna whined sympathetically.
"We went to her place, so we could talk, and she just… I don't know. It was just so cold, and…"
"Yeah, why does she keep it so cold all the time?"
"She was cold, Hanna. She was just so… cold and… distant – as if she were talking to, I don't know, Jackie from French club or someone, not her ex-girlfriend. I mean, at the bar," (Emily chuckled bitterly.) "she even introduced me as an old friend!"
"Aww," Hanna pouted. After giving herself enough of a pause to be sure that Emily felt her sympathy, she softly prodded, "But, I mean, you can't really be surprised that Paige is upset. I mean, we both know that she was really hurt…"
"Uh…" Emily swallowed hard. She couldn't find the words. "You think tha… Seriously, Hanna?" Emily fought back the tears, taking to her feet with her arms flailing. "You couldn't have told me this before I gave up everything to chase after her?"
Hanna sighed, trying to be patient. "I'm not saying that it's over forever, Em. I'm just saying… Well, let's face it, we both knew you were going to have to work to get her back."
"I know," Emily said weakly.
"And, let's face it, you two have a lot to talk about."
"I know," Emily repeated, with a little bit of venom, this time. "You know…" she said with a huff, "even when we were hugging it out, and I thought that everything was good with us, I was going to tell her that we needed to talk. All those times we just papered over the problems or pretended that everything was fine – nothing got resolved. It's no wonder she…" Emily grew sad with what she was about to admit. "… she gave up on me."
"She didn't give up on you, Emily." The phone was silent as Emily shrugged her shoulders weakly on the other end. "This is Paige, remember? Has she ever given up on you? She just needs a minute to process things. You just need to be there when she does."
"Okay."
"Okay?" Hanna asked, with concern in her voice.
"Yeah. I'll be okay."
"Okay. I love you, girl!" Hanna said enthusiastically. "And Paige does, too!" she quipped before she hung up the phone.
The bad thing about leaving home and everyone you know is… that, well, you don't know anyone. Paige had her colleagues from Iowa State's athletic department, of course. And she had her friends from the bar. But there was no one whom she could call at 11:00 at night when she needed to talk through things. Not that she'd had very many people whom she could've called back when she lived in Rosewood.
There was Caleb, for one. Caleb had been there for her in the past. They got each other. They were kindred spirits, in a way. But she would have felt bad contacting him just to unload her problems, especially after all those years when she'd never gotten in touch with him. Truth be told, she would have been embarrassed for him to know that, after all those years, she was still suffering over drama with Emily.
And there was Emily, of course. Whatever ups and downs they had back in high school, Paige always felt that she could go to Emily. Almost always, anyway. She chuckled to herself at the next thought that crossed her mind: Maybe I should go talk to Emily. She looked across the room to where her bike hung from a pair of hooks anchored to the ceiling and remembered that night when she rode through the rain to Emily's house, to apologize for the truly horrible things that she had done to her. And Emily forgave her. Even without knowing the full story and everything that Paige had been battling, Emily forgave her. Perhaps that was why Paige had always been so quick to paper things over with Emily whenever they fought; perhaps she felt, on some level, that she owed Emily that much.
But that's no basis for a relationship; keeping a balance sheet of who owes what, with one person always feeling that she's in the other person's debt. At some point, they have to wipe the slate clean and start over, on equal footing.
Still, Emily had been willing to forgive and move on when Paige bicycled up to her house that night. It had been very mature of her, and it was one of the things that Paige admired about her. Paige even strove to be like her in that respect– only, she realized, when Emily had her bicycling-through-the-rain moment, coming all the way out to Iowa to reconcile with her, she had failed the test of being like her miserably.
Paige hung her head, resting it on her hand for another half-minute before, with a slap to her knees, she picked herself up off of the floor. She would have to make amends. Even if they couldn't be together, they could still move past their past. But there was no need to force it that night. Iowa City wasn't all that big, and the swimming community was pretty close-knit. She would definitely see Emily again.
As she headed for the bedroom, she thought to herself how much she'd grown to be pragmatic, like her father. Like it or not, she'd have to find a way to deal with the fact that Emily was back in her life.
Emily smiled to herself as she looked through the glass door at the rows on rows of treadmills in the gym. It was still early, way before dawn, so most of the treadmills were idle. In fact, all of them were - all except the one in the far corner, where Emily's eyes were pointed. That was the one where Paige was running, as if her life depended on it; as if she were being chased by a cheetah.
Emily wasn't surprised to find Paige working out at the gym, but, unlike their encounter at Hawkeye Hank's, she hadn't been stalking the gym, waiting for Paige to show up there.
She was smiling because she was picturing the look on Paige's face, even though Paige's back was to her. It was Paige's determined look: A thin, deep crease between her eyebrows; her eyelids narrowed to slits, her upper teeth digging into her lower lip, and her nostrils flaring with each footfall against the tread.
Emily took a long eyeful: Paige's strong, deliberate pace, the pounding of her legs, her arms pumping back and forth, back and forth. It reminded of the time that they'd gotten so worked up in Paige's backyard that they ended up going at it in one of the pool recliners. It was the recklessness of youth. Even though the darkness and the fence kept them out of sight from Paige's neighbors, the sound of the owls and the crickets wasn't enough to cover over the sounds of their passion. And every time a car passed by the front of the house, they were sure that it was Paige's parents, coming home early, and that she and Paige would have a lot of explaining to do.
Emily felt a tickle in her gut at the memory. It had been reckless, but it was beautiful. Afterwards, when they cooled themselves down by skinny-dipping in Paige's pool, it was perfect. They didn't have a care in the world. There was nothing to fear and no need to justify themselves to anyone.
That moment was one of the highest points of Emily's high school years. She would've given anything to be back in that place with Paige.
"Keep your eyes on the prize, Fields!" Emily could still hear Coach Fulton's voice. "Keep your eyes on the prize."
Coach was right. Focusing on the trophy made the hard work tolerable.
Emily took another look at Paige – another moment to focus on the prize - before, with a deep breath, she pushed open the door and headed inside.
She could have taken any of the other treadmills in the room, but she chose the one right next to Paige's. There was no sense in trying to avoid her, even after their last encounter. They were going to meet in the gym one way or another, sooner or later. Emily put her phone on the mini-shelf in the front of the machine and started punching in the numbers for her workout. Her smile grew wider the longer she stood there unnoticed by Paige. She knew that, when Paige was in the zone, she was largely oblivious to what was going on around her. It used to drive Emily crazy. That kind of focus, though invaluable in the pool, could be dangerous alone in a gym at 4:00 in the morning. Paige insisted that Emily didn't need to worry about it and that she wasn't that bad, yet, in all the time it had taken Emily to set up her workout, Paige still hadn't picked up on the fact that she was no longer alone in the gym.
When Emily started running, Paige gasped and did a double-take, startled at the movement that she caught in her peripheral vision.
"Waaaaaaah!"
She let out a wail and slid wildly off of the treadmill when she turned her head and saw that someone was next to her. As she tumbled to the floor, the safety switch disengaged from her treadmill, cutting off its power.
Paige put her hand on her heart as she landed with a thud, breathless and with her heart pounding more from the shock than from the workout. Emily stood over her with a hand outstretched to help her up, laughing too hard to ask whether or not she was okay.
Paige swatted her hand away. "Shut up," she said softly, dipping her head with an embarrassed smile.
Emily didn't delude herself that seeing her was what had set Paige's heart racing and caused her to trip over herself. She might have thought that back in high school. Or, maybe if Paige didn't know that she was in Iowa, seeing her might have caused that kind of shock. If that had been the case, it would have been like seeing a ghost. As it was, though, it was simply Paige's reaction to the discovering someone right next to her when she thought that she was alone.
"What did I tell you about zoning out when you're by yourself?" Emily asked, again extending her hand. This time, Paige took hold of it and let Emily help her up.
"Since when do you work out at Retro Fitness?" There was still more than a hint of embarrassment in Paige's voice as she avoided Emily's question with a question of her own.
"Since the athletes started returning to campus for the semester," Emily explained. "I'd been working out in the gym on campus, but, now that the students are back…"
"You didn't want to have to deal with being hit on by all the baby jocks?"
Emily rolled her eyes. "I didn't want to have to deal with the crowds." she clarified, chuckling lightly. "Besides, I'm like an old woman to those kids. I'm so sure they'd be hitting on me!"
"Yeah," Paige asserted, staring deep into Emily's eyes, "they would."
"Whatever," Emily said, patting Paige lightly on the shoulder as if she were only humoring her. "Anyway, don't let me interrupt your workout," she teased. "I know how much you hate being interrupted when you're working out."
"Well, actually..." Paige looked away shyly. "I… I was just about to head to the pool," she lied, gesturing in the direction of the pool. She wasn't sure that watching Emily getting all hot and sweaty in her gym clothes was the best idea, when she was grappling with the need to maintain a "just friends" relationship.
"Oh, okay," Emily said, her tone upbeat. "Great – I need to get into the pool, too!"
"Don't you need to warm up first?" Paige asked, pointing to the treadmill that was all set up and waiting for Emily to resume her workout.
Seeing Emily in her gym clothes was one thing. Seeing her in her Speedo was another.
"I'll be fine," Emily assured her, "as long as I stretch out first." She punched Paige in the shoulder playfully. "You still remember how to stretch me out?"
"Ohhhhh… Mmmmm..." Emily inhaled sharply, her eyes closed.
Paige was doing her best to focus on a spot on the wall as Emily lay beneath her, her leg on Paige's shoulder, making the kind of moans that Paige hadn't heard out of her since high school.
"Oh, GOD, Paige!"
"You're…" Paige swallowed hard. "You're still pretty flexible!"
Emily sat up, her legs spread wide in front of her. "No one's stretched me out like that since high school," she said in a deep, unnecessarily sultry voice.
Paige dipped her head. It was obvious that their conversation wasn't about stretching.
Emily smiled coyly at Paige's reaction, grateful to know that her message had been received. She sincerely wanted Paige to know that there hadn't been anyone else. She might have had a workout partner or two; even a personal trainer. But there hadn't been anyone since Paige.
Paige jumped up to her feet quickly. "We should, um," she stammered, "We should probably get into the pool."
Emily groaned, extending her hands for Paige to help her up. "Ugh. Do we have to?" she whined.
She didn't let go of Paige's hands once she was on her feet. The two of them held their ground, looking into each other's eyes.
Paige looked conflicted. If she had said anything – if she had so much as flinched – Emily might have taken her right there; pushed her up against the wall, or pulled her down onto the cold, tile floor and claimed everything that she had moved to Iowa for.
Paige nodded, letting go of Emily's hands. "It's going to get crowded in here pretty soon," she informed her.
"Fine," Emily sighed, pretending that it was having to do laps, rather than not getting to do Paige, that had her disappointed.
Paige chuckled and shook her head.
"Uh... and what's that supposed to mean?" Emily pointed, her index finger making an air-circle around in the outline of Paige's face. She was smiling as she did it, even though her eyes and her tone were accusing.
"Nothing," Paige said, still shaking her head. "Well, it's just that…" Paige's tone turned playful. "Gosh, for someone who loves swimming, you sure hate to get in the pool!"
Emily rolled her eyes. They'd had this discussion a thousand times. "It's not the pool I hate," she reminded Paige. "It's the hour. Swimming? Fun. 4:30 in the morning? Not fun!"
"You big baby!"
Emily's eyes got wide, and Paige knew that she'd better run. Emily chased her into the pool area and twice around the edge until Paige took a corner too fast and started to slip. Knowing that she was going down, she adeptly spun and grabbed Emily's wrist, pulling her into the pool with her. They came up out of the water laughing, and, for a brief moment, it was as if they were back in high school together; back in the pool together; back in a relationship together, without a care in the world. Emily put her hands on Paige's shoulders and pushed her under the water. Paige, trying to get leverage, accidentally put her hand on Emily's breast.
Emily tried to laugh it off, but she saw the horrified look in Paige's eye.
Overcome by guilt at her transgression, Paige put a bit of distance between herself and Emily by ducking under the lane marker and wordlessly starting on her laps.
Emily knew what Paige was like when she got that way. It would have been futile to try to talk her down. Instead, she started swimming in the opposite direction, ensuring that their laps were out of synch.
They had made progress, she told herself. It was like any training regimen: You don't expect to convert 30 pounds of fat into muscle in just one workout. You have to keep at it. She and Paige had come pretty far in a week. They had shown that they could still be friends, and that they still remembered the days when they were so much more than that. "Good progress," Coach Fulton would have said, with a hand on Emily's shoulder. "Keep at it, Fields." But those weren't the only words from her coach that came to mind as she swam a discreet distance from Paige.
Coach rose from behind her desk, handing Emily a piece of paper with the e-mail address for Coe College's athletic director and staying for a hug.
"Go get your girl."
Emily hadn't told Coach that Paige was the reason that she had suddenly become so interested in a job in Iowa. It had been obvious.
It had been obvious to Coach two years earlier, when Paige called her up and asked her for advice about where to pursue her career in coaching, that Paige needed to get some space from Emily. For a while; not forever. Coach knew that they would end up together eventually. She had a sixth-sense about those things. She directed Paige to Iowa because it was in the middle - a little bit bigger than Rosewood, so that she and Emily would have some space (when Emily inevitably followed her there), but not so big that they could avoid seeing each other entirely. It was far enough from Rosewood to put some distance between them and the things - and people - who always came between them, but not so far that they couldn't come home from time to time, until they realized that Rosewood was where they belonged, and that they belonged there together.
Coach Fulton would never have considered herself a matchmaker, but she was an expert at putting a winning team together. And she'd known for years that Paige and Emily were an unbeatable combination.
The two ex-lovers kept at their cat-and-mouse game for about a half hour, Paige studiously keeping herself a half-lap off of Emily's position in the pool. From time to time, Emily, growing bored of the game, would mess with Paige, changing her pace or abruptly changing direction in the middle of a lap, in an attempt to force Paige to swim next to her. Each time, though, Paige deftly adjusted her pace, swimming faster or more slowly to preserve that half-lap gap.
Eventually, Emily hoisted herself out of the pool, wiping the water out of her face, and sat on the edge, letting her feet dangle in the water. She patted her swim cap as she waited, making sure that it was securely in place. She wasn't going to wash her hair in the shower, so she didn't bother to take it off. When Paige pulled up to that end of the pool and saw Emily's feet in the water, she bobbed up to the surface, moving her hands and feet back and forth like a toad treading water.
"You're going to hit the showers?"
Emily nodded her head.
"Okay. I'm going to get a few more laps in."
Emily nodded again.
It was a familiar ritual. Back in their high school days, after people found out that they were together, they were always careful to stagger their shower times, to keep from giving their teammates something to gossip about. There in Iowa, the ritual was the same, but for a different reason. As many times as they'd seen each other in the shower, current circumstances called for some privacy.
"See you in the locker room?"
Paige nodded before taking one last deep breath and speeding towards the other end of the pool.
Emily let out a heavy sigh and stood, stretching her arms above her head and putting her right shoulder through a couple of rotations. She used her fingers to pull the bottom of her Speedo back into place as she turned and set off for the showers.
Emily was dressed and straddling one of the benches in the locker room when Paige finally emerged from the showers, her head and her body wrapped in the gym's white towels with a single Navy blue stripe. Emily greeted her with a sad smile; sad because of how formal and distant things had become between them. "I'm going to go check out the rest of the facilities," she said, letting Paige know (without saying it explicitly) that she was going to give her some privacy.
"Yeah," Paige acknowledged with a nod. "It's not a bad little gym, actually." She smiled softly, looking down.
She appreciated the privacy. But the fact that Emily had waited for her meant that she needed to stay and wait to say good-bye to Emily after she finished getting dressed.
"Hey," Paige said, stepping up to Emily who was looking at a couple of guys playing racquetball.
"Hey," Emily echoed. "You heading out?"
"Yeah."
"So… see you around?" Emily reflexively put her arm out and Paige came in for the hug. Emily lingered there for longer than seemed appropriate. Something was a little bit off, and she was trying to figure out what. She couldn't quite put her finger on it at first. She only pulled away once she realized what it was: Paige's scent was slightly different. Her freshly shampooed hair still had the scent of coconut and aloe, but it wasn't the same. It was as if she had switched brands. Perhaps it was hard to find Tresemmé products in the middle of Iowa. Or maybe it was just that Emily's memory was playing tricks on her. She stealthily took another sniff. No, it wasn't a trick of her memory; there was definitely something different. It was odd, she thought, how persistent the memory of a scent can be. Odd also that she didn't notice the difference when they hugged at Hank's; but, then, Hank's came with its own set of scent-markings. The aroma of a bar wasn't one that she and Paige were familiar with, back when they were together in high school. By contrast, they were very well acquainted with the smells of a gym near a pool.
"Emily?" Paige was giving her concerned look.
"Huh? I…" Emily chuckled slightly. "I'm sorry," she said, with a quick shake of her head. "I zoned out for a minute."
Paige nodded, acknowledging the obvious. "Anyway, I'll see you around?"
Emily shot her a comfortable, closed-lipped smile. "Yeah. See you around."
Paige trotted off and Emily, tugging the zipper of her warm-up suit up and down a time or two, watched her go. She felt content; optimistic. It had been a pretty good morning.
