A/N - As a couple of reviewers noted, I'm not going to be able to complete this fic in five chapters as advertised... But we're not too far from the finish line, I promise! :)
Thanks for reading! 3
Monday workouts were the worst.
Once swimming season started, Emily's weekends got incredibly busy. Since Coe was a small school, their team usually had to travel to competitions, and, since Emily was the newest assistant coach, most of the work taking care of the travel arrangements fell to her. She was the first one there on Friday night, making sure that the bus got there on time and that all her swimmers and their luggage and made it aboard. She was the last one in bed after the Friday and Saturday bed checks, and then she was up early on Sunday morning, shepherding her exhausted team back onto their bus for the trip back to campus. She usually crashed as soon as she got back to her room, putting on some mindless movie and lapsing into a food coma.
It wasn't anything like the wild weekends that she used to have back in college, but it was just as exhausting. Or maybe she was just getting older.
Whatever it was, she dreaded the thought of an early morning workout on Monday. The only bright spot was that she got to see Paige.
Paige was a beast. Maybe it was because Iowa State had a bigger staff - and more home meets - but, for whatever reason, Paige was never as wiped out as Emily was on Mondays. But she had always been like that. "Stamina," Paige used to say back in high school, with a lecherous raise of her eyebrow; "Staying power."
And, all these years later, Paige was still just as gung-ho on Monday morning, ready to hit the treadmill, smash it in the weight room, and destroy it in the pool.
On Mondays after Iowa State won, Paige was in overdrive, pumped up on an adrenaline high. If they lost, she was kicking herself, working out even harder as penance. Emily didn't know which was worse.
Emily was really tempted to forgo Monday workouts altogether. She stuck with them, though, determined to show Paige that she was no quitter. It wasn't only about not quitting in the gym, of course. She needed Paige to know that she wasn't going to give up on them when things got difficult. She would do whatever it took to make that point.
But she really hated Mondays.
It was Monday, so, naturally, Paige was in beast-mode on the treadmill and, later, in the pool. Emily didn't have to check the weekend scores to know that Iowa State had lost. She had seen this behavior from Paige before, back in Rosewood. Whenever Paige had a poor meet and felt that she'd let her team down, she'd take it out on herself in the pool. It was painful - almost physically painful - for Emily to see that Paige still punished herself; that she was still so full of self-loathing. She wished that she could comfort her the way that she did back in high school.
"Hey, Paige... Take it easy," Emily pleaded. She was smiling, in an attempt both to lighten the mood and to hide her very real concern for Paige's health. "Save some of that for the pool!"
Paige huffed, rolling her eyes. "Don't worry. I've got plenty left in the tank!"
Emily's head snapped back and her eyes widened. "Oh, really?" She crossed under the lane marker, over to the lane where Paige had been swimming, putting her arms around Paige's neck. "In that case," she purred, "save some of that for me!" She slid her head in closer. Paige turned her head away, but Emily used her index finger to guide it back again. "Killer" she whispered, moving still closer. Paige closed her eyes.
Paige's body untensed under the intensity of Emily's kiss. Emily tilted her head and Paige's moved in sync. When Emily's thumb stroked a path from under Paige's jaw up to her cheek, Paige's lips parted. Emily went in for the kill.
Just then, one of the lockers in the girls' locker room slammed shut, and Paige and Emily scurried back into their lanes. Moments later, Shana walked in.
Shana. Of course.
They were back into their lanes, pretending that they'd been swimming the whole time, by the time Shana came in, but, it was pretty obvious from the smirk on Shana's face what had happened. Shana must have walked in on them making out and then hurried out again and slammed her locker shut, to let them know that they weren't alone.
Knowing that she couldn't help Paige hurt made Emily hurt even more. She cared about Paige; she loved her - and she would have done anything to heal her. But the days when Paige would have let her in were behind them.
Paige barely paused when she swam up to the wall and saw Emily's feet dangling in the water, the signal that Emily always used to let Paige know that she was about to hit the showers. "Don't overdo it," Emily said softly, sadly.
"I know," Paige replied as she turned and swam away.
Emily had a longer than usual wait for Paige after her shower. She tapped her toes on the tile floor of the locker room, repeatedly checking her watch, worried that she would be late for work. Eventually, she moved out to the sidewalk and waited, so that she could be closer to her car. If she hadn't been so worried about Paige's state of mind, she would have given up and headed to work, texting Paige to let her know that she'd had to leave. Instead, she texted the head coach to let her know that she was running late.
Paige came rushing of the gym in time to see Emily tapping out the text on her phone. "Oh," she said, surprised.
"Paige!"
"I thought you'd left." Paige dipped her head. She knew that she hadn't been a good workout partner, and she felt bad about it. She had hoped that they wouldn't have to talk about it. "I know I went long today," she said apologetically
Emily stared at Paige, her eyebrows crinkled in concern. "I wanted to make sure that you were okay." Her voice was earnest and soft. She didn't want Paige to hear the pain behind it.
"I'm fine," Paige said quickly, extending her arms for an obligatory good-bye hug.
Emily drew herself in and held Paige tight. She wanted, somehow, to transfer healing to her through the hug. She was doing her best to stifle the sobs that were coursing through her body out of her concern for the way that Paige was beating herself up, but Paige must have felt her labored breaths. She rubbed Emily's back up and down as the hug, longer than their usual hugs, went on and on.
Somehow, it had worked. Seeing Emily's distress had taken Paige's mind off of her own self-loathing.
Emily backed away from the hug, but Paige kept a grip on her arms. This time, it was her eyebrows that were crinkled. "Are you okay?" Her eyes were searching Emily's for any indication of distress.
Emily eyes kept blinking, trying to keep the tears from escaping. When she was able to get herself under control, she nodded, her eyes never leaving Paige's. "I'll be fine," she said unconvincingly. Paige kept staring at her, her eyes shifting slightly from left to right and back, her lips tight and her breathing steady.
Emily's eyes locked onto Paige's, matching their every movement. They were caught in the kind of stare that couldn't go on without consequences. The kind of stare that could only end one way. Emily felt the whisper of a breath as Paige's lips neared hers. She closed her eyes.
Kissing Paige felt so natural; so right. It was even better than the memory. It was like being denied her favorite food for years and years, and finally being allowed to taste it again.
Emily could hardly believe that it was happening. Her stomach was fluttery. She wasn't sure what she was thinking, but there was no doubt about what she was feeling. Her heart was yearning, desperate for one more taste of what she had been deprived of for so many years. She stroked the path from underneath Paige's jaw up to her cheek, and Paige's lips parted. But as soon as Emily's tongue made contact, Paige panicked and jerked away.
"I'm sorry!" Emily pleaded, holding onto Paige's hand, trying desperately to keep her from running off.
"No, no, it's fine," Paige said, with no commitment behind the words. She pulled herself free from Emily's grip. "I just, uh… I've just got to..." Paige twisted her wrist, as if checking the time on her watch, but she wasn't wearing one. "Shit!" she exclaimed. "I'm going to be so late!"
"Paige," Emily begged, "can we please just talk about what happened?"
"Yeah, yeah," Paige lied. Her face was turned towards Emily, but her body was angled towards her car. Her mind was miles away. "I'll give you a call. I really need to get going."
Emily, hands on hips, watched in disbelief as Paige sped to her car and then sped out of the parking lot. "Shit!"
She really, really hated Mondays.
"Shit!"
Paige couldn't believe how stupid she'd been.
Each one kills the thing he loves
By all let this be heard
A coward does it with a kiss
A brave man with a sword
Paige had killed it. With a kiss.
Coward.
That single kiss had killed the dream that she and Emily could ever be friends.
She couldn't believe how stupid she'd been. She couldn't believe that she was still falling into the same trap that she used to fall into in high school, her lips still magnetically drawn to Emily's.
Except she couldn't blame this on Emily. Emily hadn't tricked her or seduced her. Emily had been upfront with Paige ever since she first moved to Iowa. This one was on Paige; on her and her cowardly inability to control her cowardly lips. She pounded her fist into her pillow over and over, wishing that she were pounding something harder, something that would punish her with sweet pain. Anything to distract her from the memory of what she and her lips had done. Again.
Emily, too, wondered how she could have been so stupid. She had her game plan. She knew what she was supposed to do. It was like wooing a bird: Move slowly, deliberately. Show the bird that you're not going to harm it. Show it that you have something that it wants. Make it want to come to you. No sudden moves to scare it off.
But she got greedy. She let her feelings take over. She had scared Paige off. It would take ages to build up that trust again.
Emily wasn't too surprised that she didn't get a call or a text from Paige that night. That was how Paige was – when she messed up (even if it was only in her mind that she'd messed up), she'd take a step back and think about things. Emily wasn't too worried. She still expected to see Paige in the gym for their next session on Wednesday. Paige still needed to work out, after all.
On Wednesday morning, Emily waited in front of the gym for a full five minutes before she went into the building. She took her time stretching before she climbed onto the treadmill. Even there, and, later, in the pool, she was convinced that Paige would show up sooner or later, but she never did. Still, Emily didn't make too much of it. It was only one day.
One day became two, and that stretched into a week. Emily started to get concerned. She knew that Paige was chastising herself about the kiss, but she found it hard to believe that Paige would ghost her completely. She finally decided to set her pride aside and text Paige, just to make sure that she was okay.
Been busy. Will catch up soon.
And that was that. That was all that Paige had to say. Emily's bed had never felt so empty. She had never felt so alone.
Paige hit the pool harder than she had hit it since she was back in college, training for the Olympic trials. She was swimming with purpose; swimming with anger. She was oblivious to everything going on around her, letting herself become lost in the water. It was just the two of them, Paige and her oldest friend, Water. The one friend that would never leave her.
And, off in the distance was the other thing she could never shake: Her father's voice.
She could almost see him, striding up and down the side of the pool, calling out her name over and over with an anger and an urgency that were contagious:
P: Power!
A: Aggressiveness!
I: Intensity!
G: Grit!
E: Endurance!
Her mother denied it, but Paige couldn't help believing that that acronym was the reason they'd chosen to give her the name "Paige." Be that as it may, the words were fully ingrained in her head; in who she was. Nick McCullers had groomed her to dominate, to be a force in the water. And she had taken his lessons well. In the water, she felt invincible. On a certain level, she always felt that she could outswim any problem.
But she couldn't outswim Emily. No matter how hard she swam or how fast, Emily was always right there, just over her shoulder. Paige looked over her shoulder as she made the turn, half expecting to see Emily in the next lane, smiling smugly as she moved effortlessly through the water. Everything was always so easy for her.
Why was everything always so easy for her?
Shit!
That conversation had ended with a kiss, too.
Paige was back in that old cycle from high school once again. She couldn't swim her way past it. Once again, she had sabotaged herself with one cowardly kiss.
This wasn't how things were supposed to happen. This wasn't in Paige's five-year plan. Iowa had never been the goal. It was merely a stepping stone on the way to the goal. Five years: Enough time for Paige to get some coaching experience under her belt. Enough time for her heart to start to heal. Enough time for her to learn how to coach at the college level. Enough time to learn how to date again - how to love again. In five years, she would be ready to start a new life; a real life, out in California, maybe; maybe back at her alma mater. Somewhere far away from Rosewood, anyway.
Far away from Emily. She might as well admit that. She was running from Emily, not from the craziness of Rosewood. Rosewood's craziness had a way of following people, no matter how far they ran. She hadn't planned on the fact that Emily would follow her, too.
Paige pushed herself even harder, launching herself with all her might from the wall as she turned for another lap. She pushed past the aching in her thighs - and past the aching between them. She pushed till she was out of breath, suddenly lightheaded. She could feel herself losing control, going under. She grasped desperately for the lane marker and hoisted herself up onto it, leaning on top of it, sucking for air. She wiped the water away from her face and rested against marker for a while, until her breathing stabilized. By then, her shoulders were heaving up and down again – this time, from crying. It was so hopeless. No matter how good she was, no matter how focused, no matter how hard she trianed, it was no use. Literally and figuratively, she couldn't swim away from Emily Fields.
Paige swam another ten laps, slowly and leisurely by comparison, to cool down. Her body was aching. She pulled herself out of the pool and sat in the front row of the bleachers, warming herself underneath a towel. Her legs were bouncing up and down and her shoulders were shivering. She needed a long, hot shower. Gathering herself up with a labored breath, she headed for her locker.
"E… Emily." Paige's voice was soft, and her surprised eyes were opened wide, as if she had been caught robbing Emily's apartment. She quickly looked away from her.
Emily was there. Emily was always there. It was a like a bad dream – or some kind of cruel, self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Don't worry," Emily said with a forced smile. "I'm not stalking you." Her tone sounded more bitter than funny. "I'm just here because I forgot these in my locker." She held up a bottle of Ibuprofen to prove that she was telling the truth.
"Oh." Paige cleared her throat and looked down at her feet. "I… uh…"
"Switched to training at night, so you wouldn't have to run into me?" Emily scoffed, shaking her head. "God, it's just like when we were in high school, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is," Paige said defiantly, finally looking Emily in the eyes with a cold stare.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean it's just like high school. Nothing's changed. When things start to turn sour in your life, all of a sudden, good old Paige McCullers doesn't look so bad after all. Remember? Better to be with me than to get stuck with mushy squash. Or when you finally figure out what a lying psycho bitch Alison Di Laurentis is, guess whose door you come knocking at."
Emily took a deep breath. She was strangely calm. She knew that Alison would come up when she and Paige had their talk, and she had prepared for it. "Paige," she said in what she hoped was a calming voice, "I know that I did a lot of stupid things because of Alison back in high school. But things were different then. I was… I don't know. It was as if I was under her spell. It can be confusing when someone has that kind of grip on you, especially at a young age. Especially when you're first finding out about love. And Alison had a way of manipulating me with it, of using it to her advantage…"
Paige, her eyes wild, leaned in. "Trust me," she bellowed, "I know all about that!"
She saw a look of shock on Emily's face, at first. As Emily processed what Paige had said, the look slowly turned into one of pain. "Emily," Paige whispered. She reached to put her hand on Emily's shoulder, but Emily twisted it away. "That's not what I… I shouldn't have said that. I'm not comparing you to Alison."
Emily shook her head, her lips tightened together. "No. You're right. You're being honest with your feelings. I get it." She slammed her locker closed. "I wish I'd never come here."
Paige raised her hands helplessly as Emily walked past her. She slammed her fist against the lockers, wondering how she had managed to make things even worse; wondering whether Emily meant that she wished she hadn't come to the gym that evening or that she hadn't come to Iowa at all.
Emily sat on her bed with her legs crossed, hugging her pillow as she rocked back and forth. Ten months. She still had ten months left on her contract with Coe. She would have to tough it out in Iowa for another ten months. After that, she wasn't sure what she would do.
She had always envisioned going back to Rosewood eventually, but she never saw herself going back alone. In her vision, she would return as the conquering heroine, with her wife, Paige, by her side, ready to live out their happily-ever-after.
She would have felt like a loser, returning to Rosewood as empty-handed and alone as when she'd left.
There were plenty of high schools who needed counselors and coaches, she told herself. And she still had time to figure it out. She would just have to get through the next ten months.
Emily wasn't worried about running into Paige again. She just couldn't be so stupid as to stop by her locker at night again. Paige had proven pretty adept at avoiding her – the way that she managed to stay half a lap away from her in the pool.
No, running into Paige wasn't the problem. The problem would be talking to her mom. And to Hanna. She could only string things out for so long before she had to admit to them that she had been a failure; that moving to Iowa had been the biggest mistake of her life.
She needed a drink. She needed a lot of them.
A/N - Anybody need a hug? I know I do! :(
(Oh yeah - the poem is an excerpt from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," by Oscar Wilde.)
