Hi! So, if you like confrontation and angst, you'll love this chapter. If not, try and enjoy it anyway. It's nice and long!
Thanks again for the follows, favorites and comments. You guys are awesome.
"Are you Hanna?" Alison pointed at the infuriated blonde. Emily chuckled at Alison's refusal to be intimidated by her friend. She didn't flinch or stutter, she simply asked a question. When Hanna answered with a terrifying and deafening silence, Alison turned to the brunette, "Is this the friend you mentioned?"
Locking her arms across her chest, Hanna didn't give Emily a chance to reply. She spat, "You must not recognize me now that I'm fifty pounds lighter." Alison's eyes blinked rapidly at her sudden recollection of the fuming woman. She rose from her chair and gently pushed it back underneath the table as Hanna blustered, "You called me Hefty Hanna in high school. It did wonders for my self esteem." She jerked her thumb gesturing away from the coffee shop and ordered, "Emily. Let's go. Now!"
"Hanna. Please," Alison spoke up loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to sound demanding. She asked, "Can you give me a second?"
While Hanna's rage gave way to annoyance, Emily suggested, "Just a second, Han. C'mon."
"Fine," the blonde conceded. She arranged her handbag neatly in the crook of her arm. Gazing condescendingly at the former queen bee, she allowed, "You may speak."
Emily winced and rolled her eyes. Hanna was baiting Alison. Fortunately, the other blonde disregarded the tone and apologized, "I am truly sorry for how I treated you. I'm not proud of it. I was a total bitch."
With a shrug, Hanna said, "We can agree on that, but I can't do anything with sorry."
"Seriously, Han?" Emily intervened. "What else is she supposed to do? Buy you gifts as a peace offering?"
Not opposed to the idea, Hanna threw a sarcastic smirk at Alison and said, "Gifts would be nice."
"How about a couple tubs of Chunky Monkey?" Emily joked.
Hanna's head whipped around. Making a crack about an ice cream that played a part in Hanna's weight gain that earned her the nickname didn't help deflate the situation. The blonde towered over Emily, who was still seated, and growled through gritted teeth, "Emily fucking Fields."
The unfazed brunette clarified for Alison, "That's not my middle name by the way."
"Unbelievable!" Hanna grumbled as she dropped her handbag on the table with a clunk. She then yanked out a chair and collapsed into it.
Emily had a nagging feeling that her friend's anger wasn't solely fueled by a high school nickname. Since Hanna obviously wished to ultimately divulge the actual issue, Emily asked Alison politely, "Can you please let Hanna and I squabble like siblings alone?"
"Yeah, sure." The blonde beat a hasty retreat. As Emily and Hanna started hashing out Hanna's real problem with the former mean girl, Alison glued herself to a wall just inside the front door within earshot, but completely out of sight.
While Alison may have abandoned her bullying ways, she still hadn't strayed from the bad habit of poking her nose where it didn't belong.
"Look. I know this isn't just about the stupid nickname." The blonde heard Emily insist.
"Of course it's not," Hanna agreed. "I'm hot as hell. I've gotten over the shock of having to deal with the chick who tortured me in high school."
"You're also modest as hell." The hidden blonde chuckled at Emily's retort.
"Can you put on your serious face for two seconds?"
"Only if you get rid of your freaky angry Hanna face."
"You know you need to stay away from her right now." Alison couldn't help but gasp at Hanna's words. "She's engaged and the anniversary of—"
"She and I are adults, Hanna."
"And you're an alcoholic with really specific emotional triggers. If the switch is flipped and you manage not to drink, you have sex with the nearest female body you can find."
The blood drained from Alison's face. Those two sentences startled her. Hanna implied that Emily was not only unstable, but prone to substitute sex for alcohol. She found it ironic that Emily had given her a hard time about caffeine.
"That's an exaggeration and you know it," the brunette replied in a shaky voice.
"Fine," Alison could hear the shame in Hanna's voice, "I'm sorry."
"You know that I switched meeting days so I don't have to see her."
A small, wise voice in Alison's head begged her to leave. She would regret staying.
"And yet here you are outside a coffee shop that she owns."
"We live in this town Hanna, this tiny, incestuous town. We're both going to see her."
"Well, you're going to have to figure something out because you'd have to be blind to miss the fact that you want to screw her." The eavesdropping blonde's chest tightened. Leave now. "Do you even like her as a human being?" The rest of Alison's muscles tensed and she held her breath waiting for Emily's answer.
"Geez. No need to be so vulgar."
That wasn't expected. Emily brushed off a brutal accusation and insulting question. Of course she liked her as a human being. She potentially liked her as far more than that—Alison could see it written on her face when they talked. She waited for Emily to expound.
Instead, Hanna pressed, "So you're not going to deny it?"
Silence. Alison's pulse throbbed in her ears.
"Or answer the question?"
Painful, sickening silence again.
The blonde suddenly felt her stomach churn and kick up acid in the back of her throat. Emily's refusal to answer sliced at places in her heart she didn't even know Emily could reach. Every look and their three conversations now felt cheap and dirty. Perhaps it was all foreplay for Emily. Perhaps she had managed to fool Alison DiLaurentis. The pain morphed into animosity and she stormed out the back door as she yelled at an employee, "I'm going home!"
She knew it shouldn't hurt like this. She shouldn't be slamming the car door so hard the entire frame rocked sideways. The woman had an alarming amount of sway over her mood and emotions. As much as she wanted to peel away and hear her tires squeal, she'd probably end up hitting someone. Instead, she dropped her head on the top of the steering wheel and talked herself out of racing back to that table and whittling both women down to the size of toothpicks. The Alison from high school was suppressed, not gone.
After five minutes of grunting swear words, she calmly turned the key and pulled slowly out of the back alley behind her restaurant. The thought of seeing Spencer and Aria tonight cheered her up a bit. Those two always managed to lift her spirits.
"No denial or answer?"
Back at the table, the brunette still remained stoic and silent.
"That's what I thought," Hanna concluded.
The guilt of withholding the truth from Hanna weighed on Emily's heart like an anvil. They didn't lie to each other; they didn't keep secrets. The blonde earned Emily's complete transparence during the dark times of her recovery.
When Emily finally admitted that she might have a substance abuse problem, Hanna dove into every aspect of her life with scissors, tape and super glue. She snipped out the pain points and temptations, temporarily wrapped the gaping wounds with tape and ultimately guided Emily to a solution brandishing the glue. For months, the blonde treated her like a china doll, a shattered china doll that might develop cracks on top of cracks. As Emily searched for the pieces scattered within her heart, the jagged shards bloodied her fingers and sometimes shredded her palms to the point of retreat. Unfortunately, she retreated into a bottle and screwed on the lid behind her. She wanted to drown in the harsh, numbing liquid.
It was Hanna who scoured her apartment for hidden bottles and poured them down the drain in front of a frantic Emily, desperate for the liquid reprieve. She was dragged kicking and screaming to daily AA meetings and tricked into conversations with her sponsor. The first year of her journey of recovery was hell for her, or what she imagined hell might be like. Through it all, Hanna never left her side, never declared her a lost cause and never guilted her by reminding her that plenty of people trudge through terrible, debilitating times without a drink.
Emily loved her for it. She loved her for sleeping on a blow up mattress in front of Emily's front door to ensure Emily couldn't sneak out to buy alcohol. She loved her for lounging on the couch watching Netflix for hours on end. She loved her for sitting quietly listening to Emily scream in her face to just let her ruin her own life. The grilled cheeses, the long shopping trips, the road trips, the sports watching—all of these things and a multitude more earned Emily's unswerving devotion and unbreakable trust.
During these bleak times, Emily couldn't deceive her friend. Her struggle with addiction left her vulnerable and exposed. Now that she gained some semblance of control, she could hide things, but she hadn't exercised that ability until now. If she admitted that she had feelings for Alison, Hanna would storm in with her scissors, tape and super glue. Emily didn't want to deal, so she couldn't be honest.
With her head buried in her hands, Emily emphasized, "Why do you think I took your advice and switched meetings? I don't trust myself with her miles and miles away from her fiancé." Ashamed, but not too much to admit it to her friend, she said, "If she even hinted at the fact that she wanted—"
"To screw you back?"
The brunette nodded solemnly, squeezed the blonde's comforting hand gripping her arm and offered, "And then I wouldn't—I couldn't—ever see her again."
Brushing hair out of Emily's face, the other woman disagreed, "You can't really believe that you're capable of ruining a relationship. You're not that person." The brunette smiled in thanks as Hanna concluded, "I mean, I'm only giving you the fourth degree because of how this emotional crap could fuck up your sobriety. I don't think you'd go through with it."
"It's the third degree."
"Don't ruin the moment!"
Emily shook her head in amusement, "Just when I think you're a horribly verbally abusive friend, you say something nice."
"And then you make fun of me," Hanna said. She knew Emily well enough to know when her advice disguised as censure had been heard, not just tolerated. So she let the Alison issue drop.
"You make it so easy, Hefty."
"God!" Hana snapped and punched Emily in the shoulder with a chuckle, "I hate it when you do that."
As Alison, Spencer and Aria carried their dishes from the dinner table into Alison's kitchen, Aria said, "I saw Emily Fields today. Apparently, she just moved back."
"Emily Fields?" Spencer queried. She pointed at the suddenly irritated Alison, "Your Emily Fields?"
"She owns Emily?" Aria laughed.
"She's nothing," the blonde mumbled through her teeth thrusting plates under water in the sink.
Aria glanced blankly back and forth between Spencer and Alison as she waited for someone to clue her in to Alison's sudden anger.
"She's a little lost, Ali," Spencer spoke up. While the blonde slammed dishes around in the sink, the brunette launched into an explanation, "Ali and Emily met two weeks ago. There was animosity, attraction, crushing and now apparently nothing. Why is there nothing?" she pointed the question to Alison.
Not looking up from the soapy dishwater, she stated, "She wants to fuck me. End of story."
"Wow!" Aria exclaimed with her eyes widening, "This went to a weird, inappropriate place really fast."
"That is unnecessarily strong language to describe her being attracted to you," Spencer noted. "Also, you don't even know that for sure."
Spinning around slinging the water dripping from her hands, Ali insisted, "Oh, but I do know for sure. I heard her and her friend, Hanna, chatting about it."
"You were listening to a private conversation?" Aria asked although not completely surprised.
"They were chatting about it?" Spencer scoffed. "Just publicly chatting about Emily wanting to—"
"Don't repeat that," Aria pleaded.
"Arguing may be a more accurate description," Alison corrected. She planted her soapy palms on the island in the middle of the room and groaned, "The point is that she's only interested in me in a way that she can't have." Since she had found out Emily's true intentions, Alison had lost a good deal of interest in the brunette. She didn't appreciated being reduced to a sex object.
"Did you hear the entire conversation?" Spencer asked. "Oh and sidebar—don't eavesdrop on people's conversations."
"No, I didn't. I left when I felt sufficiently humiliated."
"So you're basing your declaration of Emily's intentions on a partial conversation?" Spencer questioned with a raised eyebrow.
"I heard enough!" Alison blurted. "It was gross the way Hanna put it and Emily didn't even bother to deny it!"
"It probably felt gross because it reminded you of high school and college," Aria offered.
"Except you were the one doing the sexual objectifying," Spencer concluded.
"You're not really the biggest fan of who you used to be," the other brunette added.
The blonde sighed in acknowledgement. She did feel as if the tables had been turned on her. Karma was coming to bite her in the ass with a fury. "That's becoming painfully apparent, Aria."
Across the room, Alison's phone rang. Being closest to it, Aria read the caller id and said, "It's Duncan."
"Can you hand me the phone?" Her hands still a bit moist from the water, she dragged them down the sides of her dress. After Aria handed her the ringing phone, she pressed a finger to the screen, raised it to her ear and greeted, "Hey babe. What's up? Are the guys boring you?" She smiled at his response. It was good to hear his voice. They hadn't seen much of each other lately. "Well, why don't you guys come over here. I wouldn't want you to have to suffer through karaoke. Plus, I'm sure Toby and Ezra wouldn't mind hanging out with their girlfriends." She paused. "Okay I'll see you in a bit. Love you."
As Alison hung up, Spencer groaned with a smile, "So our guys are crashing girl's night?"
"They're bailing on boys night, so we're even," Aria replied.
"And Duncan has been out of town a lot the past month. I'll take any time I can get."
"Are you okay?" Aria asked with concern.
"Yeah," the blonde assured her. "It's only for a couple more weeks."
When Alison glanced at Spencer, she could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. Any minute now, she will piece together a theory and—
"Is this why the Emily thing is such a big deal?" Spencer asked.
"I wish I knew, Spence. You'll know when I do."
About fifteen minutes later, Alison and the two other girls heard Duncan, Ezra and Toby walk in the door in the middle of a conversation. Before the guys entered the den where the three women sat, Duncan said above the laughter of his two friends, "At some point, one of us will have to tell you the strip poker story."
Interest immediately piqued, Spencer queried when they appeared, "Tell who the what story?"
"Well hey there, Spence," the man greeted. He walked to a seated Alison and pecked her on the lips, "And hello to you." When Alison patted an open cushion next to her on the couch, he sank down beside her and said, "Tell the guys a story from college. It's how we first met." He eagerly took the hand Alison offered him.
"How you and who met?" Alison asked.
"Me and…" Duncan quickly surveyed the room. Spencer and Toby occupied a love seat to his right and Aria perched on Ezra's lap on the other side of Alison on the couch. "Where did she go?" The three men glanced in the direction of the front door while the women shared a look of confusion. Two seconds later, the confusion turned to shock.
"I'm here!" a familiar voice answered. A tall, tan skinned brunette strolled into the room staring at her phone. "I had to make a quick call and I—" she looked up and froze like a deer blinded by the headlights of a semi-truck.
"Emily?" Alison almost blurted to drown out the trembling in her voice.
"Alison?" Emily didn't do as good of a job hiding her surprise.
While both women grappled with their individual reactions, Duncan asked, "You two know each other?"
Alison could feel her hand, intertwined with her fiancé's, beginning to sweat. Slowly, she unlaced her fingers and guided his hand to her thigh near her knee. His firm hand was usually comforting, but the awkwardness of the situation made it almost feel foreign and unwelcome.
Spencer mouthed to Aria, "This can't be happening."
Remembering Duncan asked a question, the blonde replied, "Yeah. We met a couple of weeks ago."
Delighted, Duncan said, "Awesome. Well, Em," he motioned to Alison. "This is the fiancé I was telling you about."
Did he just say Em? Her fiancé knew Emily well enough to use the shortened form of her name?
Duncan pointed at an empty recliner to his left, beckoning his friend to sit. Emily replied smoothly, "And to think that I already knew her." The brunette flashed the couple a friendly smile.
From her tone and body language, Alison assumed Emily had fully recovered and conquered any initial discomfort. Aria managed to inconspicuously give her friend a reassuring touch on the arm. Determined not to let the brunette's presence rattle her, Ali commented sweetly, "Small world."
"Alarmingly small," Spencer added. Aria shot a death glare across the room.
With the three men completely oblivious to the tense atmosphere, Toby insisted, "You already told us the streaking sorry. You gotta tell us this one too."
Alison watched as Duncan turned to Emily with a questioning gaze, "What do you think?" Alison had heard many of her fiancé's ridiculous and embarrassing stories from his college days. They always amused her. This time, however, he seemed a bit hesitant to share because it apparently involved Emily.
The brunette tossed one leg over the other and threw her elbows onto the arms of the oversized recliner. She shrugged, "It's definitely not the worst story we have. It's appropriate for public consumption." That made Alison nervous. If there was a question of it being appropriate, this might end up embarrassing for more than one person.
"C'mon, tell it," Toby pressured. "College Duncan sounds way more fun that software engineer Duncan."
"Hey now," Ali smiled, "He's fine how he is."
"Why thank you," he replied with a playful kiss on the cheek.
"You do the honors, Duncan," Emily prompted. Alison glanced over to see the woman still unmoved, completely controlled. She wasn't sure what else she expected.
"Alright," Duncan clapped and rubbed his hands together signaling the beginning of the tale. "Em and I met at this house party and we were both trying to get the attention of the same girl."
Emily interrupted, "Let me preface this by saying that we were both drunk off our asses. We had crossed into idiot territory."
Spencer and Toby chuckled, Aria and Ezra smiled and Alison braced herself. Duncan proceeded, "We both talked to her at the same time and individually. She seemed interested in both of us, so we agreed on a perfect way to settle it. In our drunken wisdom, we started up a game of strip poker to try and impress her?"
"How is that impressive?" Spencer asked wearing the familiar face that appeared only when something didn't compute in her Hastings's brain.
"No idea," Emily answered with a snicker.
"Like Em said, we were wasted."
Emily reminded, "At least she was watching."
Duncan smiled, nodded and continued, "So people kept dropping out of the game before they got completely naked. I guess we were the most drunk, therefore the most idiotic in the group. Emily and I were the only ones left."
"It kinda turned into a game of chicken," the brunette smirked at the storyteller. Her words seemed to teleport them back to that night as they exchanged an amused glance.
"And I lost," Duncan admitted hanging his head.
"He wouldn't take off his boxers. Didn't they have planes on them?"
The group laughed as he responded with pride, "Yes they did."
Unable to help herself, Alison said to Emily, "So, you won. What were you still wearing?"
Emily smacked a hand over her mouth to stifle what would have been an explosion of laughter. With a raised eyebrow and a smirk, Duncan answered, "A thong and a sock."
There were laughs, chuckles and many jaw drops. Emily removed her hand from her mouth and shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal. Alison wondered if she was the only one forming a mental picture.
Spencer asked in disbelief, "You took off your bra before a sock?"
"Ballsy," Duncan commented.
"Seemed like a good idea at the time." Maintaining her composure, Emily added, "And there were no complaints." For the first time during the story, Emily made direct eye contact with the shocked blonde. There was too much going on in Alison's brain to read into the gaze.
Aria said, "I suppose the girl was long gone at this point?"
Duncan snorted as Emily shook her head, "Nope. She left with me."
Both Spencer and Alison exclaimed, "Seriously?"
"Well…" Duncan reminded, "She did see Em's…"
"Boobs," Emily finished. "She certainly did."
"You also got a few numbers that night, right?"
Nodding, Emily sighed, "That was a crazy night. Hanna should have stopped me."
"She was the fully clothed dealer," Duncan laughed. "And without that night we wouldn't be friends. So I wouldn't take anything back."
Steering the conversation away from the topic of a topless Emily, Alison asked, "How long were you two friends?"
Thoughtfully, her fiancé replied, "We were really good friends in college up until…" he glanced at a suddenly uncomfortable Emily. He continued, "We fell out of touch after—"
"We graduated!" Emily interjected. She furrowed her brows at Duncan sending him a warning. "People do fall out of touch when they graduate."
"Yeah, that's right," Duncan agreed unevenly. Alison knew both of them were lying, but she couldn't imagine why. It seemed to be more of Emily's secret than his.
"Hey guys," Aria hopped up from Ezra's lap and declared, "If you want some food, there are leftovers in the kitchen.
For the next half hour, everyone milled around in the kitchen making polite conversation and cracking inside jokes. Emily blended perfectly with the group. She really hit it off with Aria. The shorter brunette's sweetness complimented Emily's incessant sarcasm.
In the midst of a talk between Ezra, Spencer, Alison and himself, Duncan excused himself from the conversation and waved Emily into a room off the kitchen. Theories of what they could be talking about ran rampant through Alison's thoughts. Fortunately, she was able multitask between an actual conversation and an internal dialogue.
When Emily and Duncan reentered the kitchen both looking more serious than before, Emily waved to the group and said, "Well, I gotta head out. I've got a busy day tomorrow. Nice to meet everyone!"
Aria eagerly gave the departing woman a hug and asked for her phone number so they could meet for lunch within the next few days. Emily barely even glanced at Alison as she brushed past her. The frustration she'd be shoving down all day boiled to the surface and overflowed as she said, "I'll walk you out, Emily." The brunette didn't even turn around.
As Emily stayed two strides ahead of her, Alison tried to calm herself enough to have a conversation about this whirlwind of a day.
Swinging open her car door, Emily said, "Thanks for making sure I made it the twenty feet to my car safely."
Alison pushed past the woman, flung the door closed and slammed her back up against the door. Bug eyed, the brunette's eyes drifted left and right as the blonde scoffed, "Are you insane?"
"Umm occasionally," Emily offered with a weak smile as a last ditch effort to avoid a confrontation. After their talk at The Brew, she didn't want to end the day like this.
"I'm not being cute and flirtatious!" Alison snapped. Her arms were crossed and her nails dug into her skin. "Why the hell did you come to my house with my fiancé?"
Emily could have launched into a full on explanation and verbalized everything playing out in her head. In the span of a few hours, she had spun through more emotions than she had in the past month. After lifting the edge of her mask to talk honestly with Alison a few hours ago, Hanna blasted her for even entertaining the idea of being with Alison. She had taken a walk later that night to clear her head and literally bumped into Duncan.
She had thrown herself into his chest and squeezed him tightly as his arms wrapped around her tiny body. Although she could fill books with all the things she wanted to say to him, she simply whispered, "I'm so sorry," into his ear.
He brushed his lips against her hair gently and replied, "I missed you, Em."
Although they embraced for only a few moments, his warm hands rubbing her back thrust her back to the last night they saw each other almost two years ago. He had held her like this, except she was crumpled on a white shiny tiled floor surrounded by a few bloody handprints. With blood on her hands and face, her body shook violently as she sobbed. She could feel the snot leaking from her nose and onto Duncan's shoulder. Occasionally, her lungs couldn't keep up with her ragged inhales and exhales as she coughed and wheezed.
Hanna clung to one of Emily's red stained hands and pressed her lips close to Emily's ear as she repeated, "Breathe, Emily. Please breathe. Breathe, Em."
Minutes later, her limp form sprang to life and she pushed herself from Duncan's embrace. Before the man could snag her wrists, she pummeled him in the chest over and over. He opened his body for her to abuse. She threw punches at his stomach, chest and shoulders. As her arms flailed and her fists beat against her friend, rage dried up her tears and she grunted loudly with every punch. She swore and muttered unintelligible words until the muscles in her arms began to burn.
Shifting onto her knees, she planted her palms onto her thighs as she tried to catch her breath. Her chest heaved as she tried to bring the world into focus. The first thing clearly in view was one of her hands, cut and bloodied. Hanna planted fervent kisses in her hair as she scooted against Emily's right side. Just before the hot tears gushed forth again, Duncan lifted her head up and promised, "Em. I'm not going anywhere." When Hanna pulled away to caress Emily's back, he placed his hands on either side of Emily's face and repeated, "I'm right here." As she dissolved into tears, her fingers desperately clung to his hands cupping her face. That's the night her world cracked and a cruel turn of luck or fate or whatever flung the pieces of her heart and life in every direction. It was the worst night of her life and she was drunk. Duncan had more than tears and snot on his blue hoodie that night.
Hours later, he left her in her apartment with Hanna and promised to see her tomorrow. He walked out with his own dried tears on his cheeks, puke on the front of his shirt, snot on his shoulder and bruises on his chest. She'd never see him again. She wouldn't let him see her. She blamed him. It wasn't his fault, but she blamed him and cursed him every time she lifted a bottle to her lips. Now here she was on a street in Rosewood and all she could do was hug him.
She finally leaned away and he smiled at her just like he used to. Neither of them brought up the past as he introduced her to Toby and Ezra. After a short chat, he invited her to his fiancé's house. He said he really wanted them to meet. She happily agreed and he gave her directions. As she drove, she could barely contain her excitement. She had Duncan back. She hadn't lost the only brother she every had. Of course, her optimism and delight came to a screeching halt when she looked up from her phone in the den and spotted Alison next to Duncan.
Everything was shot to hell. Now, Alison physically blocked her only escape route. She could tell Alison parts of the truth, but she couldn't afford to be vulnerable with this woman twice in one day. Keeping her voice even, the brunette answered, "I didn't know he was your fiancé. We ran into each other on the street and he invited me over. He wanted me to meet you." Her voice became pointed, "Because you are important to him and we used to be friends."
"Looks like he wants to be friends again," Alison seethed.
"Maybe," Emily shrugged. She was not in the mood for a full on argument.
"You know that can't happen."
Temper flaring, the brunette tossed her restraint to the wind, threw up her arms in disbelief and yelled, "Why does everyone think they can tell me what to do?! First Hanna and now you!"
Alison threw back, "Oh, it's completely ridiculous that Hanna doesn't think you should screw me!"
Shaking with anger, Emily screamed, "Were you listening to us?" Alison didn't budge or answer. "Are you kidding me?"
"I only heard part of the conversation!" the blonde interjected as if that made it better.
"Of course you did!" Emily thundered, "If you heard the entire fu—freakin' conversation, you wouldn't have even said that!" She took a breath and insisted firmly, "And it's none of your business."
"Except that it is!" Alison thrust her thumb to her own chest, "It's about me!"
Instead of spiraling down a black hole of pointless back and forth, Emily addressed the obvious concern, "I would never do anything! Ever…" Although still heated, the brunette saw the flames in the other woman's eyes subside. "I would never do that to Duncan."
Visibly disgusted by the answer, the blonde pushed herself away from the car and paced to the right, "So this is all about Duncan? Really, Emily?"
"That's not what I said," Emily spoke to the blonde's back.
The other woman whirled around and asked bluntly, "What were you two talking about in the other room?"
Emily's jaw clenched. Alison's accusatory curiosity was tipping her over the edge. Alison had no context on her and Duncan's relationship and no right to know about the conversation. "It's private."
"Do you know how messed up that is? You're having private conversations with a man whose fiancé you want to—"
"Alison!" Emily barked. She was at her breaking point. Alison had pressed all of her buttons. Knowing that if she saw the angry smirk on Alison's face she might explode, Emily squeezed her eyes shut.
"Well, I'm sure he'd thank you for not ruining his relationship."
The snark in Alison's voice kicked out a weak response of disbelief, "What is wrong with you?" When her eyes opened, the blonde wore a look of confusion. With a sigh the brunette reached for her door handle and mumbled, "I'm going home. Goodbye."
"That's it?" Alison breathed with irritation.
"Yup; that's it. Conversation over."
"Seriously?" Alison's voice shot up an octave.
Shifting through all her thoughts, hopes and fears surrounding the situation, Emily replied, "I can't give you the explanation that you want. So we're done for tonight."
Alison grabbed Emily's left arm and said, "So you're going to give me nothing?"
Unable to bear the pain the blonde's voice, Emily turned and studied every feature of Alison's face. She knew Alison was desperate and hurt. She matched those emotions with the tightening muscles in her forehead, one of them tugging the edge of an eyebrow upward. Her mouth remained straight but open slightly. Emily whispered, "I can't." Her gaze dropped to the blonde's left hand. She lifted the hand by four fingers and settled it between them. She nudged the diamond with her thumb as she concluded, "Do you understand why I can't?" She quickly dropped Alison's hand.
"Just give me something," the blonde pleaded. Emily recognized the confusion and fear on the woman's face as they struggled simultaneously.
Voicing a true desire, Emily offered, "I want to be your friend."
Maybe it was the way she said it or the words themselves, but Alison's entire face was engulfed by a grin when Emily spoke. She replied, "Why does that sound so cheesy?"
Astonished, Emily responded with a question of her own, "How are you not pissed anymore?"
Alison shrugged, "You're hard to stay mad at."
Wishing that was true, Emily snorted, "Tell that to Hanna."
"I'm still a little mad."
"I know."
A calm silence settled between them. After a few moments of dodging eye contact, Emily said, "I should get home. I'll see you around."
"Yeah, you will," Alison replied with a small smile.
Emily drove home trying to balance all the thoughts and emotions in her head. She didn't know that the blonde stood in her driveway alone for the next ten minutes battling with and finally admitting a truth to herself. Did it have something to do with Emily? Or was it something she'd known even before Duncan slipped the ring on her finger?
So much angst! I promise I'm trying to speed ahead to happy times, but Emison is a little stuck in a not so enjoyable situation. I kinda like arguments so I had a grand old time writing it. Hope y'all liked it too!