A/N - Another rush-job... Thanks for reading! Stay safe out there! 3

Paige shivered under her towel as she stared at her phone, waiting for the call to go through. She was just out of the pool and on her way to the showers, but she stopped when she saw why her phone was blinking. She had missed a call from Emily. No message.

She and Emily never called each other. They hadn't talked on the phone in years. Unless there was an emergency, they always texted or Dmed each other. So, the fact that Emily had called triggered Paige's protective instincts. Something had to be wrong. "Come on! Come on!" she whispered, her fist clenched as she waited for the call to connect.

"Uh… Hello?"

Emily sounded surprised. Actually, she sounded as if she were pretending to be surprised. Paige worried that Emily wasn't alone; that someone was with pointing a gun or a knife at her, monitoring every word. She talked slowly and carefully, trying to assess the situation. "Emily?"

"Oh, Paige!" Emily cleared her throat nervously. "To what do I owe this surprise?"

"You called me…" Silence. "I was just… returning your call – Are you all right?" Paige whispered the question, not wanting to tip off the person who was menacing Emily.

"Oh – ha!" – Emily actually said the word, and she slapped her forehead with her palm. "I must have butt-dialed you by mistake! You know me! Duh!"

Paige held her phone away from her face and furrowed her brow. It didn't make any sense. It's not as if her phone number was on the top of Emily's call list. Plus, Emily was acting way too weird.

"Emily…"

Emily sighed heavily into the phone. She didn't mean to start off with a lie; after all, this journey was all about regaining Paige's trust. Her tone turned more serious as she replied. "Actually, Paige, I… uh." She scoffed to herself. "I didn't call you by mistake. I… uh… I was calling to see whether you'd like to go out to dinner, sometime, but I chickened out."

"Din-ner…"

Paige sounded confused. Emiy pressed on, trying to sound perky and upbeat. "Yeah – dinner! Because I'm in California, now! I live here, now!"

"You do?" Paige was still coming up to speed. Emily took her hesitation as rejection.

"Listen, Paige, I… I just wanted to let you know that I took a job in California. That's all. We don't have to… I mean, I'm sure we'll see each other sometime."

"No, Emily, dinner sounds great. I'm just… I'm just having a hard time coming up to speed with all this. You took a job in California?"

"Yeah. I mean, I figured it was time for a change, and Spencer knew somebody, and I really never gave California a chance, back in college, so…" Emily was burning through all of the material she had planned later, over dinner with Paige, when she was would try to convince Paige that she had come to California for legitimate purposes – not to try to win her back. She could hear herself rambling. Mercifully, Paige cut her off.

"Yeah – we should definitely have dinner. That sounds good."

"Okay, then! Well, I know you'll want to talk to Aeryn…"

"Aeryn?"

"Mm hmm. To find a time when you're both available."

"You want me to bring Aeryn?"

"Of course, silly! I mean, I'm not trying to do anything behind her back." Emily laughed nervously.

"O… kay."

"Okay! Well, give me a call, sometime, and we'll sort out the details."

Paige ended the call and headed to the shower. She was still trying to figure out why Emily was being so weird. Even when they met in Philadelphia, and Emily confessed that she still had feelings for her, she hadn't acted that kind of weird. And why was she so interested in meeting Aeryn?

Paige's thoughts hadn't been very clear when she was on the phone with Emily, when she was afraid at first, and then confused. It was only when she was in the shower that she was able to start thinking straight. That's when she realized that there had been something odd about the way Emily said Aeryn's name. Most people who didn't know her mispronounce her name as "Erin," but Emily had used the correct pronunciation, which is more like "Irene." Paige was pretty sure that she had never spoken Aeryn's name to Emily before. Emily had certainly seen her name on Instagram, but Paige had never talked about her with Emily. She was never one to rub her relationships in Emily's face.

Paige's jaw dropped when it hit her. "Damn it, Aeryn!"

Emily's call must have gone to voicemail before she hung up. Paige hastily finished her shower and got dressed, dialing her voicemail before even got up from the bench:

Hi, This is Aeryn, on Paige's phone. She can't come to the phone now, because she's too busy with her beautiful, sexy, hot girlfriend. Leave a message, but don't be surprised if she can't call you back for a while!

It had been a few months since Aeryn found Paige's phone and put that outgoing message on, as a prank. Paige left it on there to turn the joke around on her, but then, somewhere along the way, she had forgotten all about it.

No wonder Emily was so flustered.

Paige never flaunted her relationships around Emily. She had too much respect for her. Hearing that message, Paige realized, must have been just like that time when Paige walked into The Brew all dressed up for a date. She never expected to see Emily that night; she had only stopped in because she knew that Emily didn't work that shift anymore.

"Shit!" Paige immediately deleted the outgoing message, leaving the generic, "The person you have called is not available" message in its place. She felt horrible. She started to call Emily back, but she stopped herself, thinking that it would only make things worse. She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling with it. Tossing her phone into her gym bag, she stomped out of the locker room.

Emily rolled over onto her stomach and cried into her pillow. She had never felt so alone in all her life. She had left her friends and her family and moved to the other side of the country, to chase after a woman who was in a relationship. Her life had never felt so pathetic.

She let herself cry for a while before she sat up in the bed, smoothing her hair away and drying her cheeks with her fingers. She wanted to call her mom and have her tell her to hang in there and that everything was going to be okay, but she thought better of it. She couldn't go crying to her mother everytime she had a setback.

She took a deep, calming breath and slowly let her hands descend, palms down, from shoulder-height onto her mattress. She had to keep focused. She wasn't there to steal anybody's girl. She was there to regain Paige's trust. The chips would fall where they may. If she and Paige were meant to be, they were meant to be.

"So… you… want me… to pretend that we're still together."

"No…" Paige's voice was a little condescending; a little unconvincing. "I would never ask you to…" She sighed. "Look, Emily asked me to ask you…"

"Because she thought we were still together…"

"Because… whatever! I don't know what she thought."

"Uh huh." Aeryn rolled her eyes. "So, you wouldn't mind if I brought Terry?"

"What? No… I… She…" Paige narrowed her eyelids, exhaling heavily. "Fine. Yeah, she thinks we're still together. And I let her believe it." She raised her finger, quickly adding, "But I'm not asking you to pretend that we are. I just need… I don't know – some kind of buffer."

"You're afraid that you two are going to get back together?"

"No!" Paige was annoyed. Aeryn knew better than that.

"Then why didn't you tell her that we're not together anymore?"

"I don't know. I was confused by the whole thing. The phone call, out of the blue, and all of a sudden she's in California, and I…"

Aeryn rubbed Paige's shoulder. She could see that Paige was getting all worked up and emotional. If she were to have dinner with her ex in that state, it would only end in disaster. "Don't worry about it," she said soothingly. "I'll be there."

Paige stood up as Emily approached the table and, upon seeing her stand, Aeryn stood up, too. "Emily," Paige said with a heartfelt smile, greeting her friend with a warm hug. They held hands briefly as they parted.

"You look good," Emily said, barely above a whisper.

"You, too."

"Hi," Aeryn interjected, extending her arms. "I'm Aeryn."

"Aeryn," Emily repeated. "It's so nice to meet you."

"You, too," Aeryn said, backing away after the hug. "I've heard a lot about you."

Emily smiled. She couldn't say the same about Aeryn, so she just stood there smiling.

"Uh… well… let's have a seat!" Paige said hurriedly.

"So, what do you think about California?"

Emily tightened her lips in thought, looking up at the ceiling. "I like it," she said confidently. "You know how they say there are five steps to assimilation, when you move someplace new? Like, euphoria, homesickness, and… the other three" – she laughed self-deprecatingly. "Well, I'm definitely in the euphoria stage. Everything's still new and exciting!" She smiled deviously. "I'm sure I'll hate it in a week!" After addressing her comments to Aeryn, she shifted her eyes briefly to Paige, who smiled in acknowledgment.

Paige was glad that Aeryn was there. It was clearly helping to put Emily at ease. Paige had forgotten how charming and witty Emily could be in conversation, when she wasn't trying to get them back together.

Emily used her knife and fork to cut the iceberg lettuce in her salad into more manageable, bite-sized bits. She waved her fork back and forth between Aeryn and Paige. "So, how long have you two been together? It must be – what, like three years, now? Four years?"

Paige dipped her head. Emily looked at Aeryn, confused. Aeryn looked at Paige, who nodded slightly.

"We're not together anymore," Aeryn said quickly, ripping the band-aid off.

Emily dropped her silverware and her head tumbled down, as if her neck stopped working. She felt betrayed and made a fool of. "Oh," she said softly. She was not going to cry.

Paige's reflexes from their years together kicked in. She reached for Emily's hand across the table. Emily looked at Paige's hand on top of her own, resisting the urge to jerk her hand away.

"Emily, I'm sorry. I should've told you that…" Paige gave Emily's hand a squeeze before letting it go. "I wasn't trying to hurt you."

Emily nodded slightly and dabbed her face with her napkin before looking up. "It's okay," she said softly. "I know you weren't." Paige may not always have handled things well, but Emily trusted that she would never be intentionally cruel – a trust that had come a little too late, in high school.

Aeryn elbowed Paige in the side, and Paige yelped in surpise and pain. She was somewhere between really annoyed and really pissed off. "Hey, I'm really sorry, Emily. I hope you don't think…"

Emily looked at her with a smile that was obviously forced. "It's not your fault," she said, her voice still soft. She shifted her gaze to Paige. "I know I caught everyone off guard when I called. I should've handled it better."

"No, Emily, you…"

Emily smiled at Paige. "Can we, please, talk about something else?" There was a "please" in Emily's eyes that Paige couldn't say no to, so she backed down. "We can still have a nice dinner." Emily was channeling Pam Fields' hopeless optimism for a moment.

Paige looked at Aeryn. They both looked at Emily.

"Actually," Aeryn said, reaching down for her purse, "I should probably get going." She looked back and forth at both of them. "You two really need to talk."

"Yeah, you're probably right."
"No, don't be silly."

Aeryn smiled sadly at their simultaneous responses. She gave Paige's shoulder a squeeze and gave one to Emily's wrist, too. Paige made a silent plea for Aeryn not to leave her there, to face the consequences, but Aeryn was resolved. "It was nice to meet you," she said sweetly. "I look forward to getting to know you under better circumstances."

Emily's smile faded as Aeryn walked away. She steeled herself to face the rest of dinner, just the two of them.

Paige looked back at her, once she could no longer pretend that she was watching Aeryn leave. "I'm really sorry," she rasped.

"Paige, it's okay." After a second, Emily shrugged slightly. "I know you. I know you were trying to protect me." Emily wasn't just talking about this incident. She was confessing that, despite how angry she had been at Paige in the past, in the end, she had come to know that Paige's intentions were reached for the stem of her wine glass and twirled it around in her fingers. "Let's just forget about it for now and enjoy this dinner, okay?" Paige looked perplexed. "We have the rest of our lives to talk."

Paige smiled weakly. She already had the impression that all eyes were on their table, after Aeryn's abrupt exit. "Yeah. Let's just enjoy dinner."

Emily let a couple of days pass before she called her mother. She was out of options. She couldn't stay in California; she wasn't tough enough to deal with everything. But she couldn't go back home, either, after leaving her job. And it would look horrible on her résumé if she quit her new job after only a couple of weeks. She needed someone to tell her that it wasn't all a big mistake; that she was strong enough to stick it out. She canceled the call before it went through. Back in high school, it was her mother who always told her not to push too hard, that things would be okay. If she wasn't enjoying swimming anymore, she could quit. She loved Pam for being so supportive. But in the circumstances where she found herself, she didn't need an escape hatch. She needed someone to kick her in the ass and tell her to work harder, the way Coach Fulton used to. She scrolled down her contacts and pulled her father's number instead.

"What's wrong, Emmy?"

Emily sighed. "Hi, Dad!" she said mockingly. "Not even a 'Hello?' You just assume that I'm only calling because something's wrong?"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Hi, Emmy! What's wrong?" Wayne allowed himself to laugh at his own joke before his tone turned serious. "Is this about Paige?"

He had always been a fan of Paige. He didn't know everything about her relationship with Emily, but he liked the way that Paige had of bringing the best out of her; pushing her to excel and be her best.

"I think I've made a big mistake," Emily said, as calmly as she could. She might have broken down in tears, had it been her mother on the phone, but she always tried to keep a braver face with Wayne. "I gave up my world to chase after a woman who doesn't even have feelings for me anymore." She laughed ironically. "What was I thinking?"

"You weren't just chasing after a girl. You were chasing after love."

"So? I mean, call it whatever you want, but it's the same result. I may love her, but what difference does it make?"

"You know what I always liked about Paige?"

Emily rolled her eyes. "Yes, Dad. I know. You tell me all the time."

Wayne laughed lightly. "Look, I get it. I know you're not Paige. Nor should you be. But the thing about Paige is, she never believed in lost causes. No matter what happened, she was willing to fight to the end."

"Except for me," Emily said sadly. "She gave up fighting for me."

"You know what I always liked about you and Paige?"

Emily sighed impatiently. "What, Dad?"

"I like the way you two always had each other's backs. If you were having an off day in competition, she'd step up her game. If she struggled in her race, she could count on you to bail her out. Now, don't' get me wrong: When you were both on top of your game, it was awesome. But, even when you weren't, it was still great. Do you see what I'm saying?" He didn't wait for an answer. "You see, there was a time when Paige believed in the two of you and you didn't. But she didn't give up until you started to believe again, too. And now, when she doesn't believe, it's up to you to believe hard enough for the two of you. Do you get that?"

"I guess." Emily noticed that she was smiling.

"I'm not telling you that you have to be like Paige. I know you sometimes thought that I wished you were the kind of swimmer that Paige was. But that was never it. Having two Paiges on that team would have been a disaster. No, she needed you to be the Emily kind of swimmer."

Emily nodded, even though Wayne couldn't see her. What he was saying was good to hear. She had always wondered whether Wayne had secretly wished for a daughter who was more like Paige, with the killer instinct.

"And, now, she needs you to be the Emily kind of girlfriend."

Emily chuckled sadly. "I'm hardly her girlfriend."

"Not yet," Wayne said confidently. "But give it time. For now, just concentrate on being the Emily kind of friend."