"More than a fling?! Oh my God Alison you are just full of secrets!" Her friend exclaims excitedly.
You don't even know the half of it. Alison thinks to herself.
"It's a complicated situation. Not something I talk about." Alison tells her reluctantly.
"If I was hitting that I'd never shut up about it, are you kidding me?!"
Alison shoots her friend an annoyed glare in response to the comment.
"Sorry, I obviously won't be doing that now, I'm just saying I don't understand. Why are you just now telling me this? And why were you going to act like you didn't know her?"
Alison lets out a sigh, "Again, it's complicated. I don't even know if I can find a starting point for this mess."
"Don't worry about that I have all afternoon. You can start from the beginning. Talk to me girl what's going on with you? You've been distant recently and now I'm starting to think this swim coach has something to do with it." Adrienne says putting a hand over Alison's hand.
Alison thinks to herself that she didn't plan on telling her friend everything. She wanted to tell her just enough to make her back off of Emily. But the more she thinks about it, she realizes she's never spoken to anyone about the situation with Emily before, and who better to talk about it with than someone who could be nonbiased in the situation? She had already told Adrienne about Charlotte so she would understand that part of the story.
Alison takes a deep breath before starting, "Well, Emily and I became friends in high school. I always knew she liked girls. I even knew it before she did and on occasion, we would share a kiss here and there. At the time I was convincing myself that I was kissing her for practice. But I always felt a special connection to her more than the other girls. Then when I disappeared, I realized just how much I missed her and it became apparent that I definitely had feelings for her, I just didn't know what to do with them. When I came back home it was because we thought we had finally put a stop to Charlotte and the torturing, but we were wrong. Then me and Emily finally had that night where we went all the way with each other, and she told me she loved me. But instead of me being honest and telling her I loved her back, I panicked. I knew if I told her I loved her, Charlotte would put a bigger target on her back, and I just wanted to keep her safe so I never told her. We never spoke about that night after it happened because things started getting really scary. And once it was all over, we still never spoke about it. It was almost as if it never happened. Once everyone went their separate ways for college we stayed in touch for a little while, but Emily's dad had passed away and that took a toll on her. We spoke a couple of times after that and then she stopped responding to my calls and text and I never heard from her again and I still don't know why. This is my first time seeing her in 5 years."
Adrienne took a second to take it all in before speaking, "And you don't think this is fate? That you both ended up at the same place at the same time 5 years later?"
"I don't know if I would call this fate. So far it doesn't seem like she even wants to try to be friends again. I don't know who she is anymore, especially after what happened last Friday." Alison stopped, noticing that she had said too much. She wasn't planning on talking about what happened in her classroom.
"Wait, after what happened?" Adrienne stares at the blonde with expectant eyes. Alison remains silent and puts her head in her hand covering her face.
"Alison!"
"Okay, okay!!" The blonde blushes more and finally breaks, knowing her friend won't stop until she speaks up.
"On Friday, after school, she got lost trying to find the natatorium and ended up in my classroom asking for directions, and that had been the first time we'd seen each other. That's how we found out we'd be working together…"
"Okay, and…" Adrienne says.
"And we got in a bit of a heated exchange and things may have… escalated."
"Escalated?! As in… Where?! In here?!"
Alison chuckles just a little at her friend's reaction before continuing "Yes." She takes her hand and taps on the desk directly in front of her friend. "Right here."
Adrienne's eyes grow wide, and she throws her hands up in the air as if she is surrendering. "Okay, ew!"
Alison can't help but let out a laugh at her reaction before she speaks again. "Well, you asked!"
"For fuck's sake did you at least sanitize the place?" Adrienne says with a disgusted look on her face.
"Relax, I stayed fully clothed it didn't go that far. It was actually really embarrassing. My body still reacts to her the same way it did all those years ago. She got me worked up and then walked out in the middle of it without saying a word. Like it was a game to her. The Emily I used to know would have never been bold enough to pull that. I still don't know what she was thinking when she did it and when I tried to ask her about it, she shut down on me."
"Okay, back up… if she left you all hot and bothered here and left abruptly, when did you have the chance to try to speak to her about it?"
Leave it to Adrienne to not miss a single thing.
"Oh, did I forget to mention she's my new neighbor too?"
"Holy shit, Alison! Wow, this is like my own little television drama playing out for me!" Adrienne hops up quickly from the desk and begins to pace back and forth becoming very passionate about the situation.
"I'm so happy this is entertaining for you," Alison says rolling her eyes.
"I'm sorry Alison, you may not want to hear it, but this is definitely fate! Too many coincidental situations are happening to bring you two back together. That's my opinion on all of this and I'm sticking to it. Regardless of if you are supposed to be together romantically or not, the universe is trying to tell you both something here."
Alison hears what her friend is saying, and she can't say she hasn't thought the same thing.
"Hypothetically speaking, if Emily was to tell you today that she still loves you and wants to be with you, how would you respond to that?"
Alison is taken aback by the forward question, but she's also not surprised because Adrienne isn't one to beat around the bush.
"Honestly, right now I still have this situation with Rollins going on. Going off of what Emily is giving me right now it would be crazy to choose her over him. He treats me so kindly, and I know he cares about me…. but I can't say that I would choose him over Emily if the opportunity presented itself. She and I used to be magnetic. We have so much history… and if she were to ever show me the Emily I used to know…. I don't know it's really hard to say."
"Well friend, it looks like you have yourself a sticky situation on your hands," Adrienne responds and looks at Alison and shoots her a sympathetic smile. "Just know that I support you in whatever decision you make, and you can always talk to me. You don't have to keep this bottled up."
Alison looks at her friend and smiles as a way to say thank you. She thinks about how this conversation was started just to make sure her friend knew that Emily was off-limits but somehow turned into a therapy session. But she appreciated her blonde friend and knew she could trust her.
"Now let's get the fuck out of here. The only other drama I have in my life is Grey's Anatomy and I have a new episode to watch."
With that Alison gathers her things and the pair walk to their cars together as usual. Adrienne gives Alison a long meaningful hug before going their separate ways. Little did the blonde know, that Emily was just outside of view seeing the interaction. She instantly cringes knowing now that the two blondes are friends. Pretty close friends by the looks of that hug. Well, there goes any chance I had with Adrienne. The brunette thinks to herself. But she also notes that even though the blondes do look strikingly similar, her eyes would always focus on Alison. She always seemed to take the spotlight no matter who she was standing next to.
Once the brunette got home, she decided to make some dinner. She had been picking up food from the local diner to eat for the last week but decided it was finally time to properly use her kitchen. She settled for making homemade vegetable soup, so she stopped by the local market and bought a load of fresh vegetables.
Upon entering her kitchen, she takes out her knife and cutting board and begins cutting up her veggies. She thought about how good she felt her first day went and how it was so close to ending perfectly. That is until she found out she had flirted with the wrong person. Of course, Alison would be friends with the only other attractive person on the faculty, she thinks. She wonders if the other woman caught on to her flirting or if it was just light enough that it had gone over her head. The brunette was so deep in thought that she didn't even feel it as the knife glided right through her skin cutting herself. She must have gotten herself pretty good because by the time she started to feel the pain she was bleeding rather quickly. She walks over to the sink to clean off the existing blood and wraps her finger in a paper towel to apply pressure. It doesn't take long before she is bleeding through the paper towel and Emily curses herself for not yet investing in a first aid kit or at least a pack of band-aids. Emily thinks about what her next move should be and as much as she doesn't want to, she heads out of her door and knocks on the blonde's door.
Inside her apartment, Alison had just slipped into her pajama pants and a white tank top, wrapped her hair up in a clip, and put on her glasses preparing to relax and read a book. She is surprised to hear a knock on her door because she wasn't expecting any visitors. When she opens the door, she is shocked to see Emily on the other side. She sees the brunette holding her finger wrapped in a towel with blood starting to come through it which startled Alison.
"Hey, what happened to you?" She says worriedly.
Emily speaks in a slightly strangled voice "I'm sorry to pop up on you like this, I was trying to make dinner and I cut my finger. I was hoping you had a first aid kit."
Alison observes the pained look on the brunette's face. "Yeah, of course, come in. I'll go grab it." Alison moves aside to let the brunette inside. She turns to go grab her first aid kit while the brunette walks inside. Emily observes the blonde's apartment. The décor is modern and the color scheme consists of blues and greens and hints of gold. A contrast from the pink Paris-themed bedroom she once had.
Alison walks out of her bathroom with a first aid kit in hand and this is the first time Emily observes the blonde's appearance. Emily had never seen the blonde wearing glasses and she must admit they make her a thousand times more attractive. She didn't even think the other girl could be more attractive than before, but she stands corrected. Alison stands in front of the brunette and looks at her. "May I?" She says referring to Emily letting her inspect her finger. The brunette nods yes in response. Alison unwraps the paper towel from Emily's hand observing the nasty cut on her finger. Alison finally speaks again, "Well you've given yourself a nasty cut here, but if you let me, I can help you get this cleaned up."
Emily looks at the blonde holding her hand. "Uh, yeah, thanks."
Alison holds onto Emily's hand and leads her over to the sink, running the water over her hand to clean off the excess blood. "Here, sit down," Alison instructs pointing to the chair next to her countertop. Alison proceeds to unpack her first aid kit. "This is going to hurt a little," She says before taking a gloved hand and rubbing an ointment on the brunette's finger and Emily winces in pain.
As the teacher continues to clean the cut, silence falls over the pair and Alison thinks this is the perfect opportunity to spark a conversation with the other woman. "So how was your first day at Burkley?"
Emily recognizes that the blonde is trying to make small talk, but since she is doing her a favor she doesn't protest. "It was good. I really love the size of the campus. It's so different from Rosewood high. This school is like a little mini city."
The blonde chuckles while pulling the band-aids out of her kit. "And what about the swim team? How did your first practice go?" The blonde figured she would keep the questions going to see how much she could get out of the other woman. Besides, she doesn't want things to be awkward between them forever.
"Uh yeah, it was great. I used today to test the girls' cardio by making them run a couple laps on the track. With a little more training and a lot of practice, I may just have a first-place team on my hands."
Alison notices the sparkle in Emily's eyes when she talks about swimming. She always admired how passionate she was about it. Then she remembers that Adrienne says she had that interaction with the swimmer while at that practice. The heat from earlier that day begins creeping up her neck again at the thought. She was trying her hardest not to give in to her urge to say something to the brunette about it. It was crawling its way up her throat like bile. She can't help herself from bringing it up.
"I heard you met Ms. Richie today." She says with a straight face while beginning to wrap the band-aid around the swimmer's finger.
Emily tenses up at the comment. If she knows anything about the blonde, then she knows that this could very well be a trap if the other woman told her about the interaction. Emily has to think quickly. Honestly, she thinks that she didn't say anything incriminating and it was nothing outright flirtatious. She decides if it comes up, she'll try to lie her way through it hoping her nonverbal advances went over Adrienne's head.
"I did. She seemed to be really nice." She says keeping it short and sweet.
"Yeah, she told me you were nice too when you weren't flirting with her," Alison says before she finishes wrapping the brunette's finger. She had a slight biting tone to her voice now.
Shit so much for it going over her head. Emily decides to play dumb because she doesn't know what else to do, she thought maybe it could work.
"What? I didn't say anything flirtatious why would she think-,"
"It's not about what you say, Emily, it's in your eyes. What you don't say out loud you say with your eyes."
Alison finally let go of Emily's finger. "There you go. You should be good now."
Emily realizes she's for sure been caught. "So, I take it you and Adrienne are friends."
"Adrienne is my only friend here. We're more like sisters."
Emily blushes from embarrassment. "Listen, Alison, I'm sorry about that. I know we may not be on the best of terms, but I would never knowingly flirt with someone I knew was your friend. It won't happen again."
Alison doesn't trust herself to speak or she may say something else that may not be nice so instead she just nods in agreement. Little did the brunette know, Alison would be mad to see her doing anything with anyone else that wasn't her. It wouldn't have mattered who it was, she doesn't care if it's fair.
"I can't tell you who you can and cannot talk to Emily. But if you could avoid trying to seduce my only friend, I'd appreciate it… Plus, now that she knows who you are to me, she won't go for it anyway,"
Emily looks at her and furrows her eyebrows, "Who did you tell her I am to you, Alison?" The brunette cringes at the thought of Alison telling anyone what they've been through or what has happened between them because lately it's been nothing good.
"Just know she heard enough to know you're off-limits."
Emily would never say it but she likes the sound of Alison saying she's off-limits. But she pushes that to the back of her mind. Emily smirks a little bit before responding, "Okay, got it."
Alison notices how possessive that must have sounded but she doesn't care right now as long as she got her point across.
"Well, thank you for your help with my finger. I owe you one. I should probably get back to making dinner, I'm starving."
Alison nods and gets up from her seat. "No problem, you can repay me by not burning down the building. You've already cut yourself and the last time I remember you cooking, you were burning toast."
Emily laughs and feigns shock at the blonde's comment.
"Hey that was 7 years ago, I've only burned something twice since then," She quips back. "Anyways thank you again. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yeah, I may see you tomorrow during lunch period. I'm on hallway patrol." Alison replies.
Emily smiles slightly. "Sounds good." She says and heads back to her apartment.
Alison internally takes note of that statement. This is the first time Emily has implied she'd be speaking to her again. And if that's all she can get from the woman right now she'll take it.