Strange Phase

The walls drank the light like it was on tap. Emilia stood in her clunky two-inch heels and surveyed the mass of strangers standing between her and the person who’d called her out there. From where she hovered in the door, she couldn’t make out even a solitary familiar figure.

“Emmy!” From a booth near the back rose a man. If he hadn’t called her by that nickname, her eyes would have slid right over him. His hair, brushed and tied back in a bun so she could see the entirety of his face. His cheeks, now full and shaded a healthy pink. His teeth, glinting metallic in the glow.

Him, altered but still transparently, achingly, him. “I’m glad you came.”

It was Timony Houlihan,

and he was smiling.

Emilia’s legs were immobile as she tried to take in and make sense of the change. This was without a doubt Timony Houlihan, but not a version of him she knew, this was some sort of imposter. At her stillness, Timony’s smile faltered. That clumsy flash of the boy she knew finally moved her.

“Timony!”

Unlike his so easily disarmed smile, hers was stuck to her face with delight. When she waded through the crowd and finally reached him, she opened her arms for a hug. Timony, awkward smile replastered on, braced himself and leaned into her. His weight was barely there, his hands ghosting the back of her dress. Timony let out a breath that Emilia identified as restrained relief as she let go and slid into the booth. It was simultaneously pleasant and painful for her, seeing as the barely concealed gesture was so much like the Timony she remembered.

“It’s been awhile.”

The last time they met was four years ago. Long enough that they were both significantly changed and short enough that the feelings still lingered. An eternity in the blink of an eye.

When she said it, she hoped he saw the observation and not the possible insult, “You gained weight.”

He smiled -a timid, real Timony smile. The silver glint of his teeth, she realized, was from braces. She didn’t know why she found it so endearing to see them on him.

“Thanks. I’ve been… working on myself.” His voice was the soft gravel of a dirt road. “I just felt like it was time I started really thinking about that kind of thing, you know?”

“Yeah.” It was rare for someone to parse what she said from what she meant. His ability to do so was one of the things she’d always liked about him. “So you’ve been good, then?”

He didn’t meet her eyes, his gaze instead focused on the half empty bottle of beer in front of him. “Good as I’ve ever been.”

That didn’t amount to much. Emilia glanced down at the laminated menu in front of her, pretending to think about ordering while she sifted her mind for other talking points.

“When’s the server coming over?”

“Soon,” said Timony, “I ordered you a drink already, actually. Is that okay?”

A surprisingly bold move from him. She couldn’t help herself from glancing over at him. He’d stopped looking at his beer and was staring at her, as if awaiting her approval. She couldn’t suppress the giggle that came out of her.

“That’s fine. I can’t promise I’ll like it, though. My tastes have changed since the last time we drank together.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll hate it,” he laughed, reassured by her answer, “do you remember much of that night? You were pretty drunk.”

She remembered all of it. Every sensation. Every feeling. Every taste. The entirety of it etched permanently into the very fiber of her being.

“Please.” Emilia rolled her eyes despite the sting. Did he not understand how much that moment meant to her? Didn’t he see the scar on her knee? “You think I would forget that?”

Drinking wasn’t as exciting as she was led to believe. From how much she was told not to do it, she’d thought it would be this amazing, tantalizing thing. Of course, maybe if she was hanging out at the party downstairs instead of playing the loner, her feelings would be different.

But here she was instead, sequestered away from the rest of her graduated class and sipping from a lukewarm wine cooler. The window she was sitting in was less open as it was broken, but the night breeze still cooled the anxious June sweat from her skin all the same. She took another quick drink from her little bottle and tried not to let it touch her tongue. The artificial strawberry flavor burned down her throat. Her mouth was sticky and, unfortunately, also artificial strawberry.

Everything about Emilia tonight was calculated, from the style of her hair all the way to the flavor of her chapstick. That was the part she’d struggled with the most. If everything went the way she fantasized it would, then everything else about her, though equally enticing, would blur along the edges once he tasted that sticky flavor on her lips.

Realism made her settle for strawberry. Classic. Unoffending. Meaningless. There would be no shame or embarrassment if she went unkissed.

Her little bottle of pink wine cooler was wearing the imprint of her lips. It was probably the only thing that would.

And that was fine.

The target of her chapstick was nowhere to be found, which was unsurprising. What was more surprising was the fact that he was even hosting this party in the first place. Timony Houlihan, her next-door-neighbor and alumnus, had arranged this little gathering in the dilapidated house on the outskirts of town. Why no one else felt like questioning it was most likely because they didn’t want to look a gift keg in the mouth.

Emilia felt it nagging at her, though, itching something curious in the back of her brain. Why would someone like Timony Houlihan do this? Who was this for?

She didn’t hear the whisper of his shoes as he glided into the room.

“Hey Em, what are you doing up here?”

The slit of moonlight from the window made his sallow, washed out skin almost translucent. His eyes stared empty and doll-like back at her. She swallowed. This was just like she’d imagined.

Emilia took a deep breath, disguising it masterfully as an uninterested sigh even as her heart pounded loud enough to be heard in the emptiness. “I could be asking you the same thing, Tim.”

He flinched. “Timony. It’s Timony.”

She knew that he had aversion to nicknames. Emilia didn’t like nicknames, either, but she let him call her one, anyway. She only wanted to be able to treat him the same. “Right.”

Timony crossed the room towards her and sat on the dirty floor, just beneath the window. If Emilia was brave, she had only to lean her hand down and touch his oily scalp. Timony dug into the pocket of his baggy sweatshirt and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Timony was always huddled in those big, dark sweatshirts for warmth, disappearing into himself. Emilia wondered if he was cold even in this weather. She was only wearing jeans and a sheer flowy tank top, and even that felt oppressive.

He held his cigarette right against his lips, but didn’t light it immediately. Emilia’s eyes were glued to it against her will. “I didn’t think anyone would be up here, so I thought it would be a good place to get away and smoke. Don’t you want to be with your friends?”

“No,” Emilia relaxed defiantly against the windowsill, dangling one leg outside into the open air. There was a bit of glass poking dangerously into the meat of her calf. “I think I’ll stay put. Do you have another cigarette? I’ll join you if you want.”

She watched him light his cigarette and exhale smoke into the room, pointedly away from the window she was occupying.

“You shouldn’t smoke, Emmy. It’s bad for you.”

“So is drinking,” she countered, taking an emphatic sip from her wine cooler, “and you don’t seem to have a problem with letting me do that.”

From his profile in the low light, she could see that his expression was… complicated. Timony was always an enigma, but now she was trying to see if she could solve the puzzle just by staring hard enough.

“You all would have found a way to do this anyway.” He finally said, taking another drag. The end burned vibrant orange. It was the only color in the room. “Besides, this way at least someone is looking out for you and keeping you out of trouble.”

“Thanks.” She twirled her bottle idly in her fingers, the pink swished around inside it. “You really think we would have done something like this without you?”

Timony shrugged, exhaled smoke again. “If things were how they’re supposed to be.”

Another little cryptic piece to the puzzle. She’d have to jam it somewhere later. “How are they supposed to be?”

She could feel the weight of his gaze as it finally shifted up to her. “Something’s missing here, Emmy, can’t you feel it?”

She felt something. A tension. A pleading in his eyes.

“Maybe,” she settled on, plucking words from the air with extreme caution. Her next sentence could break this entire interaction, “but what if I don’t?”

There was silence. She knew from the slimy feeling in her guts that her answer was wrong. The sounds from the party floated up through the broken window, as if trying to seduce her downstairs and out of the awkward situation she found herself in up here. All the people down there loved her, they thought she was pretty and smart and mature. Down there, the chapstick would be licked right off her lip without her even needing to beg. It would be so easy.

Timony’s cigarette sizzled in the stillness. Emilia startled at the sound so close to her, but even more startling was how much closer Timony’d gotten while her focus was elsewhere. He was leaning his head against the windowsill and looking up at her.

“That would be the worst thing you could say to me.”

Easy wasn’t the point.

Something about it, the moonlight, the room, the lingering smoke on the cooling breeze, the wretchedness in his voice, something about it all… there was a headiness that she couldn’t handle. Emilia was gripping her dignity by a thread.

Then she looked down at Timony, and his eyes were so dark and empty it was like holding a mirror to the sky.

Her thread snapped.

Emilia pounced.

It was the fall that kept him stunned long enough for her to taste. They were on the floor, Timony’s hoodie balled up in both of her fists as she clenched him close to her. She wasn’t a stranger to kissing, but she’d never done it like this before. The world wasn’t real anymore, only Timony’s lips. They were thin, and chapped, and he tasted like ashes. Her tongue kept running the uneven surface of his teeth, searching for an opening deeper in.

His response was sluggish, but full of intent. His freezing hands fell over hers, making her shiver even as she relaxed her grip. One by one, he uncurled her fingers from his shirt. She let it happen, but kept her mouth insistently pressed into his. She needed to memorize the terrain and the taste. The sensations. Her own tumultuous feelings.

At first, all she tasted was tobacco and beer.

Then, the sting of salt.

He held her back at a trembling arm’s length. Timony wouldn’t look at her, but she could tell even without seeing his face that he was weeping.

“I can’t do this, Em. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

He bolted before the questions could form, leaving Emilia all alone on the floor. There was a rip in her jeans, from the knee to the thigh, and a sliver of bright red blood that didn’t even sting. She must have caught herself on something when she’d kissed him.

She tried to calm herself down from the whole ordeal by finishing her drink, but when she found it again the remains were spilled and all that was left in the bottle was Timony’s cigarette.

The drink that was placed in front of her now was that same stupid pink wine cooler. Emilia couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh my god,” she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, “really? You remembered?”

Timony smiled again, sheepishly this time. “Of course. How could I forget?”

“And you thought I would?” She took an experimental sip. Their gazes were locked on each other. As she swallowed she thought she saw him do the same, his adam’s apple betraying the slightest shift. “This is horrible. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said, but now the smile was gone. Clearly this meeting wasn’t just for some reminiscing over their youth.

“What is it, Timony?”

“Sorry, I’m... still trying to figure out how to say this to you. I’ve thought about it so much for so long, but I don’t know how to really go about... saying it.”

“I know what you mean,” she nodded, trying not to expose her own curiosity, “I think the best thing you can do in situations like that is to just spit it out.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. In out, "I owe you an apology, Em. I ruined your life.”

Silence. Emilia licked her lips and was struck to find that she’d picked out strawberry chapstick again.

“For someone so timid, you sure are full of yourself.”

“I’m serious!”

“So am I. I have no idea what you’re talking about, Timony. How did you ruin my life?”

He shrank back, folding in on himself. His eyes were focused intently on his own hands spread on the table. Emilia took another sip of her drink. Though it wasn’t as bad as she remembered, it still wasn’t very good.

Finally, he spoke again. His voice was so soft she wasn’t even sure how she was able to hear him over the rest of the bar. “I don’t think you’ll believe me.”

Emilia wasn’t going to let this go just like that. “I can’t believe you at all if you don’t tell me.”

Silence again. He took a deep breath. In out.

“I had a sister.”

The sentence hung between them, caught in the air like some inexplicable thing. Emilia tried to respond, but her tongue was too heavy to move. She drank to lighten the weight.

It tasted pink.

“I don’t remember you ever having a sister.”

“That’s the thing, no one does.” Timony grimaced, and in the flash of his teeth Emilia saw that the bands of his braces were red. In the light it looked like there was blood on his teeth. “Only I remember her. Only me.”

Emilia was floundering, she didn’t know how to navigate terrain this intricate and tragic. So much was running through her mind, most of it questions that boiled down to “what do you mean?”

Emilia didn’t ask anything, though. She just sat there waiting. Eventually, Timony would keep talking. He had to, if he really wanted her to accept his apology.

Timony took another deep breath. In out. This wasn’t the first time his breathing felt mechanical to her. Like it was no longer something his body did automatically. Emilia wondered what went through his head when he breathed.

He followed it up by draining his beer. Then, just as predicted, he kept talking.

“It’s a long, long story. It’s also… improbable. As much as I would love for you to believe me, I know that’s asking too much. So I’ll just ask you to listen.”

Then his eyes flitted up to her, startling dark and pleading. His face may have changed, but his eyes were still empty and dark, like water reflecting a starless night.

“Will you listen?”

She forced the breath into her lungs. “Of course.”

I’m older than her by four years and a week. One of my earliest memories is her. Our parents let me hold her in the hospital, she was so small wrapped in her blankets that if I didn’t look at her I would forget I was even holding anything at all. That was only when she was asleep, though. When she was awake she wouldn’t stop screaming.

Emilia didn’t know what to say in the wake of the confession. She held her hand up to get the attention of the server. She used the motion and tracking of the server throughout the crowded bar as an excuse not to look at Timony while she gathered herself.

Emilia could vaguely remember Timony’s twelfth birthday. It was one of the few times something interesting happened on their street. She’d watched her mother wrap a comforting arm around a distraught Francie Houlihan as they all sat on her front porch. Timony went off on his new bike somewhere. He’d been gone for hours, and it wasn’t like him to do that without saying anything.

Emilia spotted him first when he came back, limping the bike home instead of riding it. As he got closer, she saw his face was painted the same as the blazing sunset behind him.

She learned later that he’d suffered from a concussion and major blood loss. He was lucky he’d made it home and got help in the condition he was in, and that he hadn’t experienced major consequences.

Of course, after hearing his story, Emilia wondered if maybe he had suffered major consequences. Sometimes consequences are more than physical.

Emilia’s whiskey arrived. She drank it slowly, letting the flavor linger on her tongue.

“I didn’t expect you to go for something like that,” Timony said, attempting to change the subject.

Emilia swallowed her relief. He was probably just as afraid of hearing what she thought as she was to tell him. “I have a pretty high tolerance. Comes with the territory.”

Timony frowned. “Territory?”

“I’m a bartender now,” she took another sip, “I dropped out of school. I just couldn’t see myself thriving there, I was only there to fulfill people’s expectations of me, you know? It’s not what I wanted.”

“Yeah,” Timony nodded, but he still looked troubled by something, “that’s surprising, though. The bartending. I don’t know what I thought you’d be doing, but I never pictured that. How did your parents take it?”

Emilia shrugged, trying to act casual about it, “It’s not really up to them.”

Her parents were disappointed. She’d quit just a semester shy of graduating. If she could tough it out, she would’ve, but it was beyond her. She had to leave and go somewhere else. Go be by herself and be herself for a bit.

All this talk about her strained relationship with her parents kept her from tasting her drink. “What about you? How have things been with your dad? I know it must be tough right now, with your mom…”

She stumbled over the end of her sentence. In an effort to take the spotlight off her healing familial wounds she threw it right onto the bleeding hole in Timony’s own family.

He nodded along as if this was an easy thing to talk about. “It hit my dad really hard. Me, too, of course. I was closer with my mom than I am with him. But for him… they’d been together more than thirty years. They were high school sweethearts. He’s never been on his own before. I think that’s the part of it that’s really getting to him, having to learn to exist by himself.”

A new beer arrived for him. He took a sip and began picking at the label, coming unstuck from the condensation. “I moved back in with him. Just so he wouldn’t be alone and he knew I was there to support him.”

Only considering outer appearance, Timony seemed like he was steadier than before. Maybe he really could be in the position of being someone’s support now.

“That’s really kind of you,” Emilia meant what she said. If she was able to convey anything with her tone, she hoped it was this, “I’m sure he appreciates having you around.”

The label wasn’t coming off as cleanly as he wanted, leaving strips of paper behind on the bottle. He carved at it with his thumbnail. “I would say it’s because I have experience, but honestly I don’t think that’s helpful with this sort of thing. Inside I still feel… raw. Right here.”

He touched his chest, let his fingers snake between the buttons of his shirt and press as deep into his skin as he could, as if he couldn’t convey the feeling without digging all the way to bone.

“It’s not just my heart. My lungs, too. Sometimes it hurts to breathe, like someone started a fire in my guts and everything inside me is the smoke and ashes. And my heart...it’s always there. Every beat an aggravation. Sometimes it’s too much. Between the beating and the breathing, I just can’t do it.”

The whiskey curdled the anxiety in her stomach. “So what do you do?”

Timony had his hands and his gaze back on his beer bottle. He gripped it so tightly Emilia thought it might shatter. His hands were as white as they were in her memory.

“The only thing I can do. I hold my breath.”

In.

“I did it a lot more when I was younger. Not long after my sister. I held my breath so long sometimes I would pass out. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone about it. My parents just thought it was some weird side effect of puberty or something. I still get the urge to hold my breath, but now I try not to as much. I promised I would stop doing it.”

Out.

“Promised who?”

“My mom. In the hospital... she begged me to stop. Demanded it. She said her dying wish was for me to... start living, really living.” The bottle was clean of any residuals from the label, the remnants a snow pile on the table. “She made me promise not to grieve for her. Not like I do for... that girl.”

That girl meaning his sister, presumably. “So she knew about her?”

“I told them both about her, they just didn't believe me. I spent a long time trying to convince them she’d existed. Once, they put me in therapy because of it. They thought that it was some weird... thing. Some strange phase I was going through from the onslaught of hormones and my head injury. They actually chose to try medicating me over getting me braces.” He tapped on the metal against his teeth for emphasis. “I realized then that it didn’t matter what I did or said, they would never believe me. She would never be real to them again. After that, I tried to play along and forget her, too, but I just couldn’t do it. I thought I did a good job at least pretending, though, until that last conversation with my mom.”

“Oh,” Emilia wasn't sure how to carry this conversation anymore, everything was too heavy and too delicate at once, “so how are you going to do it, then? Living, I mean?”

“I think I… I have to give up. I have to really do it this time, let my sister go just like the rest of the world did. Grief is a part of life, but it can’t be what my life is. My mom was right, I haven’t really been living, I’ve just been... existing.”

Emilia leaned forward on her elbows, hyper aware of how low cut her dress was. Her original intent of seducing him felt inappropriate for the occasion now. “So what are you going to live for?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “myself, I guess?”

That was a good answer, but it still surprised her.

But then Timony leaned forward, too, mirroring her exactly. She tried to see herself in the reflection of his eyes, what she must look like to him, but they were too dark for her to see anything. “What do you think I should live for, Em?”

Her face burned at the closeness, and she pulled back. She gripped her drink and finished it off, easy enough to do since it was now just melting ice.

“How should I know?” She tried to be subtle about the way she rubbed her cold fingers against the warmth of her cheek to cool it. “Anyway, you still haven’t told me what you were apologizing for. Nothing you said sounds like you ruined my life, what do you need my forgiveness for?”

“I did ruin your life, though,” he insisted, “you two were best friends. Who knows, maybe you would have been more.”

“What makes you say that?”

Timony spoke into his beer bottle as he tipped it towards his lips, as if what he was saying was so unimportant it didn’t need to be heard clearly. “Because you like me, Emmy.”

The pieces were coming together in Emilia’s head. She didn’t like what they were making. “You think I only like you because your sister isn’t here?”

“I don’t just think that, I know that.”

And it was those three words that hurt the most. The certainty in them. Emilia’s thoughts and feelings were arbitrary, easily manipulated and redirected. Emilia didn’t like Timony, but he was the closest proximation she could latch onto. Was that really what he thought of her? Did she not have a will or experiences of her own? Was she not her own person in Timony’s eyes?

...what did it mean about her that she still liked him?

“That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“Doesn’t matter how horrible it is if it’s true.” He sat back away from her, as distant as the booth would let him go. He finished his beer. “And it is.”

“You’re so unlovable that you have to destroy the lives of everyone you know just to get what you want?”

Timony grimaced, and Emilia was pleased. “That’s not what happened.”

“That’s what it sounds like you’re saying to me.”

Timony raised his arm to get the server’s attention. “If we’re going to keep talking, I think we’ll need another round. Do you want a beer, Emmy?”

Timony’s face was flushed. She wasn’t sure if it was with intoxication or shame or anger. She also wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know. She was finally starting to feel good.

“Fine. One more beer, and then I’ll decide if I accept your apology.”

He took her terms without complaint.

Their beers arrived quicker than anything else they’d ordered. Probably because the bar was close to winding down for the night. They clinked their bottles together and drank.

Timony put his down first, wiping foam from his lip with his thumb. “The truth is I’m disgusted with myself, Em, because what you said wasn’t wrong. My sister is gone and the world is... different because of it. My life is different, and so is yours, but the part I’m most disgusted with is the fact that when I tore it all apart somehow, we still got tangled together. Do you want to know why I didn’t tell you anything for so long, Emmy? Even though I lived right next to you?”

Emilia didn’t answer.

“I was worried that if I did, then you would remember her. Then you would realize how horrible I am and you wouldn’t be able to look at me or forgive me anymore. And here you are, sitting across from me, and I finally told you and you still don’t remember her.”

He was staring down into his beer like there was something interesting bubbling up in it. Something at the bottom could give him back his composure.

He took a breath. In out. Then his eyes flashed up to her, big and glisteningly dark. “I want you to forgive me, Em.”

Everything in her stilled. “Forgive you?”

“That’s all I need.”

Emilia could taste the artificial strawberry on her lips. “What if I don’t?”

“You won’t?” The glistening rippled the dark surface of his eyes, but didn’t spill. She hid her disappointment in the last swallows of her beer.

“Finish your drink and I’ll show you how much I forgive you.”

The trek back to her apartment was a fevered blur. She pulled him through the city dark and kicked her shoes off in the narrow steps of her building so she could climb them properly. If they spoke about anything it wasn’t worth remembering. All that mattered was his pulse against her palm.

The door was barely an obstacle, but now that she was here in the threshold of her own space, everything felt unsettlingly unreal. This wasn’t really happening. How could it be?

Her heart was beating so rapid it hurt her ribs. She tried to take a deep breath. In out.

“Are we going to stay in the door?” The question was a hot breath against her ear, sending electricity down her spine.

“Take off your shoes,” she said, releasing her hold on him. She didn’t turn to see if he was really there, “then we’re going to the couch.”

Timony toed his shoes off and wrapped his cool hand around Emilia’s trembling fingers. Emilia closed the door, plunging them both into the dark again before she dragged him away. When she bumped the couch, she dropped his hand and wiped her sweat on her thigh.

“I’m going to turn on a light,” Emilia explained as she fumbled blindly for the end table lamp, “I want to see you.”

She found the switch. Timony was leaning against the arm of the couch, right where she’d wanted him.

“Emmy,” The warmth in his voice was the same as the dim amber glow from the lamp.

She pressed her finger to his lips before he could say anything more. They were chapped. Her tongue darted to her own. Strawberry.

Emilia moved her hand away from his mouth and toyed with a button at the collar of his shirt. “Talking’s done. We’re doing now. Can I?”

She worked them slowly, savoring the moment for all it was. This was what she’d stayed up so many nights fantasizing over, the things that she’d dreamed about. Here it was, solid reality in her hands. She could feel every deep, steadying breath he took. The up and down of his chest. She could feel his eyes on her deft fingers as she fished the buttons from their holes.

As she reached the end of his shirt buttons, she could tell that the steadying breathing wasn’t doing its job for either of them.

His hand was on her wrist before she could touch his belt. There was a tremor to his hold. “I should probably tell you something, Emmy. Before we do anything else.”

Timony wasn’t looking at her, instead his gaze was focused on his own feet. His cheeks were abashedly bright.

“Okay,” she moved her hands away from his belt and up to his hair instead, where she loosened the tie holding it back. Her fingers were getting caught in the tangles, “what is it?”

“I have a tattoo. Right here.” He brushed his hand across his still clothed upper thigh. “It’s a name. I didn’t want you to see it and get the wrong idea.”

Emilia didn’t ask whose name it was. She loosed her fingers carefully so she wasn’t pulling his hair too hard. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Of course,” it seemed like that was going to be the end of it, but before Emilia could move her hands downwards again, Timony took another deep breath, “I love you, Emmy.”

And that was everything.

Emilia pounced.

Again she was eighteen and hungry and pushing him down. She crushed him with her body and her tongue. His mouth was nerves and hops. Emilia was wild and feverish, her heart not a beat but a thrum.

“I love you so much, Timony,” she mouthed the words into his neck, pressed kisses there as her hands found his belt once more, “you don’t know how long I’ve wanted this.”

The sound he choked off was halfway between a gasp and a sob.

Emilia prided herself on her imagination, but surveying him under her like this was greater than anything she’d envisioned. The layer of fat that softened all those hard edges from her childhood, the body hair, the expression on his face… perfectly indescribable. Better than anything. She took it all in, up and down and down and then

that tattoo. Simple. Bluish-black. Just a name in memory of someone someplace no one would ever see, of someone no one would remember.

Emma

Of course, it all made sense. Little girl best friends, it was too sweet not to happen when their names were so similar. Almost criminal if they didn’t. No wonder Timony insisted on calling her Emmy, even though no one else did. That was how he knew her. The Emmy to his sister’s Emma.

Emmy and Emma.

Em and Em.

…Em.

Did he ever call his sister that?

Her stomach lurched. Acid burning a fire up her throat.

All those times Timony called her Em instead of Emmy, was he talking to her, or to his sister?

When he asked for forgiveness, was he asking Em or Emmy?

When they kissed, did he call her Em or

“Emmy?” His hand cooled her cheek. Even now, despite the solidity of the skin it held an unreal quality, “are you with me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you.” As disturbed as she was, all of her dreams were coming true at this very moment. She couldn’t let this go. She swallowed down the bile and focused on the tension in her hips. “Don’t call me that anymore. My name’s Emilia. Only call me Emilia.”

He didn’t even hide the surprise on his face. “Emilia. Okay.”

“And-” it was a stupid the way her voice trembled, the way her vision was swimming with heat. In that moment of vulnerability, she was disgusted with herself, “say it again. Say that you love me.”

Emilia moved her hand subtly over the tattoo, smothering the name and its implications under her fingers. Timony smiled up at her, his hand still cool and strong on her cheek.

“I love you, Emilia.”

And he continued to say it, over and over and over and over like a prayer or a mantra or some kind of spell to bind them.

He said it as she pulled her dress over her head and tossed it aside.

“I love you, Emilia I love you, Emilia I love you Emilia I love you Emilia I love you I love you I love you Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia”

When they came together for another kiss, he breathed it into her mouth.

“Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia I love you I love you I love you I love you Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia”

When he sank his teeth into her shoulder to keep himself anchored to her, his braces scraped her name into her own skin.

Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia Emilia EmiliaEmiliaEmiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemiliaemi

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