#jswayman

He wasn’t.

“Yep,” she responds, nodding as she takes a sip of the drink in front of her, the non-alcoholic one that Luke cringed at while he ordered a cocktail.

“What grade do you teach?”

“Mostly sophomores, then juniors and seniors in my AP.”

“I bet the boys love you,” Luke smirks, Emeline already feeling like she was going to leave the date early. 

“I mean, I don’t think any of my kids have a problem with me or anything.” 

“I would have paid attention in school if I had a teacher that looked like you.” 

Emeline bites the inside of her cheek, pursing her lips and nodding at him. “Gross,” is the only thing she could think of saying. 

The worst part, that was the best conversation they had. Luke spent the rest of the date talking about himself, no longer asking anything about herself while she just nodded and said, “oh, nice,” or, “cool,” or some other unenthusiastic variation of that. 

Emeline gets home to find her roommates watching a movie on the couch, one of the nights where the guys are on the west coast playing late night games that they end up missing instead of watching their friends. Emeline groans as she flops down next to Maddy, covering her face with her hands while Fran pauses the movie.

“That bad again?”

“I got the, ‘I’d have listened in school if you were my teacher,’ line for the third time,” Emeline says, the girls groaning in disgust. “How many times do you think we have to go through this before I actually find someone decent?” 

“I mean, you do have a decent man right next door.”

“I can’t,” she says. “He doesn’t want that.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Johnny groans, throwing his head back against the couch. “I can’t fucking do this anymore.”

“Johnny,” Maddy starts, Emeline seeing a look of panic cross her roommates face. 

“No, Mads, I can’t. Emeline, Jeremy has been in love with you since the moment he saw you. I had heard nothing for months about any topic other than ‘the most beautiful girl with red hair that might live in the building.’ Then he realized not only does this girl live in our building, but she’s right next door. You’re right next door and you three become our friends, and honestly, you, Emeline, get closer to Jeremy than you are with your actual best friends, and he gets closer to you than he is with anyone on the team, while everyone around you watched you while you were falling in love with him, and he was falling deeper in love with you. He has not stopped loving you. You have not stopped loving him. Neither of you will be anything other than in love with each other and so help me, God, I need you two to fucking do something or I’m going to launch myself into the Charles.” 

The girls stare at him, dumbfounded by this outburst. 

“You’re staring at me like that because you know I’m right,” Johnny shrugs, pulling out his phone and scrolling through one of his social media apps. 

“Jeremy still loves me?” Emeline asks out loud, to no one in particular. 

“You are not that stupid that you would think he wouldn’t.” 

“It would be better if you could be helpful.”

“I think I’m plenty helpful.”

___________________________

Ben had texted again, asking to see her. Why she said yes, she wasn’t sure. He said he wanted to take her to some sort of restaurant, the same one she went to with Luke, where she definitely had gotten some sort of mild food poisoning from the dinner she barely ate to begin with. She didn’t want to go.

“Is it too late to cancel?” she groans, flopping on the couch next to Maddy, not caring that it would probably wrinkle her outfit, something that Ben had commented on last time. The bar was literally in hell, and men still couldn’t clear it. 

“What time is he supposed to be picking you up?” Maddy asks, not looking up from her phone. She was probably texting Johnny, Emeline remembering something about the rest of them having plans to go out tonight. 

Emeline reaches for her own phone, three texts from Ben showing up on her screen and making her feel nauseous. “He was supposed to be here in five minutes, but I guess he’s waiting downstairs now.” 

Emeline starts to get up from the couch, Maddy resting her hand on her arm. “You have five minutes before you’re supposed to meet him. If he doesn’t like that, then too bad.”

“I shouldn’t be this nervous for a date, should I?”

“It’s probably not a great sign since you look like you’re going to vomit.” 

Emeline groans again, another text from Ben coming through. All four of them that he had sent since she last opened her phone were asking where she was and if he should come up to meet her, asking what her apartment number was. “I don’t want him knowing which place is ours,” she says, having to force herself off the couch to head downstairs to meet this guy.

She gets into the elevator, a feeling of dread and anxiety washing over her as it goes down to the ground floor. The doors open, Ben standing in the lobby of the building, looking slightly annoyed as he frowned at his phone. “Hey,” she lets out, her voice shaking with a fake smile plastered onto her face.

“You took a while.”

The smile faded, Emeline trying to hide the disgust that she felt. “Well, you said to be ready by six, and here I am, at 5:58.” 

Ben shrugs, turning and heading out the door without saying another word. If only he could stay like that the rest of the date, it might actually be tolerable to be with him. 

Before they can reach the door, Fran comes rushing in, tears streaming down her face.

“Babe, what’s wrong?” Emeline stops, Ben groaning at the hold up despite her glaring at him.

“I got fucking fired.”

Emeline gasps, taken aback that Fran’s father would ever even think about firing his top performing employee, his golden child, from the job that was going to help her take over the company when he finally decided to retire. “What?”

“Can you please come upstairs? I really don’t want to be alone right now.” 

“Um, Maddy’s there,” Emeline says, “You want me, too?”

“Please?”

She couldn’t say no to Fran. “I’m sorry,” she says to Ben, rushing towards the elevator she just came down, leaving Ben standing at the door while he called out something stupid about dinner reservations. She didn’t care if he ever texted her again, honestly. 

“Ok, so what’s the game plan?” Emeline asks as the elevator doors close, looking over to Fran who has her phone in front of her face, open to her camera. “You’re not crying anymore.”

“It’s windy. You know my eyes water like I’m sobbing when it’s windy.”

“I hate you.”

“You really think I’d get fired?”

“If you did, you have a great career as an actress ahead of you,” Emeline laughed.

“You seem weirdly ok for someone who just bailed on a date,” Fran points out, pulling her back towards their apartment. 

Emeline thought about it. She should be mad that she spent too much time getting ready for a date she wasn’t even going on now, checking her phone to see Ben already breaking it off with her for bailing, feeling no remorse about the situation. “I think I’ll be ok,” she tells Fran, showing her the texts. 

“After the first date, I’m surprised you even said yes to a second one.” 

“I’m surprised you managed to get her back up here,” Maddy says when they get back to the apartment, Johnny sitting on the couch with her, his arm around her. 

“Don’t you have your own apartment?” Fran asks Johnny.”

“I’m not Keelan,” he reminds her.

“She told me she was fired,” Emeline says.

“And you believed that?” 

“Johnny,” Maddy scolds. “So, now that you’re not going out with Ben, that means you can come out with us.”

“Trent should be here any minute.” 

“Great, so I can fifth wheel your double date?” Emeline laughs, Maddy and Johnny smirking.

“Hold on,” Fran says. “Trent and I are not dating.” 

“But he does like you,” Emeline points out.

“Look at me. Plenty of men do.”

“He’s going to ask you out eventually,” Johnny tells her, a look of panic on Fran’s face. 

Fran scoffs. “We have to fix Emeline before we even come up with fake scenarios for me.”

“I’m not broken.”

“But you and Jeremy aren’t together.” 

Emeline rolls her eyes. “I still don’t want to be a fifth person with no one to sit across from at a table while these two are either looking at each other stupidly in love or actively engaging in PDA and Trent is drooling over you.” 

“We could invite Jeremy. He’s genuinely just sitting in the apartment right now doing nothing.” 

“What if he has plans?”

“Yeah, of course,” Johnny starts, pulling out his phone. “The guy whose teammates are either married, engaged, in serious relationships, or cannot legally drink has plans on a Saturday night when his family is in fucking Alaska and he can’t go on a date with a girl if his life depended on it definitely has plans.” 

“You and Fran really are the same person,” Emeline says, both of them yelling at her for her comment. 

Before anyone can say anything else, Jeremy walks into the apartment, slightly disheveled as if he had just woken up from a nap. “You changed my text tone to the same sound as my alarm?”

Johnny shrugs, getting up off the couch and pulling Maddy with him. “It’s the only way you’d pay attention to me since you’re barely checking your phone any more. Anyway, we’re going out to dinner tonight and we’re just waiting on Trent. Want to change and join us?” 

“Um, I,” Jeremy starts, looking at everyone in the room except for Emeline. 

“Perfect, go change, I’ll help you pick out a shirt,” Johnny says, pulling Jeremy out the door. 

___________________________

“Ok, you need to calm down,” Jeremy says, shaking Johnny off him after he physically pushed him from the girls’ apartment into Jeremy’s bedroom. “What’s going on?”

“You and Emeline are going to finally start dating tonight,” Johnny says, rummaging through Jeremy’s drawers.

“You’re making a mess,” he says, pushing his roommate out of the way and trying to put his shirts back the way he had them. “And what are you talking about?”

Johnny pulls out a shirt and throws it at Jeremy, closing the drawers and plopping himself down on the bed. “You and Emeline have to get over whatever weird thing is going on between you two because it’s becoming fucking insufferable for the rest of us. Emeline keeps going on horrible dates with awful guys because she’s convinced you don’t care about her, Fran will not even consider the fact that she and Trent would have a lot of fun together because she’s so worried about you and Emeline never getting together, and Maddy and I have been sleeping together way less lately because Maddy can’t get over the fact that you are not dating her roommate when, as she puts it, you two are soulmates.” 

Jeremy stares at him, pulling the shirt he was wearing over his head and throwing it into his hamper. “You just want us to make up so you can start having sex again.”

“No,” Johnny protests as Jeremy puts on the new shirt, surprised that Johnny would have picked it out. “I’m doing this because my woman needs to have needs met and her worries to stop and I cannot help her right now because of you.”

“How chivalrous.” 

“Whatever the reason,” he says, starting to run his hands through Jeremy’s hair in an attempt to help combat the bedhead, despite Jeremy swatting his hands away, “You and Em need to get back to normal so the entire group doesn’t feel awkward. It’s weird for everyone that you two can’t be around each other anymore.” 

Jeremy sighs. “I doubt we’ll get together tonight, but I’ll try to talk to her.”

“Thank god,” Johnny says, dragging him back to the girls’ apartment, where Trent was already waiting outside the door. “You alright there, bud?”

“I didn’t think you guys were in there and I didn’t want to be alone with the girls.” 

“Why?”

“Fran,” the three of them say together, Jeremy and Johnny trying to hold back a laugh while Trent looks terrified. 

“You could just ask her out, you know.” 

“What if she says, ‘no?’”

“What if she says, ‘yes?’” Johnny counters, opening the door to the apartment to let the girls know they were ready to go. 

What if she says, yes? For some reason, Jeremy hung on to those words. Johnny was annoyingly smarter than he seemed, and Jeremy knew that somehow what he said to Trent was meant for him, too. 

He takes in a deep breath, walking back into the girls’ apartment to find the three of them running around and attempting to pregame with what appeared to be very little alcohol, Emeline trying to get Fran and Maddy to drink water. 

“Are we going to dinner or to a bar?”

Emeline stops and stares at Johnny, Jeremy recognizing the look on her face that told him she was trying to remember something she knew was gone in the depths of her mind. “Ladies, when was the last time we ate?”

“I had breakfast before I left for work this morning,” Fran said, immediately going back to chugging the wine she had open in front of her.

“I think I ate lunch,” Maddy stops, opening the fridge.

“I think I ate dinner last night.”

“How the fuck do the three of you survive?” Johnny groans. 

“We’re all twenty six, we had to have done something right,” Fran shrugs, putting the bottle in the sink to wash later. “I say we go to a bar that serves food and kill two birds with one stone.”

Trent looks up from his phone. “We’re killing birds?”

“I need better friends,” Johnny says, grabbing his phone and taking Maddy’s hand. “I know where we’re going, come on, idiots.” 

“That’s bold when the three of us have six degrees between us and the three of you have three brain cells total,” Fran says, rolling her eyes and falling in step with Trent as the six of them head down to the lobby of their building. 

“Especially when Jeremy normally has all three of them,” Maddy chimes in, the group of them laughing as Johnny’s cheeks turn bright red at his girlfriend's words. 

Johnny leads the group to the T, taking them on the red line towards who knows where. Emeline sits down in an empty row, another seat next to her. Jeremy stands awkwardly, holding the railing above him. 

“You can sit down, you know,” Emeline tells him, clearly looking as nervous as he felt. 

“Thanks.” He takes the seat, trying hard not to make direct eye contact with her as his leg started to shake uncontrollably next to her. “Um, how,” Jeremy starts, staring down at his lap. “How have you been?”

He sees Emeline nod out of the corner of his eye. “Good. School’s good.”

“Good.”

“You?”

“Huh?”

“How have you been?”

“Oh. Good, too.”

“That’s good.” 

God, he wanted to throw himself into a river. Whatever bacteria the Charles had festering in it had to be better than whatever this feeling was. Talking to this girl next to him used to be so easy. He shouldn’t have to fight internally to find the words to talk to Emeline when he was this in love with her. 

They spent the rest of the ride in silence, Jeremy getting more uncomfortable by the second being near her. He missed her. At this point, he didn’t care if he ever dated her, he just wanted the Emeline who had become his best friend back. 

Johnny calls for them to get off the train as it pulls to a stop, Jeremy practically sprinting off the train and grabbing Trent away from Fran. “I think I need to go home.”

“Why?”

“I can’t be around Emeline.”

“Why?” The two of them fall behind the rest of the group, Johnny leading them to a bar they frequent way too often for their own good.

“I don’t know how to talk to her anymore. Whatever Johnny thinks is going to happen between us is never going to happen.”

“What do you mean you can’t talk to her? You just open your mouth and words come out, Jere.” 

Jeremy stands there, staring at his teammate. “You did pass some classes when you were at Wisconsin, didn’t you?”

Trent shakes his head. “I mean, it shouldn’t be hard for you to talk to her. You two love each other. You’re just in a weird place and you need something to break the tension so you can go back to normal.”

“Normal was me in love with her and her dating Keelan.” The rest of the group goes into the bar, not bothering to wait for the two of them as they continue to talk to each other outside. 

“You know, I don’t know Emeline that well, especially not as well as you do, but I can see why you two love each other. I see the look on her face when she talks about you, that light in her eyes when you get brought up that just fades when she realizes that you two aren’t together and that you two are in this weird place right now. It’s the same look you get when Fran or Maddy mention Emeline. You look like you’re bursting with love one second, then like you’re about to crumble the next.”

“So what do I do about that?” Jeremy asks, looking back and forth between the bar and Trent. 

Trent shrugs. “You might just have to fight it out. Get whatever ew things you’re feeling out in the open.” 

Jeremy laughs. “You had me there until, ‘ew things.’”

“Shut up, you know what I mean. Get everything out so you can get together and the rest of us can finally relax.”

Jeremy lets out a deep breath. “Let’s head inside.” The two of them go in, finding Fran, Maddy and Johnny standing at the bar waiting for drinks. 

“We ordered you guys your drinks, too,” Maddy tells them before they can ask. 

“Where’s Em?”

Fran shrugs. “She said she was going to try to find a table for us, probably somewhere in the back.” 

“Thanks,” he says, rushing off to find her as soon as possible, despite his friends calling for him, clearly confused by the sudden change in his demeanor. He wouldn’t even know where to start telling them what had changed in his mind in the short time between talking to Trent and now; it barely made sense to him. All he knew was that he had to find Emeline. He had to figure this shit out with her now before he was sure he was going to lose her forever.

The bar was more crowded than he had anticipated for it being seven pm. He was pushing through people far too drunk for their own good, feeling like the room was closing in on him as every additional person bumped into him.

It didn’t matter. He had to find Emeline.

He finally breaks through the crowd of people, his heart dropping when he sees her.

She was at a table big enough for all of them, a guy sitting right next to her who looked surprisingly like Keelan. He stood frozen as he watched her smile at him, throw her head back and laugh as he leaned back and put his arm on the back of the booth they shared. She leans back, snuggling into his arm, his hand running up and down on her arm. 

He couldn’t be with her. Not when she was with someone else. He thought he finally had his chance, and he was already too late.

Someone drops their glass behind him, everyone around them drunkenly screaming. Emeline finally looks away from the mystery man who was leaning in already, the color draining from her face when she makes eye contact with Jeremy. 

He couldn’t watch this. He turns to leave, pushing past Trent, Johnny, Maddy, and Fran on their way back with drinks, calling his name. 

It had started raining, a sudden downpour that none of them would be ready for if they left the bar anytime soon. It didn’t matter to him. He barely felt it. 

How could he be so dumb? She had barely spoken to him in months. They had no idea how to be around each other any more. Why would he think that he even still had a chance with her? Why would she want to be with him when she was practically avoiding him whenever she got the chance? Yes, they had those few moments where it felt like everything could be finally falling into place for them, but they were few for a reason.

“Jeremy, wait,” he hears Emeline call out, the sound of her running after him as her feet hit the pavement, splashing in the puddles that were quickly forming on the sidewalk.

“Why?”

“Where are you going?”  

“Nowhere,” he snaps, Emeline flinching. “Home.”

“Jeremy.”

“I’m fine. You’re doing your thing with whoever you want, and I’m just-” 

“You’re what?” she asks after he trails off.

“Alone.” 

Emeline looks at him, confused, her voice getting soft. “What are you talking about? You have all of us. You have your family, your teammates.” 

“What does any of that matter when I’m losing my mind watching the girl I told I love a couple of months ago flirt with other guys and not even think about me when I’m trying everything to try to figure out how you could have told me you wanted me and then changed your mind so fast. Do you think that it’s easy to stop loving someone like you? Do you think I want to sit here feeling like this? Do you have any idea what it’s like to have someone take up every free thought you have when you know they don’t think about you at all?”

“You think that I don’t think about you? You’re all I can fucking think about.” Jeremy involuntarily lets out a scoff, Emeline’s face turning bright red, tears forming in her eyes. He looks away, knowing that he would break if he saw her starting to cry because of him. “You asshole, this is so easy for you to stand here like this is a one way thing, that you like me more than I like you or something.”

It starts to thunder, Jeremy praying that lightning doesn’t follow, Emeline’s makeup just starting to run down her face, her mascara smudging as the rain draws it down her cheeks. He looks up at the sky, knowing that it was better than looking at her. Trent was right, though. “God, Emeline, do you think this is easy? Do you think I like this? We should be in there having fun with our friends instead we’re out here on the sidewalk in the middle of a fucking screaming match. I don’t want to be here if it means I have to watch you hit on someone else.”

“What am I supposed to do? So what if I hit on guys I have no interest in? The guy I want to be with, the guy standing right in front of me, looked me in the eyes back in December  and told me that he and I shouldn’t be together because he didn’t want to be a rebound. Well, guess what? These guys are my rebound. These guys are lining up to be the guy you didn’t want to be.” 

“No shit, I don’t want to be your rebound. I want to be more than that. I want you to be more than that for me. I don’t want to end up as a one night stand.”

“For fucks sake, Jeremy. It’s been since December, you and I doing this awkward fucking dance around each other,” she repeats, “I'm not here for a one night stand. I don’t know how you could think that you would ever be just a rebound to me when you are everything. I don’t want just one night. I don’t want one shot. Fuck, Jeremy, I want chapters, I want a novel, I want you and me to finally be something. If you have spent all this time thinking that I only want the bare minimum with you, then you don’t know me at all. That means we have spent the last how many months trying to ‘get to know each other,’ with nothing to show for it.” 

“Emeline, you have avoided me every chance you get. I have to hope for those few moments when we’re alone and you actually want to be around me. But we can’t even be around each other anymore. It was almost worse than all those other times it was just the two of us. If someone saw us interact, they’d think we had never fucking met before that moment and didn’t want to be around each other any longer than we had to be. Then there are the other times when I try to talk to you, and you avoid me. You ignore me, which I don’t even know if that’s worse or not. Everything I do I feel like I’m losing you more and more. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you as my friend even though it’s clear you don’t want anything to do with me.” 

“For fucks sake,” Emeline says, stomping her foot on the ground. “Why is this so hard for us? All of our friends are trying to push us together and we can’t figure out how to be around each other.” 

“Maybe they’re wrong.”

Emeline stares at Jeremy, swallowing what he was sure was about to be a sob. He felt himself crying, too, blinking away the tears as they mixed with the rain that ran down his face. “I don’t want them to be wrong.” 

“We have to both want this, then, Emeline.”

“When you die,” Emeline starts, her voice shaking, “Your brain goes on for seven minutes playing back all of your happiest memories. You are my seven minutes. I want you to be all seven minutes, don’t you get that? I don’t want other people. Of course, I want you, too, you fucking idiot.” 

Jeremy couldn’t tell if she was still crying at this point or if it was the rain going down her cheeks. Her makeup was everywhere down her face, but she still looked perfect to him. 

He takes a step forward, raising his hands to cup her cheeks.

“What are you doing?” she asks, stepping back slightly, despite her body getting noticeably more relaxed.

“Will you just stand still?” he asks, taking her face in his hands and finally kissing her. He could feel her smiling against his lips, not stopping himself from doing the same as his hands tangled in her wet hair, the taste of the rain mixing in as their lips moved together. His mind stopped, he swore his heart was about to stop, everything around him stopped as he stood there in the rain, kissing the girl he had wanted to be with. 

It was stupid, but they had just talked about it the night before. While they were falling asleep, she admitted that she thought dancing in the rain was one of the most romantic things you could do with a person you cared about, just as he had admitted to Johnny however long ago. 

He could go, have this movie scene moment with a girl he liked, and while he would probably end up getting sick in the process, he would have a girlfriend by the end of it, just like he always wanted to.

Jeremy quickly threw on a nicer shirt, trying to find his raincoat in an effort to look good but practical, running out of his room.

“Where are you going?” Johnny’s words stop him in his tracks before he can reach the door, his roommate sitting on the couch as if it were part of him at this point. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be packing to go home tomorrow?” Jeremy asks, deflecting the question. The All-Star Break was starting, and a lot of the guys were using the first half of the week to visit their families, just like Johnny.

“I packed already,” Johnny shrugs. “So, where are you off to?”

“I’m meeting Anne.” Johnny nods as his response. “What?”

“I thought you weren’t going to see her until the weekend.”

“She texted me asking me to meet her.”

“Then why do you look like you’re about to barf?”

“I’m going to ask her to be my girlfriend.”

“No, you’re not.” Jeremy looks at him, sitting down next to him on the couch. “You’ve been dating this girl for almost three months and you still haven’t asked her to be your girlfriend. You aren’t going to ask Anne to be your girlfriend because you’re still too in love with Emeline. And you aren’t the kind of guy to lead a girl on like that when you know damn well that you are more into the girl next door.” 

Jeremy starts to panic, trying to internally tell himself that what Johnny was saying was true. He used to love Emeline, but he didn’t have any other option besides forcing that feeling away as if it never existed. She didn’t want to date him. He didn’t want to be in love with someone when they didn’t love him. He wanted to love someone who loved him. “I’m not in love with her anymore. I barely talk to her anymore.”

“Sure, ok,” Johnny says sarcastically.

“I’m serious.” Or, at least, he wasn’t totally lying. He had barely talked to her in the last few months, but not for lack of trying. She had been ghosting him a lot more often than not lately, Jeremy just chalking it up to it being the end of her school year, then Ethan getting drafted, then her going back and forth between Connecticut and Boston. But, god, when they were still together, he had no idea how he was going to stop loving her if she still lived next door.

“If you’re so serious, then why are you still here when Anne is waiting for you? Maddy said this is the first time in a while they haven’t been scheduled together with Anne trying to pick up more shifts lately. She doesn’t have a lot of time for you, and she is taking her little free time and still trying to see you.”

Jeremy doesn’t say anything else, getting up and leaving him on the couch, the smirk on Johnny’s face still there as Jeremy closed the door on his roommate. 

The past few months have been spent with him and Emeline getting to know each other, just like they promised each other they would that night in December. She knows him better than his sister and parents know him at this point. She knows him and still doesn’t love him the way he wished she would, and he can’t change anything about that. All he can do is try to love someone who actually will love him back.

He was sure that Anne could be that for him. Anne, Maddy’s coworker he met by chance at that fundraiser back in December, who is sweet, funny, shows an actual interest in what he does even though she’s a bigger basketball fan than she is a hockey fan.

Anne, who was nothing like Emeline.

She liked him and wanted to spend time with him in a way that was more than just being his friend. He needed someone who wanted that.

He needed something more than what Emeline could give him, despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than for him and Emeline to give each other everything.

Jeremy’s phone buzzes in his pocket, another message from Anne. He takes his phone out despite the fact that the pouring rain covers his screen, Anne telling him to meet her at the Commons, near the restaurant they went to on their first date. 

Everyone decides they no longer know how to walk when it’s raining, his commute to Anne taking much longer than it needed to. He finally spots her bright blue jacket standing on the sidewalk, her hunched over to look at her phone.

He can’t help but smile at her when he sees her. She’s gorgeous, she’s fun, she’s smart. 

She’s not Emeline.

“Hi,” he says, Anne smiling back at him. 

“Is this dumb?” she laughs, draping her arms around his neck, pulling the hood off his head, the unseasonably warm weather hitting him as she did. 

Jeremy pulls her hood down before wrapping his arms around her waist, laughing as he tells her, “Maybe, but it could be fun?” 

He was already soaked when she squirms to get to her pocket, pulling out her phone and playing a song Jeremy didn’t recognize and could barely hear over the rain as they started swaying to what he hoped was the beat. 

They move together for a few moments, Jeremy blinking away the rain falling in his eyes as his hair starts to plaster to his forehead. He felt a chill rush through him, telling himself that the moment of uncomfort was from the weather getting to him. 

She lets out a laugh when he clumsily tries to spin her, nearly causing her to fall over as she tripped on his shoe. He catches her, his hand spreading across her lower back as the two of them stare at each other for a moment. Her eyes flick down to his lips as he pulls her back up to him, their chests pressing together. 

“Can I kiss you?” she asks, throwing Jeremy off. 

He feels himself hesitating, saying, “Of course,” the back of his mind telling him it was just because he didn’t want to hurt her. Jeremy pushes that away as her lips meet his. He pushed away the tense feeling that involuntarily overcame his body, trying to ignore it when Anne pulled away, a forced smile on his face as they rested their foreheads against each other and continued to move slowly in the rain. 

Anne had a genuine smile on her face, Jeremy’s heart hurting while he was with her. 

The song ends, Jeremy having no idea how many songs they had danced for. “So,” Anne starts, her hand finding its way to his. “Do you want to come back to my place?”

Jeremy feels himself start to panic, his heart racing in the wrong way. “Uh, I can’t, really,” he said, seeing Anne’s face drop. “I think the weather’s starting to get to me, I don’t want to risk you getting sick.”

“Oh,” Anne says, giving him a sad smile. “I’ll still see you over the weekend, right?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy lets out, the panic disappearing knowing that he could go home just as fast as it had started to show. “Over the weekend.” 

He gives her a quick kiss before leaving her there for the nearest T station, unsure of which line he was even getting on when he gets on the first train that appeared in front of him. 

Anne was great. 

Anne wasn’t Emeline.

Anne was funny.

Anne wasn’t Emeline.

Anne was kind.

Anne wasn’t Emeline.

Anne was smart.

Anne wasn’t Emeline.

Jeremy could feel himself start to spiral, the people in the car around him barely registering him. His phone starts buzzing in his pocket, just enough to pull him out of whatever he was about to feel just enough to see Ethan’s name on his phone. They had met after one of his games earlier in the month, Ethan insisting since his sister knew players on his favorite team, that they all come to his game.

“Hello?”

“Are you busy right now?” Ethan’s voice came through the other end, sounding just as panicked as Jeremy thought he sounded.

“I’m just on my way-” Jeremy starts, realizing he had no idea where he was going, just that he was on the green line. “No, I’m free right now.”

Ethan lets out a breath. “I think I’m freaking out about the draft.” Ethan was quickly rising in the draft rankings, with scouts coming to the games he’s been playing in to watch him. 

“What about it?’

“What if I don’t get drafted by the Bruins?”

Jeremy stares out the window of the train, the darkness of the tunnel they were traveling through somehow distracting him. “You just deal with it, I think.”

“But I want to be drafted by them.”

Jeremy laughs at the panic in Ethan’s voice, sounding like a scared little kid even though he was an adult. “Does Sweeney know that?”

“I think so?”

“That’s a good start then.” 

“But what if I go to the Habs or the Leafs?” he asks.

Jeremy understood where Ethan was coming from, experiencing the rivalry between the Bruins and the two Canadian teams for his entire career. “I thought I was going to be drafted by the Leafs, actually.” 

“Oh. Right.”

“Yeah, and I wanted to play for them, but they took another goalie instead.”

“I remember that.”

“And you know what?” 

“What?”

“Not getting drafted by the team I thought was going to take me was the best thing that could have happened to me.” 

“But did you grow up a Leafs fan?”

Jeremy smirks. “I didn’t hate them.”

“But think about what it’s like to have the scouts of the team you’ve been a fan of for your entire life coming to games to see you, just to have them not pick you.”

“That would suck, but it’s not the end of the world. You’re going to get picked by a team that is going to be the best fit for you. It might be the Bruins, it might not be, and you’re going to be fine either way.”

Ethan groans. “You sound just like my sister.” 

Jeremy swallows, the train coming to a stop at the station he was supposed to be getting off at. He sits down as people shuffle in and out of the train car, not caring where he was going. “It could just be that we’re both right.”

“But what if I don’t like the team once I’m on it? What if that doesn’t work out?”

“Ethan,” Jeremy says, shifting in his seat. “That could happen, but you have to make it work. If you love hockey enough, and you want to be in the NHL bad enough, then you figure out a way to make it work, or wait it out until things get better. You have me no matter what team you’re on, and you have Emeline no matter what team you’re on.”

Ethan sits on the other end on the line in silence. “Have you talked to her?”

“We were all hanging out together the other day,” Jeremy lies to him, getting off the train despite his stop having passed a while ago. 

“No, I mean,” Ethan lets out a sigh of frustration. “Actually talked to her?”

Jeremy stops in his tracks, a few people swearing at him for not knowing how to walk in the middle of the sidewalk as he tries to step aside. “She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“She thinks you don’t want to talk to her.” 

“I don’t think we know how to talk to each other anymore.”

“I don’t think it helps that she’s still in love with you and you are running around with another girl.” 

“How do you know about Anne?”

“Because unlike you, I talk to Emeline.” 

Jeremy turns his face toward the sky, closing his eyes and letting the last bit of the rain hit his face. “I want to talk to her,” he admits. 

“Do you still love my sister?”

Anne’s face flashed in his mind, her smile as she looked at him before she kissed him earlier that day. He liked Anne, despite the fact that her mind quickly morphed into Emeline’s, the idea of her making a smile grow on his face. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop.” 

“Can you two stop being stupid then and just tell each other? How am I supposed to focus on hockey and getting to know my sister when I have to deal with you two like this?”

Jeremy laughs. There was no questioning whether or not Ethan and Emeline were related after that. “Leave that to us, ok? We’ll figure it out.”

“I hope so. I deal with enough girl drama from my teammates.” 

Ethan ends the call, leaving Jeremy alone on the sidewalk. He knew that Ethan was right, that Johnny was right, that, if Fran and Maddy were here, they would be telling him the same thing, and that they would be right. 

“Hey, can we talk?” Jeremy asks into his phone once Anne picks up, running back through the streets towards his apartment. 

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I’m sorry. I ca-”

“I know,” Anne cuts him off, trying not to sound sad. “Maddy filled me in on everything with her roommate a while ago.”

Jeremy let out a sigh. “Anne.” 

She laughs, Jeremy hearing the sound shake like she was about to cry. He could feel his heart ache. “It’s not fair to either of us if we aren’t both in this one hundred percent. I can give you that, but you can’t give that to me.” 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault. You can’t help what you feel. Only tell me you’re sorry if you’re not dating her in a month, ok?”

Jeremy smiles, wishing he could have made things work with this amazing girl on the other end of this call. “We’re gonna find a guy who deserves you, Anne.”

“We?”

“Yeah,” he says, his hand on the door of his building. “You’re one of us now.” 

“God,” Anne groans. “Does that mean Johnny, too?”

Jeremy laughs, going into the building. “Yep, you’re stuck with all of us.” 

“Jeez,” she lets out, Jeremy hitting the up button on the elevator. He needed to see Emeline, even if he had no plan as to what he was going to say. 

Anne tells him she has to go, Jeremy letting out a breath as the doors slid open.

“Oh, hi,” Emeline says, standing there dressed up.

Jeremy felt a pit form in his stomach at the sight of her. “Hey,” he lets out. “Where are you off to?” he asks, even though he was sure he already knew the answer.

“I’m going out?”

“Out?”

“Yeah.”

“Em,” Jeremy says.

“I’m going on a date.” Jeremy nods, swallowing the lump forming in his throat without success. “His name is Ben.” He nods again, Emeline gesturing to the guy standing outside staring down at his phone. 

The guy looked like a mix of him and Keelan; the blonde hair from Emeline’s ex but with Jeremy’s build. He was just enough of both of them that he wasn’t either of them, probably why Emeline said yes to him in the first place.

“That’s awesome, Emeline,” he chokes out. 

“Could you do me a favor?” she asks, taking out her phone. 

“Anything,” he tells her, noticing the quick smile on her face. 

“Can you watch my location?”

“Of course I will. Go have fun, Em. I’ll keep an eye on you.” 

“I’ll see you later,” she tells him, heading out towards Ben outside. 

Jeremy watches as he pulls her in for an awkward hug, Emeline frowning when he does, a fake smile on her face immediately as he pulls away before he leads her off to their date. He pulls out his phone, bringing up his conversation with Emeline, seeing “Em started sharing location with you.” as the last thing in their thread.

He gets up to his floor, heading to his apartment to find Maddy and Johnny sitting on the couch. “Do you ever go to your room?” he asks, taking the chair across from them. 

“Fran, Em and Trent are coming over when they’re done with all their errands and things, the bedroom is just for me and Maddy,” Johnny says, pulling Maddy in closer to his side while she rolls her eyes at him. 

Jeremy cringes. “Classy. And I just saw Em heading out, I don’t know how long she’ll be though.”

“Where’s she going?”

Jeremy looks at her confused. “She’s going on a date. Some guy named Ben.”

Maddy shoots forward, nearly launching herself off the couch. “What?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No, where’s she going?”

Jeremy shrugs, showing her his phone. “She asked me to watch her location.” 

Maddy takes the phone, her mouth hanging open as she watched Emeline’s picture move across the map, on the T going who knows where. “I didn’t even know she was talking to anyone.”

“Didn’t you tell me Fran set her up on that dating app?”

Maddy sighs, handing the phone back to Jeremy. “I didn’t think she was using it. It looks like she’s heading towards the Garden right now.”

“The Celtics are playing tonight.” 

Jeremy laughs. “There’s no way he’s taking her to a Celtics game. She doesn’t even care about basketball.” 

“He’d be perfect for Anne since she loves Jayson Tatum.” 

“Well, if things don’t work out for Ben and Emeline, he can always date her.”

“Won’t that get in the way of Anne dating you?”

Jeremy sighs, shaking his head. “Nope. We broke up.”

“Shocking,” Johnny deadpans, earning a glare from Maddy. “What? I told him he wasn’t going to ask her to be his girlfriend today.”

“If you say one more gross or unhelpful thing today, I’m sleeping in my own bed by myself tonight,” Maddy threatens, Jeremy trying not to laugh at the look of panic flashing on his roommates face. “Why’d you guys break up?”

It was how he looked at Anne when she showed up in his doorway. 

Jeremy looked at Anne the way he had first looked at Emeline. 

It was how she wished he still looked at her.

Emeline took her work bag from the kitchen chair she always rested it on and brought it to her room, locking the door behind her before dropping the thing and flopping face first onto her bed. Jeremy didn’t want to date her. He didn’t want to be her rebound, no matter how many times she told him that he wouldn’t be. He didn’t want to be with her, so why shouldn’t he date other people?

Why didn’t he want to date her anymore? 

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, a notification from the dating app Fran downloaded on her phone for her showing up on her screen. She didn’t do anything on the app; it was just notifications that guys liked her. It’s not like she liked them.

Emeline scrolled through the profile that Fran and Maddy set up for her, a picture of the three of them that Johnny took one night with Emeline in the middle, the three of them smiling; a picture of her coaching her lacrosse team, standing on the sideline, yelling at the ref for something she thought was unfair against her team; a picture of her that she took for Keelan when she was chaperoning a trip in France with her students two years ago; one of her teaching that was taken when a photographer came to campus for their website; one of her with a puppy that the girls saw while they were on a run together that Emeline wished she could have taken home with her; and one of her and Jeremy at a bar, Emeline looking at the camera and Jeremy looking at her like she was the only girl in the world.

She zoomed in on the last photo, on Jeremy specifically. That’s how he looked at Anne, now.

If Jeremy could date, why couldn’t she? 

She had plenty of guys over the last week who had liked her on this stupid app; they couldn’t all be undateable, could they? 

After what felt like hours of hitting the x button, she finally went through all the guys who liked her and found that not a single one of them appealed to her. None of them were Jeremy. 

Emeline was ready to throw her phone across the room when Ethan tries to FaceTime her. She didn’t want to talk to him, but they were getting close in the last couple of weeks. How could she say no to talking to him? 

“Hey, kid, what’s up?” she asks, sitting up on her bed as Ethan looks like he’s on the T.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Nothing, why?”

“Can you come to my game?”

Emeline tries to think of what his schedule for the week was. “The game against BC?”

“NHL scouts are going to be there and Mom and Dad are going to Oliver’s show with Luke and I need someone from my family there so if I throw up everywhere at least I know one person won’t laugh at me.” 

“Yeah, because vomit is so funny?” Emeline jokes, hoping it could calm her brother down. 

“Em,” Ethan whines.

“Ethan, yes, I’ll be there,” Emeline reassures him. She hears Ethan let out a long sigh of relief. She had never seen him this nervous before. Granted, she hadn’t been seeing him at all other than for the last month, but still. “I’m wearing BC stuff.”

“Emeline,” Ethan yells. “You can’t wear BC to BU.” 

“You will not catch me in BU gear. Eagles are superior to Terriers.” 

“Emeline, my sister can’t wear BC gear to my game when I play for BU.”

Emeline laughs, her mind quickly wondering what her life would have been like if she grew up with Ethan instead of getting to know him now. “It’s not like anyone is going to know that you’re my brother.”

“We look like we could be twins.” 

“Except for the fact that you’re just barely 18 and I’m 25, yeah we could totally be twins.”  

“Please, wearing something Bruins related or something, instead?” Ethan begs, Emeline freezing. The only thing she had that had a Bruins logo on it was the jersey Jeremy bought for her, the one with his last name on it that she had buried in the depths of Fran’s closet.

“Fine, fine,” she relents. 

“I’ll send you two tickets, ok?”

“Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

Ethan hangs up right as he gets off the T, Emeline left sitting on her bed alone. 

Who was she going to bring to this game?

Johnny was away on a road trip, and Jeremy was out of the question even if he was in the state. Fran was with her family for her mom’s birthday, and Maddy had an overnight shift again. Javier didn’t care enough about hockey to go to her brother’s game. 

She sits and scrolls through her contacts, trying to find anyone that she had talked to recently to bring to this game, seeing person after person she hadn’t talked to in over a decade. 

Emeline sighs, finally finding someone to bring. 

What are you doing tomorrow night?

___________________________

“When was the last time we were on this campus?”

Emeline thinks back. “Accidentally when we went to the Sox game last season. Intentionally probably back in college.” 

Keelan looks out over the ice, the twos out for warm ups already. “I can’t believe you have a brother,” he says, a frown on his face. 

“Three.” 

“You have three brothers?”

“Ethan, Oliver, and Luke.” 

“I can’t believe you never told me.” 

“I didn’t know how.” Emeline feels his gaze turn to her. “I didn’t want to know how. I thought at the time that my mom not only had a new family, but that she didn’t think about me. How do you tell someone that?” 

Keelan sighs, “You could have just said that.” 

“Why, so you could have broken up with me then instead last a couple months ago? So you could have started sleeping through whatever sorority you wanted earlier?” Keelan looks at her, confused and shocked. “What, you didn’t think all those times you bragged to your friends about how you were with me because you thought I was too unstable to break up with, even though you didn’t want to ‘deal with my baggage,’ that all the times you said those things wouldn’t get back to me?” 

The anthem starts before Keelan can say anything else. Ethan wins the faceoff, BU getting possession of the puck. Emeline laughed to herself; if someone had told her six months ago she would have understood any of the words that ran through her mind outside the context of lacrosse, she wouldn’t believe them. Jeremy came into her life and changed that for her. 

Keelan shifts uncomfortably in his seat, looking like he was trying to figure out what to say to her. “Why did you think proposing to me was the thing to do at my party? Especially after you dumped me.”

Keelan stares at the ice, his eyes not following the game. Emeline studied the man next to her. She knew, physically, why she spent so much time with him as his girlfriend. He looked like each one of her celebrity crushes when she was growing up. He had exactly the look she thought the guy she would end up with had; he had blonde hair that was slowly turning to a golden brown as he got older, the crooked smile with perfect teeth that made her swoon when he smiled at her for the first time, hazel eyes that shined in just the right light.

But she knew that physical wasn’t enough. 

“You weren’t just with me for seven years, Emeline. I was with you, too, that entire time. And I had to watch you fall in love with someone else easily while I know you had to convince yourself you were still more in love with me.” Keelan stares out at the ice while Emeline tries to understand her own feelings. Ethan has the puck, circling around the goaltender for BC and trying to get it to the net. The goalie saves it, the ref stopping the play. “I knew it was my last chance to show you that I loved you.”

“You proposed, believing I was in love with someone else?”

Ethan gets the puck again after his goalie makes a save against one of the BC defensemen. He streaks up the ice, trying to dodge the Eagles flicking him on the sides. The goalie is wide open, just him and Ethan facing off. 

“Yes.”

Ethan scores. 

Emeline jumps to her feet along with half of the crowd, cheering for her younger brother as his teammates on the ice crash into him. He breaks out of the pile on the ice, pointing to her as he skates to the bench. 

“Em?” Keelan asks once the noise dies down and the play starts again. “Why him?”

She could play dumb and pretend he’s asking about her brother, why was she here cheering for him at Boston University when she so proudly hated the school. “Because he knows me.”

“I know you.”

“Not the way he does,” she says, watching her brother interact with his teammates on the bench. “I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t tell you, or because you didn’t listen when I did. It might be both. But Jeremy?”

Emeline thinks back on the last few months. She thought she loved Keelan and that Keelan loved her. But meeting Jeremy made her realize she didn’t know what it was like to be cared for by someone who didn’t have to care for her. He was there for her when she needed him, and let her be there for him if he needed her. She knew the details about her, and loved her for them anyway. Keelan was what she thought her dream man was, Jeremy is who her reality should be. 

“Even if we aren’t telling each other everything, we pay attention. I think I know him better than I know myself. And he knows me better than anyone ever has.” 

“Better than Fran and Maddy?”

“Yeah.” 

Keelan takes in a deep breath, the period ending with BU up 1-0 as the players head off to the locker rooms. “He’s at least treating you right?”

Emeline looks over to him, the two of them trying to move out of the way of people heading up to the concourse. “Jeremy and I aren’t together.” 

“We broke up because of him, and you aren’t even dating him?” 

“He didn’t want to date me yet.”

Keelan scoffs. “What an idiot.” Emeline laughs. “Do you regret anything?”

That question catches her off guard. She had spent how many nights recently telling Fran and Maddy that she ‘wasted’ seven years with Keelan. What really good times had they had together? 

“I regret us not ending things when deep down, I think we both knew we should have. We both knew we weren’t each others forever.” 

“I just always hoped that feeling was wrong.” 

___________________________

Keelan didn’t end up staying the entire game, leaving Emeline alone about half way through the second period. She ended up getting a video of Ethan scoring another goal, his second of the night, his third point of the night, to put the Terriers up 3-2 against the Eagles, Emeline sending the video in the group chat with her roommates and the boys. 

BU ended up winning the game, Ethan getting the game-winning goal. 

Emeline stands outside the locker room where Ethan asked her to wait for him after the game. 

Ethan comes out, a man in a suit stopping him before he can reach Emeline. She watches them talking, trying to pretend to not be too creepy about it, scrolling on her phone to read the texts from her friends about Ethan’s goal. 

She honestly just wanted to hear the conversation between this guy who looked important and her brother, but she was just out of earshot. 

Ethan shakes the man's hand, the guy patting him on the back before turning and leaving, nodding at Emeline as he passed by her. 

“Who was that?” she asks, Ethan looking starstruck as the man walked away. 

“A scout from the Bruins.”

“The Boston Bruins?”

“No, the UCLA Bruins, Emeline.”

“Don’t be a little shit. What did he say?”

The two of them start walking down the hallway, Ethan heaving his bag on his shoulder. “He was telling me how he was impressed with my game tonight and that if I keep it up, he thinks I might have a chance to be invited to the combine.” 

“That’s a good thing,” she says, not really sure what he was talking about.

“The combine is where the top prospects that year get invited to work out and show off in front of all the teams scouts and managers before the draft. Do you know how many guys' draft stock have gone up because of the combine?”

“No.”

“Enough of them that I could get drafted in the first or second rounds.”

“Ethan,” Emeline exclaims, stopping her brother and pulling him in for a hug. “That’s awesome.” 

Ethan lets out a deep breath, running his hands through his hair. “I can’t believe this.” His phone starts going off, a call coming in. “Oh, it’s our mom.” Emeline feels a weird rush go through her at the sound of Ethan saying ‘our mom,’ to her as he answers the call and puts it on speaker. “Hi Mom, I’m here with Em.”

“Hi,” she says, cutting herself off before she says, ‘mom.’ Still too weird for her.

“Hi guys,” Celine yells, clearly driving as the sound of her turn signal clicked in the background. “We’re all here, we’re just leaving Oliver’s show.” The rest of the family says a chorus of hello’s. “How was the game?”

Ethan and Emeline start walking back toward his dorm as he talks a mile a minute about the game and the scout. They get back to his dorm, Ethan signing her into the building as they make their way up to his room. 

“Mom, I’m gonna go,” Ethan says, hearing the car stop in the background to signal that their family was pulling up in front of their house. 

“Ok, I’ll talk to you two later,” Celine’s voice sounds through the speaker. “Emeline, say hi to your friends for us.”

“Will do,” she says, sitting down on Ethan’s bed, looking around at his dorm. His side of the room was neat, kind of like how she kept her room when she first moved into the room she shared with Maddy and Fran, the only three freshmen on the lacrosse team in their building, the rest of them living in a dorm on the other side of campus. He had a picture of him and his family from his high school graduation on his dresser, another one of him from what looked like his senior night with his parents and brothers on either side of him. There was a Bruins poster on his wall, right next to a Yankees poster.

“There’s no way,” she says, pointing at the NYY insignia on his wall.

Ethan smirks, “It’s more fun this way.” Ethan laughs at Emeline’s scoff. “So, no Jeremy tonight?”

“He and Johnny are up in Canada.” 

Ethan shakes his head. “I know that. I mean, you haven’t talked about him.” 

“I also haven’t talked about a lot of people I know,” she deflects, the way she does when her students try to pry into her personal life.

“Who was that dude you brought to the game?” he asks, sitting back in his desk chair.

“Keelan.”

“Ken doll reject?”

“Excuse me?”

Ethan shrugs. “That’s what Mom calls him. But why did you bring your ex-boyfriend to the game?”

Emeline sighs. “He was the only one free.”

“I doubt that.” 

Emeline rolls her eyes, Ethan giving her that look she often gave her roommates when they weren’t telling her the whole truth. “The last time I saw him, he proposed to me, and the time before that, he broke up with me. It’s hard to end a seven year relationship like that.” 

“And you ended it because you’re with Jeremy now?”

“I thought you said I didn’t mention Jeremy.”

“Not to me, but I can read lips.” 

“Weren’t you supposed to be paying attention to your game?”

Ethan smirks. “I had just scored a goal, my attention could wander.”

“I hope you never meet Johnny. You two together would be awful.” 

“But you and Jeremy?”

Emeline shakes her head. “He’s dating someone else. And we barely talk anymore. Everything’s been weird between us lately whenever we’re alone.”

“So why don’t you date someone else? Are you on any of those apps?”

“Maddy and Fran made me a profile, but I don’t really use it.” 

Ethan gestures for her phone, Emeline rolling her eyes and reluctantly gives it to him, standing over him as he scrolls through her profile. He stops at the last photo, the one of her and Jeremy, and frowns. “Why would you put a photo of a guy who’s clearly in love with you on your profile.”

“Maddy and Fran made me the profile,” she repeats. 

“Yeah, no, I don’t know any guy who would like a profile with a girl who has a boyfriend.” 

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“This photo makes it look like you do.”

Emeline snatches her phone from her brother, sitting back down on his bed. “I don’t really want guys to like my profile. I don’t want to date someone else,” she admits.

“Then what do you do?”

Emeline shrugs. “I guess I wait.” 

___________________________

“You’re getting home late again,” Fran says when Emeline opens the door, Emeline dropping her bag on the floor with a grunt.

“Yeah, it’s almost eleven,” Trent points out, sitting next to Fran.

Emeline groans. “I was staying for lacrosse and then one of the teachers who was supposed to help with senior sleepover got sick so they asked me to stay since I was still there, anyway.”

“Saying, ‘no,’ is an option, you know,” Johnny says as Emeline sits down.

Emeline glares at him. “Not when you’re a teacher.” 

“Can you call out tomorrow?” Maddy asks. 

“Nope,” Emeline shakes her head. “We have an away game tomorrow and I can’t go with them if I’m not at school that day.” 

“Go to bed, babe,” Fran tells her, Emeline yawning and nodding as she heads back to her room. 

It was days like the one she had today where a long shower was the best feeling next to actually crawling into bed. She does her routine, trying to not take too long out of pure desire to get into bed as fast as she can. 

Emeline heads back to her room, hearing her roommates talk with the guys.

“We should definitely be worried about her, right?” Maddy’s voice carries through the hallway despite her trying to whisper.

“She normally stays later during her season, but not this late and not this often,” Fran says.

“Is she still not over Jeremy?” Johnny asks.

“She was into Jeremy?” Trent asks.

The other three groan. “How does that not earn a comeback? He’s not new anymore.”

“He’s not important right now,” Fran scolds Johnny. “Do we try to set her up with someone new? Someone to get her to forget about Jeremy?”

“Even with Jeremy dating Anne, he hasn’t forgotten about Emeline. He’s still just as in love with her now as he was the day he met her.” 

“It’s like they’re not even friends anymore,” Maddy says. “They can’t be around each other.”

Emeline rolled her eyes. She shouldn’t be surprised that her friends would be having this conversation. They were constantly worried about her since her grandmother died, right after they met her. She loved her friends, but she wasn’t this fragile person she felt they thought she was.

Fran sighs. “She either needs to get over him or get under him.”

Johnny laughs. “I said that to him when we all met.” 

Emeline closes her door quietly so they don’t know she had been listening the entire time. She finally gets in bed, her entire body relaxing as her body sinks into her mattress. 

Everyone was right, she needed to forget about Jeremy. He didn’t want to be with her anymore, and she didn’t really want to wait for him. She opens the dating app, desperately looking for someone she could find remotely attractive, Jeremy be damned.

One guy that had already liked her, Ben, finally catches her eye, matching with him. He didn’t look like Jeremy, he didn’t look like Keelan. He was completely different at first glance.

He messages her right away, Emeline struggling to keep her eyes open as she responded back to him.

“Because your girlfriend asked us all to go?” 

Johnny sighs, Jeremy knowing that his roommate regretted his decision to say yes for both of them. Trent was supposed to be meeting them any minute before heading over to the girls’ place. Mass General was having a Christmas benefit along with Boston Children’s that just happened to fall on one of the nights the guys didn’t have a game, and who better to invite to a Boston charity event than some of the athletes of the city?

“Is this even normal?”

“Charity events? Have you seen the state of our world?”

“Bringing five guests to a charity event.”

“You brought your entire family to Pucks and Paddles last month.”

Before Johnny can refute Jeremy’s comment, Trent comes barging in, his suit as disheveled as he normally was. “Am I supposed to be matching with someone tonight?”

“It’s not a wedding.”

“Isn’t Fran my date?”

“You don’t have to match with her.” 

“What if my tie clashes with what she’s wearing?”

Jeremy rolls his eyes and shakes his head, helping Trent pull himself together before dragging the two of them next door. “I’m pretty sure Fran is more likely to kill us for being thirty seconds late than for you wearing a tie that will clash with her dress, right now.” 

Johnny knocks on the door, visibly shaking out his nerves in front of his friends. Jeremy couldn’t help but smile, seeing her roommate nervous about seeing the girl he was dating. 

Fran opens the door, her hair in a slicked back high braided pony tail, her makeup flawless as always, letting the guys in. She looks Trent up and down, a frown on her face. “Absolutely not,” she shakes her head, turning around and heading down the hall. 

“What does that mean?” Trent asks, the color draining from his face as he starts to fidget with his tie. 

Johnny pats him on the back, heading over to the couch to wait for the rest of the girls to appear. “It means it was nice knowing you.” 

Trent starts pacing the apartment, clearly panicked. “She could actually kill me over a tie?”

“Ok, we don’t know that it’s over a tie.”

“She looked at me and said, ‘no,’ then walked away.”

“Fran actually said, ‘absolutely not,’” Johnny says, Jeremy shooting him a death glare.

“Be helpful for once?”

“Fran isn’t going to kill you right before we leave, it’s too much to clean up when they’re trying to get put together.” 

Fran comes down the hall,the first of the girls ready. She has on a black, high neck, long sleeved floral gown, with red heels, a yellow tie in her hand that matched some of the print on her dress. “You’re wearing this,” she says to Trent, heading into the kitchen before he can say anything else.

“Holy shit,” Trent stands there, tie in hand, absolutely mesmerized. Jeremy laughs, another one of his friends fallen to the girl next door. 

“Ladies,” Fran yells, emerging with a cup of water and straw in hand. “We have to leave in less than five minutes.” 

“How did you manage to be the first one ready?” Johnny asks as Fran takes the seat next to him, Trent still standing there trying to figure out how to break himself free of the tie he had on. “And why do you have a tie?”

Fran shrugs. “Maddy doesn’t know how to be early,” she starts, Maddy yelling down the hall that she needed someone to zip her up. “Emeline was at school so she started getting ready about two hours after we did. And I stole the tie from a guy in college, I think. I might have taken him to one of our formals.”

“There’s school on Saturdays?” Trent asks, finally getting the yellow tie around his neck.

Fran rolls her eyes. “It was either the chorus concert or a musical today? I’m honestly not sure.” 

“Ok, I’m ready,” Maddy comes down the hall, Johnny's eyes bugging out of his head when he sees her in her black lace dress with sheer sleeves to show off her tattoos, her hair piled in a bun on the top of her head.

Johnny gets off the couch, making his way over to her, a smile on his face. “God, you are gorgeous,” he tells her, his arms on her waist.

Maddy murmurs something to him as she pulls him in for a kiss, the three of them groaning at their friends PDA. 

Maddy blushes, pulling away and looking as if she forgot the rest of them were there. “Emeline should be done in a couple of minutes.” 

Jeremy knew that Emeline had to be stressed; she was used to being the first one ready, the one who was already early. He knew that if she was worried about being late, that she was going to fake enjoying whatever event she was at for the sake of her students, the time constantly on her mind the entire time. The T was probably not running on schedule, as usual, which would make her more stressed. He could imagine her standing on the platform contemplating if it would be easier to just run home instead of waiting for the train.

“No, I’m good,” she calls, stumbling out of her room as she tried to get her shoes on. Jeremy could feel his heart skip a beat, Emeline’s hair slightly slicked back and hanging down her back, a long sleeved emerald green dress that matched her eyes fitting her perfectly. “Can you grab my phone off the charger?” she says to Jeremy while everyone else around them starts to get their stuff together to finally head out. 

Jeremy shakes himself out of whatever trance he fell into seeing Emeline dressed up like that to do as he was asked. He was still in love with the girl in front of him, no matter where they really stood with each other after that night a few weeks ago. As much as he tried, he couldn’t get the look on her face out of his head; seeing the girl who would withstand anything crumble over him turning her down. 

He knew he was right to do it. She wasn’t ready. She was too vulnerable to date her at that point.

He grabs her phone for her, heading out the door with it in hand while she struggles to get everything she needs into the small clutch she was bringing with her. “Can you hold on to that for me?” she asks him, showing him the lack of room in the bag she had as they piled into the Uber he had no idea was even ordered.

Jeremy nods, putting her phone in his pocket with his. 

Maddy and Johnny dominate the conversation, Trent staring dumbfounded at Fran while she chimes in whenever she can, Emeline adding on as well. Jeremy was silent. He felt like he didn’t know how to be around Emeline anymore, even if they were in a group at this point. He had been avoiding her whenever he could, knowing that he wanted to be with her when he couldn’t. 

Jeremy doesn’t hear any of the conversation the entire way to whatever venue they were being driven to. He wasn’t even sure they were still in Suffolk County by the time the car pulled up to a curb to let them out. 

Emeline was in front of him, Jeremy trying not to stare at her while she walked in front of him. He should be focusing on anything else.

“How am I getting through this evening?” Trent verbalizes Jeremy’s thoughts as Maddy leads them to the table they were assigned. The room was decorated with what looked like crystal everything, some sort of upscale, try-too-hard attempt at a winter wonderland. It certainly felt cold, void of any real personality. 

Jeremy sighs, wondering the same for himself. “Somehow, we will.” 

Trent starts ranting about Fran as the girls go to get drinks, Jeremy barely mentally there. 

“You need to calm down,” Johnny says, Jeremy taking a moment to realize that he was saying to him, not to Trent. 

“What?”

“You’re doing that anxious thing you do.” Jeremy stares at him. “You’ve been fidgeting with your shirt sleeve since you saw Emeline walk down their hallway.” 

Jeremy looks down, not even realizing that he had practically worn away part of his sleeve from pulling at it all night. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“What do I do?”

“Pretend you’re not in love with her?” Johnny smirks. 

Jeremy rolls his eyes. He should have known that nothing coming out of Johnny’s mouth would be of any benefit to him. 

“Ok, but, can we agree that Fran looks hot?” Trent interrupts, practically drooling over her while she’s standing at the bar. 

“I’m dating her roommate.”

“I’m into her other roommate.”

“So, just me then?”

“All you, bud.” 

The girls start making their way back to the table, Jeremy feeling his phone buzzing in his pocket, probably a notification from one of the other games going on around the league. He pulls out his phone, his screen lit up with multiple notifications from the same app. 

It was a dating app. 

He didn’t have any dating apps installed on his phone. 

The lock screen was his, the picture of him and Emeline sitting on the couch that one night, turning over the case to see Emeline’s Van Gough case she bought herself for her birthday.

Emeline was on dating apps?

Emeline told him she wanted to be with him a few weeks ago, all while being on dating apps?

Jeremy felt his heart racing, excusing himself from the table before the girls could sit down, ignoring the girls calling him, ignoring Emeline calling his name and leaving her phone sitting there with her dating app notifications. 

Jeremy weaves his way through the room, the ballroom suddenly feeling like it was closing in on him, everyone in there getting physically closer to him and breathing down his neck. He finds his way to the hallway, not sure if he was even technically allowed to be in this part of the building. 

He leans against the wall, sliding down to the floor. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to calm his breathing. He didn’t know what to do; last time he tried to distract himself, his mind went back to Emeline every single time. How could he distract himself from Emeline when he can only think about her?

“Stand up,” he hears someone say to him.

Jeremy looks up, a woman standing in front of him in a royal blue dress. “What?” he manages to stammer out, feeling her hands on his arms. They were fucking freezing, shocking him with the contrast of his own skin.

“Stand up,” she repeats, a gentler tone than before.

She helps him up, Jeremy towering over her. He still couldn’t control his breathing, his entire body shaking against the wall he couldn’t seem to break free from.

“Good. Now do ten jumping jacks.” Jeremy looks at her, clearly confused. “Do ten jumping jacks and count them to me out loud.” Jeremy looks around, trying to figure out if this was some sort of joke. “I’ll do them with you, come on.”

This mystery woman starts slowly doing jumping jacks, waiting for Jeremy to follow her lead. She looked ridiculous in her gown, her hair done up in a messy bun and the necklace she was wearing bouncing everywhere as she jumped, Jeremy counting out loud as they got to ten.

“Ten more,” she demands, not even giving him a break before launching into another set. 

Her hair was starting to fall out, a smile on her face that Jeremy couldn’t help but mirror. 

They ended up doing five sets of jumping jack, Jeremy feeling his blood pumping through him and feeling weirdly out of breath for someone who was supposed to be a professional athlete. 

“What was that for?”

“You were having a panic attack.” Jeremy looks at her, about to ask her how she knew that. “I saw you look at your phone, put it down and run out here. Something triggered it, and the physical symptoms came on suddenly. I felt like I had to follow you and help you.”

Jeremy looks down at his shoes, unable to fight the smile. “You didn’t have to do that.”

The woman smiles at him, Jeremy finally able to get a good look at her. She has to be around his age, with short brown hair framing her round face, her brown eyes shining as she smiled at him, not showing her teeth. There was a simple sweetness to her that Jeremy didn’t understand, but wanted to know about. “I wanted to.” They fall into silence, neither of them knowing what to say, the first time in what felt like forever that Jeremy was around a girl in silence that didn’t make him want to launch himself into the river.

“I saw you were here with Maddy?” she asks. 

“Yeah, she’s my neighbor. And dating my roommate.”

“Wait, you guys are the hockey players,” she says, her eyes lighting up.

Jeremy laughs, looking back at the door that leads to the ballroom. “Yeah, we’re ‘the hockey players.’”

“I’m guessing you’re Jeremy.” Jeremy raises his eyebrows, unsure if he should be concerned or impressed by her. “I work with Maddy. She said she was bringing her boyfriend Johnny, his roommate Jeremy, and their friend Trent. One of you hasn’t stopped staring at her ass, so I assume that one is Johnny. Maddy said Trent reminds her roommate of a muppet, and you don’t have that vibe, so that leaves you as Jeremy.”

“So she brought her boyfriend and a muppet,” Jeremy laughs, “What did she say about me?”

She cocks her head, looking him up and down, Jeremy feeling a rush go through him as her eyes trailed his body. “She said I would like you.” 

“And?”

“So far, she’s right. I’m Anne.”

___________________________

“What do you mean, you guys are going on a trip together? You did that at Thanksgiving,” Fran asks, plopping down on the couch next to Trent, who noticeably tensed up being around her. 

“Do I need to say it in a different language?” Johnny asks, Fran cocking her eyebrow with a frown on her face. 

“Like you know another language.”

“Ok, this is getting annoying,” Maddy groans, throwing her head back on John’s arm resting on the couch behind her. 

“Keelan isn’t around anymore, I need an outlet.” 

“You’re putting me on the same level as him?” Johnny asks with disgust.

Fran laughs, bumping into Trent, Jeremy seeing the goosebumps form on his arm almost immediately, his friend shifting uncomfortably on the couch like he was trying to hide something. “I actually like you. You’re just also easy to bitch at.” 

Emeline turns to Jeremy, his body tensing up almost immediately. “Where are you guys going?”

Jeremy swallows, a lump in his throat forming. “I think one of the guys planned a trip to Puerto Rico.”

Emeline nods. “Have you been before?”

“Nope.” 

There was no way this was where Emeline and Jeremy were in their relationship. Jeremy used to be able to tell her anything, talk to her for hours about nothing and everything, sit with each other and be comfortable around each other. He could text her or call her whenever he just wanted to hear her voice and he knew that she would do the same. They would make time for each other as best as they could. 

Now, they could barely look at each other. They were like awkward colleagues who only interacted with each other because they had to. He felt like he didn’t know her anymore. He felt like he did before he met her, when he liked the idea of her, the Emeline he thought she was, except now he knew her and felt like she didn’t want anything to do with him. 

He had to forget about her. 

A knock at the door interrupts the group. Trent looks around, pointing to and counting  each person. “But we’re all right here. Who else is there?”

Fran bites her lip, her cheeks turning red.

“If I said that, you would be mean to me,” Johnny points out as Jeremy gets up from the couch to answer the door once it was clear that Johnny wasn’t going to move from cuddling with Maddy. 

“He’s still new,” Fran says, nudging Trent.

“Oh, hey,” Jeremy opens the door to see Anne standing there, ready for the date he forgot about. 

They both step in, Anne getting on her toes to give Jeremy a kiss, Jeremy unable to hide the blush he knew was showing on his cheeks. 

Johnny coughs behind him, pulling him back to the reality that included his five friends watching him kiss the girl he was about to take out. “Um,” Jeremy clears his throat, “Let me go grab my stuff and I’ll be right back.” 

Before anyone can say anything, Jeremy heads to his room, ignoring the fact that his shoes and coat were by the door, his wallet and his keys were on the kitchen counter, and his phone was in his hand.

How could he have forgotten he had a date with Anne? How did Johnny not tease him about the date in front of the girls and Trent?

But he didn’t remember telling Johnny about the date, not even sure he told his roommate that he and Anne were even talking to each other. It’s not like this was even their first date. Anne had spent the night at their place and he had spent the night over hers. Of course, it was when Johnny was staying with Maddy, so he would have had no idea that Anne was over. 

Jeremy looks at himself in the mirror, taking a deep breath. He could do this. He had spent hours with Anne. The only difference is now his friends knew about it. 

He ventures back out into the living room, Anne and Maddy talking about one of their patients. 

“Where’s Emeline?” Jeremy asks, putting his shoes on, her absence the most noticeable to him. 

Fran shrugs, showing Trent something on her phone. “She said she forgot to do something for her students that she meant to get done last night.”

She didn’t think it would happen at a restaurant in nowhere, Connecticut, on a street that looked like a rundown Commonwealth Ave after spending two days mustering up the courage to even reach out to Celine and tell her that she was in the area. She didn’t think that she would have gotten to the restaurant half an hour earlier than her mom, despite the fact that Emeline purposely ran late as it was so she could have a grand entrance, not her mom, who came flying in like a tornado. 

But, she was with her mom, the woman who looked just like her that she had only known through noninteractions on her Facebook page, watching her the last seven years as her sons grew up, wishing so desperately that she could have been with them. Emeline was sitting in this weird restaurant, with her mom, and she had no idea how to feel about it. She was angry, she was confused, she was happy, she felt like crying.

Emeline wasn’t even sure how long they had been sitting in that booth at that point. She found out that her mom was there at her dad’s funeral, her senior night in high school for lacrosse, her high school graduation, her grandmother's funeral, almost all of her games at BC, she was there when she won the national championship, her BC graduation, she’s even managed to make it to a few of the games she coached at her school. Emeline had no idea she had been there, no idea that she cared. How did she never notice that her mom was in the background of some of the most important events in her life? 

She had been telling her mom about breaking up with Keelan after seven years, then having him show up at her surprise birthday party that Jeremy had thrown her because she didn’t tell Fran and Maddy when they were in charge of the guest list, the fight she and Keelan had. 

“I have no idea what to do. He keeps blowing up my phone and acting like I didn’t break up with him twice,” Emeline tells her, staring at the plate of food in front of her. It was the first part of the conversation that Emeline was in charge of.

“Get a restraining order” Celine shrugs, her fingers on the tip of her straw stirring her drink, avoiding making eye contact with Emeline.  

“He wasn’t entirely bad,” Emeline feels herself deflate,, thankful her mom wasn’t looking at the disappointed expression on her face. She still wasn’t sure how she couldn’t see that about Keelan when everyone else could. Why was she even defending him in the first place? “He was there when Grandma died.” 

“One good act doesn’t make him a good person. Enough about him, though,” her mom says, taking a sip of her water. “What about Jeremy?” 

“Why didn’t you ever reach out to me?” Emeline asks instead of answering the question and talking about the person she didn’t want to bring up. Celine didn’t get to know about her feelings for Jeremy. Not yet. Depending on how things went, Emeline didn’t want to bank on the idea of her telling her ever. “All these years, if you knew where to find me, why were you silent?”

Celine sighs, shaking her head. “I didn’t think you wanted me to.” Emeline could feel her anger growing, the woman in front of her acting like a teenager getting scolded for staying out past curfew instead of her mother admitting she didn’t know how to contact her daughter.

“You still should have tried.” Emeline told her, her voice shaking while she tried to keep her composure. “You obviously knew you could have. You could have found the right moment, the right time. You were there for so much of my life, and I didn’t even get to know that you were there to begin with. Do you get how that feels? Like I was no more important than background noise to you,” she continues, watching the woman across from her shaking her head in agreement, opening her mouth to say something. Emeline cuts her off before she gets the chance. “Does your family know about me? Your husband and kids?”

“My husband and my oldest, Ethan, yes. Oliver and Luke don’t yet.” 

Emeline looked down at her plate, still mostly covered in food as she really hadn’t felt like eating. “You need to tell them. I want to know them. I want to know my younger brothers, and the man who is technically my step dad. I have a brother who lives in the same city as me who I never met, who I don’t even know if I’ve seen by chance, and I want to meet them. This is the only family I have left, and I haven’t done anything wrong to not be allowed around them other than being born at the wrong time.”

“Emeline,” her mom sighs, a hint of panic in her voice.

“No,” she cuts her off. “This is what I want. I spent my entire life thinking that my own mother didn’t care about me. I grew up with my entire family being my dad and my grandmother, and while they were more than enough, I shouldn’t have to go on without knowing the family I have left when I did nothing to deserve that. You knew that I had no one left in my life when you were there at the funeral. You saw me stand there and give the eulogy where I said I lost the last family member I had in my life. 

“I get that you weren’t ready to be a mom when you had me. You were young, I get it. You and my dad weren’t in the right place. I would rather you have admitted that than try and fail to raise me. But you should have done something when you were ready, especially after you had Ethan if you were ready for him. You’re the one who needs to own up to the fact that you have a daughter on her own with a family who doesn’t know who she is.”

“I know.”

“And you need to tell Oliver and Luke. I teach kids who are Oliver’s age, and if Ethan says anything, or if they have any hint of suspicion, they’re going to find me somewhere online, and then they’re going to be just as pissed at you as I am for not saying anything.” 

“I’ll tell them tonight.”  Emeline stares at her, the gnawing feeling in the back of her mind telling her that her mom wouldn’t do what she said she would. She didn’t know Celine, she had no reason to believe her. “I’ll tell them tonight and I will call you tonight after I do and let them talk to you if they want to.” 

Emeline nods. It was better than nothing. “Thank you for dinner, Celine, but I have to get going, actually.” She stands up, her mom staying seated. “I do want to do this again, you and me. If you want to.”

“I would love to.”

Emeline turns on her heels before Celine could get out of her seat. That was a lot, a rush of emotions coursing through her that were manifesting in a sob that was caught in her throat. She heads back toward the entrance, ready to go back to the car she had rented and drive back home. She got what she wanted, and she had a long way to go before she had to teach the next morning now that the traffic was starting to get worse. 

“Oh, sorry,” she says, bumping into a person waiting by the host stand while she was pulling up the directions for her to get back home. “Jeremy? What are you doing here?”

She couldn’t believe it, the only thing she could think of doing was hugging him despite the people trying to get around the two of them. She felt him kiss the top of her head as he held her tight. She wanted more than this, eventually. 

“We came to find you when we didn’t know where you were. You didn’t think you could disappear on us and no one would care, did you?”

Emeline felt her heart swell. “We?”

“Fran, Maddy, and Johnny are in the car.”

“And that’s safe?”

“I left the windows open.” Emeline lets out a laugh, not caring about the tears that were also coming with them. “How did you even get here?”

“I rented a car.” 

“Do you want to drive back alone, or do you want to drop the car off and come back with us?” 

“If I go back with you guys, I’ll have to talk about things I don’t really want to talk about right now.” 

Jeremy loosens his grip on her, getting a good look at her as he shakes his head. “You know we won’t make you.” 

Emeline follows him out to the parking lot, driving to the nearest rental place that was still open to take the car back, Jeremy following closely behind. She settles that, getting into the passenger seat next to Jeremy, Fran, Maddy, and Johnny sitting in the back, not saying anything as they head back to Boston. 

“I told him ‘no,’ by the way. I practically had to break up with him for a second time in a week or so,” she tells them after sitting in silence for almost an hour. “I was never going to marry Keelan.” She looks out the window, not seeing the four of them exchange hopeful glances behind her before she buried her face in her hands. “I’m so stupid for spending seven years on a man I had to have known deep down that I wasn’t going to marry.”

“Babe,” Fran says, reaching forward and resting her hand on Emeline’s shoulder and giving her a gentle squeeze. Emeline reaches up to her. “You aren’t stupid. You are the farthest thing from stupid.”

“You met him during a hard time in your life. He helped bring you back from that. It’s natural to want to stay with him, to want to stay with that feeling,” Maddy adds.

“I think I fell out of love with him right after I fell in love with him. I should have broken up with him a long time ago. Especially if I was starting to fall in love with someone else,” she added that last part quietly, only loud enough for Jeremy to hear since it was about him anyway.

“He didn’t deserve you. He never did. We’re just glad we finally got here.”

Emeline nods, resting her head against the headrest and looking up at the ceiling of the car. The rest of them fall silent, the sun having set long before they got on the road making everyone in the back seat sleepy. 

The three of them nodded off as soon as they passed the sign for the University of Connecticut, the absurd traffic and somehow, multiple accidents on the highway, causing the exit that should have been passed forty five minutes into their drive take them almost an hour and a half to reach, leaving just Jeremy and Emeline together for what was going to be a long time. “How are you doing?” he asks.

“I told my mom I want to know my brothers.”

“Really? We met one of them today. That’s how we knew where to find you.”

“What?” Emeline asks, excitement she wasn’t expecting coming through her voice. “What’s he like?”

“He seems like a good kid. He’s definitely your brother. Threatened to put the cops on us if we did anything to your mom.” 

Emeline laughs. “I always knew I got my personality from my mom.” She pulls her feet up to her chest, trying to get comfortable with the seatbelt constricting her. “I guess the oldest one goes to BU, Ethan. Mom said he’s a freshman on the hockey team.” 

“Let’s go see a game together sometime. Let’s see your brother play. I’m sure I can swing tickets when they play Maine.” Jeremy smiles, keeping his eyes on the road, careful not to look at Emeline staring at him. 

“It’s a date,” she says, putting her hand down in the center of the console. Jeremy reaches over, taking her hand in his. He gives it a gentle squeeze, sending a rush of warmth through her. 

She could feel her eyes getting heavy, the only light being from the brake lights of the cars around them definitely not helping her. “Go to sleep, Em, you’ve had a long day.” 

Emeline didn’t even realize she fell asleep until she felt the car finally stop, Jeremy putting it in park. The three in the back groggily climb out and mumble their way up to the girls place. 

“Jere?” Emeline asks, taking his hand before he could get too far away. “How did you end up finding me?”

Jeremy shrugs, staring at their hands locked together. He rubs his thumb back and forth across the back of her hand while he shoves the other one in his jacket pocket. “Fran mentioned something about your mom, and it reminded me of how you knew where she was. I really just guessed and hoped that we would find you there. It was easily our wildest option.”

“Yeah?” she asks, smiling, walking towards the stairs of their building. “What were the others?”

“Maddy and Fran suggested BC or your hometown, but, I don’t know, neither of those seemed like places you’d run away to. Johnny was no help until he was fed, naturally,” he explains, earning a laugh from Emeline. “And Keelan just said that you’d turn up eventually.” 

“You talked to Keelan?”

“God, no,” he scoffs. “I guess he texted Maddy and Fran asking where you were on Sunday. I’m glad you said no to him, by the way.”

Emeline laughs again. “Me, too.”

“No, seriously,” he says, stopping. “Em, Fran was right: he doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t know anything about you. You are this amazing, strong, kind, intelligent, beautiful person who should be with someone who can see that and celebrate that and help you embrace all of that. He was too stupid to see all that you are and too much of a coward to fight for you the way you should be fought for. He tried to break up with you over text instead of doing it in person like a civil human with a heart. God, if you had said yes.”

Emeline knew there was more to his sentence as he trailed off the way he did. “What would you have done?”

He shakes his head, not making eye contact with her. “I have no idea. I would have been devastated.” 

“Why?” she asks.

“Emeline,” Jeremy whispers, shaking his head as he closes the distance between them just like she had started to do the night of her party.

“Please?” she asks him. 

“God, Emeline,” he says, letting go of her hand and resting his hands on her waist, his shoulders relaxing when she drapes her arms on them. “You know I’m in love with you.” 

Emeline leans in, Jeremy doing the same. This is what she had been waiting for. She was sure she loved him, too.

“Wait,” Jeremy said, squeezing his eyes closed and shaking his head. “We, we can’t, Em.” 

“What?” Emeline asks, her voice small. He was rejecting her, her heart dropping to her stomach.

“I want this. God, you have no idea how much or how long I have wanted this, wanted you. But you just got out of a seven year relationship. I don’t want to be your rebound from that.” 

“Jeremy, you aren’t a rebound,” she tries to argue.

“But I would be,” he tells her, reaching up to her arms, a gentle pull on them. “I would be your rebound. You deserve better than Keelan, but I deserve to be more to you than a rebound.” 

“You aren’t a rebound,” she repeats.

“Em, I would be. What else do you call the next guy not even two weeks after a break up? Not only that, but the guy two weeks after a break up where you were with the other guy for nearly a third of your life so far? What do you call this when I know all of the reasons why I love you and I don’t think you know anything about me?” Emeline didn’t say anything, dropping her arms from his shoulders and looking down at the pavement below her. His arms traveled with hers, both of his hands in hers. “You need to take some time. You don’t just move on from seven years.”

“What if someone else realizes how great you are and you fall in love with them?” she asks him. What if someone else she cares about leaves her when she doesn’t expect them to? What if he realizes that he doesn’t love her anymore, that she’s not good enough? What if everything he thinks of her is a lie? What if, what if, what if?

“If you think I wouldn’t wait for you, you really don’t know me.” 

Emeline steps back. “So what does that mean for us?”

Jeremy laughs, looking up at the ceiling and shaking his head. Emeline swears she could see his eyes starting to tear up. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this. But I think we can only be friends right now.” Emeline nods. He was right. She hated that he was right. “Let’s head upstairs. We need to go to sleep.” Jeremy takes her hand, Emeline feeling his shaking almost as much as hers was as he leads her to their apartments. 

They stand outside their doors, neither of them wanting to make a move to go in. “Where does this leave us?” Emeline asks.

Jeremy swallows, shrugging. “I guess it leaves us where we started, like I said, just friends. But we have forever to figure out what comes after that.” 

Emeline nods. That could be all they were meant to be. Their ‘next’ might not be anything new for them. 

Before they could say anything else, Fran’s head pops out of their apartment door. “Ok, I need someone else in here with me, I cannot be the third wheel to these two any longer,” she says, pulling Emeline into their apartment. She tries to force out a laugh, turning back to see Jeremy staring down at his shoes, his hands shoved in his pockets as the door closed on him. 

“I thought you said Johnny was here, too,” Emeline says once she’s dragged to their couch, finding only Maddy sitting there. 

“Fran yelled at him so he’s in the bedroom making us a new playlist,” Maddy says, patting the seat next to her. “What happened, Em?”

Emeline shrugs, pulling her knees up to her chest once she sits down next to Maddy, Fran on her other side. “I’ve known where my mom was for the last eight years. And, I don’t know. Keelan and I broke up, then he proposed out of nowhere, and I just snapped. Something inside me told me that I needed to talk to her. After all this time, it was Keelan finally leaving my life that made me feel like I needed to talk to my mom.” 

“Are you glad you did?”

“Yeah. I had all this emotion that I didn’t realize I felt, and seeing her let me get that out there. She’s supposed to be calling me tonight. I might get to talk to my brothers.” Fran and Maddy both nod, neither of them sure what to say. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You talk to them.”

“No, not that. My life, now. The entire time I’ve been an adult, I have been with Keelan. I’ve been his girlfriend. I was 17 when I met him, when I met you guys. I still have you two, but I don’t know who I am without him.”

“You’re our Emeline,” Fran says, both her and Maddy hugging her. “You’re a badass teacher who cares about her students more than I’ve ever seen someone care about someone else’s kids. You’re smart, you’re funny, you can probably kill any of us if you really wanted to.” The three girls laugh.

“You’re the one we both know will be there for us if we need you,” Maddy continues, “You will do anything for anyone because you have the biggest heart. You’re not afraid to stand up for us. You know what you want and you get it.”

“Then how come I didn’t know I didn’t want to be with Keelan? Why did it take me so long to realize I want to be with,” Emeline starts, trailing off. Jeremy thinks she doesn’t know anything about him. 

She knows how much he loves his sister and his parents, how he cares for Linus’s kids as if they were his own even though he’s in Ottawa now. She knows that he loves shootouts despite the fact that they seem like absolute hell. She knows that he would drop everything for her and his teammates if they asked him to, no matter what they were asking. She knows that when he falls asleep on the couch when they’re watching a movie on the weekends, that his lips part slightly but he clenches his jaw. She knows that he gets this intense stare whenever he’s concentrating on something, that he starts to shake his leg if he’s on one thing for too long. She knows that even when they’re with their friends, that he can’t take his eyes off her, and that he looks at her the way she has always wanted Keelan to. 

She knows that she’s been falling for him since the moment they met. Not the moment when he came into her apartment for the first time, the day he was moving in and she saw him in the lobby. She was waiting for Keelan to pick her up but he was late, using the time to catch up on her grading when she saw him. She had no idea who he was but something in her told her that he would be important to her. 

She knows she’s been in love with him, and the only thing they are is friends. 

“Babe, you’re crying,” Fran says, wiping a tear Emeline hadn’t realized fell.

She lets out a laugh. “I was just thinking about everything, the last few months.”

“Like what?”

He was so sure that he and Emeline were finally about to kiss, something so minimal but after everything, so momentous for the two of them, and then all of that happened. Of course, something like that would happen.

Jeremy didn’t even wait to hear what Emeline had said to Keelan’s question. As soon as Keelan got down on one knee and pulled out that ring, Jeremy knew he had to leave the room. He had to leave the building.

Her ex-boyfriend was at the party Jeremy had planned for her birthday asking her to marry him when they had been together for seven years before that and apart for only a week and a half. How was Jeremy supposed to watch that?

He could feel his heart racing as he stepped onto the T, the memory of the elevator he still hadn’t set foot on rushing back despite him trying to suppress it. He wasn’t even sure what train he got on, where it was leading him.

It didn’t matter. 

Jeremy didn’t even process the people getting on and off the train as each stop passed by him, the college students getting ready to go out on a Friday night after classes, the fans getting home from the Celtics game that was at the Garden that night, the people going to and from wherever to who knows wherever while his ability to breathe felt like it was diminishing with each second. 

His mind flashed back to the elevator. The train car felt like it was closing in on him, the tunnel vision and the warped voices around him making his heart race.

He tried to think about something to distract him, the way Emeline did for him last time. Everything he tried to think about brought him back to her, seeing her say yes, seeing her kiss Keelan after he slides that ring on her finger, a ring that he knew she didn’t even like the style of because he knew she liked whatever ‘art deco’ was, and the ring Keelan picked out wasn’t that. 

He tried to think about hockey, his mind wandering back to the night that he and Johnny brought the girls to the game. He had one period where he was in goal opposite where they were sitting. If the guys were playing offense, he was busy looking at her and watching her reaction to what was going on. He tried to think about what it was like for him back in college, leading him to wonder what it was like for Emeline to meet Fran, Maddy, and Keelan, on top of losing her grandmother and her childhood home.

After the first panic or anxiety attack he had (like Emeline, he still couldn’t figure out the difference), he had looked into what to do to stop them if they happened. Sticking his hand in cold water didn’t seem like a viable option right now, unless he wanted frostbite or an infection from the Charles. Deep breathing seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. There was one thing he could think of, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 or whatever. It had something to do with his senses, but he didn’t remember what order they went in. The last one, he knew, was one thing he could taste, which was only really the beginnings of vomit. 

God, he couldn’t believe this was happening. 

He couldn’t be on the T anymore, practically knocking over the guy in front of him to get off at whatever stop he had found his way to. He looked around, trying to get his bearings straight, as he figured out he was about a mile or so from home, easily walkable for him and just a long enough time that he hoped he would be able to clear his head. 

The winter air was calming, the shock of the cold in contrast to whatever heat was attempting to pass through the cars of the train. Jeremy could feel his phone buzzing in his pocket, incessantly, probably the girls and Johnny trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened. 

As if he knew.

He pulled out his phone, ‘Dad,’ showing up on the screen. He hadn’t talked to anyone back home since his birthday. He had been so engrossed in both hockey and planning Emeline’s party, nothing else seemed to matter to him. 

“Hey, Dad,” Jeremy let out, hoping that he didn’t notice the way his voice was shaking. 

“Hey, kiddo,” his dads voice comes through his phone speaker, the child-like nickname despite him being 26 making him smile. “How was tonight? Is it still going on?”

The smile on Jeremy’s face disappears as fast as it appeared. He forgot he told his dad about tonight. “Uh, it’s still going on, but I left.”

“Is Emerson with you?”

“Emeline, Dad.”

“Is Emeline with you?” he laughs. He was never great with names, but at least he tries. 

“No, uh.” Jeremy hesitates to tell him. He could easily just say that he got tired and needed to go home, but there would be no way his dad would buy it. Even being in Alaska, his dad always seemed to be able to call his bluff no matter what. “Her ex-boyfriend showed up.” 

“You didn’t fight him and get arrested, did you? Kicked out of your own party?”

“Dad,” he scolds, his father’s laughing ringing through his ears, a small smile coming back to his face. “No, um. He proposed to her.” He doesn’t hear anything from his dad’s end, the only noise around him coming from the Charles. Jeremy didn’t even realize he had walked in that direction. “Dad?”

“What’d she say?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t be there if she was going to say yes.” 

“What if she was going to say no?”

Jeremy finds a bench along the river trail, sitting down, despite it being freezing from the weather. He rests his elbows on his knees, one hand holding up his head while the other keeps his phone to his ear. “I don’t think she would.”

“Why?”

“Dad, she was with him for seven years. You don’t spend that kind of time with someone that way just to say no.” 

“Did I ever tell you how our mother and I met?”

Jeremy rolls his eyes, the story being told every wedding anniversary. “You went up to her at the bar, you asked her to dance, she said no.”

“Do you know why she said no?”

“Because she’s a feminist and takes every opportunity to say ‘fuck the patriarchy?’”

“Well, yes,” his dad laughs, “But no. She was seeing someone else at the time.” Jeremy perked up at that, not having heard this part of the story before. “She was seeing someone she had been with since high school, and your mom and I met right after college.”

“So what happened?”

“We became friends.” 

“You were friends,” he repeats.

“Eventually she called things off with the other guy. She was tired of waiting for someone who wouldn’t move mountains for her the way she would for them. Then she finally saw me when she was ready to. And here we are, how many years later, with you and Beth to show for it.” Jeremy sat there, trying to take it in. “Hey, your mom’s calling, I gotta go.”

Jeremy and his dad hung up, not having it in him to move from the bench. It was nice and all that everything worked out for his parents, that he got the girl that had the boyfriend at first. But did she get proposed to at a party he planned for her? He knows his mom didn’t go through all the things Emeline went through while she was growing up, that she didn’t have something life altering happen while she was with the other guy on the same level that Emeline did. 

His phone kept going off, the girls and Johnny, the rest of his teammates texting him and asking where he went. They had his location. They didn’t have to ask. 

The only person he wanted to ask, the only person at the party he wanted to notice, but he was sure didn’t, was probably off with her fiance.

___________________________

The next days involved Jeremy going through the motions. His teammates didn’t bring up the party, John didn’t say anything while they were at home. Joonas was starting in net for their game on Sunday, which meant Jeremy just had to hope he didn’t get pulled and have to play. He wasn’t even sure if he could get on the ice if Monty told him it was life or death at this point.

He shouldn’t have to feel this way over a girl he wasn’t even dating. A girl that just lived next door. 

Monday afternoon came around, Johnny and Jeremy getting home from morning skate to find Fran and Maddy outside their door, both with a panicked look on their face. “What’s wrong?”

“We haven’t seen Emeline since the party,” Maddy says, Jeremy’s mind immediately starting to race to every bad or horrific scenario that could be happening. How could they not have seen her? She lived with them? They have her location. Aren’t they the two people who were supposed to be able to see her every move, just like she could and would for them if this situation were reversed?

“What are you talking about?” John asks. 

“She left with Keelan right after he asked her to marry him, you know, and then she said she was with him and going to stay with him until she had to go to work today, so we didn’t think anything of it,” Fran explains. “If she goes with him on a Friday night, then she normally stays the entire weekend and comes home Monday after work, anyway. But then Keelan texted us on Sunday asking if Emeline was ok. And Javier put in the group chat that she didn’t come to work today, which isn’t like her.”

“She always talks about how it’s way more work for her to call out than it is for her to just suck it up and go into work.”

“You guys have her location though, what does it say?” John asks as if reading Jeremy’s mind while he was still unable to get a word out. 

Maddy shakes her head, “Javier already brought that up in the group chat, haven’t you guys read it?”

“We really don’t have jobs where we can be on our phones all day, Mads.”

“No, but you can read since we’ve been having this conversation since last night after your game when we first found out Emeline wasn’t with Keelan, Jonathan,” Fran snipes.

“That’s just not my name.”

“I don’t care.”

“Ok, guys, hey, not important right now. Emeline’s location hasn’t updated since Saturday, and we don’t know why. We’re trying to figure out where she could be, but we need you guys to help.”

“Especially since you guys are the only other option at this point,” Fran adds, a look of desperation on her face. 

“We’re supposed to be on a plane first thing in the morning to head off for a road trip.” 

“What is more important to you right now, hockey, or finding Emeline to make sure she’s ok?”

“Emeline,” Jeremy finally says, the first thing that was easy for him to admit. “Where are places she could be?”

“She really only goes to work and here if she can,” Maddy says.

“Ok, think about places that could mean something to her from when she was younger,” Jeremy says, finally opening the door to let everyone in. 

“She could be at BC. Alumni, Campion, or O’Neill,” Maddy lists off the field where they played and the buildings she spent the most time in.

“She’s from Manchester-by-the-Sea. She took us to the Singing Beach there when we went up to help her clean out the house,” Fran adds.

“Does Keelan have any ideas?” Johnny suggests.

“The jackass said, ‘she’ll probably turn up,’ Fran mocks, making her voice deeper to try to emulate Keelan. “I can’t believe she could be engaged to him.”

“Could be?” Jeremy asks.

“We have no idea if she said, ‘yes,’ or not. She dragged him out of the party before she answered him,” Maddy says. “She always told us if Keelan ever proposed, she wasn’t sure if she would have an answer for him, anyway.” 

“How the fuck have they been together for so long?” Fran asks, to no one.

“What do you mean?” Jeremy follows up. 

“Emeline never really had a great view on marriage, or really any opinion in general. Her grandfather died right before she was born, so she really never got a good look at her grandparents' marriage, and her parents were never married,” Maddy explains. “She had her dad and grandmother, and through no fault of their own, neither of them were able to show her what marriage is supposed to look like.” 

“I always wonder what would have happened if her mom had stayed around. What she would be thinking.”

“I think I know where she is,” Jeremy says, grabbing his keys and heading towards the door. “You guys can come or go look at the other places, but I’m pretty sure I know where to go.”

___________________________

Johnny complained the entire way to Wethersfield about not having any snacks or the ability to take a nap after practice. Fran yelled at him to shut up multiple times, saying that she could just knock him out if he really wanted to go to bed that badly. Maddy tried to calm both of them down by trying to reassure them they could get food once they found Emeline, and that violence couldn’t happen while they were driving. Jeremy tried to fight his way through traffic that somehow seemed to start as soon as they got into Connecticut, and didn’t end until they were off the highway.

“How are there this many people in this state with places to go?” Johnny grumbles. 

“Why are we here? Why would Emeline be here?” Maddy asks, the four of them getting out of the car. Jeremy had pulled into the first place on Main Street where they could legally park, a small brick building with a pizza place inside, really having no idea where they would even begin to look for her as they started walking in any direction. The ‘small town’ was a lot bigger than the four of them could reasonably cover. There was minimal chance of them even running into Emeline. But they had to try.

“Emeline’s mom lives here.”

Fran and Maddy both stop walking, Johnny’s eyes fixed on the pizza place they happened to pull in front of. “Her mom?”

“She told me the same night that Keelan broke up with her that before she started college she had found her mom on Facebook, and she lived in this town.”

“Keelan broke up with her?” Fran asks. “After he proposed to her?”

“No, that night we were up in Vermont.”

“Jesus Christ, what is going on?” Maddy worries, running her hand through her hair. John wraps his arm around her, pulling her in to kiss her on the side of her head to try to calm her, Jeremy and Fran both pointedly looking away from their friends.

“Emeline really does love you,” Fran tells him, staring at him as if she were studying him. “She never would have told Keelan anything that we didn’t know first.”

“So what’s the plan?” Maddy asks.

“Food,” Johnny says, dragging Maddy into Village Pizza. Maddy and Fran both scoff. “It’s right here!” he whines. “We have no plan, and wandering a town we aren't familiar with when I’m hungry, cranky, and have no idea what we’re doing is going to end poorly for all of us. I’m pretty sure there’s a river or some other body of water that isn’t far from here, and I’m not above throwing one of you in it.”

Jeremy looks at Johnny, shaking his head as he opens the door. “We spend way too much time with these girls.”

“And yet you love us anyway.” They sit down, order Johnny his pizza and try to think of anything, anywhere she could be. “There’s no beach here since we’re in the middle of the state, but could she be somewhere near the water? Something like she would be at back where she grew up?”

“There’s the Cove Park not far from here,” Maddy reads off her phone screen. “It’s literally right up the street so we can walk from here.”

“What about the local high school? You said she could be at Alumni Field at BC, so why not the fields there?” Johnny suggests through a mouthful of pizza, finally being useful now that he was being fed.

“It’s a mile and a half up the street,” Maddy tells them.

“Do we think we could find where her mom lives?” Fran suggests. “If she’s been finding her on Facebook, then we could at least get her last name and ask around.” Fran takes out her phone and pulls up the website. “Her mom’s name is Celine, I’m pretty sure.”

The four of them sit in silence, Fran and Maddy both at work trying to find Emeline’s mom while Johnny eats more than half the pizza by himself. Jeremy couldn’t think of anything else. What if she wasn’t at any of those places? What if she was somewhere else completely? Fran and Maddy had to also be sure she was here or else they wouldn’t have trusted him to lead them here. They knew Emeline better than he did, so if they thought he was right, it had to mean something. 

“Ah, we found her. Celine Greco.” Maddy turns the phone to show the boys, Jeremy leaning in much more. She looked just like Emeline; the same red hair and green eyes, her smile the exact same. Her nose and freckles she had to have gotten from her dad, but there was no question that Emeline was her daughter. 

“Ok, but how do we find her off of social media?” Johnny asks. 

“Can I get you guys anything else?” their waitress asks, startling all of them. 

“Actually, can we ask you a weird question?” Maddy starts, Jeremy already feeling panicked. “Do you know a woman by the name of Celine Greco?”

“Why?”

“She grew up with my mom,” Maddy lies, Jeremy impressed by how fast that came to her and how easy this seemed to be for her. “She always meant to reconnect with her after they lost touch when they were younger, but she passed away last month, and I wanted to meet her.” 

Jeremy sat there with his mouth hanging open, both the waitress and Maddy looking at each other with tears in their eyes. 

The waitress sniffles, “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. Her son works here, actually, he should be here in about twenty minutes.” 

The waitress leaves after taking Johnny’s dessert order. “What? We need a reason to be here for at least twenty more minutes, and I’m still hungry.” 

“You just ate an entire pizza,” Fran says. 

“Your point?”

“I’m surprised that even worked,” Jeremy admits. “What are the chances that her brother works here?” It felt weird talking about Emeline having a brother, when her only family was her dad and her grandmother. She had a brother. Jeremy knew she actually had three brothers, and she probably met them already if she’s been here since Saturday or Sunday. 

“Incredibly slim and very improbable, but I guess anything’s possible,” Fran shrugs. They wait while Johnny keeps eating, their heads turning towards the door every time someone opens it. Finally, after what felt like hours in Jeremy’s head, they see a red-headed boy walking in. “Holy shit.”

“That’s definitely Emeline’s brother.” He couldn’t have been older than 16, but he looked almost identical to Emeline. They watched as their waitress talked to him, the boy looking over at their table, clearly confused.

“Marley said you guys know my mom?”

“Um, yeah,” Jeremy says. “Well, of her.” 

“Our moms knew each other when they were younger. They were apparently best friends growing up,” Maddy continues her lie from earlier. “They lost touch, and I wanted to reconnect, learn what she was like. What they were like together.”

The boy nods, clearly unsure of the situation. Jeremey was sure he could tell they were lying. “You two actually do look familiar,” he says, talking to Maddy and Fran. “You played lacrosse at Boston College? On the team that won the championship a few years ago?” 

The girls look at each other, their turn to have confused expressions as the waitress reappeared with Johnny’s chocolate cake. “Yeah, we were. You follow women’s lacrosse?”

“No, actually, my mom did. But only your team and only for four years. She took us to a few games when you guys were playing, she followed your class specifically, but never told us why. She never played lacrosse, she didn’t go to Boston College, I don’t play and neither of my brothers play, so I don’t know why she was so locked in on that team. There was one girl that was her favorite, though. Her name was Emily, or something. I don’t remember, but I think mom just liked her because she had the red hair and green eyes like we do. Dad used to tease her that it looked like that girl could be her daughter, or something.” 

Jeremy felt his heart breaking. All these years, Emeline thought her mom didn’t care about her. She was at her games in college. She was watching her win the championship, and she was bringing her brothers to her games without them knowing. Why didn’t her mom reach out to her? Why hasn’t she said anything in twenty five years?

“Does she still follow lacrosse?” Jeremy asks.

The boy shrugs, “This random high school team up in Boston. Again, I’m not sure why she’s so locked in on them, but, moms, right?” They hear someone from the back call for Oliver, the boy turning and telling them he’ll be right there. “Mom said she was meeting someone from work for dinner tonight. I think she said she was meeting them at Puerta Vallarta, this Mexican place one of our neighbors owns in the next town. You can try to catch her there, I guess.”

“Thanks, Oliver,” Jeremy says, ready to slap money down on the table and run out of the building to go find her.

“Hey, by the way, the police chief is our neighbor. He’s a bastard, but still don’t try anything, please,” he calls to them, running back to the kitchen to start bringing out food to the other guests. 

“He just gave us a weird amount of information, right?” Johnny asks, spraying Fran’s vicinity with chocolate cake, Jeremy putting his arm over her to refrain her from jumping over the table.

“I really don’t get how Emeline teaches children,” Fran adds, grabbing a napkin and wiping down the table, throwing it across the table at Johnny. “You need to hurry up and finish if we have any chance of finding her.”

“The restaurant is a ten minute drive,” Jeremy says, shaking his leg with anxiety as he pulls up the directions on his phone. 

Johnny eats the rest of the cake in a sickening speed, the four of them slapping down way more money than they probably needed to, running out of the restaurant before even getting the check. It was probably the closest thing to illegal they had done on this trip. 

“Do we think that she’s really there with her mom?” Maddy asks, getting in the car.

The last period of the week had just let out, the teachers trapped in the building until their contract hours were up even though the only thing they wanted was to go home. She needed something to do, and what better task than cleaning her lab in a futile attempt to make her next week that much easier for herself?

Thanksgiving had just passed, leading the students to be more feral than normal for who knows what reason, their energy unfortunately renewed after their long break, the teachers more agitated than normal because of the students, and admin more oblivious to all of this than normal because that’s what they did best at times like these. 

“Hibernating,” Emeline deadpans, looking around her classroom. Her energy was depleting fast, the motivation to clean already gone.

Javier laughs. “Nothing fun planned?” 

Emeline shakes her head, walking back over to her desk to start to pack up her bag. “After this week? Do you know how much glassware my kids broke?”

“Over or under a thousand dollars?”

Emeline thinks for a second. “I would love to believe it’s under,” she groans, sitting down at her desk. “Do we think Anderson would approve it if I bought more beakers?”

The two exchange a look before both saying, “No.”

“I’ll buy them for you,” he tells her, taking out his phone. But, come on, you can’t be doing nothing this weekend. Fran and Maddy have nothing planned?”

“Fran I think is already on her way home to see her brother for something and Maddy is probably going to be out with John all weekend that he’s not doing his own job. Plus, I one hundred percent have a hot date.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, my bed and the fictional men in the books that I read are going to be very happy together.”

Javier opens and closes his mouth while he tries to find the words. “Sometimes it’s better to lie to people.” 

“Lying involves way more energy than I have. Anyway, why do you care? You’ve never asked me about my weekend plans.”

“That’s not true.”

“What did I do last weekend?”

Javier stares at her for a second, the smirk on Emeline’s face growing because she knew she was right. “Whatever. You probably did the same thing you’re planning on doing this weekend, apparently. There’s a new place in the city that I want to try and no one else wants to go with me.”

“So?”

“Do you want to go?”

“I love being the last choice. It’s every girl's dream.”

“I’ll pay.”

“I love getting free food, it’s every girl’s dream,” she said, in the same sarcastic tone as before despite the fact that she meant it this time. She looked around her classroom, the chairs in disarray and her back lab counters covered in things she should have put away earlier in the week. “God, I really should put all this stuff away, first.”

Javier looks to the back of her classroom. “It’s a Monday problem now, come on.” 

“Hey, there’s an arm in this sleeve,” Emeline protests as Javier grabs her by the coat, dragging her along to the T stop right near their school. This seemed suspicious, given that he was putting her on the red line to go out to what she for some reason assumed was a dinner despite the fact that it was barely four pm. “Are we going for a senior citizen discount here?”

“It gets really busy, really fast,” Javier claims, not looking up from his phone. He was getting text after text from a bunch of different unsaved numbers, Emeline knowing he would never not save it once he knew who it was. But why was he smiling? “Even if we get there at 4:30 like Maps is saying we will, we’re going to have to wait at least an hour and a half or longer before we can sit.”

“Reservations aren’t a thing?” she asks dryly. The last thing she wanted to do after a long week was wait a long time to get food. Lunch was at eleven am, dinner time was supposed to start right when she got home, which seemed to be getting later and later as the semester wore on.

“They don’t take them, and I didn’t even know you would say yes if I wanted to put our names in.”

Emeline laughs. “See, that’s where you’re different from everyone else in my life. They would just put our names down and then use that as a reason why we would have to go, no choice given.” 

“Even Jeremy is like that?”

Emeline looks at him, Javier still glued to his phone and whatever looked to be a group chat that was going off on his screen. Was Jeremy like that? “Jeremy would have asked me two weeks in advance and then confirmed three times day of to make sure I still wanted to go. He wouldn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to.” She wasn’t even sure if that was true. But it seemed like it would be. 

“Look at you blushing,” Javier teases her, Emeline not even realizing the heat in her face was visible to him. “So you’re not still seeing that Kaylen guy?”

“Um, no actually, I’m not,” she tells him, not even bothering to correct him. “After seven years, we’re not together anymore.” 

Javier’s face drops. “Oh, Em, I’m sorry.”

Emeline shrugs, like the last seven years she had been with him were nothing, like she was trying to tell herself, it was just a blip in her own timeline. “It’s fine. It happened last week. I haven’t even told Fran and Maddy yet.”

“Well that explains it.” 

“Explains what?”

“You’ve been off all week.”

Emeline thinks back, trying to figure out if he was right. She didn’t have time to show emotion in her classroom; everything was about the students. If she was having a bad day, she had to pretend like she wasn’t because her students needed her to not have a bad day. She had to go on like everything was normal, like she hadn’t just ended something with someone who was in her life when it felt like it all came crashing down. She went on like she always did. “I have not.”

“You made the girls run four miles as a cool down yesterday.”

“They have to run between three and five every game.” 

“We’re not even in season.” 

“So I pushed them a little harder, that doesn’t mean I’ve been off.” 

“They were in full gear.”

“And?”

“You ran with them.” 

“I was setting an example as their coach. If I can’t do it, how do I expect them to do it?”

“Why haven’t you told Fran and Maddy?” Javier asks, giving up as he drags her into the train she didn’t even realize had pulled up in front of them. They managed to find two seats, their bags in their laps as people squished in all around them. “You tell them everything.”

“It happened while we were up in Vermont and then they left for Thanksgiving.” 

“And you didn’t have time to tell them in the last week?”

“I would get home and just go to bed.” 

“That’s what happens when you run four miles as a cool down,” Javier teases, nudging her shoulder with his. “You’re worried about something. You would have told them if you weren’t afraid.”

Emeline glares at him. “What are you talking about?” 

Javier laughs, looking back down at his phone, the unknown numbers in the group chat sending message after message. “You would have told them if you weren’t afraid,” he repeats. “You aren’t afraid of what they’ll do to him, because I know you don’t have it in you to care because I know they’ll threaten to kill him but they’ll never actually go through with it because neither of them could survive in jail. You’re afraid they’re going to bring up you liking Jeremy as the reason why you broke up with him, whether it’s true or not.”

“It’s not true.”

“You can tell me that, but did you fight to stay with Kenny? Did you fight him when you broke up? Because I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t have initiated it if it meant that it was going to hurt him.” 

Emeline stares at her bag, noticing every out of place piece of thread on the Vera Bradley bag her grandmother bought her when she started at Boston College. The bag was old by fashion standards, looking like it had taken a beating the last how many years she had owned it. The straps were ripping, the zipper was close to its last leg. The fabric on the bottom of the bag had worn away from it constantly being kicked out of the way by either a student or herself when they needed to come ask her something at her desk. It was one of the last things her grandmother gave her. “Keelan broke up with me. But I didn’t fight him. I just told him I didn’t care anymore.” 

“Well, forget about him,” Javier says, getting up and dragging her yet again towards this unknown restaurant he never told her the name of. The cold air outside hit her face much harder than she expected, the chill of November turning into December somehow catching her off guard despite being from Massachusetts. “We’re going to have fun tonight. So much fun, in fact, that the name Cameron will be the last thing from your mind.”

Emeline finally lets out a laugh. “Well, considering that wasn’t his name, it shouldn’t be that hard.” Javier leads her down the street, a part of Boston that Emeline barely ever went to. She was sure that the Garden was somewhere close to them, practically forcing her mind to wander to Jeremy. 

Jeremy is the same as Keelan was when they first got together. The difference was that Jeremy hasn’t stopped acting like he cares for Emeline, like she lit up the room for him whenever she was around. Jeremy was the one to check on her no matter what, he was the one who could tell when she was feeling off for one reason or another, he was the one who knew and could anticipate everything about her. He definitely was falling in love with her. She could see it in everything he did.

Keelan hadn’t acted like that since they got together.  

“Can I ask you something, and promise you won’t get mad?” Javier asks, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“We both know if you have to say that then I will definitely be getting mad at you.” 

“Did you really love Kingston? More than you love Jeremy?”

“Woah, wait,” Emeline stops, Javier nearly falling over at the sudden change in momentum. “I never said I love Jeremy.” 

“Emeline,” Javier lets out, shaking his head. “You light up whenever someone mentions his name. Your students have been talking about how much you talk about hockey now in your class, way more than you ever talked about lacrosse despite the fact that you told me that was what helped you get through college and high school. Your phone background for the last month has been a picture of the two of you sitting on a couch together, mid-laugh, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t look at someone I don’t love the way you are looking at each other.” 

Emeline looks down at her feet, pulling her bag close to her body. “I did love Keelan. I think I loved him until I met Jeremy.” She could feel her face getting hot despite the wind hitting it, sniffling and finally letting the tears that had been stinging her eyes fall down her cheeks. What if she was just miss reading things with Jeremy? What if he wasn’t falling in love with her? “What if I messed everything up with Keelan for a guy who won’t ever love me back?” 

“If he knows what’s good for him, he probably loved you the moment he saw you.” The two of them just stand on the sidewalk for a moment, ignoring the snides of the people who were dodging them. “Do you still want to go to this tonight?”

She shakes her head, trying her best to blink away the hot that she knew were about to fall if she dwelled on this any more.. “We can go. I think it’ll be good. Take my mind off whatever Inferno-like journey is about to go on.”

Javier gives a hesitant laugh with her. “You should have been an English teacher.”

“Have you seen me try to write an essay?”

Javier takes her hand again, leading her down the street. What would happen if she and Jeremy had started dating? She had insisted for so long that the feelings she had for him were friendly at best, nothing more. But they weren’t. She wasn’t sure they ever were.

“We’re here.” Javier stops so abruptly, Emeline nearly knocks him off his feet. There were no signs anywhere, just a building.

“Is this where you take your murder victims or something? This isn’t a restaurant.” 

“Stop reading murder mystery books,” Javier laughs, pulling her inside. 

Javier leads her up a set of stairs, the entire inside of the building pitch black. He opens a door, leading her into a room, which is again, pitch black. Emeline couldn’t even see her hands in front of her face if she tried. “If you kill me, I’m going to come back and haunt you.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you, Em,” she hears, not Javier’s voice. 

Before she could say anything, the lights turn on, what sounded like a hundred voices yelling, ‘Surprise’ at her. Emeline gasps, her hands flying to cover her mouth. “What the hell?”

Fran, Maddy, and Johnny stand in front of a crowd of her friends; people from high school who she hadn’t seen in years, classmates from college, her teammates, guys from the men’s team, various other random people that she swore she knew from years past that Fran and Maddy had kept in touch with, Johnny and Jeremy’s teammates and their partners they just met last week. 

“What is this?” she says, Javier hugging her from behind.

“Happy birthday.”

“I’m offended that you thought we would kill you here of all places,” Fran says, her and Maddy squeezing her tight for a hug as Javier takes her work bag from her. 

“If anything, we would do it where no one would find you until you started to smell.” 

“I’ve never had a surprise party,” Emeline says, looking at everything in awe. The space was lit up with fairy lights strung up everywhere, clear balloons filled with confetti in various shades of green, her favorite color, floating everywhere. There was a ‘Happy 25th Birthday Emeline,’ sign in the back, with an easel that said ‘Leave your favorite memory with Em’ on the table right below it, already covered with things from all her friends that were there. The food tables were off to the side, the walls decorated with pictures of her and her friends. She could make out pictures with her dad and grandmother from when she was little, pictures of her, Fran and Maddy when they first met at their summer camp before starting as freshmen, the picture of her and Jeremy that was the aforementioned lock screen on her phone. “Did you guys do all this?”

Fran, Javier, and Maddy all shake their heads. “We just did the guest list,” Maddy admits, “And Javier was in charge of getting you here from work.”

Emeline shakes her head, confused. “Then who did all this?” The only other person who knew she never had a surprise party was Keelan. It couldn’t have been him. He wouldn’t break up with her and throw her a party a week later, would he? 

“I did,” she hears, watching Jeremy come out from the crowd of people in front of her. She should be cringing at how dramatic and corny it was of him to do that, but she felt her heart race instead. Of course, he would do this for her. “Happy birthday, Emeline.”

“To our friend Emeline,” Johnny yells, Emeline not even noticing that everyone had glasses passed out to them while she was lost looking at Jeremy. She could feel her heart starting to race just looking at him, barely caring that everyone who meant something to her was staring at her. 

Everyone raises their glasses, one of her own finding its way to her hands without her looking away from Jeremy. 

“To Emeline.” 

Everyone floods her before she can process what was going on, wishing her happy birthday and trying to get in a minimal conversation with her as Fran, Maddy, Javier, and Johnny didn’t leave her side. The entire time, she focused on Jeremy standing off to the side, swirling his drink in his glass while he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. 

The party finally officially starts, the music loud, her friends dancing, eating, and laughing. Emeline finally goes over to Jeremy, taking his hand and dragging him out to the hallway she had come in from. 

“You did this?”

Jeremy looks down at his feet, his cheeks turning red. “Of course.”

“But, why?” Emeline lets out, feeling her heart race. 

“Emeline, you know I would do anything for you.” Emeline could feel her heart swell. God, she did have feelings for him. Fran and Javier might be right that she was in love with him. She wanted to love him. She just didn’t know if she did; her feelings for him were different than what she felt for Keelan. She felt better about Jeremy. She felt safer with him around, more at ease. She wanted to see him whenever she could, wanted to talk to him to hear his voice. 

She wanted to kiss him right there. She stepped closer to him, Jeremy reaching out to take her hand in his. Emeline starts to lean forward, her mind not registering Jeremy doing the same because her heart was beating so loud that even she was sure he could hear it. He had to want to kiss her, too, right?

“Em,” Fran interrupts, Emeline disconnecting from Jeremy and nearly jumping into the wall behind her. “Come back here!” 

Jeremy lets out a nervous laugh, looking back down at his feet. “Let’s go. It’s your party, you should be in there.”

Emeline takes his hand back in hers, feeling him give her a gentle squeeze. They walk back in, Jeremy leading her. He stops, dropping her hand immediately, Emeline moving around him to see why he stopped.

Her heart dropped. 

“Keelan?” Emeline walks up to him, not expecting to see him, but not wanting to either. “What are you doing here? How did you know about this?”

“Fran and Maddy invited me.” Emeline looks over at her roommates, their confused looks reminding her that they had no idea what happened the week before. “I had to come to my girlfriend's birthday.” 

“Can we go talk somewhere else?” Emeline whispers. 

But he couldn’t do that to Emeline. He couldn’t make her choose between him and Keelan. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he was sure that once he saw her, he would know.

Until he could hear Fran yelling on the other side of the door, that Emeline was in love with Jeremy like he was with her. 

Emeline didn’t deny it. 

If she did, it wasn’t loud enough for him to hear it. 

He couldn’t go in now, turning around and bursting back into his apartment, finding Johnny perched on the couch with the TV already on. “Jesus, knock much?”

“I don’t have to knock, my name is on the lease,” he counters, sitting next to Johnny and turning off the TV despite his roommates' protests. “I’m in love with Emeline.”

“Yeah, I told you that months ago.” 

“And I think she’s in love with me.”

“I also told you that months ago.”

“That means she’s not in love with Keelan.”

“I really don’t want to sound like a broken record, here.” Jeremy groans, leaning back on his face while he covers his face with his hands. “You really just need to get laid.” 

“We tried that already with Fran.”

“We can try again with someone who doesn’t sleep a few feet away from where the girl you really want to fuck sleeps.” 

“But I don’t want to try again with someone else. Just because you’re getting fucked by someone you want to sleep with doesn’t mean I want to do it with the next female who walks through the door.” Before Johnny could counter, someone knocks at their door. “Oh that is too easy.”

Johnny laughs, getting up to answer, neither of them expecting anyone. Maddy stands on the other side, Johnny’s eyes going wide as he whips around to Jeremy. “I swear to god if you do anything.”

Jeremy holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m not going to, calm down. What’s up, Maddy.”

“I, uh,” Maddy starts, her face getting noticeably red as she tried to put as much space between herself and Johnny. “I left my bag here last night, I think.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were over,” Jeremy starts, the realization taking too long to hit him. “Last night? Last night! Nickelback!” 

“Don’t,” Johnny starts.

“You and Maddy?” Jeremy yells, Maddy shutting the door behind her before his voice carried through their entire building.  “We fucking knew it.” 

“You didn’t,” Maddy blushes, looking at Johnny.

“You two weren’t subtle. God, John,” Jeremy says, running his hand through his hair, “How did you get the girl next door?” 

Maddy notices Jeremy’s expression fall as he thinks about what that means. Johnny got the girl he never thought to look for while Jeremy can’t get the girl he can’t stop looking at. “Jere.” Maddy didn’t know what to say, Jeremy trying to keep his cool while he stared at his hands. “I think she does love you.” 

“Does it matter? She’s with Keelan.” 

“Eventually, it will. It might just take her some time to realize it. You have to decide whether or not she’s worth the wait.” 

Jeremy and Maddy sit there in silence, Jeremy trying to take in what she just said. 

He had moved in a year ago, seeing Emeline for the first time waiting in the lobby of the building when he was going upstairs with some of his things. He immediately thought she was beautiful, figuring he would never see her again if she wasn’t in one of the apartments upstairs. He saw she was surrounded by papers, the bright green pen in her hand flying down the sheets, checking and crossing out line after line. She looked up from everything, smiled at him, and asked him if he needed any help with his stuff. 

He told her he was fine, he was just moving the last of his stuff in. He asked her what she was doing, putting the box down on the table on top of the papers, when she told him she was grading quizzes she wanted to get back to her students the next day, then asked again if he was sure he didn’t need any help, that she could do her work later if it meant helping him now. 

He had started to fall for her then, seeing her in passing, always doing something or offering to help someone else. Jeremy had wanted to know more about her and get to know her the entire time, laying low because he wasn’t sure what to do. 

He had already been waiting for this long, what was a little longer?

__________________________

“Remind me again where we’re going?” Emeline asks, climbing in the passenger seat next to Jeremy, while Johnny, Fran, and Maddy pile in the back.

“One of the guys has a house right over state lines in Vermont. We normally go up there all together right before Thanksgiving.” 

“So you guys spend every day together and regularly travel the continent together and then still go on vacations together?” Fran asks. 

“Yes,” Johnny says, as if it’s obvious.

Maddy laughs, Jeremy looking in his rearview mirror as he gets settled on the highway, Johnny and Maddy’s hands finding each other in the back seat. They hadn’t officially told Emeline and Fran as far as he knew, the two of them keeping it a secret still for who knows what reason, “You guys are so weird.”

Fran, John, and Maddy fall into a conversation, leaving Emeline and Jeremy with the sound of the radio. “So, how were conferences?” Jeremy asks. The group had to wait to leave until late Monday night because Emeline was locked in her room doing parent/teacher conferences the entire day, and she had to do the same for tomorrow morning, too. He was pretty sure she mentioned it being a ‘light year’ for her, having only thirty sets of parents sign up across the twelve hours they were scheduled for. 

Emeline doesn’t turn from the window, staring at the trees lining the highway he knew she very rarely ventured on. “They were really good this year, actually. But the parents I needed to talk to didn’t show up, so that’ll be an email I have to send on Monday.”

“What do you mean, ‘this year’ they were good?”

Emeline lets out a short laugh. “I had one parent my first year rip me a new asshole,” she says, a smile still on her face that made Jeremy confused. “She was mad that the teacher I replaced was asked to leave and she was taking it out on me. She went on and on about how she didn’t like my teaching style and how the way I taught wasn’t how she taught in an elementary school in Beverly Hills when she was my age.”

“Yeah, because a high school in Boston is the same thing.”

“Exactly. She even said that I should be surprised if I had a contract for the next school. Anderson even agreed with her.”

“Jesus, what?”

“She couldn’t do shit. Anderson couldn’t do shit either. None of the students complained and she was the only parent who ever said anything about me. There’s a teacher shortage, and I’m the only person in the department who has a full chemistry degree along with my teaching degrees. They aren’t going to fire me unless I majorly fuck up.” 

“I wish I had that kind of security.”

“Oh, come on,” Emeline says, finally turning to Jeremy. “If Boston trades you, there will be riots. You think any of your teammates will go down without a fight? Your entire team, and probably the Boston fans, would fully commit a felony for you..”

Jeremy can’t help but laugh. “You’re gonna like the guys.”

“Are they all coming?”

“Yeah, the entire team. They’re all gonna love you.” He almost slipped, adding ‘just like I do,’ catching himself before the rest of the car could mercilessly roast him for it.

“How big is this house?”

“Big enough that somehow everyone fits. Not big enough that the five of us and probably a few others are going to have to share a room.” 

“Wait a second,” Fran interrupts. “No one said anything about sharing rooms.” 

“Fran, the three of us have shared a room before.”

“Yeah, hotel rooms overnight when we were traveling for games. The last time we shared a room was Maryland when we finally won the championship. We haven’t done that since.” 

“You can share a room with us for a few nights, Princess,” Johnny says.

“Call me, ‘Princess,’ again, see what happens to you.” 

“Hey, ok,” Emeline says, her teacher-voice coming out. “Fran, you’re going to be fine. Yes, it’s been a few years, but this is a free trip where we don’t have to wake up, work out, and play for hours before we hop on a bus exhausted still having to do homework. This is better. And Johnny, I highly encourage you not to say anything else condescending because we all know that Fran is capable of killing you and making it look like it was self-defense.”

Jeremy could feel his face getting red, hating that her scolding his roommate was such a turn on to him. God, his mind wandered to some dark places, her taking charge of him if they ever got together. 

“How far away are we?” Maddy asks, changing the subject.

“Um,” Jeremy says, clearing his throat and shifting in his seat, trying to keep the wheel as steady as possible. “It says we’re about twenty minutes away.” 

Jeremy just had to get through Wednesday with Emeline sleeping in the same room as him. He could do that without issue, right?

He glanced quickly at her, trying not to let his vision stray from the road ahead of him for too long. She was pretty much turned around, talking and laughing with the rest of their friends. He loved her smile, how it lit up her entire face. 

‘Fucking, hell,’ he thought to himself, taking the exit off the highway. He really was screwed. 

By the time everyone gets settled in the house, they were in their room that was being shared with a couple of the other single guys. The rest of their teammates and their partners were spread out across the grounds, Fran, Maddy, and Johnny heading off to explore. 

Emeline and Jeremy elected to hang out in what Brad had referred to as the den, despite the fact that the singular room was probably bigger than both of their apartments combined. The couch was big enough that they could both comfortably sleep on it without being in the same time zone as each other, let alone have any worry about brushing up against each other. 

That was good, that was what Jeremy needed. 

Emeline said that she needed a minute to grab something from their room, telling Jeremy to pick something for them to watch while he waited for her.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Keel,” he heard her angrily whisper into her phone as if there was more than just him around to hear her. “There’s a bunch of us, what’s the problem? I’m already spending Thanksgiving alone, not that you seem to care, so why does it matter that I’m going somewhere with my friends before the holiday?”

He couldn’t hear what Keelan was saying, of course, but from Emeline’s reactions, it couldn’t be anything good. “Why don’t you trust me anymore? Why is it ok for you to go away on trips for weeks on end, your friends fine to go with you, Jacklyn from Accounting being in the room right next to you in every hotel you stay in, while I can’t go away with Fran and Maddy and my neighbors without you freaking out?”

She was arguing with Keelan about Jeremy. He muted the TV, trying to hear as much as he could. He shouldn’t be listening, but he had to. He couldn’t help it. 

“For fucks sake, you have been jealous and worried about Jeremy for months now,” she scolds him. “Grow the fuck up.”

She pauses, Keelan so loud on the other end that Jeremy could almost make out what he was saying. “You know what? If there was something going on with me and Jeremy, it serves you right. We haven’t been on the same page for a while, Keelan, and I know you know it, too. You wouldn’t have texted me that if you didn’t.” Emeline lets out a long sigh. “You had ‘no choice?’ If you had no choice, then I’m glad. At least I know you had the decency to wait until after my birthday before you broke up with me, even if we haven’t seen each other in two fuckign weeks. You didn’t even text me ‘happy birthday,’ until you were about to go to bed. The only kind of boyfriend that does that is a shitty ex-boyfriend.”

He was breaking up with her? Keelan actually thought he was the one who should be dumping Emeline, when it was clear to Jeremy, and probably anyone who cared, it should have been the other way around? 

Emeline finally comes over to the couch, throwing her phone on the opposite end and sitting next to Jeremy despite the space. Her eyes were red, her nose running. She looked like a mess. 

And Jeremy still thought she looked perfect.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“My mom has another family.”

“I meant-” Jeremy starts, quietly, quickly cut off by Emeline.

“I found her on Facebook, right before I was going to start college. She’s never reached out, and I never reached out to her. She had me when she was 21 and I guess she just wasn’t ready to be a mom. But now, she has a husband and three boys in Connecticut. Her oldest is a freshman in college by now, if he went. And I know she loves them. I just wonder why she couldn’t love me. 

“Fran and Maddy don’t even know where she is, that I know where she is. Wethersfield, Connecticut. Literally a two hour ride. Less than that if you took the T to Riverside and drove the rest of the way down. She was so close to me this entire time, literally in our backyard, and never bothered to look. 

“I remember the first time I thought I was in love with Keelan,” she starts, looking down at her hands as she pulled her legs to her chest and changed the subject. “He called me every night to make sure I was ok after my grandmother died. He would bring me a change of clothes to the house and take my dirty ones back to the dorm and throw everything in with his stuff so I didn’t have to add laundry to the never ending list that came with cleaning out and getting rid of my dad and grandmother’s lives. 

“He was the one who helped me arrange for the house to be professionally cleaned, staged, and sold when Maddy and Fran didn’t know what to do. He was there for me when I didn’t know how to tell Fran and Maddy what was going on and what I was feeling. He was the one I went to when I had no one else.

“We were at the house one weekend trying to get the last bits of things laying around sorted into what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to donate, and he had put on Dead Poets Society because he knew it was my favorite movie at the time. The lights were off, we were just sitting on the couch under the blanket together, and I felt overwhelmed by the fact that the house I grew up in was bare, everything of the two most important people in my life getting slowly stripped away while I knew my mother was somewhere out there probably not thinking of me at all. And, I don’t know, he wrapped his arms around me and I felt safe and calm for the first time in what felt like forever. I loved how gentle he was when he kissed the top of my head and just let me cry during the last scene, because of the movie, because of my dad, my grandmother, I think even because of my mom.

“I fell asleep at some point, and I woke up to him making me breakfast, already having more of my grandmother's stuff pulled out and sorted because he knew that I was getting overwhelmed and he wanted to try to help me. He didn’t even know that I was in the kitchen when I saw him, and, I don’t know, I just knew I was in love with him.” 

“Emeline,” Jeremy says, wanting to reach out to hug her. This felt like the other night, her spilling her guts to him while all he could do is sit there and try his best. He wanted to do more for her. His best wasn’t anywhere good enough compared to what she really deserved. 

He thought back to what Fran told him that night in the stairwell, how Keelan wanted to break up with her, all while Emeline was falling in love with him. 

“I wasted seven years on him. I don’t think I’ve loved him for a while. I shouldn’t have loved him for this long if Fran and Maddy hated him so much. I shouldn’t have loved a guy who had the nerve to break up with me over text because I told him I was going away for a few nights with my friends. Why do I care so much about people who don’t want to care about me? Deep down, I still love my mom, even though I never knew her. Or, I guess, I love the idea of who she could have been to me. But Keelan? He was the one who was supposed to last. He was the one who filled in everything when things started to crack.” 

“What can I do?” Jeremy asks. 

Emeline hesitates. Jeremy wanted to just kiss her right there. Doing it now meant it wouldn’t be cheating for her. But that was the last thing he could do, with her sitting next to him, crying over her boyfriend breaking up with her just moments before. “Can we just sit here?”

He nods, unmuting the TV and turning his attention towards the screen. He feels Emeline grabbing the blanket that had been hanging over the back of the couch, nestling herself up against Jeremy as she threw it over the both of them. He put his arm around her, one of her arms resting on his leg. 

Eventually, she fell asleep, the guys shuffling in and around, not noticing them or not saying anything to them. 

He looked at her, her eyes closed with her head against his chest. 

“I think I love you, Emeline,” he whispers, knowing it wasn’t the entire truth, not loud enough for her to hear even if she was awake.