Stay By My Side
Title: Stay By My Side
Pairing: Naomi, Naomi/Emily, Naomi/OC
Spoilers: S3 and S4 sans Sophia
Summary: Naomi through the years.
Rating: R for language
Disclaimer: Not my universe, not my characters. They do, however, make me believe me in love.
When I am an old man
and live by the sea
will all your thoughts
fly to me?
- Fly to me by Keane
The first time she sees Emily Fitch, she’s a goddamn fucking goner.
It happens at recess. They’re all playing tag, or catch, or some sort of game that involves running, and Naomi’s off in the corner, sitting against the wall, not particularly wanting to play, not particularly enjoying being left out. No one invites her to play, but it’s not like she wants them to. It’s a complicated law of the playground, yet everyone seems to abide by it just fine. Except for this redhead. This one cute little midget who makes her way through the crowd, paddling her way towards Naomi.
“Hi,” she says confidently, this huge smile on her face, her hands at her waist: She’s in charge. “I’m Katie.”
“Hi,” Naomi responded warily.
“This my new ball,” Katie goes on as though Naomi hadn’t said a word, showing off the shiny red and silver ball. “Do you want to play with us? We’re one person short.” There’s a group of people standing in a circle near the centre of the playground. That annoying Peter in mathematics and his group of drooling idiots, along with Tara and her flock of giggling dunces.
Naomi fidgets on the spot, eyeing the ball, then Katie nervously. She hates sports. And she hates playing with the other kids. They’re mean, and selfish, and there’s nothing like team sports that bring out the absolute worst in them. She shakes her head slowly. “No thanks.”
Katie stands for a little while longer, staring at Naomi, as though waiting for her to concede and sigh, “Alright,” the way Naomi imagines many people must. But she stands by her answer, and the two just sort of glare at one another.
“I don’t like ball games,” Naomi says, more than defends.
Katie is unfazed. “You’re weird,” she says simply before walking back to her group of friends, and it’s the casual manner of which she says it that makes Naomi feel the pang in her chest. The spicy, tingling feeling in her lungs. The shame. The embarrassment. She feels herself go red and hides her face behind her bangs. She is weird. But Katie didn’t have to say it like that...
“See, I told you she wouldn’t, Katie. Just ask your sister.”
“Fiiiine. Emily! Emily, you can play.”
Naomi gets up and dusts herself off to get inside. On her way in, she collides with another girl, another redhead, but this red hair was brighter, so bright, more alive. She is without a doubt the cuter twin, and Naomi will never confuse the two again.
“Sowie,” Emily squeals absently, and she raises her eyes to Naomi’s.
. . .
“Sowie,” she repeats again, this time breathless, and she runs off to Katie before Naomi can say anything.
“You always take so long!” Katie was complaining, and Emily was mumbling an apology, lowering her head shyly as Naomi shuffled into school, well ahead of recess time, well ahead of everyone else.
Later at lunch she sits alone, as always, in the corner, and manages to swallow down the sandwich as everyone passes, points, and laughs. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself, and wills herself not to look at them. She could never give them the satisfaction of crying in front of them. She extends her gaze to the rest of the cafeteria, and tries to fight the feeling again as everyone’s laughing, running, chattering animatedly at their tables. She observes her table, and imagines how nice it would be to have someone to sit next to, someone to...
“Hi.”
She turns her head. “Hi,” she responds.
She places her tray down on the table, without hesitation. Without any hesitation whatsoever. “Can I .... can I sit here?”
Naomi gulps down a piece of bread she didn’t realize was in her open mouth. A burst of giggles from the far left of the cafeteria jostles her back to reality. She brings her head down to her lunch and rifles through it for her box juice. “W-why would you want to sit here?” she asks grumpily.
The girl buries herself into her hair, something Naomi hadn’t actually known was physically possible. “Because I want to?”
Another burst of giggles, and Naomi looks up to see the culprits. It’s Katie and her friends again, they’re sitting together, laughing at some stupid joke one of the boys probably made, their backs all facing her. “You should go back to your sister,” Naomi says, finally finding the juice bottle and poking the straw in much more violently than needed. She sticks the straw into her mouth and bites down hard. “I’m weird.”
“You’re not weird,” Emily responds without hesitation. Without any hesitation whatsoever.
Naomi turns her head to look at her, and Emily burrows herself again. “Sowie,” she says, and blushes this incredible shade of red that manages to match her red, red hair. It’s so red. Emily picks up her tray and begins to trek over to Katie’s table. And it’s because of the loud, raucous cafeteria she can’t hear Naomi get up from the table immediately, and whisper a haste, “Wait, I’m sorry.”
“Emily!” Katie calls her over when she just so happens to turn her head, and catches Naomi’s eye. When Emily’s over and her tray is down, Katie grabs her closer. “Why were you talking to her?” she asks menacingly, and Naomi wants to go over and tell her to take her hands off, that Emily’s nice, and Emily should be treated like that.
“I like her,” Emily says in a voice that sounds like she’s about to cry, and Naomi wants to...hug her, or something.
“You shouldn’t,” Katie sneers and lets Emily go, turning her head to Naomi, and raising her voice so everyone can hear, “She’s a weirdo. A giant weirdo.”
The laughter is everywhere. Coming from left, right and center, everyone is laughing at her height, her platinum blonde hair that simply can’t be real, all that weird political stuff she reads, the way she keeps to herself. They take her apart with their eyes and spit it back out at her with their ha’s and ho’s.
Yet all she can see is Emily’s red, red, red red hair as it swishes around and she looks at her with these huge, soft eyes that convey nothing but pity.
And now, finally, in front of everyone, she gives them what they want: A single tear trickles down her cheek and she wipes it away almost as fast it comes, grabs her bag and slings it over her shoulder, and grabs at her tray. As everything collides on the tray, her juice box falls with a spectacular splat, her apple rolls over it, and it sprays all over her face, her shirt, soaks her collar.
And the laugher booms.
“See? Weirdo.”
-
Her first boy friend (note: not boyfriend, mum) is Chester, who she meets a few months later. He has huge glasses, and almost as blind as a bat. He stutters and hyperventilates, never goes anywhere without his inhaler, but has a heart of gold, and Naomi loves him for it. But she loves his library more. When he follows his lost marble to her one recess, they strike up an odd friendship.
“I don’t like playing with the others,” Naomi says, trying not to look Emily on the lawn, also sitting away from everyone else, reading a book.
“I-I d-d-d-don’t n-neither,” Chester responds, and hands her a marble. “D-d-d-do you w-w-want to play with m-me instead?”
It begins slowly, and they start spending more and more recesses together, playing marbles or sitting and talking. He’s funny, and smart, but people wouldn’t know it if they just kept focusing on his stutter, or the scary way his eyes bulge out at you from behind his magnifying glasses. “C-c-c-come meet m-my mum, Naomi, I w-w-want her to m-m-meet you,” he suggests one afternoon.
What an afternoon.
Chester’s library is the biggest she’s ever seen of books that interest her. Down at the library they have books on other stuff, too. But Chester’s library is filled with books about other countries. His dad is a pilot and brings home as many books as he can from every single country. He even changes his flight schedule with the others in order to visit as many different ones as he can. “W-w-w-we’re up to a h-hundred and two,” Chester says to an absent-minded Naomi rifling through book by book, giggling in excitement as a person of different heritage, culture and skin colour pops out from each new cover. At the center of the room is an atlas, beside a globe. A huge, blue and green globe that turns at your will, showing you every last bit of earth waiting to be discovered.
As she’s swirling it with her pinkie and smiling grandly as South America and Africa rolls around, Chester tries to kiss her and she moves away. “Chester...”
“I know,” he says sadly, and digs his hands into his pockets, “I just wanted to be sure.”
She kisses him on the cheek, though.
He loans her some books, and after a while he lets her keep them.
-
After Chester moves away that summer, she moves back into her hole at school.
Emily tries again to sit next to her at lunch, the second time. Maybe it’s a yearly activity.
“Why now?” Naomi asks bitterly, incapable of even looking at her, and she realizes she would have liked Emily to meet Chester.
Emily buries her head in his hair again, mumbles an apology and walks back to Katie. Naomi watches her tray slowly slide off the table, and listens to the girl’s footsteps. It’ll be months before Emily will try again.
Later in the summer, she meets Fanny. The most obnoxious girl she’s probably ever met. But she’s fucking badass. It’s their last year before graduating and Fanny’s gone absolutely bonkers. “Everything is better when it’s on fire,” she laughs, drunk as fuck one Friday night, and lighting a trash can on fire by dropping a makeshift Molotov cocktail in.
“What the fuck,” Naomi laughs at it, following her lazily, trips over her own two feet. She’s picked up some of Fanny’s language, and fallen into this world of rock and roll, drugs, smoking.
“I fucking love this song!” she yells as they pass by a club, and Fanny starts dancing insanely in the streets, her fag bouncing up and down in her mouth. A car stops in front of her and honks. “Piss off!” she yells, giving him the middle finger and moseying onto the sidewalk. Naomi waits until the car drives off until she crosses the street.
“You’re going to get yourself killed, Fan,” she laughs, as the girl sits down on the curb and rests her feet.
She just grins, wickedly, so wickedly. “Sit down, Naomi,” she says, patting the sidewalk next to her.
She does.
“You’re really smart, you know that, Naomi?”
“No, no, I’m-”
“HEY. Listen to me, eh? You’re really smart. And you’re going places.”
Naomi grins and leans back on her two arms, looking up at the night sky. “I certainly hope so.”
“There!” Fanny points at her, “Who fucking uses the word ‘certainly’ anymore? You’ve got to take care of that brain of yours, girl,” she pokes Naomi’s temple. “You got to stand up for yourself, alright?”
Naomi takes this into consideration.
“There’s a lot of shit out there, you know?” Fanny says, dead serious, now chipping some nail polish off her thumb, “There’s a lot of people out there looking to fuck you up, and bring you down to their level, and you can’t let them, you know?”
Naomi can still hear them laughing.
Fanny turns to her. “Don’t be like me, is what I’m trying to say, alright?”
Naomi tries to laugh that off, giving Fanny a playful push.
Fanny laughs at this. “You’re smart, alright? You’re not like me, you’re like...real. You know? You’re not a hypocrite.”
Naomi grimaces. “You’re not a hypocrite, Fanny.”
Fanny laughs and finishes her fag, tosses it into the sewage. Naomi thinks about that movie they just saw in school about litter and gets up to throw it out. “I like seeing things burn,” Fanny says, as she watches Naomi stub the fag out and toss it into the garbage, “But I always say don’t hurt people.”
Naomi claps her hands together to get the grit off her hands. “What are you talking about?”
Fanny takes out a fresh new cig and puts it in her mouth. “You know that redhead in school?”
Naomi looks away.
“That cute button-nosed one, the quiet one who’s always in the corner? She’s-”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah what?”
“Yeah, I know who she is.”
Fanny lights her fag. “She likes gardening.”
Naomi knew this already, had taken a peek into her bag one busy morning. The girl was always heaving this huge bag to school, almost twice her size, and Naomi was going to offer to carry some books for her. But Katie had come along, as always, and whisked her away. Naomi saw a flash of gardening books threatening to spill out. At recess, Emily would stick by the flowers, help the teachers water them, sometimes even talk to them, when she thought no one was looking.
Not that Naomi was looking.
“Yeah, I know,” Naomi takes the cig out of Fanny’s mouth and places it in hers.
“So there’re these lilies you know, outside Perkins’s office. I see her talking to them one recess. Like actually fucking talking to them, you know?” She laughs, no, guffaws at this, and Naomi can’t pinpoint another time when she’s disliked Fanny more.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, not really,” Fanny chuckles, “Especially not when...” She winks at Naomi.
“What?”
“What do you think?” she asks, and takes the cig back, puts it in her mouth. She takes out her lighter and waves it around in the air.
Realization.
“You lit them on fire.”
“They don’t smell all that nice when they burn,” she laughs, laying on her back and smoking.
Naomi takes her cig away from her for good, smashes it into the ground. “That was a shit thing to do, Fanny. That was a really shit thing to do. She gets enough crap from her sister, you probably ruined her day.”
Fanny gets up, props herself on her elbows. “I taught the kid a lesson, Naoms.”
“Don’t call me that,” Naomi says fiercely. She hates that nickname.
Fanny lifts her hands up in false apology. “Nothing lasts forever. Can’t get attached like that. Imagine how clingy she’d be on a real person.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting, or needing other people, Fanny. Emily’s nice. You just did that because you’re cruel.”
“The world is cruel.”
Naomi shakes her head at Fanny, tries to will images of a sobbing Emily by burnt lilies out of her mind. “Not me,” she says, digging her hands into her jacket, turning on her heel and walking home.
She promises herself she’ll never hurt Emily like that, if the situation would ever present itself.
-
As it turns out, Fanny gets sent to boarding school before school starts, and Naomi is friendless once more by their final year. She never gets around to apologizing to Emily, and she’s pretty certain she’ll never bring up that she was, in any way, associated with her.
Actually, she tries.
Actually, she actually tries to apologize, actually. She has the entire explanation and apology and offer to purchase new lilies all set up in her mind, but the moment she sees Emily again, she is stopped by the red hair. So vibrant, possibly even brighter than she remembered it. It blinds her, in a way the sun doesn’t, and as the twins walk by, Katie sneers and Emily avoids her eye shyly. She wants to say ‘hello’ or even a squeaky ‘hi’, but finds the red just overwhelms her, and suddenly she’s having trouble breathing. So she doesn’t. Apologize, that is. She doesn’t apologize. She simply stands there, and watches Emily file into class, and sighs a breath she didn’t realize she was holding in when the redhead is gone. And at that moment, a blonde haired boy smashes into her.
His name is Danny. He is so fucking fit, and he’s got these brilliant blue eyes. He takes a liking to her immediately, and she him. It’s because he’s so worldly, she thinks. He knows everything about everything, and they stay up late nights talking about the World Wars in great detail. He’s strong, confident, funny. Knowledgeable. In some ways he’s almost a mentor.
They go to see Independence Day together, and for some reason she expects him to make a move. But nothing. She writes it off, labels him a friend, until he invites her out again for bowling. This time she makes a commitment. Dresses up, pumps herself up, and yet nothing. It happens again when they go out for ice cream, for ice skating, for Valentine’s Day, and still fucking nothing, and Naomi’s tired of waiting for something she’s pretty certain she wasn’t interested in anymore. They lose touch. Well more like she tells him to stick it. He smiles at this, almost proud of how he’s made her so...easily irritable.
She hadn’t realized it until he said it. It was true. All this time with him, she’d realized how very impatient yet impassioned she’d grown. Hate him as much as she sort of did, Danny was an influence, an eye-opener, and when the kids pointed and laughed in the ignorant way they did at her Chairman Mao t-shirt one afternoon, she finally, finally, blocks it out. (She will never care what they think of her again.)
She notices Emily doesn’t laugh, though. Emily never laughs.
-
Liz is like a calmer version of Fanny. The kind of girl you can bring home. Not...not that way. Just..the nice girl you can bring home and show off to your parents to prove you’re not up to no good at that school you’re at. Liz is intelligent, not like the blokes at school. She’s organized and punctual, and collides with Naomi at school one day, their books collecting together.
She picks up one of them. “Eve Ensler,” she says excitedly as she hands the book back to Naomi. “I didn’t know there was another Ensler fan in the school. No one likes her.”
“I haven’t read this one yet,” Naomi admits, getting up and offering Liz a hand to get up. “Is it good?”
Liz pauses and laughs. “Is Ensler good? Christ, you’re fresh.”
(Later Naomi realizes she meant she was a fresh feminist.)
They go to Naomi’s mostly, because Gina takes a huge liking to her. ‘She’ll be a good influence on you,’ or some shite. They stay up some nights talking about anti-violence walks, feminist reading lists, discussion groups.
In the end it boils down to too many things happening at once, and Naomi cracks. She actually cracks, boils over, loses it.
“I can’t do it anymore, no one fucking cares!” she says to Liz, handing the flyers over to the girl.
“It’s not about people caring, Naomi, it’s about standing up for what’s right.”
“Even if we’re standing alone?”
“Especially if we’re standing alone.”
Naomi shakes her head at that. She’s been alone. It’s not as much fun as Liz seems to think it is. “I don’t like this anymore.”
Liz pauses. “You can’t choose to not identify as a feminist just because it’s getting hard, Naomi.”
Naomi shakes her head again. “I don’t choose to identify as anything.” She’ll be a feminist, yes, but on her own terms. So she walks off. As always, she walks off.
Gina is torn up over this broken friendship.
-
She meets Colin immediately after word gets around school that she’s no longer associated with The Feminist. Colin has contacts, short, dark brown hair and these beautiful dark brown eyes. Not quite as dark as Emily’s.
(Whoa what?)
He’s always liked her. And for some reason, it’s more than enough. Because whatever. He’s cute, and kind, and well-meaning, and sits with her for lunch. That last bit is important to her. Even Emily stopped trying to sit next to her.
(In retrospect, Emily stopped because of Colin.)
She loses it to Colin one afternoon, mostly because they’re bored, and Naomi’s curious, and Colin’s a complete gentleman. For some reason when he kisses her, though, it’s sloppy, and messy, and everything he isn’t. So she tells him not to, and they just go right down to business. It’s not horrible. It’s playful, and considerate, and very, very safe. But it isn’t particularly enjoyable, though he seems pretty satisfied when they’re done.
“I’m sorry,” he says, still panting, “That wasn’t very good for you.”
“No,” she lies, lighting a fag because it’s there, “It was fine.”
“No,” he rebuffs, “I’m sorry. I got too excited. I just..I really like you and it was happening real fast, you know?”
She nods, though he can’t see it, so she nods a bit harder so he can feel it as she rests her forehead on his neck. They rest there for a while, and his heart rate returns to normal.
“Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw you?” he asks. She says no. He chuckles. “You were so beautiful. I thought I’d seen some sort of...angel.”
Red
She lifts her head abruptly. He takes her cheek into his hand and kisses her. It’s still sloppy. “I thought I’d die.”
She smiles. They go at it again, slower, more carefully. It continues on through the night, each try being more and more enjoyable. When he’s finally exhausted and falls asleep, she traces his back with her finger, thinks about first impressions.
Later they break up, because it turns out he’s actually quite an ass, and really, neither of them knew the other all that well. It’s strangely mutual in that way, and Naomi goes on her way, just as content as she was before she met him. In fact she decides to celebrate her newfound happiness by going to a house party, hosted by Leah, the pretty brunette in English class.
Mistake.
Everyone is off their faces. It’s as though these kids have never drank alcohol in their lives. Naomi pauses. Well, they are fifteen, and yes, it’s possibly many of these kids have never drank alcohol in their lives. Nonetheless it’s a complete mess and a ruined night when some ponce throws up in the living room and she decides to take her own private party outside.
Red.
Naomi sees her from the living room, sitting on the porch, looking at the stars. She thinks about first impressions. She walks over, the noise and music of the party distant already.
“Can I sit here?” she asks, sitting down already.
“Yeah,” Emily says shyly.
They sit in silence for a little while, listening to the crickets. Emily caresses the petal of a flower nearby. It dawns on Naomi that they’ve never actually ever spoken to one another. Only in the cafeteria, and even then Naomi had always pushed her away, and even then they were never full length conversations. And yet...
“Are you drunk?” Emily’s asking in this tiny voice.
“No,” Naomi laughs, and stops abruptly when Emily’s gazing at her mouth, and lips, with these gloriously large brown eyes. “Are you?” she asks.
Emily shakes her head. “Katie is. Katie always is.” She pauses and buries her head in her hair. “I’m not like Katie.”
Naomi sees her own hand on Emily’s cheek before she realizes it.
(In retrospect, she did it because she was getting tired of seeing her burying herself in her hair. No one should have to do that.)
“That’s okay,” Naomi says as earnestly as she can. “I like that you’re not like Katie.”
Her eyes are so...large. Naomi can’t get over it, and thinks there’s something so stupidly romantic to that. And over a girl, of all people, but for some reason Emily’s brown eyes just staring at her make her feel...powerless, like a flashlight in your eye from two coppers in an interrogation room. One blink, two blinks, and Naomi feels as though Emily’s taken a photograph of her, just with her eyes.
Then, she kisses her.
Really kisses her.
She takes Naomi’s hand off her cheek, flings it down to the ground. Takes Naomi’s head in both her tiny hands and plants a huge, forceful kiss on her lips. And it’s soft. And warm. And tastes like water. It’s unrelenting, her grip on Naomi’s head that moves down to the sides of her neck, holding her in place like she’s going to disappear. She breaks the kiss, tilts her head to the side, licks her lips, and goes in again, not allowing Naomi even a second’s moment of hesitation.
(In retrospect, Naomi began kissing back the moment their lips touched anyway.)
Naomi doesn’t realize her hands are in Emily’s hair until Emily pulled her down on top of her and she’s cradling her now, their breasts actually touching, Emily’s breathing coming in fast and loud in her ear, everything’s actually feeling hot, and Naomi’s actually getting damp. She’s never been anything like this with anyone.
“Emily,” she whispers strenuously when the redhead’s hands are trailing down the front of her neck, moving towards her breasts.
“Get off my sister!”
The fight is terribly public and awkward, with Emily moving into her hair perhaps permanently, and Naomi now just getting sick of Katie’s voice.
“Such a fucking lesbo,” Katie’s saying, “I always knew there was something totally weird about you.”
“It’s alright to be different like that,” Emily’s trying.
“It’s not alright, Emily,” Katie says, grabbing her sister by the wrist and pulling her up from the porch. “Come on, we’re going home, I knew I shouldn’t have brought you.”
Naomi gets up as well, ignoring the party that’s taken a breather and now every last guest seems to be staring at them, some whispering, others pointing and laughing. Naomi feels nothing. Absolutely nothing. “You done?” she asks bravely.
Katie spins around. “You’re a muff-muncher who sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong, Naomi Campbell.”
Naomi shrugs at this. Why the fuck not. Honestly, why the fuck not. It’s their last year, and it’s not like anyone at this party, or even at school, have ever given a fuck. She has nothing to lose, and quite honestly just doesn’t care anymore.
Katie takes a proud stance. “So you admit it.”
Naomi smirks tiredly. “Whatever you say, Katie-kins.”
-
She meets Liam that summer. He’s a rockstar. A fucking rockstar, thirty years too young. He sings, he plays guitar, he’s got an amazing tongue. It doesn’t strike her as odd, though it would later, how much she loves his tongue in particular. It comes in handy, of course, when he has some issues getting it up the first couple of times. He flips her over and says, “Fuck it,” before diving down. It doesn’t strike her as odd, though it would later, that her favourite part of it would be running her hands through his long, long auburn hair.
(In retrospect, she laughs uncontrollably when she thinks of Liam for obvious reasons.)
Eventually, by his umpteenth dysfunction time, it’s getting ridiculous, and they part as friends.
-
The next year goes by in a flash.
A very messy, very scary, very busy flash.
Something about Katie, and strap-ons, and brownies.
Something about Emily, and bouncy castles, and the girl knowing her better than she knew herself.
Something about Cook, and his similarities to Fanny.
Something about Emily, and being by the lake, and feeling more alive than she’s ever, and actually coming, and going up in flames.
Something about Cook, and making out, and stopping, and actually being good friends who don’t fuck each other up.
Something about Emily. And cat flaps.
Something about Emily. And a beautifully tight black skirt, and an open leopard print blouse, and lockers.
Something about JJ. She doesn’t like to think about JJ.
Something about Emily. And being brave, and admitting to what she thinks she’s always known.
Something about Emily.
There’s always something about Emily.
There has always been something about Emily.
-
It’s eight years later and for some reason, the red hair is still bright as ever, blinding her in the early mornings when Emily’s standing half naked in the kitchen, nibbling on toast, waiting for the water to boil. The flat is a home, a house. Still in Bristol, the same sunrises and sunsets, the same dull smells by the risky alleyways, the same raving parties. The home is warm, warm like the tiny dimple of skin on Emily’s right shoulder when she arches her back. The bookcases are filled, albeit with novels of parenting, of true love and cuddly bears along with books on travelling and political rebellion. One of Naomi’s favourites, Top Ten Most Infamous Dictators, in fact, used to be on her dresser in their bedroom.
“I wish you wouldn’t read that in here,” Emily had said one night as she changed the pillow cases.
“Why not?” Naomi had responded absently, turning the page.
“I’d rather wake to your face than this nasty-looking bloke,” she brought the book down on her lap and kissed her, climbing on top and straddling her.
“That bloke,” Naomi murmured against her lips, sliding the book off the bed and caressing Emily’s bare thighs instead, “Managed to cover up thousands of murders and charm every last reporter who came into his country so no one suspected he was a raving homicidal maniac.”
“Well you certainly know how to get a girl hot, Ms. Campbell.”
In the end, Emily put the book on the shelf one morning and Naomi took a hint.
They manage to agree on giving Naomi a workspace and Emily to write in the living room. It had taken two weeks in after Naomi moved her things in to realize the living room was much more spacious, and Emily’s wicked grin showed she knew this all too well. “Well played,” Naomi had simply chuckled. On long nights, when the work seemed to illogically accumulate the more she would work on it, Naomi would give up and head into the living room, disturb Emily’s working time with some tea, biscuits, a foot rub. They would sit and talk, tease, fight, leave in a huff, talk, giggle, make up, make love, sit in silence. Everything and nothing until the sun came up, and Naomi would realize she’d wasted the entire night. Well. “Wasted.”
It changes, with Bobby. And yet it doesn’t.
The work habits remain the same. Given, one must always be home to be with him, but Emily works at home, and Naomi doesn’t stay late. In fact it’s the perfect situation. They avoided using that word. They try not to label anything as perfect, because they tried that, so long ago, and that didn’t end so well. But thanks to Robert Sr, thanks to Cook, to Katie, to even Jenna, things have gotten back on track. On a track. And it was the perfect time, and situation, and world, and (Naomi dares to say it) family to bring Bobby in.
She finishes early one night, packing up and clicking her briefcase closed, placing it at the door to remember to pick it up tomorrow morning. She checks the clock in the kitchen; 10:14 PM. The house is still as a horror movie. Slowly she tiptoes into the living room, but rests against the doorframe from the kitchen out of shock, and pleasure.
Emily’s still, somehow, rocking in the rocking chair, hands securely fastened on the tiny bundle in her arms, humming some unintelligible tune to an already asleep Bobby. Her eyes flutter every now and then, threatening to close completely, her breathing on a steady, reliable pace, her hair casually and conveniently tucked behind her ear, her right breast still out, but now being used as a pillow.
She is even more beautiful than she was, all those years ago.
It takes a while for Naomi to recover her breath, steady herself, knock some sense into her lightheaded figure, and she tiptoes over to them. She gathers Bobby into her arms carefully, and he mewls, turning slightly, and then cuddling against her chest, relishing in her warmth.
(and her heart grows three more sizes, as it always does around him.)
Slowly, she nudges Emily with a kiss to the forehead, then nose. “Em.”
She wakes slowly, blinking first at Naomi, then at Bobby. “He’s asleep.”
“He’s asleep. Come on, get ready for bed, I’ll tuck him in.”
Emily kisses her, and though she meant it to be a chaste one, it turns into a slow and exhausted one. They part with a soft suction sound, and Naomi moves into Bobby’s room, placing him down in his crib, pulling the blue-orange covers over him, caresses his soft skin, even softer red hair, and kisses him goodnight. Then she makes her way into their bedroom, where Emily’s already changed, and brushing her teeth. Naomi turns off their lights, the only light now shining from the bathroom. She watches her.
She thinks about first impressions.
“Whwat?” Emily grins, mouth still full of toothpaste, before spitting and rinsing.
Naomi smiles. She can’t remember what went through her mind the first time she saw Emily. Probably nothing at all. “Nothing.”
Emily wipes her mouth, washes her face, turns off the light, and walks over to the bed in total darkness. “What is it?” she asks, and Naomi can hear her smile.
She waits until Emily’s in bed. Takes her in her arms and moves on top of her, sliding her leg between hers, pressing their noses together and losing her fingers in her hair. God this hair. “I love you.”
Emily kisses her. “I know.”
“No. I mean; I love you, Em. I loved you first. I have always loved you, I have only loved you, and I always will.”
Emily pauses at this, and soon the only audible thing in the room is Bobby’s soft breathing through the baby walkie-talkie. Slowly, though, she plants tiny kisses on Naomi’s lips, one for every centimetre. And when she’s done, she kisses her full on; slowly, lovingly, deeply. And then she grasps Naomi’s head in her tiny hands, the same way she did all those years ago, and whispers the phrase that makes and breaks Naomi into a thousand tinier pieces; “I’m yours. I’m all yours.”
(In retrospect; for Naomi, it was never a chase. It was coming home.
The first time she ever saw Emily Fitch, she was a goddamn fucking goner.)