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EMILIA
Later that night, when Mia was packed up and gone and Emilia could hear Hannah arranging her things in her new room, she decided it was Wine O’Clock. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that had been plaguing her on-and-off for weeks, and so really, getting drunk was the only option left.
“Oh, yes please!” Annie said as she walked into the kitchen and noticed the wine glass Emilia had pulled out of the cupboard. Her roommate took a seat at the bench, obviously contemplative. “Such a weird day, isn’t it? We haven’t been in the house for long, but it’s going to be weird without Mia. Thanks,” she said, taking the wine glass Emilia slid across the bench to her.
“Yeah, strange how you get used to things.” She stared into her glass before taking a sip. “But it’ll be great having Hannah here, even if she is a bit of a slob.”
Annie smiled at Emilia’s reference to Hannah. She was well known in the group for being uncontrollably messy. “Yeah, it will. Want to talk about whatever it is that’s crawled up your ass?”
Emilia almost spat her wine back into her glass. “I beg your pardon?” She sputtered, staring at her flat mate.
“You heard me. You wanna talk about it, or no? Or maybe later?”
“Have I been awful to deal with?”
Annie’s brown eyes softened as she gestured with her head toward the lounge room. They moved as one and Annie kept talking while they took their seats on the couch. “You really haven’t been bad at all. There’s just obviously something going on and I thought maybe you didn’t want to talk about it with Mia since she’s got all that happy going on. So, I waited.”
“It’s not just Mia and all her happy that’s stopped me from talking about it. It’s just…I don’t know.” It was hard to put her feelings into words. She felt like no oneapart from her girlfriends-was ever going to look past her face and see her asmore. Memories from her childhood bubbled to the surface. The fuss her mother always made of her looks. The beauty pageants circuit. Early morning starts, make-up and hair spray from when she was four years old, hair. The pain of the braces her mother made her get when she was six, even though she still had most of her baby teeth. Because nothing less than absolute physical perfection would do for Joan Emerson. But then she chastised herself for being petty. Because how arrogant and first-world-problemsy was that? She was pretty. So the fuck what? So many other people had it so much harder than she did. And it was just all too much. But the recent rejection letter she’d received had hit her really hard. She’d believed that applying to further her education would be the ticket to a new, improved, serious Emilia. Where she would finally be seen as a grown up, talented person. More than a pretty face. But instead, the rejection made her believe, more than ever, that her mother was right. All she had to offer anyone was her pretty face.
Annie looked at her for a long moment, scaring Emilia into thinking she was going to push. She let out a sigh of relief when instead, Annie said, “Okay, good, cause what I really wanted to talk to you about was the hot guy flirting with you today.”
Emilia couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh my God, how can you, of all people, be so stereotypical?”
“What? I am not. He was seriously hot! And I have taken an unwilling vow of celibacy, obviously, so I have to live through you and our friends.”
Hannah walked in, just at that moment and plonked herself down on the armchair opposite them. “Good time to walk in then? Are we talking about sex?”
“Or lack thereof,” Emilia said, clinking her glass to Annie’s.
“Actually, we were talking about the hot guy from today.”
“Which one? Pete?” Hannah said. “Too old for you, Emilia.”
“And also not hot,” Emilia laughed. “Cameron, the guy in the cap.”
“Ah. Cameron.”
“How do you know all their names?” Annie asked, shaking her head.
“They came into my flat and shifted all my stuff. The least I could do was learn their names. Anyway, he is super-hot. And nice. Are you going to go for him, Em?”
“I’ve taken myself off the dating scene, so no.”
Hannah seemed about to push the subject, but Annie stopped her, calling a toast to their new living arrangements and the hot sex Mia would now be having a lot of.
As the night went on and they talked about a million other things, Emilia felt a little pang of regret. She’d never see Hot Movers Guy—Cameron—again. But it had been fun to flirt and be flirted with for the first time in a long time. And if she found herself thinking of him every two minutes, well, that was her problem.
