WHO: Emilia Wolfe and Elliot Haham. WHEN: A little over a year ago. WHERE: Elliot’s house. SUMMARY: Emilia and Elliot have an argument. This time, they don’t make up. WARNINGS: Brief allusions to emotional infidelity? Sads. Lots of sads.
“I just—I don’t understand what the problem is,” Elliot insisted, a hint of anger behind her neutral expression as she pushed through the door to her house, Emilia behind her. “Xo is my best friend, Emilia.”
This response was exactly why Emilia had spend the past couple months telling herself that every time Elliot changed their plans to better suit Xo and/or Olly that her gut was wrong. That it was okay that Elliot had a friend this close and just because Emilia didn’t have that in her adult life didn’t mean it wasn’t normal. “I get that she’s your best friend. And that Olly probably sees you as an aunt and you see him as a nephew. And I don’t want to ruin that in any way. It just seems like you’re always happy to cancel things we have planned if they come up with something. No matter how small their something is or how big our something is.”
“I’m never happy about it,” she said, shrugging out of her coat, trying to keep her tone even. Elliot glanced at Emilia with furrowed eyebrows, trying to recall the last time she’d canceled because Olly or Xo needed her. Had it really been as much as Emilia seemed to think it was? Even though there’d been that concert…and dinner the other week... She pushed the thoughts out of her head and got back to the matter at hand. “How can you even say that?”
Emilia didn’t like the phrase Elliot had used. But she didn’t think it required a discussion of how much it discounted what she’d said. She took a small breath, that was meant to be calming, while she took off her own coat.
“I can say it because it’s not an infrequent experience,” she continued. “Every time I have an idea about something that would be fun for us I find myself thinking I should check the school calendar first because you’ll definitely say no if Olly has anything and I end up telling myself to be prepared for you to say no again. Because it feels like you say no more often than you say yes.”
Elliot adopted a sullen expression. “It’s not that I don’t want to go, because I do.” Emilia had great ideas, fun ideas, things that Elliot’s wanted to do for ages but never had someone to go with anymore. But Xo and Olly were family, and wasn’t family priority? A thought popped into her head, just then—”You’re not - you’re not jealous, are you?” She asked before she could stop herself, and then found herself latching onto the idea even more. Because why else would it bother Emilia so much?
It was a difficult question to answer. Because Emilia wasn’t quite sure herself. She’d tried to convince herself that she was weirdly jealous of Xo but then there was another side of her. The deputy sheriff side that was always on that told her she was trying to avoid the truth.
Instead, she tried to hear what Elliot had to say, hoping to be proven wrong. “Jealous of what?”
“I don’t know,” Elliot shrugged wildly, hand motions and everything. “How close we are, our friendship, all of it?”
Emilia ran a hand through her hair. “And the answer is I don’t know either. It would be so easy to say I’m jealous of Xo and I’m just being a shitty girlfriend. But I’m always your second priority and it feels…” The word that kept coming to mind was awful but she didn’t want to use it because it seemed to accusatory. “Really crappy. And then when I think we’re having a conversation about something and everything is going great, you get a text and you get this smile on your face. And I’m honestly not sure that it’s a smile that I can ever get out of you.”
Elliot scrunched up her mouth, as if physically trying to stop herself from jumping in and contradicting everything Emilia was saying. Even though she was like, 99% sure that Emilia was exaggerating, because she couldn’t be that bad. Wanting—needing Xo and Olly in her life to the extent that they were couldn’t be.
So hearing all of this from Emilia, now that Elliot was letting it all sink in instead of immediately push back, she wasn’t angry, but sad, instead. She swallowed, getting ready to say something, but whatever she was going to say got lost on the way there. In a thick voice, Elliot said, “But I always thought we had a really good thing here.”
The weight of those words were heavy. But Emilia did her best to push through them. “I love you, Elliot. And for the most part, yea, we do have a good thing. But there are all these moments where I think that…” She trailed off. “I don’t know,” Emilia was trying to be gentle with her words, thinking and rethink them as they came out. The more she did, the more they cracked and the emotion came through her tone. “I’m just not sure I’m the person you imagine the rest of your life with.”
“I love you, too.” Her voice was about as steady as Emilia’s. And her makeup was about as intact. And when Elliot tried to say that no, Emilia was wrong, well. She couldn’t. Because that would be lying, and Elliot had lied about this too long, even to herself. “I’m sorry, Em,” Elliot wiped her eyes.
Watching Elliot process through everything hurt. But she told herself this was the right thing to hash through. She hadn’t been expecting an apology. “Well, I, am not entirely sure what to say in response.” Emilia paused for a few seconds. “Or where that puts us.”
Elliot’s hands moved to rub her neck as she slumped against the wall. “I don’t know. I don’t—you shouldn’t—” She stopped herself, and closed her eyes. “I don’t know. I love you. And I love what we have. But if you’re feeling all of—this,” she gestured vaguely, and specifically did not mention the emotions on her own end that were for a woman decidedly not her girlfriend, “I don’t know.”
Emilia followed Elliot down to the floor, kneeling there. All of the ‘I don’t know’s were begging to be picked and prodded out. People said that for lots of reasons but often because they didn’t feel like they could say what they felt. And this was the problem, really. Emilia knew how to watch people too well to see the signs of her girlfriends interest in someone else.
“I,” Emilia looked down at her own hands as she spoke. “-want to have kids. And I don’t want to be really old when I have them. But I also don’t want to push someone else into a more serious relationship than they want. And I know you said you want that. But are you-” Emilia paused, knowing that her words would have an everlasting effect on them both, no matter how Elliot answered. “Are you sure you want that kind of future with me?”
“...I thought I did,” she said miserably, after a long pause. But the truth was, she couldn’t give that to her. Not right now. Not when Emilia wasn’t the only one who had her heart.
Emilia knew what the answer was before Elliot said it but that didn’t make it hurt any less. She went from kneeling to just sitting on the floor across from Elliot. Her whole body suddenly felt a little bit heavier than it had before.
They both knew where they went from here. But it wasn’t like they’d even cut the cord before Emilia’s feelings had gotten too deep. They’d been together for a year and for at least the past six months every decision Emilia had made, she’d contemplated how it would effect Elliot or how Elliot would be part of the decision.
She knew a verbal response was expected but she had trouble coming up with the words. When she was able to say them, they were quiet. Each word felt like more pressure building in her head like it was going to burst. “Then I think we should probably break up.”
Elliot closed her eyes and let the back of her head rest against the wall behind them. “Yeah. Yeah, we probably should.” She said, defeated. Because what was the alternative? Nothing Emilia deserved.
And that was it. The end of a year of loving someone who she was not going to marry. Again. Her whole body felt like it was in pain and she knew tomorrow would feel like the hardest day. Yet, she didn’t push herself up and walk out the door yet. The two of them just sat in silence as the sun went down. There were lots of reasons but the one that Emilia kept thinking about was how as soon as she put her coat back on and left, she wasn’t going to ever be here again.