All Eyes on Emery

Her deep, royal blue eyes are glazed like glass, hard like marble, and empty like a plastic doll’s. She’s glaring at him, with those hurricane eyes and he doesn’t notice; he can’t see her. He’s bent over some blindingly blonde Barbie, his tongue buried deep in her lip gloss glazed mouth.

Emery, the girl who’s standing on the sidelines, watching with no air left in her lungs, she feels like she’s drowning. She’s suffocating and choking and there’s so much goddamn pressure on her, she can’t even claw her way to the top.

They’re at a party, Emery and Quinlan, Quinlan who was supposed to be her date, supposed to be her boyfriend of two years. Quinlan, whose hands are currently exploring the never-ending tanned legs of a preppy, poppy cheerleader from the next town over.

All eyes that aren’t glued to the nearly x-rated act being showcased in the middle of the star quarterback’s living room are glued to Emery. They’re all watching, seeing the way her skin’s turning red, with both embarrassment and anger, seeing the way her fingers are clenching and unclenching, the way she’s practicing strangling him from afar. Him, her fucking boyfriend.

He’s not even drunk, that’s the worst part, Emery’s thinking.

Sure, she’s done things she’s regretted, things like letting that stupid quarterback put his hands in places they don’t belong, but not bad places, not really. Outside of her thigh, trying to cop a feel through her bra and t-shirt, tickling up the back of her neck. But she’s always been drunk, always completely and totally shitfaced, before anything like that takes place. And she’s always smart enough to stop him before things go too far; hell, she won’t even let him kiss her on the mouth. Then the next morning, in between violent gags into the porcelain bowl, she’s got Quinlan on the phone, crying and bawling and apologizing like crazy, even though he’s not even mad at her.

Quinlan’s had two beers. Two, not even enough to make Emery, lightweight of all lightweights, start to feel fuzzy.

While she’s thinking still, going over their relationship and processing possible ways to kill him, (castration, suffocation, burning him alive) Quinlan’s still got his tongue shoved down Barbie Cheerleader’s throat and his hands are now busying themselves with her chest.

They’re smashed together on a couch, a couch that’s not even any sort of hidden. It’s pretty much as close to the center of attention as you can get, right in the middle of the living room, next to the doorway to the kitchen.

By now, no one’s even watching the two all but fornicate. It’s all eyes on Emery, watching the 5’4” redheaded girl look more intimidating than any 6’5” linebacker in the room.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, imagining herself away from the situation just to get the feeling of everyone’s eyes off of her, just so that she can breathe. She’s not inhaled in forever it feels like; she thinks she might have forgotten how to do so.

After she’s come back from Neverland, she’s alive. There’s adrenaline and electricity bubbling through her veins and she’s on fire, like she’s just smoked a wet joint.

She walks up, right behind them, so close she knows Quinlan can feel her body heat and can smell her perfume. The perfume he bought her last Christmas.

She touches his back, runs her nails down his spine, lightly pressing, just teasing like she knows he loves.

“Hey baby, did you forget who you came with? Because I’m pretty sure me and this drunken skank you’re dry humping look nothing alike.” She’s purring, talking quietly, not so that everyone else can’t hear her, but so that all the anger in her pours out of her mouth in a way so scary that most people haven’t seen before.

Quinlan pulls away and his lips are red and swollen and dropped in an O of surprise. He acts like he really did forget who he came with. Emery would laugh if she didn’t feel like she might puke.

“Wha-? Em?” he asks, and he makes sure to slur, just to make it seem like he’s five times as intoxicated as he really is.

She shoves him, just lightly, backwards and off the whore that’s still lying there with her legs open.

“Goddammit, you are the lowest lying piece of shit I’ve ever laid eyes on. I can’t believe I’ve wasted two years on your sorry ass.”

She turns around, knuckles white with the how hard she’s clenching her fists and she just wants to storm off, so that she can sit in her car and imagine him crashing on the way home.

“Oh, and do me a favor, you fakeass drunk, have a few more beers before you decide to drive yourself home, will you?”

She storms out then, pushing and shoving past the ignorant fucks that are too busy yelling, “Ohhhh!” and “Burn!” to realize that she’s trying to get out.

It’s after she gets all the way home in her car that she realizes she can’t go home because she’s crying to damn hard to face her parents. So she turns around at the end of the driveway and heads out into the 3 o’clock darkness, driving just to drive.

It’s five o’clock in the morning and the sun is just peeking up when she finally realizes that she has a place she can go to, a place that’s never failed to help her calm down.

The dock is empty, which makes sense because it’s mid October, and Emery’s crying so hard she can’t see straight by the time she pulls into the sandy lot.

She just makes it out of the car before she’s sobbing, inhaling those huge shaky breaths that remind everyone of three year old temper tantrums and she just barely hears her phone ringing over her own commotion.

She pulls her phone out of her jean pockets and is getting ready to launch it into the frigid water when she sees the name flashing across the screen. Taking a deep breath, as deep as she can to calm herself, she answers, “Hello?”

And that scared, shaking, stern voice that only a mother can have says, “Quinlan’s been in an accident.”