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It was part of the whole revenge act Ruby had put her up to. Technically, she didn’t quite put her up to it, but when she’d suggested it, Emma couldn’t quite think of a better way to get back at Neal.
Then again, Ruby did suggest more drastic measures, one of them being burning down his place and/or stealing his beloved baseball card collection. She hates him, sure, but she’s not going to be that psychopathic ex-girlfriend. So instead, when Elsa had jokingly told her to get him jealous with a couple of pictures of her and other guys, drunk Emma had decided to step up the game – apparently, a bit too much.
So when she wakes up the next morning, set with a dry throat and a pounding head, she doesn’t quite expect to see such a confusing text from an unknown number.
Unknown number: I swear the moment I realized what was happening, I deleted it
Unknown number: I barely saw anything
Unknown number: sent you an image
With a moment of hesitation, she slides her thumb across the locked screen, wondering who this mystery person was and exactly what image they’d sent.
Her questions aren’t quite answered when she opens the chat, for it only shows her a screenshot of the exact conversation, only on their end of the chat. With an unsure swipe, she closes the image and rereads their message again, looking for the hidden clue she’s surely missing out.
She doesn’t find anything, and seeing as nothing else can be done, she asks.
what exactly did you not see?
She doesn’t quite expect an answer immediately, so she fumbles around her nightstand’s drawer looking for the aspirin she knows she has stocked away in case of Red Nights, as she’s taken to calling them, since the only reason she’d actually ever leave the house to get drunk is for her dear friend, Ruby.
But he (she? She’s not quite sure about the sex of her mysterious texter, but there’s a feeling in her stomach at the spot where she usually gets those feelings – of which almost always ends up being right – telling her that it’s a guy) replies her just over a minute later as she’s gulping down that much needed pill to mute the thumping in her head.
Had too much to drink last night, did you?
He’s avoiding the question and she while she does want to know the full story, she’s far too tired to entertain him.
She manages to pull herself out of bed, fixing her half taken off clothes from last night and dragging her feet to their shared kitchen. And there sits Ruby, coffee in hand and laptop on counter as she scrolls through God knows what social media (twitter? tumblr? she’s never been too fluent with the internet in the first place) looking as though she’d just come back from a damn morning jog while Emma here looks a mess. In fact, she probably did come back from a run, given the sports bra and the yoga pants that she wears, set with a thin sheen of sweat layering her skin in that glow Emma never seems to be able to achieve.
(When she goes for her morning runs – which is kind of never – she comes home panting and practically dead, collapsing straight onto the couch, rising only about three hours later needing to fully recover from the hellish experience)
“You’re kidding me.”
“What?”
“Shut up,” Emma glares, snatching the mug from her hands and sipping it for herself as she settles on the stool next to her. “I was pretty sure you were as drunk as I was last night.”
Ruby scoffs then, “Honey, no one could’ve been as drunk as you were,” she gets up and pours herself another cup of coffee, leaning against the counter as she speaks.
She doesn’t think anything of it; Ruby has a way of exaggerating things. But then she remembers her mystery texter and, did she do something embarrassing?
“I didn’t do anything weird, right?”
“Weird? No,” she answers, taking a long sip of the drink, and the anticipation in Emma’s chest dulls. She pushes herself off the counter and reclaims her seat, crossing her legs at the knees as she says oh so calmly, “Except, of course, for the nude you sent to Neal.”
How she says it so coolly forces Emma to do a double take, only processing what she’d said after several moments of thought.
“I did what?”
Her mind jumps to the possibilities of what that catastrophe could lead to – one being that jerk of an ex of hers doing god knows what with a picture of her bare, since throughout their relationship, she’d always refused to remotely venture into the sexting business, a.k.a: him winning.
She’s freaking out because while she did want to get back at him, sending him a nude wasn’t quite the way she thought it’d go. In her head, she was going to keep more to Elsa’s advice – maybe party with some good looking guys and take obnoxious pictures to be posted somewhere he’d definitely see. Even in that situation, she hadn’t actually intended to send any picture of her directly to him.
She jumps out of her the chair and begins pacing about, all the while, her best friend here is having quite the kick out of the whole thing. She’s not quite thinking straight – not putting together that the fact the number she texted and Neal’s number aren’t actually the same number – more focused on the point that a naked picture of her is out there somewhere.
“Oh Emma, calm down.”
“I can’t calm down! There’s a picture of me naked in the—“
“You didn’t send it to him okay!”
“You just said—“
“I stopped you before you could, alright?”
“But—“
“You’re a persistent drunk, so I uh,” she pauses here, and oh God here it comes, “redirected your message to someone else,” she says so quickly she almost doesn’t catch it.
“You what?”
“Right, so here’s the funny part,” – also known as ‘here’s the part I messed up bad’ – “remember that guy I’ve been trying to set you up with?”
Emma nods slowly here, one Killian something that works where Ruby works, who Emma has said no to on several occasions, when asked to set them up, vaguely recalling dark hair and blue eyes and frankly quite an attractive face from the Facebook picture Ruby had shown her.
Then it clicks.
(Excuse her slowness this morning, she is in fact suffering from a terrible hangover after all)
And shit.
“No.”
“Yeah, but he’s a nice guy! And, well, now you have to talk to him!”
“Ruby I was naked!”
“You weren’t! It was just a little flash of boob, okay! I’m not that bad of a friend,” she argues, “And I also tried deleting it before it sent, but your signal was pretty strong and I couldn’t do it in time.”
“God damn it, Ruby!” she stomps her foot rather petulantly, “I’m pretty sure this is breaking some girl rule or something.”
“At least it wasn’t sent to Neal,” she shrugs, turning back around to her laptop and resuming her scrolling as if she hadn’t just revealed that some guy Emma doesn’t even know has a picture of her naked (well, almost naked). “And I did explain to Killian what was happening – I doubt he even really looked at the picture.”
She considers the whole thing for a moment, weighing out the pros and the cons of the situation – pro: she didn’t embarrass herself in front of her ex; and con: she instead embarrassed herself in front of some handsome mutual friend she may have to bump into in the near future.
So instead, while Emma realises how conceited it sounds, she asks anyway, “Did I at least look… good?” she questions in a soft tone, cringing at even the thought of what she’s saying.
“Honey, you looked so good it made me wish you were sending that to me.”
Well at least there’s that. Even if she’d sent a complete stranger a more intimate photo than she had ever shared with any of her past boyfriends, at the very least she didn’t look like a drunk mess in it.
“I might’ve deleted it from the chat, but I’m pretty sure it’s in your camera roll.”
She huffs, rolling her eyes at the insinuation that she’s actually that vain. “I’m not going to inflate my ego any more, okay?”
But she does.
And she does look good. Turns out, morning runs aren’t actually needed for her, and sue her for liking the way she looks.
how much did you see, exactly?
Ruby did warn me beforehand
But I’m not going to lie to you
I did peek
But I swear all I saw was blonde hair and a hint of a red bra before my morals kicked in and I deleted it
I couldn’t even tell you the colour of your eyes
Honesty – she does appreciate it. Honest guys aren’t quite easy to come by – ask her, she knows – with her history of cheating boyfriends (shoutout to Neal Cassidy) to men who weren’t quite telling the truth about themselves (this one’s for you, Walsh Green!), she’d mastered the art of detecting lies.
She’s usually feels it at that same place she felt that her (not so) mystery texter was a man. She felt it with Walsh early on, managing to break off the relationship before things developed, unlike when Neal started cheating, which by then she was already too deep in love with him, too blind to even want to acknowledge to her gut feeling. Ergo, the heartbreak that followed after.
Not that I feel like I’d be memorising the colour of your eyes or anything
Given the nature of the picture
She laughs at this – well, the laugh people say they have when reading things from a screen, which ends up more like a little snicker she breathes out from her nose.
and you swear on this?
Upon my mother’s grave
good
She sees him typing and then deletes it, typing, deletes, typing, deletes, and she knows that he’s probably trying to continue this conversation, and it’s kind of cute how hard he’s trying (he’s kind of cute – maybe she shouldn’t have been so hard on Ruby – she could have sent it to worse guys), so instead, throwing tradition aside, she makes the move.
(Granted, sending a nude is practically skipping a dozen steps with a rather grand move, but putting that aside:)
since you kind of already know what I look like naked, how about we go out on a date?
maybe then you can memorise the shade of my eyes?
It’s a bold move on her end, and she quite likes the adrenaline that comes with it – to be the one waiting for the other’s answer, instead of the tables being unturned.
I swear I was going to come up with some smooth way in asking you out
But you beat me to it
it’s just a yes or no answer
Yes
-/-
They agree to go out on the next Saturday, and he’s at her door at seven sharp – far more punctual than she’d expected him to be.
The picture doesn’t do the blue of his eyes justice, not that she’d expect such a vibrant colour to be able to be caught on camera, nor does it truly show the cutting line of his jaw.
When she rushes back to her room to finish getting ready, she overhears the light-hearted threats Ruby makes, of which he should know aren’t actually empty promises (- she’s scary when she’s protective, almost like a lion with its cubs – she did actually punch Walsh in the nose, subsequent to knowing the truth of his lies, and Emma could not have been more thankful).
He does look faintly frightened by the time she comes out, mixed in with a look of awe that has her smirking.
By the end of the date, instead of kissing her goodnight, he tells her the exact shade of green her eyes are, all inclusive with facts as to what colours they change into in different scenarios.
While he leaves her slightly unsatisfied with the lack of a kiss, she can’t quite say she regrets taking that picture one bit.
-/-
(“Emerald in the light, yellow-green when you speak, and olive when you smile. But I think olive’s my favourite one.”)