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abigail could stay like this forever, she thinks.
stretched out on a queen sized mattress, leaning into emma’s side, staring lazily and blearily ahead into the screen of her laptop, where some beauty vlogger’s video about a new line of vegan eyeliner plays. of course, she isn’t paying attention at all. she’s more focused on the taste of strawberry wine on her lips and the way emma’s fingers twirl around the faded strands of pink in her hair. the lamps mounted to the wall between the two hotel beds casts the entire room in a hazy orange glow that reminds her of the sunset over the lake up north. she tips her head back to look at the woman wrapped around her, but she’s lost in her phone, her free hand tapping away at a text message.
“i thought you muted everything,” abi frowns. all notifications, shut off the second the trial began. it was the only thing to keep their phones from practically exploding with updates, messages, follower requests, tagged posts, and calls.
“it’s just my dad. he’s texting me about checkout times.” emma drops her phone into the sheets and her hand, now free, finds its way to abigail’s chest. she pulls her closer.
“what time do we gotta be outta here by?”
“11 on friday. he couldn’t get the delayed time slot, so we’ll have to wake up early.”
that gives them two more nights together, counting whatever is left of this one.
“you could always just come stay with me and my mom.” abi props herself up better, leaning on an elbow. “i still sleep in a twin sized bed, but we could make it work.”
emma smiles, but shakes her head. “i’ve gotta get home,” is all she says.
abigail sticks her bottom lip out in a pout. she knew that'd be the answer, but the thought of their time together already coming to an end again stings a little. a week is not enough for her.
“but you’ll have plenty of time on the weekends to come sleep with me in my full sized bed this fall,” she hums.
“what?”
“well, now that we know for sure that we’re like, basically getting away with murder -” she starts to joke, but when abi winces, she’s quick to get to the point, “i can still go to school, if any of them will take me after all of this, anyways, and i think i wanna come up here. new york.”
abi’s fingertips brush over emma’s wrist. “really?”
“i could use a more permanent change of scenery. i’ve lived in LA my whole life. and depending on where i pick, you’ll only be a few hours away from me. i know you and ryan plan on staying local and moving in together, but if you get tired of him and dylan, you could always drop by.”
“oh, you know i’m going to get tired of dylan,” she snorts. “he’s already telling us how he wants us to decorate. did i tell you about that? last night at dinner, he suggested a stripper pole for the living room. he said he’ll start taking classes. then jacob said something about how it’s actually really good for like, building core strength, and maybe he’ll join him, and they can totally magic mike it up at our place. magic mike mondays.”
emma groans and pulls at her eyelids for dramatic effect. “no.”
“yeah. so depending on my class schedule, i’ll probably be crashing with you more often than you’re probably thinking.”
she shakes her head, then gestures to the two of them, their limbs entangled under the covers. “why would i say no to this?”
it wasn’t even originally abi’s plan to room with emma. for the week of the trial, they had all agreed to stay at a rather classy hotel on the same street as the courthouse, suggested and mostly paid for by the mountebanks. it had been a whirlwind eight months of waiting and waiting and oh my god, the waiting, in addition to being hounded by the police, press, and public. it didn’t help that emma had already been a somewhat popular influencer, which only brought more attention to their case. the first night in the hotel, abigail dragged herself down the hall, away from the room she had been sharing with her mother, to emma’s suite, where the girls ordered room service and fell asleep in the same bed. this quickly became their nightly routine for the remainder of their stay, and abigail realized it would be more convenient to just move all of her luggage into the empty corner of the room.
she knows emma could use the company. even since they were all proven innocent, she still hasn’t left their floor of the hotel room, not even for the celebratory dinner her parents took everyone out for. she’s gone to the ice machine late at night, and left twice to talk to her mother and father next door. it’s a little worrying, if you ask abi.
“emma…” abigail starts, but the words get caught in her throat.
the blonde quirks a brow and waits for her to continue.
“can you just like, give me a solid answer of what’s going on here?”
“what do you mean?” she purses her lips.
abi sits up even further. “when we got to camp last summer, i thought maybe we had this like, mutual connection or something, and there was that time we kissed in my bunk,” she swallows, “but then you told me two days later you’d hooked up with jacob. and now that we’ve been back together again, we’ve been all over each other, but i’ve been too scared to get my hopes up, and -”
“i don’t like boys, abi.”
abigail blinks, processing her words. “okay, but -”
“i thought i did, but i don’t. i just liked jacob’s attention.” emma hides her face in the crook of her elbow, stretching out more on the mattress. abigail’s gaze flits down to her torso, which is now exposed from under the sheets. there’s a nice stretch of skin between where her cropped top ends and her leggings begin. “i liked the way guys made me feel, but i didn’t actually like guys. i called jacob crying about it on christmas. i told him i was sorry and i think i’m a lesbian and then he started crying and asked me if he was so bad at kissing that it made girls gay and i told him he was a fucking moron and i loved him but not in the way i’ve loved girls. then he asked if i was going to go all orange is the new black and get a hot prison wife if we were convicted.”
“he’s seen orange is the new black?”
“who knows. but you’d think a guy with two moms would understand that him shoving his tongue down my throat every time we kissed isn’t enough to make me gay,” emma scoffs.
“so…”
“so my therapist and i talked about it. i think last summer, i was too scared to go any further with you, because i actually like you and i value our friendship. i didn’t want to hurt your feelings if we couldn’t keep up with long distance when camp was over.”
abi draws her knees close into her chest. “but what does that mean for us now?”
emma peeks up at her from under her arm. “i don’t know. what do you want it to mean?”
this earns her an eyeroll from abigail. “emma, do you want to actually like, be in a relationship with me? oh my god, this is so awkward.”
the bed shifts underneath them as emma sits up. “i’d be pretty stupid to tell you no again.”
abigail tries to think of something to say, but her mind is a sputtering, fumbling mess. her heart starts to race a little too quickly in her chest, her forehead feels hot and fuzzy, her hands sweaty and clammy -
“abi? you good?”
she hangs her head. “i just really like you, and i’m relieved, because i was starting to worry i was reading too far into things, or maybe i was reading the vibe wrong altogether.”
emma pushes up her face with her fingers, turning her head towards her. “that’s pretty cute.”
“i still think about kissing you, like, a lot, okay? and i wanted to do it again, but i was scared you’d either be like, ‘ew!’ or maybe you’d just be like, ‘aw, we’re gal pals, just besties being-’”
their lips meeting is enough to shut her rambling up for now, and once again, she’s flooded with a sense of relief. it’s soft and brief before they part, only for abi to reach around, grab emma’s ponytail, and pull her back in. this is going to make long distance way harder, abigail thinks as emma’s hands start to ride up her shirt, grabbing at anything they can find. she leans back against the pillows, emma following her. a small whine escapes her throat when the other woman tips her head back, their eyes meeting.
“i’m still not out to anyone but you and jacob,” emma breathes.
“that’s okay,” abi nods. “take your time with it. i’ll be there for you.”
“my followers used to ship me with this other girl, jessica. she’s a little bit older than me and came out a few years ago and makes content kinda similar to mine. there were like, fanfictions and shit. she got with one of her friends, though, and she told everyone to knock it off, because i’m younger than her and it was weird.” emma blurts out, and she can’t help but laugh when abigail breaks out into a wide grin.
“how did i not know about that? that’s so fucking funny!”
“my parents asked me if we were dating. they weren’t mad, just confused. i had to explain to them what jemma was when they saw fancams pop up on instagram.”
“well, at least they’ll be supportive, right?”
emma shrugs. “i guess so. they don’t seem like they’d care one way or the other. they’re more liberal than you’d think. i’m not that worried about telling everyone else anymore, either. people on twitter already call ryan a bicon for his totally epic clapbacks in court and kaitlyn’s got girls flooding her DMs and mentions every day. nobody will even really care, it’s just a matter of actually doing it, you know?”
abi gives another nod, then takes a moment to think. “do you think people will come up with a cute ship name for us?”
she groans. “god, no.”
“emmagail. blygbank.”
“i’m not doing this.”
“abima? mounteblyg?”
“stop it!” emma grabs a pillow and shoves it towards abigail, knocking her over onto her side as she starts to laugh.
“give the people what they want, em!”
“stop it!” emma shrieks again, abigail’s giggling contagious.
abigail blocks her face with both arms as emma gives her another swat with the pillow. “you know i’m right!”
“you know, you’ll have to deal with the total invasion of privacy, too. moreso than you already do. people got obsessed with me and jacob when the news of everything first broke out, because he started telling people we were dating, even though we weren’t.”
“i’m okay with that, i think.”
“really?”
abi shrugs. “everyone knowing emma mountebank is with me? more attention on my illustration portfolio? something other to talk about than the fact that i was thrown in the back of a police car covered in nick’s blood last summer? yeah, i could get used to that.”
“okay, okay, that’s fair.”
“now will you put the pillow down and come back over here?”
emma obeys, dropping the bedding and finding her way back into their previous position. “but can we take things slow?”
the last few months have been nothing but slow, abigail thinks, but she hears her out.
“i’ve always rushed into every relationship i’ve ever been in, and everything has just been so chaotic lately. i just want, like, some peace and quiet for a little bit, and i want us to have some semblance of normalcy.”
“you don’t want me to pull a jacob and start saying i love you the same week you go down on me for the first time,” she snickers, and emma makes a retching noise.
“you’re like, my best friend, abi. i just want to make sure we do this right.”
her cheeks grow hot at that. “me too.”