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Aaron’s hand stills on top of the file. His eyes flick up, to Emily’s restlessly tapping foot and the glare she has fixed on the floor. Her bottom lip just about edges into a pout, a few centimeters shy of a sulk to match the creases between her brows. It’s been ten minutes of this silence, which makes everything abundantly clear.
“You’re moping.” He says suddenly, chasing his death as Emily’s foot stops tapping. Her neck snaps up, two bitter pools of brown burning his face.
“I’m not moping.” She sniffs, fingers tightening on her crossed arms. “I don’t mope. It’s not a thing I do.”
“I can take a picture.”
“Can you shove it up your—”
“Emily.” He coughs out a laugh, moving to perch on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. Her eyes track him, suspicious, still hard. “We can see her.” He offers.
“I don’t want to see her.” The corner of her mouth twitches. Bingo. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
She can deny it all she wants, but he knows the signs. Knows when the absence starts to grate and become too much. Like clockwork, anything past a fifteen day stretch and Emily’s mood goes sour, her body restless for another dose of Addison, her mouth tightly shut against the need to express it.
Doesn’t matter. He knows how it feels.
“Okay.” Aaron says. “Why don’t we go for lunch?”
Her glare eases some.
___
Emily huffs when he pulls into the hospital parking lot, shaking her head, grumbling under her breath. She still gets out of the car, poorly hiding a smile into her sleeve as she slams the door shut.
“You’re a liar.” She mutters. “A big fat fucking liar, Aaron.”
“I’m not,” he says, refraining from pointing out that she is. She looks at him sideways; her glare lacks its usual bite. “I’m not. We’ll go have lunch, I just thought you might like company.”
She grumbles, but her heel lands half an inch before his, not even outpacing him yet but still not quite in step with him. When asphalt turns to gleaming bright vinyl and they catch a hint of flaming hair, Emily leaves him in the dust, all pretenses gone. She flocks to Addison’s side, a shadow reading over her shoulder as she goes over a chart.
“Hey Doc, my mouth’s awfully sore, can you check it out?”
Addison starts, looking up to find a grinning Emily, a quietly standing Aaron. “God!” She clutches the chart with an exhaled breath. “Where did you pop out from?”
“Can you?”
Addison’s eyes roll in a flash of blue. Still, she doesn’t deny her. Neither of them really ever can.
Her hand finds the porcelain edge of Emily’s jaw for no reason. It’s one small peck, so chaste it hardly counts, but Emily’s eyes gleam, her lips struggling to stay pressed over her teeth. Addison falls short of looking annoyed, even with the vigorous shaking of her head.
“They have got to stop letting you guys in here.” She mutters.
“Not much stands in the way of a flashy badge.” Emily says cheerily, linking fingers, falling into step with her.
“Yeah.” Addison’s eyes rake over her, taking her in from top to bottom. “I’m sure it’s that.”
Emily is not displeased with the attention. She preens, clears her throat, follows Addison into her office and toys with five fingers worth six digits each. “Can I take you out to lunch?” She asks, her dimple shy, eyes doe-like and round.
Addison’s eyes flick behind her. At him.
“Will he be there?”
“He doesn’t have to be.” Emily says easily. “C’mon. When did you last eat?”
“When did you?”
She pauses, her forehead creasing. Aaron doesn’t know if she’s forgotten this morning’s chocolate croissant or if she’s pretending to. It doesn’t matter; she shrugs, and Addison’s eyes go wide. “Okay, lunch. Jesus. Bring him too, he’s paying.”
Emily’s face splits, her teeth gleaming pearly. “Baby, I’m rich enough for the both of us.”
Addison’s smile is not docile, but it’s far softer than anything she’s ever given him. “I feel better spending his money.” Her hand skims Emily’s jaw. Mellow. That’s how she is with her; sanded down, a strong gust of wind that takes care to tuck your hair behind your ears with gentle fingers. So very pliable, one degree shy of melting into a puddle at Emily’s feet.
“Besides”—icy blue meets his, gripping his heart in a fist—“he’s pretty to look at.”
“Hello to you too.” Aaron says dryly.
“Don’t be mean to him,” Emily murmurs, her fingers hooked into the belt loop of Addison’s coat. “He bruises easily.”
___
It’s not his favorite thing in the world, being teased and poked at by his girlfriend and his romantically ambiguous, sleeps in his bed, kisses his girlfriend (and also sometimes him), technically-ex-wife, but he finds himself helpless against it. Emily glows with her, softly blushing, always smiling, some part of her constantly wrapped around Addison like a boneless cat.
Aaron is vaguely aware that he should probably be jealous. Addison slices up bits of her steak and deposits them on Emily’s plate and he knows he should, because she never did that for him, but he’d do it for the both of them and beneath it all he just so deeply understands the urge, intimately familiar with both Addison’s fist around his heart and with Emily’s.
He sits across from them, very nearly excluded from their circle but still not. Emily’s ankle rolls around his. Addison’s hand reaches for his fries, two inches between their fingers on the same stretch of ceramic. Very delicately, they’re connected.
At least he thinks so.
He lets them steal fries from his plate because—well, Emily keeps eyeing them, and he’s shared fries with Addison for over a decade. It’s habit by now, stranger if she does hesitate and not take them. So he tilts his plate. Scoots the ketchup closer to Addison’s side. By the time the clock ticks closer to one, his plate lies at the center of the table.
Addison scoots to let Emily out of the booth, a barely there hand against her hip guiding her out. The smile she flashes her disappears as her attention turns to him; she leans her elbows on the table, concaving in, idly reaching for his plate again. Her eyes narrow but they don’t pinch at the corners, the skin gone soft from her smiles, the high pitched laughter Emily pulled from her like she was weaving thread into gold.
The switch up should make him burn. Like an idiot, he has to force himself upright against his seat, his spine grounding into fine powder under her stare.
“So, lunch breaks are okay now?”
He regains a bit of solidity.
“You weren’t too keen on them either.” Aaron murmurs. “If I remember correctly.”
Addison goes quiet, pink lips pressing delicately together. Her eyes slide past him, fixing on something in the distance as she rakes her hand through her hair, pushes it back.
“Your girlfriend is…persuasive.”
His chin dips. He nearly says that she’s practically her girlfriend too, if they’re doing this labels thing now, but he refrains.
“Come over for dinner.”
“For Emily?”
“For…both of you. You don’t sleep well alone.”
Her brow arches. “I thought it was just dinner.”
“Addison.”
“Aaron. God. You’re just as clingy as your clingy girlfriend.” She mutters, popping a fry into her mouth. “You enable each other. And besides,” she cuts across before he can intervene, “who says I’m sleeping alone?”
His lips tick upward. Aaron leans forward, hooks his fingers into the delicate chain tucked under the hem of her dress, and pulls it out. Two rings tumble down her chest, stacking on top of each other with a clink that sounds like the satisfied edge of his smile.
“Are you?”
“I hate you.”
“What’d he do?” Emily tuts, sweeping back in with freshly glossed lips and artfully arranged bangs. Her eyes fall to the rings. She sends him a glare, fingers delicate as she plucks the chain from the pale curve of Addison’s neck. “Jesus, Aaron. Give her grace, will you?” Gently, she tucks them back under Addison’s dress, smiling at her as she skims her jaw. “Don’t worry, babe. He still carries his ring around in his briefcase. Sometimes his pocket.” She leans down, carefully kisses a still dumfounded Addison. “Come over for dinner?”
Addison’s mouth hangs, a smudge of lipstick blurring past her bottom lip.
“I’m not sleeping next to him.” She blurts out.
Emily’s smile is small, dripping with honey. “More for me, then.”