Chapter Text
Friday, June 7th, 2019
What is it about birthdays that makes them lose their charm as you get older? For Emma Nelson, turning thirty was nothing to look forward to and it only reminded her that none of the dreams which she had as a hopeful teenager, so sure she’d be a marine biologist or something close to it by now, had actually come true. Instead, life had turned out differently: no degree, few marketable skills for the “real” world, and already one divorce behind her. It felt more like a day to mourn than to celebrate with the kind of party that her parents clearly envisioned. Even the idea of old friends returning to town for the occasion couldn’t lift her spirits, and when she woke that morning, all she really wanted was to stay in bed and let the day quietly pass by until life could go back to normal.
It wasn’t hard for her to pinpoint a few moments in her life that, in their own way, had led her to where she was now: unemployed, back living with her mom, half-brother, and stepdad, and with so little money in her bank account that she couldn’t remember the last time it held more than a couple hundred dollars. It had started with her attempt at college, which didn’t go at all as planned and came to an abrupt end after just two semesters. She’d learned the meaning of “College isn’t for everyone” the hard way, but that was only part of her fall from grace. Mostly, it was everything that had happened since then which had cemented in her mind the idea that her parents would have to be crazy if they were still proud of her.
Marrying Gavin “Spinner” Mason on a drunken whim had clearly been a mistake, even if he was still arguably her closest friend in the city nearly two years after their divorce. Then again, who else could it have been, with her old friends living elsewhere and the ones she’d made in her twenties now busy raising families, leaving little time to hang out with someone like her? Honestly, she was happy for him too, seeing as he deserved it just for being such a genuinely nice guy to everyone lucky enough to know him, as she had, that he’d recently found love again with his old high school flame Paige, who had moved back to Toronto after a disappointing decade in Hollywood, and she had no doubt in her mind that he was far better off with her than he ever would have been with herself.
Their marriage ending was just one of those things that happens, she figured, especially for a young couple who’d rushed into such a big commitment far too soon. He’d wanted kids, something she still didn’t feel ready for, and she knew Paige had long wanted the same things he did. In her mind, it had worked out for the best for him, if not for her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried dating since the divorce, but none of the guys had shown real long-term potential. Even the few she’d slept with had been more about easing her loneliness than anything else. Truthfully, there was only one guy she really wanted to be with, and sadly, she hadn’t seen him in over a decade: Sean Cameron.
First loves can be incredibly hard to move past, something she knew all too well, having never really gotten over her own. She had loved Spinner with most of her heart, but there was always a part of it that belonged to Sean, the boy she’d fallen for at the tender age of twelve and who had never truly left her thoughts. Thinking back now to the butterflies that had filled her stomach when she’d first talked to him, or their first (rather disastrous!) date, or their first kiss at her mom’s wedding to her stepfather, was almost enough to make her feel like she was that age again, when life was simple in the best possible ways.
"How does it feel to officially be an adult now?" her mom joked after she finally got out of bed and joined her, her stepdad, and her half-brother Jack (who, at fifteen, was now also in the dating stage with a sweet as can be girlfriend that he was crazy about and who was impossible not to like) for a bit of breakfast that would hopefully set the tone for the day ahead.
"Can't I put it off for another couple of years?" she joked darkly as she poured herself a cup of pitch-black coffee, hoping it would make her feel more ready for the day than she did at that moment.
"You’re not the only one who’s felt that way on this day of your life, honey," said her stepfather, who had been more of a father to her than her brain-damaged biological dad could ever manage to be. She didn’t blame him for it since it wasn’t his fault, but in her eyes, Archie (or “Snake” to his oldest friends) was her real dad in every way that mattered.
"Did you feel that way, Dad?" Jack, who admired his father more than most boys she’d met, asked the one biological parent they didn’t share.
"That is a deeply hidden secret I’m taking to the grave!" their dad deadpanned, earning only a small laugh from his son.
"I don’t suppose we could all pretend it’s my twenty-fifth birthday instead?" she half-joked, taking a big sip of the brown nectar in her cup.
"Ooh, I love that idea!" her mom replied with a half-laugh. "Can we pretend that I’m turning twenty-five on my next birthday too?"
"We could, but no one would believe it for a second!" Jack quipped back in his usual smart-ass style, one of the many things impossible not to like about him.
What a birthday this was going to be!
Growing up, if there was one person in Emma’s life who was almost as important to her as her mother, it was Manny (short for Manuella). Even though they didn’t see each other often anymore, their bond went far beyond an ordinary friendship. For years, Emma had thought of Manny as the sister she never had, and it was second nature to call her whenever something exciting happened in her life (not that it was all that frequent). She knew instinctively that Manny felt the same way and if her fourteen-year-old self had been given a million guesses about who Manny would end up with, then Jay Hogart (the former juvenile delinquent) would’ve been the last name she’d pick. Yet from the moment Manny began talking about him, it was clear she’d found the one. Manny’s romantic history before Jay was full of guys who either took advantage of her naivety (with first boyfriend Craig Manning topping the list) or failed to truly see and appreciate how amazing she was. In Jay, though, she’d found her perfect match, and even if they hadn’t fully settled down yet, there was no doubt they’d be together for the long haul, maybe even for the rest of their lives.
She couldn’t help feeling a little jealous that it hadn’t been her who, like Manny, had somehow stumbled into the best relationship she could have hoped for. Still, it was hard not to be happy for her friend, especially now that they’d finally gotten engaged after such a long buildup that it was starting to get ridiculous. They’d even been “Fake Engaged” for a while before that (which is a whole other story that's too long to get into here) but now that they were “Engaged for Real,” her friend seemed to be glowing all the time. And it wasn’t just because her acting career, after a few rough patches, was finally looking up, thanks to landing a decent role in a big-budget Hollywood movie instead of the B-movies and low-budget streaming series she’d mostly been in before.
“So, is there love on your horizon, Em?” Manny asked as they waited for Jay to return from searching for a men’s room at the train station where she’d come to pick them up in her dad’s car.
“I wouldn’t call it likely,” she replied curtly. Her love life (or lack thereof) was such a depressing topic that she rarely discussed it, even with the one person who knew her better than anyone, including her ex-husband and her family.
“You really can’t find a guy you could see yourself with in a city this big?” her best friend pressed. Truthfully, she couldn’t, as unlikely as that might seem.
“I’ve already got one failed marriage behind me, Manny. I’m not in any hurry to add another to that list,” she sharply replied, making her friend shake her still-pretty head.
“I get that, but if you don’t get out there and meet people, you’ll never find love again,” Manny reminded her. “When was your last date?”
“It wasn’t that long ago!” she protested, recalling how she used to love objecting to anything she didn’t like when she was younger.
“And?” Manny prompted.
“I knew from the start that I didn’t want a second date with him. Still slept with him, though,” she admitted, making Manny giggle at her bluntness. “Being thirty and trying to find someone isn’t nearly as easy as it was when we were teenagers, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Spinner managed to, didn’t he?” Manny pointed out.
“Yeah, with a girl he’d been close friends with since kindergarten! I don’t have anyone like that in my life unless you count Toby, and I really doubt he’d leave my former sister-in-law and their two kids for someone he’s never been romantically involved with,” she told Manny. Honestly, she couldn’t imagine “Good Old Tobes” and herself lasting more than a month or two as a couple, even if he wanted to.
“There is one guy who sort of fits that bill,” Manny reminded her.
“Sean and I haven’t talked in years. Sure, I’d love to get another chance with him out of the blue, but that’s not really in the cards, is it? He’s probably been snapped up by some other girl who wouldn’t let him slip through her fingers like I did multiple times.”
“In that case, I guess you wouldn’t be interested in knowing that he’s divorced too now and back on the market?” Manny asked casually. Instantly, Emma felt those old butterflies in her stomach, just like in the past when it came to Sean Cameron.
“How do you know?” she asked, trying not to sound too excited.
“Jay still emails him once in a while. I also know where he lives here in Toronto, if you’re interested,” Manny said, meeting her eyes to gauge her reaction.
“I didn’t even know he was back in the city. Is he…”
“Still as interested in you as you are in him?” Manny finished for her.
"Well?"
“All I can say for sure is that he often asks Jay in his emails if he knows how you’ve been doing lately. Do you really think he’d do that if he wasn’t at least a little interested in revisiting some old memories with you?”
Could there actually be a chance, however small, that she might end up with the boy of her dreams after all? It seemed almost too far-fetched to believe, but stranger things have happened, haven’t they?
As the months leading up to her thirtieth birthday passed, Emma felt less inclined to celebrate it than she ever had before. Not that she’d ever thrown many big parties and most of her birthdays had been spent with those closest to her, like her mom, Manny, and their late friend JT Yorke, whose life had been taken in the most senseless way by a random stranger he’d been unlucky enough to encounter. She missed him deeply and made a point to visit his grave a few times each month, if only to remember his goofy smile and the way he could lift her spirits just by being his cheerful, genuine self.
Life can be cruel, and it had been especially so for him that night in their late teens, when all his hopes and dreams were shattered because some kid lost control of his temper. Oddly enough, over time she’d become, in a small way, friends with Johnny Marco, the only other person who was there at the scene of the crime that night and might have been able to stop things from getting out of hand. From their talks, she knew he still carried the heavy weight of not stepping in when he could have. Every so often, they’d text or meet at JT’s grave, and as she shared childhood stories and spoke of the amazing friend JT had been, Johnny would often cry, which usually made her cry too. Having to go on living with a guilt like that is one hell of a tough burden to carry, especially with years of hindsight, and no one wore it more than he did.
Probably wisely, he’d decided to skip her birthday party, knowing there would be people who still hadn’t (and likely never would) forgive him. He’d only been a big kid at the time, and as he’d told her many times, the whole thing had happened so fast that he didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. Toby and Liberty, for example, had taken a break from their busy lives to stop by with their families, visiting an old friend on what should have been a milestone day. The fact that Liberty had found love and started a family after losing her first great love so brutally was a small miracle, though Emma knew that much like she felt about Sean, Liberty would always have a place in her heart for the one who should have been there and telling bad homemade jokes that only worked because of his impeccable delivery of them. Toby was still the same as ever, just with a beard now and a few more years under his belt, and while she rarely said it, she was grateful to still have them in her life, even in some small way.
Aside from them, Manny, Jay, and her ex-husband Spinner, she couldn’t really say she had many friends. Because of that, it had been a small gathering with only about two dozen people, most of them family members she rarely spoke to and had only invited out of politeness. Honestly, apart from her closest friends and her mom, stepdad, and half-brother, the only person she spoke to somewhat regularly was Paige, the young woman now keeping her ex-husband company through the long, cold Canadian winters and who, in many ways, had been like an older sister to many of the younger girls, herself included, back in their simpler Degrassi Community School days.
“Did you hear that Sean’s back in town?” Paige asked as they helped her parents clean up after the party, most of the guests already gone.
“I just found out today,” she replied. Paige had always been like an older, slightly wiser sister, even if their one-year age gap didn’t matter much anymore. “How did you find out?”
“Spinner told me that he's applied for one of the open spots at The Dot, so it wasn’t hard to put two and two together,” Paige answered.
“Really? Have you talked to him?” she inquired, trying not to sound like the twelve-year-old who had once fallen head over heels for him.
“Not yet, but I’m guessing you’d want to! Emma, just because things didn’t work out with Spinner doesn’t mean that we don’t both only want the best for you. Life’s short, so what do you have to lose by seeing him again?” Paige said. And of course, she wanted to see Sean again, as long as it was under the right circumstances.
"Sure, I’d love to talk to him again, but it’s not like I have a ‘Sean Detector’ that tells me exactly where he is at any given moment," she reminded Paige, who could only giggle at her complaints.
"He’ll be at The Dot at twelve-thirty tomorrow, on the dot, no pun intended. That much I know for sure. Look, do with that information what you will, but if it were me still pining after the one that got away, I’d at least go down there and try to start a conversation with him," Paige said. And maybe she should, just to see if there was a slim chance that he might want to try dating again.
She wrapped up the day by heading to a bar with Spinner, Paige, Manny, and Jay, but after such a long day, it didn’t take long for her eyelids to grow heavy. She excused herself, grabbed a taxi, and was home well before there was any chance of getting drunk. She’d never been much into substances anyway (aside from a handful of times where she’d tried the “Wacky-Backy” during her one year of college) so it was probably for the best. Besides, she actually had a solid reason to get up relatively early the next morning for once.
That reason was the one guy whom she wanted to get back together with more than any other lover that she’d ever had.
END OF CHAPTER ONE