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Andrea Sachs. The complete and utter bane of her existence.
How the bloody hell this girl had wormed her way into the position at the desk across from her, Emily would never know. For crying out loud, Andy didn’t even read Runway.
The irony of it all was almost too much.
Emily continued to type aggressively on her keyboard as she complained further to herself.
Anyone could see that the imbecile didn’t know the first thing about fashion. And that wasn’t even getting started on the frumpy sweaters and hideous skirts she had the gall to stumble in wearing every day — at least, up until a week ago. Emily paused her movements. She could still recall the way her mouth had hung open as Andrea had waltzed in that first morning, dripping in Chanel and her hair styled to perfection. It loathed Emily to admit the girl looked phenomenal in couture — just in an objective sense, of course. Nothing more.
Not that she’d ever voice that admittance aloud anyway.
Unlike Serena. The traitor.
“Uggghh…” came the frustrated, struggling groan from behind the door. Emily looked up from her computer upon hearing the disruption to the peace and quiet she’d been enjoying. She drew her gaze to the cause of the noise and found herself rolling her eyes at the spectacle playing out on the other side of the glass. “Please don’t fall, please don’t fall…” she heard Andrea chanting to herself while fumbling her way through the door, balancing various items in her arms.
Once through, Emily was able to look at her properly, unamused brows arched upwards as she scanned the appearance of her coworker. She tried to hide her smirk when she noticed the slight frizz the girl’s hair had accumulated. No doubt from running across the city for the last hour — Emily certainly did not miss that part of her job from her former days as the second assistant.
“Hiya, Emily!”
She halted the internal judgments she had been casting onto Andrea when that very brunette decided to look straight towards her, beaming widely as she caught the breath she’d lost from her trek across the streets of New York. Emily didn’t entertain her with a response, she snapped her eyes back to her computer.
Andrea’s constant cheery demeanour towards her was baffling. It wasn't as though they were mates. They were barely even acquaintances. Yet, Emily apparently found in the last couple of months that no matter how many of Andrea’s pathetic attempts to build a rapport between them she’d shut down, it didn’t seem to phase the other woman.
It was getting rather desperate, honestly.
“Emily?”
“What?” the redhead acknowledged boredly, eyes still glued to her screen.
“Is- oh shoot…” Andrea trailed off as one of the many Calvin Klein bags full of samples on her right arm slipped from her grip and onto the floor. Miranda had been on her way to a meeting earlier and, before departing, had sent Andrea on another run of errands, leaving Emily alone to man the desks. Based on the look of exhaustion on her face, Emily concluded that Andrea had actually managed to complete the list of errands she'd been sent on. Albeit, with all the grace of an anaesthetised elephant. “Is- is she back?” Andrea jerked her head in the direction of the closed door to Miranda’s office.
“You better pick that up,” Emily neglected to answer the question and pointed at the Klein bag before tacking on, “and no, she isn't. Not for another half hour,” her answer was brief, as usual. Emily paid the brunette no further acknowledgment until she caught the blur of Andrea’s flailing body in her peripheral vision. Curiosity piqued, she pulled her focus from her work once again and spectated from her desk. Forehead wrinkled in bemusement, Emily watched as Andrea bent her legs — in a way that was certainly not natural — while trying to not drop the Starbucks she was holding or any of the other items in the process. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Picking up the bag, like you said.”
“And you couldn’t put everything else down first?” she questioned as Andrea lowered herself closer to the ground to retrieve the fallen bag, Emily’s eyes widening when she noticed the tray of drinks tilting ever-so-slightly in the girl’s hand. “Andy, don’t you dare spill a drop. Miranda will have my head. And then I’ll have yours.”
“I know, I know,” Andrea grunted dismissively, fingertips brushing the handle of the bag she was trying (and failing) to pick up, “you know, despite what you think, I- ugh, I am capable of doing something without messing it up.”
“Of course,” Emily nodded sarcastically, pushed away from her desk to stand, and smoothed out her skirt with her palms, “which is why you look like you’re about to collapse on your arse at any moment now.”
“I won’t,” Andrea perkily insisted, her own body contradicting that statement moments later — her leg suddenly jerked from the uncomfortable position it was resting in, throwing her off balance. Seeing how close Andrea was to falling, Emily stopped finding amusement in the girl’s buffoonery — Miranda would surely end both of them in a heartbeat if the Klein items ended up in tatters. She quickly circled her desk, heels clicking in rapid succession as she approached Andrea, arm outstretched.
“Oi,” she called and looked down at her, “coffees. Give them to me.”
“Okay, okay,” Andrea sighed. Her arm shook, failing to hand over the beverages due to being unable to raise her arm, given her current position. Emily sighed and leant down lower, shooting an unamused stare at her.
“Quickly, Andy.”
“Right, uh… here. Take it. My arm is killing me-“
Just as Emily reached for the tray, Andrea’s legs finally gave out.
“Woah!”
The drinks slipped from the brunette’s already-weakening grip, hitting the ground in unison with her. The lids came loose, sending the hot liquid all over the floor.
And both assistants.
“Crap! Emily, I am… so sorry.”
“Ow- fuck, fucking hell!” Emily hissed in pain. She stumbled backwards, her legs stinging from the coffee that had splashed on her skin and clothes. “For Christ’s sake, Andy!”
Absolute fucking twat.
“I-my leg just couldn’t stay up and-“
“Andrea. Andy. Just… sh-shut up. Shut. Up,” she snapped, voice calm, yet quivering a touch from the pain she was failing to mask. Pressing her middle and index fingers to her temple, Emily exhaled shakily, chest tightening with anxiety as she wracked her mind for a solution. “Right…” she paused, closing her eyes, “Miranda will be here soon, so I… will call for a cleaner while you,” she glared pointedly at Andrea, “put everything else away. Now.”
“Right, of course,” Andrea nodded apologetically, scrambling to her feet and shifting uncomfortably in her now-damp pants, “Emily, I really am sorry-“
“Stop wasting time and just go. It’s a bloody miracle none of the bags are soaked,” the redhead breathed, already back at her desk and dialling the number for the cleaning crew. Andrea silently obeyed, shuffling over to the sample room to put the clothing away.
The cleaning staff arrived promptly a few minutes later to mop the floor — thank goodness for small miracles — leaving Emily with the final matter of her ruined clothing to settle. Breathing out deeply, she waited a brief moment until Andrea appeared from the sample room, her eyes scanning up and down the girl’s outfit before spotting the faint outline of a stain and deducing she too had the same issue to resolve.
“Right,” she muttered as she strode over to the brunette, “come along,” the order came through clenched teeth.
“Huh? What do you- woah!” Andrea cried out, startled by the cold fingers digging into her arm. Emily ignored her yelp of pain, gripping her by the wrist. She pulled Andrea along as though she were a mother dragging around her misbehaving toddler, guiding the pair of them down a short hallway they’d both rarely traversed. “Where are we going?”
Emily, a few steps in front of Andrea, ignored the question, heels pounding against the floor until she abruptly brought both herself and her colleague to a halt outside a rather large set of doors. Releasing Andrea from her grip, Emily reached out and swung open one of the doors, jerking her head in the direction of the doorway.
“Get in,” she demanded.
“Oh… kay,” the brunette sighed, having given up on asking any more questions. She walked in with Emily in tow.
The closet was huge, mostly used as a storage area for items that were no longer in season or that had been rejected from an upcoming collection. In other words: convenient for two people in desperate need of a new outfit after one of them spilled a bloody coffee all over them both.
“Now,” Emily sighed, closing the door behind her, “despite your recent upgrade in attire, I assume you still have no clue how to style yourself?” she watched as Andrea self consciously pulled at the sleeves of her Valentino blazer, mouth opening and closing in an attempt to find the words.
“Uh… I- uh, well, Nigel picked this out for me-“
“And I rest my case. Now…” Emily uttered, turning away from the brunette to swipe hanger after hanger across one of the dozens of clothing racks. She perused the choices with haste, well aware that Miranda was due to return shortly, and plucked a pair of dark blue Dior pants from the Winter collection a few years prior. “Here. These trousers suit your complexion, I suppose,” she shrugged, tossing them at Andrea. “And if you’re going to wear those…” she trailed off before turning back to the rack, pulling out another article of clothing, “you might as well wear the matching blouse.”
“Thanks, Em. I-I know I screwed up. I appreciate you doing this for me,” Andrea smiled sheepishly as she took the top from Emily, who immediately shook her head and raised her arm to point a manicured finger at her.
“Don’t make that face. I- I am not doing this for you, I’m doing it for me.”
“I know,” Andrea shrugged, “but it was still nice of you.”
“Yeah, well…” Emily paused, tongue clicking against her teeth as she carefully curated the next few words out of her mouth, “if Miranda found out you nearly ruined the Calvin Klein samples on my watch, I’ll likely be the one she blames. And I am not risking Paris being taken away from me,” she insisted quickly, to which Andrea quietly nodded, pressing her lips together to suppress her grin. Resisting the urge to scoff, Emily simply avoided looking at the brown eyes that were watching her intently, instead fixing her gaze onto the clothes she'd just handed over. “These are only to be borrowed and brought back tomorrow, do you hear me?”
“Mm hmm,” Andrea shook her head affirmatively.
“Good,” Emily said, satisfied. “Now, change quickly."
“But what are you going to wear?”
The question caught her by surprise, and Emily could have smacked herself right then and there — picking her own outfit had slipped her mind until that moment. There was no way she had been that concerned over Andrea. Surely not…
Hiding her startlement, Emily coolly walked over to a clothing rack a few feet away and effortlessly picked out a gorgeous burgundy dress, as though she’d planned to wear it all along.
“This.”
If the redhead’s memory served her correctly, the dress had been slated to appear in the Chanel Spring/Summer line last year before Miranda had axed it for ‘lacking soul’. Cutting off just above the knees, it was appropriate enough to wear around the office while also being of a quality to clearly signify it as a designer item.
Andrea’s gaze swept up and down the dress, head tilting with a gentle smile.
“It’s pretty.”
“I know,” Emily murmured. As she then tried to find a way to say her next few words to Andrea, without bringing attention to the obvious fact that both of them were about to be very undressed in each other's presence, an awkward cough escaped her. “Now, when you… uhm, you know, get changed and whatnot, face that wall. I’ll face the opposite one. Turn around,” she said, gesturing to the left side of the closet. Andrea did as she had just been told and shifted until her back was towards Emily.
“Works for me.”
Emily hadn’t had the chance to move yet when Andrea already began to remove her blazer, revealing the see-through camisole that resided underneath it. Inhaling sharply, Emily’s eyes grazed over the brunette's back for a moment — that sheer top left nothing to the imagination — until she caught herself and averted her gaze, a pit forming in her stomach. She hated that she didn’t know what had possessed her to stare.
Snapping out of her stupor, Emily was quick to move. She turned quietly on her heel before shucking her ruined frock and setting it aside. The thought of having the dress cleaned and the cost it would require caused her to huff, but her frustration quickly dissipated when the cold air around her brushed against the skin of her body. The chill wasn’t enough to give her goosebumps, but what did make Emily freeze was, ironically, the body heat radiating from the brunette mere inches behind her — she could feel it gently against her lower back.
And the reality of the circumstances truly hit her like a ton of bricks.
She was alone in a bloody closet with Andrea Sachs. Practically naked.
Swallowing harshly, Emily shook her thoughts aside and attempted to will away the blush that — she assumed from the sudden heat rushing to her face — had formed on her cheeks, for a reason that she still couldn’t put her finger on.
She ignored the sinking feeling that deepened in her stomach and slipped the Chanel dress from its hanger. Despite being slightly bothered that it was half a size too big, she guided it over her head and down her body anyway, sticking to the choice knowing that there was no time to be picky. With the dress on, Emily ran her hands through her hair, sighing in relief at being rid of the disgusting sensation of damp clothes against her skin. Ready to leave, she turned back around.
“Right, let’s get back before Miran- for heaven's sake, what on earth are you doing?” she cut herself off after laying eyes on a struggling Andrea, fiddling with the zipper of her pants. The brunette looked up, unkempt bangs partly obscuring her eyes as she looked pleadingly at Emily.
“It’s stuck. I can’t-”
“Oh, you’re useless,” Emily muttered under her breath, stepping forward and interrupting Andrea’s grunts of concentration. “Come here,” she tutted, pulling Andrea closer from the waistband until they were practically pressed against each other.
Their sudden closeness led to the revival of that unidentifiable tightness in Emily’s stomach.
With a deep inhale she dutifully ignored the feeling just like she had before, whilst her nimble fingers fastened the brunette’s pants immediately — almost immediately. It had taken a few attempts, her hands had faltered because her mind was clouded with the fact that she was oh, so close to her infuriating coworker.
“It wasn’t the trousers, it was just you. Idiot,” she released her hold on Andrea and stepped backwards ever-so-slightly. Andrea took no offence from the remark, her head instead tilting down as she chuckled quietly, wondering if Emily was aware of how unintentionally funny she was.
However, Andrea’s laughter soon stopped when her attention was stolen by something else that had caught her eye.
“Emily, your legs.”
“What?” Emily asked, looking down to see the faint red splotches littered across her knees and further down her legs. “Oh.”
“The coffee did that? God, I feel terrible, I didn’t know th- that it’d burned you,” Andrea stammered. “Are you okay?”
Emily scoffed. The initial burn had hurt like hell but, to her luck, the pain had faded massively in the brief window between the cleaning crew’s arrival and her outfit change. Not to mention that her mind had also been otherwise occupied with an annoying brunette to dwell on the damage to herself.
“Andy, hush. I’m fine. It was just coffee. I don’t see you blubbering over your own burns,” she rolled her eyes.
“I don’t have any. Coffee soaked into my outfit, so nothing got on me,” Andrea fixed her with a firm, yet sympathetic look that made the redhead want to crawl out of her own skin — she was English after all, she’d never had a good track record with vulnerability.
“Gosh, you're making this a much bigger deal than it is,” Emily groaned, massaging her forehead. “If we don’t get back to our desks right now-”
“Do they hurt?” Emily’s words fell on deaf ears as Andrea interrupted her, trying to get a better look at her injuries.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“Andy-“
“Emily.”
Hearing her name roll off Andrea’s tongue in such an uncharacteristically serious tone made Emily’s nostrils flair. Her teeth also began gritting together. She stayed quiet, and for a few moments Emily debated whether or not to speak, the silence stretching on until it was eventually broken.
“Fine, yes,” she hissed, “it hurts. Faintly,” she used that last word as an afterthought. “But compared to how bad it felt before, I’m just… I’m fucking peachy.” She folded her arms across her chest — a terrible attempt at feigning nonchalance — and shrugged at Andrea, who wordlessly nodded and started to crouch. “Hey, whoa, wh-what are you doing?”
“Checking out your burns,” the brunette replied, as though it had been obvious.
Emily stumbled backwards, almost colliding with a clothing rack.
“Don’t be silly. Get up. I said I was fine.”
Andrea rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Stop being so stubborn for once. I’m doing this.”
Groaning loudly, Emily peered down as Andrea settled closer to the floor, her gentle fingers examining the afflicted areas of flesh, causing the redhead to hold her breath — not from any sort of pain, but from the severity at which the pit in her stomach had suddenly returned.
Emily hid the discomfort on her face, trying to force her mind to fixate on something else…
Like how dark blue really did suit Andr-
“Oh, for the love of…” she muttered, stopping her train of thought. A curse then came out under her breath, resulting from how quickly she’d failed at the simple task of distracting herself. She didn’t know how or why her brain had jumped to that… but with Andrea crouched in her direct eyeline, Emily found she still couldn't help but notice how incredibly well the Dior set she’d picked out suited her coworker. The mere fact that a size six was able to pull off such a gorgeous piece of couture was impressive enough on its own. And the trousers, sleek and fitted, accentuated Andrea’s figure in a way that almost made her jealous of-
“So,” Andrea piped up for the first time in a hot minute, snapping Emily from her embarrassing plethora of thoughts and bringing her back to the current moment.
“What?” she sighed, her sights staying trained on the brunette, watching as Andrea’s hands pushed against her knees and she rose from the ground. Once upright, Andrea found herself standing directly in front of Emily. Their eyes met and Emily’s breath hitched at how close she suddenly found herself to the other girl, enough to feel puffs of air against her face from her breathing. The redhead found she couldn’t help it when her gaze lowered instinctually to Andrea’s mouth for the briefest instant before she caught herself and focused back on the pair of brown eyes in her presence.
“They're definitely inflamed. But, uh, I’ve seen Nate deal with a fair share of burns — what with him being a chef and all…” Andrea chuckled awkwardly, deciding to then move backwards to lean against a clothing rack behind her. Emily meanwhile bit the retort lying on her tongue at the mention of the stupid, so-called boyfriend. “So, once you get some ice on them, you’ll be all good.”
There was a pause as Emily pondered how to respond.
“Well, thank you…” she ultimately uttered before going quiet, nodding sincerely, avoiding eye contact, and then hastily added onto her sentence a moment later, "for wasting both of our time.”
The insult was petty. And disingenuous. And Emily knew it. But even so, it lessened the discomfort she felt due to her brief display of emotion — she was not a gooey person, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now, damn it.
But Andrea saw through it. Of course she bloody did.
“Is that your version of gratitude?” the smirk on Andrea’s face was smug, to which Emily scoffed and stepped forward to lightly swat her on the arm. Andrea was unfazed by the action, gleefully deciding to test how far she could go with her coy attitude. “Does violence typically mean ‘yes’ in England?”
Emily raised an eyebrow at the cockiness of her colleague.
“You…” she heard the words dying on her tongue when she took note of the way Andrea’s chest heaved with each millimetre they subconsciously got closer to one another.
“I, what?”
Emily found that she had no control when her blue eyes flickered down to those full, grinning lips before rising to meet pupils of brown that were equally as dilated as her own. Disregarding all the voices in her head screaming at her to stop, she slowly leant forward.
“Just shut up, Sachs,” whispered Emily, and- oh.
Oh.
The reasoning for that goddamned pit in her stomach finally clicked the instant her lips collided with Andrea’s, not that the redhead was even remotely prepared to open that new can of worms. Far from it, in fact. But still, she did not pull away from the brunette, instead allowing herself to stop thinking for just a moment and drape her arms over the girl’s shoulders as the kiss continued.
Emily Charlton was not a shy person, not in the slightest — but as she kissed her coworker she was timid, unsure, apprehensive, pressing a mix of light brushes and gentle pecks to the lips in front of her as she carefully navigated the unfamiliar territory of kissing another woman.
Andrea, on the other hand, had been stationary for the most part. Her brain had fizzled out when Emily had leaned in softly. She’d been unable to wrap her head around what was happening right away. A few moments passed before she did, and her body finally got the message. Andrea instinctually snaked her hands around Emily’s waist, returning the kiss with fervour, all notions of how insane the situation was melted away with each tentative brush of their lips. Her only thought was Emily.
For a while, the closet was silent, occasionally broken when both women briefly broke apart with a light gasp right before leaning back in again for more. Not long afterwards, Emily didn’t know how or when, but Andrea had taken initiative and started to peck softly along the side of Emily’s face, planting featherlight kisses further and further down until she reached the crook of the redhead’s neck. The sensation sent tingles down Emily’s spine and she hummed in pleasure, her hands moving away from their place on Andrea’s shoulders to comb her perfectly manicured nails through brunette tresses.
That was when it all came crashing down.
Revelling in the feeling of Emily’s hands in her hair, Andrea mumbled against her skin.
“Mmm, Em…”
Emily had heard it. The pure unadulterated affection clearly audible in such a simple word — a nickname nobody else had ever dared to address her with. That was what brought Emily back to Earth in an instant.
She jolted back to end the kiss all of a sudden, mouth tingling and lipstick smudged.
“Oh my god…” she whispered against Andrea’s lips, “no, no…”
Her cheeks were burning. She brought her fingers up to her mouth and gasped, cleaning away the stray lipstick marks she knew had rubbed off onto her skin.
“Emily?” Andrea spoke hesitantly, reaching out to grasp her coworker’s hand in an attempt to diffuse the emotional bomb that she could spot threatening to go off in Emily’s head at any moment.
“This was… I’m sorry,” Emily weakly apologised and avoided eye contact. “I don’t…” she trailed off, at a loss for words and hating herself for it.
She didn’t know what scared her more: the fact that she’d just had another woman pinned against a clothing rack in the closet of her workplace, snogging her senseless…
“Em, calm down, okay? Let’s talk about this, please.“
Or the fact that the aforementioned ‘woman’ was Andrea Sachs.
“No!” she spat, shrugging Andrea’s hand away fiercely, “you do not get to speak about this. To me, or anyone. Ever. Okay?”
Who had reciprocated.
“Emily…”
Enthusiastically.
“We are not having this conversation. This did not happen. I- I don’t, I’m not a-” Emily cut herself off and swallowed harshly, panic surging in her chest. She wouldn’t say it. She couldn’t.
Saying it would make it harder to deny.
“I’m-I’m not saying you are-“
“And you!” Emily exclaimed, bewilderment and anger fuelling her as she jabbed a finger into Andrea’s chest. “Why didn't you pull away?” it almost sounded like a sob. “Why are you not angry? Y-you have a boyfriend?! The chef… what’s-his-name.”
“Nate,” the brunette provided gently, “look, just forget about him. Let’s focus on this. I know you’re upset, but-“
“Upset? Me? No, I’m not,” Emily interjected, her tone suddenly morphing into something more flippant, which Andrea (who was surely gaining whiplash from trying to keep up with her colleague’s internal identity crisis and simultaneous emotional breakdown) was caught off-guard by. "I’m not upset. Because this…” Emily gestured at the space between them, “was nothing. I’m not… like that with other women.”
“Oh,” Andrea nodded patiently, suddenly understanding the cause of Emily’s fluctuating, unstable emotions. “It’s okay. You’re not. I believe you,” she lied smoothly, knowing that the redhead was not in the right state of mind to hear anything other than that. However, her words had the opposite effect than what she’d intended.
In Emily’s brain, the brunette offering her pure and gentle acceptance only served as confirmation that the emotional whirlwind she was feeling was not being concealed well at all. And that only made her angrier at the entire situation.
“Don’t placate me!” she snapped, arms jerking outwards. Emily shocked herself at how loud her voice had come out and paused, taking a moment to catch her breath. Andrea took that as an opportunity for an attempt to smooth things over, to no avail.
“I’m sorry, Em, I wasn’t trying to-”
“Just…” Emily breathed tensely, massaging her forehead, “don’t breathe a word to anyone. Or so help me, I will never forgive you.”
Andrea held her hands up.
“I would never, I swear.”
Emily clenched her jaw, her mind reeling as she stared at the brunette for — what Andrea would argue felt like — a long period of time, until eventually she spoke.
“Wipe your mouth.”
The command was devoid of emotion, as if Emily had simply told Andrea to answer a phone that just rang, or to send a fax, or to do any other one of their daily mundane tasks. Then without any warning, she walked out, leaving not only Andrea to clean off the smudges around her lips, but also the memory of the stolen kiss they’d shared.
And, as Andrea had sworn, their secret wasn't brought up again. It never left the walls of the Runway closet, inevitably becoming a distant blur in the minds of both women…
…. until twenty years later, over an apology lunch of shared carbs — during which Andrea was chatting away animatedly beside her — the kiss had resurfaced to the forefront of Emily’s mind.
“-and after our dinner date, he gave me this gorgeous bracelet…” the brunette was ecstatic to be filling her newly established friend in on her most recent escapades with her boyfriend, Peter. A contractor. How dreadfully dull.
“Mm hmm.”
But she failed to notice the way Emily had mentally checked out of the conversation, trying to numb the dull ache in her heart. At some point in between mouthfuls of fries, while sitting in their quiet little corner of the restaurant, Emily had suddenly been hit with a freight train of memories.
Her encounter in the closet at Runway with Andrea.
Having her dream of attending Fashion Week snatched away by Andrea.
Inheriting all the Paris outfits she’d missed out on from Andrea.
Hearing the dial tone as her call went unanswered by Andrea.
The list went on. And every other item on it included Andrea.
It almost physically pained Emily to know that it took twenty years of deep denial, repression, two kids, a failed marriage, and a hollow relationship with an idiotic, hairy bellend for her to pick up the phone again and realise what her heart had wanted all along:
Andrea Sachs. The complete and utter love of her life.
How the bloody hell this woman had wormed her way into the seat at the table across from her, Emily would never know. Except she did, she knew damn well how this had all happened. It had started twenty years ago, with a kiss amongst the couture.
But what hurt Emily the most was that she knew it was too late to do anything about it. Andrea may not have been with the chef what’s-his-name anymore (as if that had been enough to stop her from making out with Andrea two decades ago) but she was with the contractor now. And she seemed happy, as much as Emily hated to acknowledge it.
The bottom line being — Andrea had someone already. And it wasn’t Emily.
It seemed ‘pals’ was the most she was going to get.