Emma Interlude: Thanksgiving Break

Interlude warning: since this is from Emma's perspective, it might give some hints about what is to come later on in the main Isaac branch.

I pushed the last bit of pancake around my plate for far too long. At first it was to mop up all the maple syrup, but then it began disintegrating and left me with nothing on the end of my fork apart from a few crumbs.

"Emma, what is up with you?" Sarah asked. My head snapped up. I had forgotten she was there.

"Nothing, I'm fine." I grinned.

"Oh my God, you are so not fine. We stop talking for more than five seconds and you get this look on your face like someone sent your dog to the farm upstate." She grabbed my hand, fork and all. "Come on, spill it."

I took a deep breath. I didn't even know why it was such a big deal. "A Picture Guy dumped me."

"So? You've got loads on the go, right?" she asked. I shrugged. "Oh ... He dumped you."

"Isn't that what I said?"

Sarah offered me a warm smile. "Oh honey, it isn't the same thing ... What happened?"

I looked around the diner. Over the clink of cutlery and the low murmur of conversation, no one was within earshot, so I told her about leveling Isaac up. How I had teased him after DnD, and how when I pushed too hard he had just shut down. And then when he stood up for himself and demanded pictures of me as a naughty schoolgirl rather than the Level 2 ones he was supposed to pick.

"What an ass," Sarah said. "You're not a doll for him to dress up."

I stayed silent, my stomach twisting as I realized that something was nagging at the back of my mind. The look on his face when he asked for them was ... too smug. "I don't think he actually wanted them ... I think he just wanted to piss me off."

Sarah was scrutinizing me. "You like him."

"What?" She leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee, smiling smugly and saying nothing. "I don't like him, I like teasing him. He definitely likes me, though ... Or he did."

"So what? All the Picture Guys like you, right? That's why you do it."

"Yeah, but he dumped me. That's not how it goes. I push, they break, I drop them because they're boring now." I knew how callous I sounded and I hated every word of it, but it was true. That was the pattern every time, apart from Isaac. "He just deleted all my pictures and left."

Sarah sipped her coffee some more, and I narrowed my eyes. "Stop that."

"What?" she giggled.

"That whole I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself thing. It makes you look like an owl."

Sarah laughed. "Oh my God, can you just let me help you out?" she said. "One question and then I swear I'll drop it. You don't even have to answer it."

I sighed and gestured for her to ask.

"Are you more angry about him not breaking, or him deleting your pictures?"

I got home with that question still ringing in my ears. Of course I wasn't angry with him for not breaking, I never really wanted any of them to break. So if I was really angry about deleting the pictures ...

I dumped my purse on my bed and lay down for a second, thinking. Then I rolled out of bed almost instantly and strode over to my closet. I knew I had it somewhere, but where did I put it? Sifting through the clothes, I finally found what I was looking for, and pulled out a short skirt and a white button-down. Holding them up to myself, I looked in the mirror. I still couldn't see the appeal, but clearly it was just one of those guy things.

Curious, though, I stripped and slipped into the outfit. The skirt barely hung past my ass, leaving my thighs completely bare. Some stockings would have completed the look, but I still didn't own any, more to annoy Zach than because I had any real opposition to them.

The tie was a problem, until I thought for more than two seconds. Slipping into Dad's room, I rooted through his drawers until I found a fairly plain one. Putting it on with the help of a video tutorial, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and looked at myself in the mirror again. Okay, maybe the appeal was there after all.

An image of Isaac drooling over me like this flitted through my brain, and I flushed a little. Even if he hadn't really wanted them when he had asked, I could make him want them. I grinned and skipped happily to Emily's room.

Opening the door, I found her with headphones on watching something on her laptop. She gave me the finger without even looking up.

"Are you busy?" I asked, a little breathless.

"What?" She paused whatever she was watching and looked up, then caught sight of my outfit and rolled her eyes. "I'll get my camera ..."