The Pact

Prologue

Prologue

Emma sat in her room typing away at her laptop, desperately trying to complete the latest essay she had been set. She was so stressed she was going to pull her hair out that, when Zachariah strolled into her room whistling with a stupid grin on his face, she wanted to punch him. However, Zach had known her for four years now, so when Emma went to lunge at him for disturbing her he took his hands from behind his back and showed her what he had brought.

"I come in peace Emmy," he said chucking her the jar of peanut butter and spoon he had in his hand, her gaze now transfixed on them. "How much do you have left?" he asked looking at the essay.

"I've written it, I'm just 100 words off of the target," Emmy frowned down at the document as she bunged a spoon of peanut butter in her mouth, leaving the spoon in as she sucked it off. Zach had found it disgusting when he had first found out she stress ate peanut butter, he didn't mind it with stuff, but eating it on its own was just weird. However four years later he had found peanut butter spoons were his best friends. Emmy was lovely and a dream to live with, until she became stressed. It was fine the first year of college, when they had stayed in halls, he would poke his head around the corner of her room, and if he saw her tearing her hair out he would just leave. However they had decided to get a flat together off of campus after the first year, so he couldn't exactly dodge her like he used too and so he had resorted to bulk buying peanut butter every time one of her deadlines came up. You would think Emmy would be chubby with all the peanut butter, but actually because that was the only thing she ate during deadlines and mid-terms it all balanced out.

Zach picked up her laptop, the first time he had tweaked one of her essays so it hit the word count she had flipped. However it had become common practise between them, and now she even did it for him from time to time, it was the benefit of fresh eyes looking at it. Emmy sat in the corner of her bed which sat in the corner of her room so she could lean against the wall when typing, hence the excessive amount of pillows she had. She was propped up by some of them now, her legs crossed and looking so innocent. Emmy sucked the last of the peanut butter off of her spoon, before taking a second spoon full. She watched him intently as Zach typed away, a flicker of worry crossing her face every time he pressed delete.

"I thought you were out with Chloe, how did it go?" She asked while spooning more of the wonderful stuff into her mouth.

"Eh," Zach replied shrugging his shoulder.

"So basically, you had an alright time, you went back to her's, fucked her, and then snuck out while she was asleep?"

"Yeah, basically," Zach nodded, not looking up from her essay.

"I thought you liked her?"

"I did, I liked having fun with her, but I've had fun with her and now I want to have fun with someone else." Zach looked up, waggling his eyebrows at Emmy, she just rolled her eyes at him, causing a pout to form on his face.

"I don't know why I'm even surprised, you are the epitome of the perpetually bachelor," Emmy said getting up and strolling to the kitchen. She reappeared moments later with a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

"Hey," Zach said offended as she poured the wine. She left both of them out of reach on her desk which she never used. Emmy was very clumsy, and they had once had a near miss when she had almost knocked Zach's wine out of his hand onto her work. Since then they always waited till after the editing was finished to drink. "I want to get married sometime, have kids and live in the suburbs with a white picket fence. It's just I'm young and I want to have fun." Zach said rising to his own defence, but as a lawyer in training Emmy expected nothing less.

"I wish I was drinking just so I could spit it out. I really thought that you didn't want to settle down, I know you like kids, but I just expected you to always be the cool uncle, not have your own, with a wife," Emmy half exclaimed half laughed the last part.

"Well I do, and this is finished, if 4998 words will do you," Zach said irritated, Emmy nodded and Zach pressed save and shut down the laptop. Emmy handed him both glasses and the placed the screw cap bottle on the bed before getting back in. They had changed to screw tops when they had found neither of them wanted to get out of bed to refill their glasses, and this way neither did.

"I'm sorry Zach, I really didn't know," Emmy said defensively.

"Well the papers an A, though I really worry about you becoming a surgeon with your lack of coordination." Zach smiled sweetly, and with his recurring joke about her being clumsy, she knew he had forgiven her. "Would you be my back up wife?" Zach asked out of the blue, as he took a sip of the wine. Emmy shot him a shocked look, and coughed into her wine. "I don't want to be alone forever and you are one of the few people who can put up with me. We get on great together, we can live together easily and, let's be honest, we both find each other attractive. The amount of times we've gotten drunk, woken up naked together, not sure what's happened, we might have already done it." They giggled, its true they might have at least twice this month. In all honesty Emmy was the reason all of Zach's 'relationships, were he had stayed the whole night or called her back after the first date, failed. They got kind of insecure of how close him and Emmy were and ran for 'more available men' as they put it. "I'm not saying we hit 35 and marry, but you know 32 we could start dating, that way if it worked then we could marry by 35 and still have kids," Zach very logically laid out his argument, he'd obviously thought about this a bit.

"Okay, I don't see why not," Emmy said, holding out her hand to shake on it.