But There Was You // Amber Freeman x Fem OC

Long Time No See- Evie and Amber POV

We get out of the car, meeting the twins at the entrance with Wes walking up behind us. The five of us enter the lobby, Wes walks up to the receptionist and talks to her, seemingly trying to convince her to let us into Tara's room. Amber stands with her arms crossed, the twins looking around at whatever, I don't know if I'm ready to see her so- fragile. Wes walks back over to us,

"C'mon, she's in room 216."

We all follow him, I grab Amber's hand and squeeze it, she squeezes back. We get to the room and Chad opens the door for us, we walk in to see Tara on the bed. She's got a breathing tube on her lip, IV's and just a bunch of stuff around, her leg is broken and in a cast under her blanket. We all mumble variations of 'hi', 'hey' and 'how are you?'.

"Hey guys." Tara says, a tired smile on her face. I walk over and kneel to her level,

"Hey," I gently grab her hand, "did you sleep here?" Obviously not thinking straight, I just say the first thing that comes to mind. She laughs weakly,

"As much as I could, having survived an assassination attempt." Good to see she's still as snarky as usual. We all sit in various chairs around the room, still leaning in and talking to her,

"You guys look like you've seen a ghost. I'm injured, not dead," She jokes. "It's not like this is the first time we've lived through this."

"The first time (Scream 4), we were all still in elementary school and you weren't almost dead." Wes reminds her. Just as we all begin talking, the door opens. We all turn to find Sam, and some guy behind her- greasy looking white guy. She stops at the image of all of us, and we all stand up- almost in disbelief. She immediately goes over and kneels at Tara's side,

"Hey, how're you feeling?" She asks her quietly.

"You came." Tara ignores her question.

"Of course I did. Wes called me," She nods at him, "This is my boyfriend, Richie."

"She brought a date?" Amber mumbles under her breath, only loud enough for me to hear.

"Don't start," I urge her, just as quietly.

Richie squats down and says something to Tara, Sam walks over and says hi to all of us.

"This is Chad and Mindy- the twins, Wes and Evie," She pauses as she looks at me, "I used to babysit them all."

"Which is always how I like to be introduced." Wes jokes.

"And Amber, good to see you." Sam adds.

"Nice to see you too." She tries her best to seem pleased, I appreciate it- really, I do.

Richie collectively waves at us, Sam goes over to Tara again,

"Where's mom?" Sam asks, a little confused.

"She got stuck in a conference in London, she called earlier."

"For all of ten minutes I'm sure," Amber mumbles again. I pinch her in protest of her comments, she audibly reacts to it, drawing everyone to our interaction.

"Tara's probably tired, and there's a lot of us in here so..." I say, trying to draw everyone away from what just happened, totally not embarrassing. Everyone agrees and begins making their way out of the room, thank god that was awkward.

"Not you Sam, I want you to stay." Tara stops us.

"But the rest,"

"Yeah, let's go," The twins respond.