Not Everyone || Emily Prentiss

7.

«It's hard to cultivate anger
only in unforgiveness.
I don't know if it can be cured.»

November 2023
(Months since Atalanta: 25)

Winter had started to roll in, and not only was it beginning to get colder outside, April's bed had also cooled considerably in the last week.

It wasn't really anyone's fault, although it seemed to feel a lot like her own at that moment in time.

She was busy, and focused on her career. Kelly, on the other hand, was not.

They had been progressing to this point for a while. The barista had begun requesting that she make more time, and she simply didn't have any more to give. They had parted on pretty good terms, all things considering.

However, April couldn't help feeling it was like Nate, her ex boyfriend, all over again, and she sighed as she looked out the window. Why she was never able to make work a job and a relationship at the same time?

She and Kelly hadn't even made it a year.

October had been the nail in the coffin if she was being honest. Some important cases had sucked up all of her spare time. She had also been livid that the woman had called her multiple times at the Penelope's department launch, and the barista, in return, couldn't understand why on Earth she would be so angry about a phone call that had lasted all of a minute.

To be honest, April couldn't explain it herself.

Well, actually, that was a lie.

She could.

Emily.

Her mind had been plagued with thoughts of the FBI's demonic leader ever since she had watched her swan away in red Valentino at the launch. She had been playing the conversation over and over in her head, trying to discern exactly what about that night had left her so unsettled.

It was pleasant.

And that was the problem.

She had spent the last two years viewing Emily Prentiss as an adversary. A respected adversary, but an adversary nonetheless; and now she was, what?

She had no idea.

She had felt a strange level of comfort in the older woman's presence, and she had liked it.

April shook her head. It was ridiculous. What were they going to do? Braid each other's hair and talk about their failed relationships?

Because that was the real rub right now since, because of her job, also Emily was never able to make love work.

She was beginning to feel like maybe she was a little more like Emily Prentiss than she cared to admit. With another relationship down the drain, it was becoming glaringly obvious exactly what took priority in her life: her job.

Her entire justification for upping and leaving in Atalanta had rested on the single point that she would never, ever, become like Emily Prentiss. The thought that maybe, just maybe, some of what Emily had said to her two-plus years pior outside of a SUV car had been right was just far too depressing a thought to entertain at that moment.

April pulled the covers up and around her shoulders as she snuggled deeper into the mattress, and a little deeper into her bleak mood.

She sighed.

It was Sunday and she had nowhere to be. Her social life for the better part of the past year had consisted of Kelly, Kelly's friends and Alice; and Alice was married so she had her own life.