"I can't seem to let you go," he breathed into my hair. "I'll see you very soon, Emmy."
"Yeah," I replied in a daze, as if the hug had just blasted me spiralling into the stratosphere.
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For Emilia 'Emmy' Harwell, there are many, infinit...
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For a few seconds, I was startled by his abrupt manner and couldn't concentrate from the intensity of his gaze as well as my surprise at hearing a faint American accent. When the words sunk in though, I was very confused.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, why would you be hiding here like you were ready to ambush me or something? How did you get here so quickly? I thought I lost them. Who are you?" He replied and again, this left me quite bewildered.
"In case you didn't notice, I was hiding here first and you could just ask for my name, idiot, instead of accusing me of trying to attack you!" I whispered back, getting quite indignant. This conversation was already becoming strange. Typically, this wasn't what happened when I met a stranger.
"Wait, so you're not one of those girls outside who were chasing me?" He asked as his eyebrows shot upward and a rather bemused expression occupied his face.
"Uh, no, what girls?" Really? He was good looking and all, but girls were chasing him? Wow. This guy was some pompous jerk.
"The girls that were just chasing me!" He exclaimed. "You really didn't see them?"
"No, they must be a part of your imagination," I smiled at him but he just glowered at me.
"Very funny. But I know what I saw. It's happened before. However, not on this large of a scale, though. Man, this town is crazy." He murmured that last part to himself and shook his head.
Suddenly, something dawned on me.
"Hang on, who are you, then? Why are girls chasing after you for God's sake? Seems a bit much doesn't it? Wow, they must be really desperate." At that I chuckled, imagining the entire female population of Roseworth throwing themselves at him.
"You really don't know who I am?" He immediately responded incredulously before continuing with, "Uh, I mean, I'm not entirely sure why the girls were following me. I guess they are, as you say, desperate."
There wasn't really much to say after that and I mumbled an indistinctive agreement back to him. We lapsed into momentary silence where I pondered who this guy was. He wasn't a local, that was for sure, with his brash accent and dismissal of our proudly historic town. But he seemed to think that I would know him, which I evidently didn't since I'd never seem him before. However, something about him did seem vaguely familiar. Maybe I'd seen his face in passing already when the girls and I had been shopping earlier. Yes, that must be it.
"So why are you hiding, then?" He said, interrupting my thoughts.
"Um," was my reply as I had only then just remembered the reason why I was crouched behind a tub of buttons, no less. "Ah, well, uh, my friends are kind of high on sugar right now and my other friend and I, Clarice, were just hiding from them. We really didn't want to be subjected to their crazy treatment with birthday balloons and tiaras. So yeah, bottom line, I am hiding from my weird friends."
