Family

Dear Emily

Ali's pov

"This has been thee longest week ever, and I'm so stressed, and life is just so crappy right now" Emily complains as she slumps into the spiny-chair at my desk

"Em, it's not that bad. You have me" I flirt

"Yeah I guess" she sighs

"You guess?"

"Well the last time we had even a second alone was Paris, ever since it's been work, home, work, home, work. I've not even had time to breath with the swimming trials coming up"

"It's easy being a swimmer you just jump in the pool and swim, a coach well that's a whole different kettle of fish" she continues

"Swimming competitively isn't easy, I can barley even get in a bath without drowning" I joke, trying to lighten the mood

Emily rolls her eyes and I can feel a sharp tension poor off of her. Her discouragement lowers my mood and I can't help but feel upset and hopeless. I place the last 'Then and Now' on the desk at the back and slowly walk towards Emily, my high heals dig into the floor as I stop behind the spiny-chair. I rest my hand on her shoulder and she jumps away from me, spinning the chair around she storms out the class. She leaves me standing alone in my classroom, staring at the door confused as to what just happened.

Once my brain has registered that Emily has ran out, I race after her. She is slowly walking down the corridor, fiddling with her fingers. I stop by her side and slowly walk with her

"Emily" I ask concerned

She looks over to me and doesn't say anything. She stops in the middle of the corridor and deeply emerges her eyes into mine. Over her gorgeous brown eyes is a thin glaze of insecurities and isolation. My recognition of the look in her eyes makes my heart crumble, she had that exact same glaze in high school. In high school I knew what the glaze meant, it was a sort of barrier she put up when she came out as gay. When we were in RHS the glaze left her eyes every time she looked at me, that's how I knew she loved me but that can't be why she looks so upset now. We have both got past the self consciousness and don't care what people think of our relationship, so I am clueless as to why Emily's eyes look that way

"Em, I'll meet you at the car after school" I say, discreetly kissing her cheek

Emily's pov

"Hey beautiful"

"Hi" I smile, trying to hide my sadness

The drive home is awkward because I can tell that Alison is worried about me but I don't want to tell her what's wrong because I'm nervous it will upset her. So instead I just awkwardly smile at her and turn the radio up high.

After dinner Alison has finally had enough of the tension that I have unwillingly created between us

"Em. What's wrong?" She asks

"Nothing" I lie

"Emily, I know you. So how about we skip the part where I try and figure out what's going on and you just tell me"

"Fine" I sigh

"For the past few months I've...I've..." I stop and look up to see Alison sweetly smiling, trying to comfort me

"There's this boy...who's being really...really homophobic...and I don't know it's...it's difficult" I stutter

"I tried to ignore him but it became too difficult and I guess I've just fallen back into my old high school ways where I try to hide from homophobic situations, I feel like he pushed me back into the closet and I'm doing everything I can to get back out but every time I see him he just aggressively traps me again" I blurt out so fast that I'm surprised Ali understands me