Excuse Me, Miss Mills?

Chapter Seventeen

After our first official date, Emma and I settled into a comfortable kind of togetherness. We were strictly professional when we were at the school of course. She and I knew that there was a line, and a very solid one at that. We made sure that any time we were intimate after that second time happened off school grounds and behind the closed door of my motel room. We still worked on her paper on Wednesdays, and after a month we decided it was prime time to start sending it to journals. We got to spend more time together that way, searching for and sending work to the different places to try and get her published. It was fun, and the time was usually light-hearted and easy. We had yet to fight about anything, still being in the honeymoon phase of our relationship.

Graduation was fast approaching, which was more than a bit of a relief. When she graduated we would only have to wait a few months and we would be able to say something about how a relationship had sprung up following graduation. Maybe we'd say we continued talking about her essay and it had developed from there or that we'd meet randomly about town and something started then. After she graduated the only thing standing between us would be the age difference.

I woke early in the morning one morning about a week before the day of graduation. I was still in the motel—there was nothing opening up in Storybrooke and I was unwilling to move further away until I knew what I was doing. Emma had been dropped off by Neal the night before and she'd brought her graduation cap and gown to show them off to me. She had gone into the bathroom to put them on and when she came out it had become very apparent that she had changed totally out of her clothes and then wore absolutely nothing underneath the gown except a lacy little number she said she'd bought specifically to impress me.

Tangled up in Emma, my mind hazy from a lack of sleep, I burrowed into her, enjoying the feeling of her bare skin on my own. The effects of the lingerie had lasted a while, as had we, and I didn't understand how I was up so early. The clock said it was barely 6:30. Considering I didn't think we'd gone to sleep until well past 2 in the morning there was no way I should have been awake at that point.

It was then that I felt a twinge in my stomach and I frowned. What had we eaten the night before? Chinese, right? It hadn't been from Lotus Blossom though—it had been from that other place. The other place always made me sick. Why hadn't we gone to Lotus Blossom?

I groaned a little and tried to ignore it. I would forget about it and just keep close to Emma. When I pressed into her she tightened her hold on me in her sleep, and it was a comfort for a moment.

That moment soon ended as the twinge in my gut turned to a lurch. I heaved myself out of bed, tearing out of her arms and rushing to the bathroom. I managed to throw myself in front of the toilet bowl just in time for what I'd eaten the night before to come back up.

Tears pulled themselves from my eyes and I felt myself trembling as I clutched the toilet bowl. Gentle hands ran across my head as I retched, pulling my hair back to keep the sick away from it.

I hadn't meant to wake her up.

"Emma, I—" I started but another wave of nausea passed over me. I bent over the bowl again.

"It's okay," she said, her voice bleary but calm. "I'm not gonna grudge you a few minutes' sleep when you're not feeling good."

I heaved a few more times before the feeling seemed to ebb. I stayed where I was, shaking and exhausted, not willing to move in case of an unfortunate surprise reoccurrence. The whole time I knelt there Emma stood behind me, her one hand gently holding my hair back while her other hand rubbed my back lightly.

"I think it was the food last night," I said, sitting back a little and leaning against her. "I don't usually get food from that place."

"You sure you're not coming down with something?" she asked. "You've been complaining about feeling off for a week."