When Emma Falls in Love (Taylor Swift x OC)

Goodbye Earl

February 3, 2017.

Twenty One - Emma

The last week was filled with frantic phone calls and confusion. Emma's father had been admitted back to the hospital following a postoperative infection in his lungs. Her mother had called her five times before she finally picked up. Emma hadn't gone to visit him in the hospital. Her mother would call her everyday and leave a message to update her on how her dad was doing, but Emma stopped listening to them after the first one.

Her father had gotten into the habit of writing notes. Everyday an envelope with no address appeared in the mailbox, obviously put there by her mother. She read the first one, the first few sentences of it at least. Somewhere along the second or third phony apology she had ripped the paper up and thrown it in the trash. Emma was so tired of receiving voicemails from her mum and envelopes with her name on front in childlike boxy letters.

For all she knew and cared, her father was dead. The problem, though, was that her father was dead. He had stopped breathing one night in the hospital. From what Emma understood it was relatively painless, a shame really considering all the pain he'd put her through. She was sitting on the couch inside of a church and wearing something her father would never have approved of. Emma could hear his voice telling her how much she looked like a slut, but she didn't care. She didn't want to be here, she wore it to spite him.

Everyone was walking up to her and telling her how sorry they were for her loss. She wanted to scream but she couldn't. She sat there and smiled politely at every passing person. The truth of the matter was that she hadn't lost anything. She wasn't sorry he was gone, she wouldn't miss him. Maybe it made her a terrible daughter, the inability to feel any kind of sadness or grief over his death, or maybe it made her someone who was still angry over their childhood.

She had spent the days relieved after learning that he had passed. She wasn't grieving in the slightest. Taylor has been worried about her, worried about the lack of any kind of emotion, but Emma didn't know what she was expected to do in a situation like this. She could mourn the father she never had, the father that she could have had if everything had been different, but there was no point in wasting tears on that.

So there she sat, emotionless and alone, on an old tear stained couch. The couch was uncomfortable, the cushion had been worn down from so many people sitting in the same spot she was now. She tried to think of all the people that had sat here before her, crying over their lost loved one. Imaginary people started to fill her head. Each of them had a name, a face, a story.

One was a mother who was sitting to the left of Emma with a wadded up tissue in her hand. She wasn't crying, but it was different from how Emma wasn't crying. This woman had no tears left to cry. She was staring at a picture of her teenage daughter that was propped up on a table overflowing with flowers in every color. Every once in a while the mother would lean over and tell Emma random things and memories of her daughter.

The girl's name was Florence Jane, named after both of her grandmothers. They called her Flora. Flora was fifteen. She was a smart and outdoorsy kid who loved hiking and baking. Her favorite color was baby blue, her mother made note of that while pointing at an arrangement filled with blue roses. Flora was obviously loved and cared for by many, very unlike her father. Emma blinked and the woman sitting next to her faded back into whatever corner of the imagination she had come from.

Emma wanted to yell and ask the woman to come back. Maybe if they sat there long enough then her grief for her daughter would be contagious. She felt like everyone was staring at her, maybe they wouldn't be if she was crying. But of course, sitting with someone who was never real wouldn't be enough for her to cry over her father.