Just Like Her

Chapter 50

Tom

I sat with my legs stretched along the length of the couch, my arm resting along its back. Emma was puttering around in the kitchen after having slipped out of her evening wear and opted for a much more comfortable ensemble of T-shirt and sweatpants.

"You and Derik seemed close!" I called from the living room.

She grunted as she began to work the wine opener into the unopened cork of a bottle of merlot. "We just went to school together."

I bobbed my head, not wanting to argue. "Eh... you also worked on the paper together."

Emma frowned up at me before directing her attention—and her scowl—back to the bottle she gripped in her hands. "Yeah," she said as she slowly twisted the cork free. "We had a staff of nearly fifty students. What about it?"

I shrugged and watched as she reached for a wine glass on a nearby shelf. When she did, her shirt rode up just as the waistband of her sweats slunk just below her hip...

"I just didn't know you worked on your university's paper, that's all," I managed.

"Yeah I did for a few years," she said turning back toward the counter where the bottle sat.

I frowned, not understanding. By both their accounts, Emma had reached the status of editor, and by Derik's Emma had been quite well-liked.

"What happened?"

Emma raised the bottle and poured herself a healthy-sized glass. "I went abroad and just didn't pick it back up again."

"Still, Derik seemed to think highly of you."

Emma merely hummed as she re-corked the bottle.

I leaned back against the armrest of the couch watching her.

Emma stood with her hip resting against the counter as she stared out the nearby kitchen. She cradled the bowl of the glass in both her hands, but never drank from it. Instead, she merely gnawed on her lower lip.

"Ems?" I finally asked after a minute or so of silence had gone by.

She startled slightly and looked over at me. "Sorry, did you want some?"

I shook my head and hesitated before asking: "Should we have added honesty as an amendment?"

Emma sighed before taking a long sip of wine and placing the glass carefully back down onto the counter. "He was talking about Rufus."

I frowned in confusion but said nothing, so she continued.

"When he said 'we'... they all know," she explained giving me a pointed look. "They all know what he did and what he tried to do."

Slowly the pieces began to fall into place before me. They, the press core, her fellow reporters and colleagues...

"So why don't any of them say anything, write an article—something! If they're your friends—"

"They can't."

"Why the hell not?"

Emma shrugged, ignoring my growing sense of indignation on her behalf. "Rufus has ties with various bigheads in the publishing world. If any of them ever want a book deal, he could squash it. Besides, it was their editors that decided not to hire me, remember?"

She took another drink and then twirled the remaining contents of her glass. "It doesn't matter now anyway."

I blinked at her wide-eyed. How the bloody hell could it not matter? This had been the whole reason she had moved home, the whole reason we'd been separated!