30 Days of Em Challenge - Sun & Moon (Emmett/Rosalie)
Sun and Moon
By miztrezboo80
Genre: Twilight - Angst/Suspense/Romance
Characters: Emmett/Rosalie
Rating: M
Status: One Shot Complete
Beta'd By: Ilsuocantante & lightstardust
Summary: Waiting and watching sure, yet unsure that she will arrive and day and night will cease to chase each other through dawn and dusk. Will the man that cared be enough for the girl who doesn’t care at all?
Banner By: prettystuffnstu
A/N: Written for the gorgeous leaders of our Em Pack - Hmonster, AccioBourbon and sweet Ms Life aka TheHeartOfLife and the Emmett 30 Day Challenge.. go seek the rest of the 70 something author entries on their fanfic profile30 Days of Emmett
Sun and Moon
She's always running late.
I know this.
I've sat outside in the dark, or stood in a crowded room alone waiting for her so many, many times before. Why should this time be any different?
It should be. Today should be.
Today should be the day that I arrive to see her waiting for me. All alone with her luscious plump lips pouting in indignation, because the tables have turned and it is she who taps a toe and watches an empty door.
But it is not.
It is me who sits. Who shifts in his seat and rubs a finger lightly around the top of his now empty glass. The remains of thirty-year-old scotch and two ice cubes long melted and consumed, the one vice I allow myself as I sit and watch, listening for the familiar click click of expensive heels across a once-polished floor. The warm dark timber is worn and dull after years of service.
Worn and dulled like me.
I am worn out. I am dulled from the once bright man who had been quick to smile and even quicker to have laughter flowing from even the hardest of stone hearts.
Not now.
Those times are just memories, fleeting and brief, much like her presence in my life. If I try to latch onto their particles, these tiny fragments of my time, they disappear like smoke. Curling, and fading around me, staying only long enough to warm my skin-but not my soul.
I should have known she'd be late.
I should have expected this.
Yet, I did the one thing I told myself I wouldn't.
I opened my heart to hope.
A stupid, foolish move. Something the younger man in me had done countless times before. The one who is now thirty-five should know better. The one who has life experience with women who have only used and abused him should know the rules by now.
Beautiful, smart and classy women only ever want the lowly working class hottie with the nice ass and dimpled smile for one thing.
Revenge.
Pure and sweet.
I'm the guy they see when the husband has been caught playing the field. I'm the man they have a little fun with when the money maker is away. I'm the bit on the side.
I'm almost a whore.
She's never made me feel that way. Not once.
Until now.
The longer I sit here-not checking my watch, not glancing nonchalantly at the entrance every time I hear the bell, not judging the seconds as frozen water returns to its liquid form-not doing any of those things, but still I recognize that she is not here. That she isn't coming.
That she may never come.
At what point does late become wishful thinking that she'll even consider arriving at all?
Today was supposed to be different. Today was supposed to be the one time that all the waiting and hoping and wishful thinking on wisps of dreams ended.
I was supposed to get my dream today. Today was meant to be my magic moment where unicorns are real and there are pots of gold at the end of rainbows.
Yet sitting here, the unicorns are really just horses with cardboard cones fitted to their heads. The pots of gold are tarnished and filled with chocolate money.
She's failed me. But worse, I've failed myself.
I should go. I should get up and leave now before I look as pathetic as I am beginning to feel. I should give the bartender a foolish half-grin and get my coat and walk out the door. I should walk out of this bar, this town, this country, even, and never look back.
I hear it's nice in Mexico this time of year. Hot and balmy, and maybe if I went to Baja I could learn to surf. There's no snow down there. No crisp, clean white wonderland that I walked through mounds of this morning in my effort to get here. Every small drift caused a spring in my step. All the stark nakedness, this bright blanket upon everything grey and dreary had me hopeful of what lay ahead in my life. A new life with her.
Or without, as the case may now be.
Maybe I'd even use that passport that I haven't touched since my cousin had one of those destination weddings in Fiji. I flew halfway around the world to see Garrett happily marry the woman of his dreams. His one. His everything. His Katie. I wanted that. I thought I'd found it with this girl. This woman who could hold a crowd with her entrance alone. Who could merely raise a brow and the unacceptable to her would become acceptable once more. All because of who she was with. Who she was attached to. Who thought he owned her.
One didn't own this woman. This ethereal beauty.
I'd come to discover that the first time I'd met her.
Late night or early morning, whatever you want to call the witching hour when the clock struck twelve. She hadn't been alone. She very rarely was. She'd walked in and his hand had been at her waist, a slight frown on her perfectly manicured brow. I'd thought at the time she was one of 'those' socialites. The ones who suffer through parties they don't want to be at, merely to be seen. Who bantered playfully with CEOs, sons and playboys with six figure bank balances whose money came from trust funds.
I hadn't seen her crack a smile the entire time she'd eaten the small meal that our hotels bar had on offer. When she left her date at the booth after an hour, I didn't think she would meet my eye when I asked her what it was she wanted to drink.
But she did. Her gaze had been steady with my own, so much so that it rocked me to the core. Her eyes weren't above average or overly different. But they were warm. So warm compared to the icy exterior and carriage of the woman who'd impatiently tapped her fingers from pinky to thumb and back again over the warm wood of the bar top I'd previously polished to its mirror like gloss. She'd held me, melted me with that stare. Burning me with those slightly muted colors that swirled amongst rich tones, contrasting sharply with the poise and refined outer layer she wore.
She'd merely gazed in my direction, asked me for the use of our phone and when I'd told her that it was for staff use only, she'd rolled her eyes and asked me for a favor.
The first of many. The first that should have been the last.
Shouldn't have been at all.
She'd wanted me to call her cell, then hang up once she answered.
Simple. Effective. Something I'd done for plenty of women before. Those that needed an out and didn't have the heart to let the date of the night down with harsh words. A simple, "emergency," and, "I'll call you," did the trick, let the hopeful down with a tiny thread of maybe-there'll-be-a-next-time, when in truth there wasn't even a this time.
Women like her, though, so confident and refined, they didn't ask for favors like this. They usually drank more and ate less. Answered in clipped, short sentences that divulged nothing of who they were, or who they hoped to be. Women like her simply didn't talk with the 'staff' like me.
Yet, she had. She'd smiled when I told her it, "wouldn't be a problem, ma'am." She'd smiled and said ma'am was her mother. She'd stared at me for a moment after that. Thirteen and a half seconds, to be exact. She'd stared right into my eyes and smiled when I'd nervously grinned in response. My 'assets' on show, the deep dimples in each of my cheeks always garnered a response from those that were privy to their hidden presence in my skin. They had been the sole reason for an increase in tips when I'd finally learned their usefulness in the business life had lumped me with.
When you're suddenly homeless and jobless at age seventeen, you learn to use the gifts god gave you. Even if it does make you go home late at night and scrub your skin raw to rid yourself of the shame. But every smile was another dollar in my pocket, every purposeful bend at the waist, slyly shaking my ass to some song on the speakers, was another bill paid. Every lonely, bored housewife or socialite who wanted more than to just try the creations my hands could make with ice and fruit and liquor was another step on my way back to college, and out of the mess that an embezzling father and suicidal mother had left me.
A look from her alone had changed my entire outlook that night. I no longer thought of this job and sweet talking pretty women as a necessary evil. Because here I'd met her. Here she'd given me her number and told me to use it, and not just for the ridding of one upper class Manhattan rat. No, I'd made the call and she'd left without a glance in my direction. I'd shrugged it off, just another good deed gone unsung - but her number still made its way into my pocket. A week later, she'd been back again on the arm of some Harvard boy, and with another look into the seemingly endless depths of her eyes, I was doing her a favor once more.
And so it went, every Friday between eleven and one she would arrive, a look, a call and she'd be gone. It got so I never needed her to write with that familiar looping scrawl the numbers that were ingrained in my memory. So firmly stuck in my head that I'd begun reciting them instead of counting sheep at night.
Six months of this, and then it had stopped.
It was then I began doing favors for a dark haired man with a look to him that raised my hackles every time he slid on up to the bar. She never looked at me after he started bringing her around. I'd started off thinking that she was a strong, independent woman. Someone who knew what she did and did not want. Yet with him, she was different. Gone were the fake laughs, the questions filled with false interest. They were replaced with a quiet I didn't understand.
This new man did everything for her, and then ignored her. He'd order her hard liquor and shots instead of her glass of white. He'd talk to his friends about her, as if she wasn't there. Yet she said not a word. Never a glance in my direction. I never even saw her phone. I did, however, notice the ugly chunk of rock that was a new addition to her left hand.
Just like that, it all fell into place.
There was never to be anything more in our game. I was nothing more than a pawn in her dating war. The buffer between her and those that weren't up to whatever standards to which her bar was raised.. What I couldn't figure out was the man she was with now. He blatantly ignored her. It was obvious that she was just a pretty thing to dangle from his arm. To look at, to hold, but not treasure like at least half of the men she'd had me send away would have done. Like I-on the odd occasion-had wondered about doing.
What was it about this man that made her settling? That had her accepting a marriage proposal from a man who obviously didn't know her? Didn't know and didn't want to get to know her. He was oblivious to who she was. The woman who laughed loud and snorted that one time her date somehow sucked a line of spaghetti through his mouth and out of his nose. The woman who would get this faraway look of sadness whenever they started talking about themselves and forget to ask about her.
She was interesting. She was intriguing-hell, even I had wanted to know more about her.
Things changed with this new man, this fiancé of hers.
Never once did a bored look pass my way. No tiny roll of the eyes to indicate it was time I used those familiar numbers to fake an emergency. It wasn't like we had a relationship… well, I suppose we did of sorts, but now it was like I was being ignored. I was nothing to her, nothing more than the bar man who'd helped her out once in a while, and the realization, the popping of my balloon of 'like' with her, staggered me a little.
I settled for getting him the drinks she didn't want, but drank anyway. I settled for watching this stunning woman with the most amazing eyes shrink in front of me week after week, and on some occasions, day after day. She didn't just come on Fridays anymore. There were Saturdays, midweek all-nighters and sometimes four day benders. They would stay until she could no longer hold her head up, and then he and a friend would practically drag her from the bar. My hands itched to do something for her with the way they manhandled her, not caring when her head bounced into the door frame once or twice on the way out.
I did nothing, though, because I was nothing to her, and obviously, he was something.
It was another three months of this before his eyes met mine. Dark and menacing. Giving me more than the cause I had already to despise him. It was he who asked me to fake a call, and wouldn't take no for an answer when I declined. When he brought up that he was old friends with the owners of the establishment and maybe he'd seen me drinking more than my fair share on the job, and how easy it would be for him to make a complaint … I picked up the phone and did as he asked.
Again, she never looked at me. He'd sweep out of the room with his so called friends after nothing more than a polite peck on her cheek and a 'Later, babe.' She'd sit there on her own for another few hours, then quietly put a few bills on the table and leave.
I relegated myself to the background as these events turned to second nature, of their arrival and his early departure. So much so, that I dropped the glass I'd been polishing- ever so cliché like-when her voice, the one I hadn't heard in months, met my ears.
"I suppose you think I'm pretty stupid."
I looked up into eyes that had haunted my dreams since I'd met her, and was stunned by the sadness and melancholy that lingered in their depths.
"Stupid?" I stuttered as I bent down to escape her burning gaze for a moment, and picked up the shattered pieces of glass from the floor.
She didn't say anything further, just waited for me to finish cleaning, and when I'd disposed of the mess, she was still there at the bar.
Stone cold sober. I hadn't served her a drink once that night and she'd come in alone. It was the first time I could recall she'd come in without someone dangling on her arm, especially him
Why I hadn't realized then, or even now, that it had been different, that her coming in on her own should have been worthy of my attention, I'll never know. Maybe I'd been too preoccupied with my thoughts of her that I'd ignored the fact she'd walked in the door.
"Yes. I've seen the way you look down at me. The stupid girl that drinks too much and lets her man walk all over her. I've seen the pity in your eyes."
I didn't know what to say.
We'd never spoken more than a few sentences to each other, and she'd accused me of something that I wasn't. Something that I wouldn't be with her. Not her.
"I think you're confusing pity for caring. Or maybe you've never had anyone worry about you before," I said softly, hoping that she could find the sincerity behind my words.
She blinked. The stormy blue-gray pupils disappeared behind thick black lashes and reappeared again, still making my heart stutter, skip a beat, for just that one second when their brilliance shone bright with the overhead lights.
Even as annoyed with me as she apparently was, she was still, still, unbelievably beautiful.
Stunning.
Wild.
"Worry?" she'd spit out, like the word was dirty and left an awful taste in her mouth. She'd stared at me for a beat, then stepped back from the bar, dropping a large note on the counter. "What's there to worry about?"
Then she was gone.
Days passed and I thought about the strange almost-conversation I'd had with her. The look in her eyes and the way she'd looked at me. But most of all, under the harsh words and hard stare, the little girl lost that was hiding just below the shadows.
A week later, there was a note in my locker from one of the other barmen in my locker when I clock in to start my day. An envelope with a question on the front, asking about 'the girl' that we both knew from the bar, and just why it was she was leaving me notes. I opened it without a seconds thought,, and inside, one of our napkins with the words, "I'm sorry."
She was there that night, with him and his friends and I prepared to be a part of the furniture. I prepared to be insignificant and invisible once more. Yet the moment he left, she was up off the chair and sitting at the bar.
"So, tell me a story," she'd said, her voice tired and strained but her eyes had been light, interested, aware.
"A story?"
She'd shrugged and she smiled, the first I had been witness to in… I couldn't even remember how long. "Isn't that what you bartenders do? Tell long involved stories and fix your patrons' woes?"
"And here I thought we were only good for remembering drinks," I'd said as I set down a glass of her favorite Zinfandel and was rewarded with a quirk of one brow, until she'd sipped and she'd sighed and the smile was back, bigger than before.
"A priest, a rabbi and the Easter bunny walk into a bar…"
That was the first night tshe'd stayed until the end of my shift.
Soon, I caught her eye before he'd even started to drink. Then she'd turn and give me a smile that warmed me to the tips of my toes as she walked in the door. After that, she'd come in on her own, and that was when the flirting really began.
I shouldn't have wanted her. The Harry Winston, five carat, pear-shaped diamond that sparkled on her left hand said taken... but her eyes, her eyes did not. Her eyes said, "I'm lonely." Her eyes said, "I like that you like me." Her eyes said, "I want to be here with you."
Then her eyes stopped saying these things, because her mouth said them for her.
I gave in.
I succumbed to what I wasn't supposed to want, and even though she was 'taken' and couldn't be mine, I wanted her to be. I wanted to show her what it was like to have someone listen and want to know her. I wanted to show her what it was like to be…
Loved.
When the bar was slow one night, she being the only patron we'd had in hours since he'd left, Felix cornered me and told me to go. He alone had been privy to the slight drop in my armor when she was around. I'd let her get past the walls I'd put up from the expensive women with their expensive taste. She was different. I knew it
I wanted to know it.
Felix said he'd close up. Felix nodded toward my golden-haired distraction and told me to take her home.
He never said whose.
Strangely enough, she took up my offer to walk her to her apartment, I knew enough by then to know that she lived only a block from the bar. It had felt so good, so right when she'd placed her hand in mine once we stood outside on the street in the cold fall air.
When we began walking, it was not in the direction of her home. When we stopped at the stairs to an apartment, it was I who produced a key and it was she that followed me inside. When I closed the door and reached out a hand to flick on the light, it was her voice, soft and feminine that stayed my fingers as they hovered just out of reach. It was her full lips that pressed gently to mine as her fingers wove into my hair.
That night, we didn't make it past the sitting room of my tiny studio apartment. We did, however, explore the threadbare carpet in the entranceway, the bench in the kitchenette and the one selling point of my humble abode-the bathtub.
She made me feel again.
She made every cell in my body come to life that first night. Bursting with energy from wherever her skin caressed my own. The revealing of pale skin when she slowly gathered her cobalt dress over her thighs, her stomach, her chest and, finally, off her too thin arms, was like the unveiling of a masterpiece. Her eyes dark and wanting matched my mood. The lust, the need. We'd flirted enough, touched, but not completely. This was everything we'd been slowly working toward every time he'd left her alone. Every secret smile, every parting glance, it had all led to this moment where she and I were more naked than without the garments that concealed our bodies during the day. The whole night had been like a dream, it had all happened so quickly.
It should have stayed that way.
It should have remained a one night stand.
Yet, the next night, and the next. She'd stayed back, or arrived just before closing. Our smiles had been filled with our secrets.
We had been fools to think no one would notice.
Soon, nights weren't enough for her. The few hours stolen between the end of my working night and the beginning of her social day were far too short. Our moments of shared bliss, of my body wrapped around hers, protecting her from the world outside the bubble we'd slowly made, hadn't been able to shelter her from the day when she was no longer within reach. I couldn't be there when she had to return to the world where the ring on her finger was more than just a claim to her name. She couldn't be mine in that way, but the night... the night was ours alone.
I wanted more. I pushed for it, knowing it wasn't mine to ask for.
I had fallen, though. Fallen so deeply into the blue of her eyes, the warmth of the smile that felt like mine. For the words she'd whispered hoarsely when she came. I'd made her give up more and more of her time. I'd stolen the day because our night had been too short. Not enough. I'd begged for moments, extra minutes and she'd given them to me. She would tell me, "anything for you, anything," and I'd believed her.
She was never on time to these rendezvous. She'd leave me waiting and wanting and then she would arrive just as I'd about given up hope. All the hours of mind-numbing clock watching would fade away because her lips would be on mine and we'd be falling back onto a bed that had likely seen more of its fair share of lovers engaged in situations much like our own. She'd never cared that the hotels we met in weren't of the five or even three star variety, and she'd refused to let me pay for somewhere more suited to a woman of her class . She hadn't wanted thousand thread count sheets, or chandeliers, or small overly priced Pringles cans in bar fridges. "Just you, only you," she would say and I would believe her. Every time we met only had me counting down until we could be together again.
Then he went away for business.
And our nights and days became one long together.
No apart.
No stealing the sun and giving it to the envious moon.
Because the moon hadn't been envious anymore. The moon thought he had it all.
Yet, night always turned into day. The two must always separate, only joining for brief moments at dusk and dawn, where the dark and light blended into pinks and purples washing over the cityscape. We'd lived for each moment. Spent every possible second of every possible twenty four hours in each others' company. We'd been completely wrapped up in each other, the dates, the love... because it had felt like that for me and I was sure she'd nearly said it once.
My world revolved around hers. She was everything, she was the air in my lungs and the extra spark in my step. I'd lived for her smile, for the sound of my name as she whispered good morning and good night. So preoccupied and crazy in lust were we, that we'd forgotten the reason why the Night forever chased the Day. We'd ignored the possibility of the Day's minions having spies in the night. That his friends were still around, even if he was not.
One Friday evening, she'd been waiting for me outside the service entry. She'd reminded me of a young Grace Kelly. What would have been a demure black dress on some was wrapped to her curves, accentuated the curve of her thigh where the hem hugged her legs tight. A perfect line of pearls curled around her neck and a gigantic black hat covered her face nearly as much as the dark round fames that hid her icy blues from my view. We'd watched Rear Window the previous weekend when she'd had a cold and I'd looked after her. Soup, back rubs, tissues-the works. Maybe the movie had been the cause of her change in style-not that she hadn't always dressed nicely-or maybe it had been something else, I'd never gotten to ask..
I'd stepped into the alley, my feet crunching on some stray gravel below caught her attention. She'd looked up and, taking a quick drag on the menthol cigarette she'd had, the house of cards we'd built so precariously began to fall.
"He knows."
Her voice had been soft, but the hidden edge behind those two words stopped my blood cold.
"Who?" I'd asked, stepping closer, but she'd only moved back. She hadn't wanted me near. It had been a stupid question to ask, because there was only one person that she would have been referring to. Yet, ask I had.
She hadn't bothered to say anything in return, just blew another steady stream of minty smelling smoke up into the air, creating a barrier between us. Not entirely tangible, but there all the same.
She'd told me he'd said something, but it had been cryptic. Some questions about where she'd been and why his brother had seen her downtown when she was supposed to have been anywhere but there.
I'd told her to forget it, that it was just one time. One person.
But it hadn't been. There had been more. More sightings.. more times that the sun had eclipsed the moon, creating black voids where her absence and my presence had been noted as one and the same.
I'd told her it would be fine.
She'd been shaking by that stage, shaking so hard that she dropped the last of her cigarette to the ground and had almost fallen along with it, but my arms were faster, shooting out to hold her at the last second. She'd collapsed against me, breaking that icy facade one last time, and had begged me not to let her go. Begged me to stay. Begged me to run away with her. Leave all our problems behind and be some modern day Bonnie and Clyde without the bank robberies.
"We don't have to run away," I'd said, gazing intently into those grey blues that had been opened wide, so frightened. "I'll look after you. I won't let anything happen."
And I would. I'd wanted to be there for her, be the person she could rely on now that she had finally let me in and I'd finally let myself believe in something. Someone.
She'd fought me tooth and nail. "You don't understand," she'd said, pounding her fists, such delicate bones under pale white skin had been merely a beating of butterfly wings against me. "He's not... he's not right. He's not a nice guy, Emmett."
I'd tried to assuage her, to tell her that he was just angry. That anyone would be in his position and that it would be okay now. If he knew, we could be something more. God how my heart had ached for that. But she'd rallied and ranted that he had connections. He wouldn't be happy. It could get... bad. I'd brushed it off and assured her whatever her worst thoughts were, I could fix them.
No one would hurt her. Not my girl. Not ever.
We'd arranged to meet the next evening. She had to get some things together and then she would be back at the bar. No later than seven.
It's getting close to ten.
She isn't coming.
She wasn't ever going to.
I'd just been that added pawn in her game of drama. Bored socialite seeks good time with cute and good in bed lower classman.
I was so, so stupid to think she'd want me for anything more. That it could have been anything more.
I pick up my glass, surveying the bar one last time with a long look from the door to the back and to the door again-she could have slipped in and not have seen me. Which is a lie, I'm in a quiet bar, it's been slow here all night, but even if I'd missed her, Felix definitely wouldn't have from his place at the bar.
It's no use. She's not coming... but I can't give up. Won't give up. Maybe I'll never give up, but I will leave this bar. I will go home and pretend to sleep and pretend to care about my day, until the night comes again and I'll be here waiting for her. I take my glass to the bar, and consider having one last drink before I go. She could come in at any time. She could still arrive.
Felix just shakes his head and wanders to the other side where the expensive liquor is kept. Fuck it, I'll work overtime for a few of these, anything to help me sleep tonight without her in my bed.
I hardly notice the two women that enter and sit down beside me, both idly chatting about this and that. I don't notice the subject change or familiar names when they take a breath and speak with a quiet reverence that is usually reserved for the old or the dead.
"She went to school with my sister and then..."
"... a friend of mine was screwing him on the side, what's good for the goose..."
"Still, she didn't deserve that. No one deserves that."
I slowly drift back to the present with these tiny scraps of conversation that I've picked up. I can't be sure in my scotch-fueled haze if they said the name I think they said. My one. My girl.
They nod and say how tragic it is. How it was all over the news, didn't I see it?
I shake my head and each word that leaves the taller one's overly painted lips has my stomach filling with stones of dread and my limbs almost floating in this unreal yet utterly realistic world. It can't be.
It can't be.
Felix turns the channel on the TV we rarely use apart from the odd game of PGA golf - our clients aren't exactly the sports mad type.
It's her. It's her.
I know the photo they're showing of her on the screen. I was there with her that day, and because they leave it up there for a while, I can actually make out my hand beside hers, my feet just that little bit behind and out of syncopated step.
I want to throw up. Yet I can't tear my eyes away from the screen. From her. All the while the women beside me continue their running commentary on everything I don't want to believe has occurred, has in fact, happened...
Felix pours me another which I think I drink, but I can't be sure. I'm stunned. In shock. She was right all along.
..."Hale, twenty eight of the hotel and financier Manhattan Hales was found stabbed to death today in what detectives believe to be a murder-suicide by her fiancé, Mr. Royce King. Police are calling it a crime of passion and are urging any..."
I can't hear any more, there's only one word on endless repeat in my mind. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
She's gone.
She wasn't late after all.
I do throw up then, attempting to aim over the bar into the sink we have there but mostly missing. The women who are sitting beside me raise their brows and mutter something as they pick up their Prada handbags and leave through the doors I'd spent so much time staring at only minutes before.
Gone. Dead.
Rose.
.
.
.
.
.
In the words of the great and epic Fngrcufs - "EmRo without the R is Emo"
Thanks for reading =D
Fan girl love to Fate_of_Gabriel who did a lil prereading for moi. She's my Emlice idol ;o) or just Emmett in general! AND to those homies who I'd pour a shot on the floor for - Momma, LazyAB, Smooshy Middle and my Moo.. can't be done without you. Huge thank you's for the betafishing from the deloverly and deawesome ilsuocantante, the pocket is open and stocked with oreos and Harry Potter on repeat.
By miztrezboo80
Genre: Twilight - Angst/Suspense/Romance
Characters: Emmett/Rosalie
Rating: M
Status: One Shot Complete
Beta'd By: Ilsuocantante & lightstardust
Summary: Waiting and watching sure, yet unsure that she will arrive and day and night will cease to chase each other through dawn and dusk. Will the man that cared be enough for the girl who doesn’t care at all?
Banner By: prettystuffnstu
A/N: Written for the gorgeous leaders of our Em Pack - Hmonster, AccioBourbon and sweet Ms Life aka TheHeartOfLife and the Emmett 30 Day Challenge.. go seek the rest of the 70 something author entries on their fanfic profile30 Days of Emmett
Sun and Moon
She's always running late.
I know this.
I've sat outside in the dark, or stood in a crowded room alone waiting for her so many, many times before. Why should this time be any different?
It should be. Today should be.
Today should be the day that I arrive to see her waiting for me. All alone with her luscious plump lips pouting in indignation, because the tables have turned and it is she who taps a toe and watches an empty door.
But it is not.
It is me who sits. Who shifts in his seat and rubs a finger lightly around the top of his now empty glass. The remains of thirty-year-old scotch and two ice cubes long melted and consumed, the one vice I allow myself as I sit and watch, listening for the familiar click click of expensive heels across a once-polished floor. The warm dark timber is worn and dull after years of service.
Worn and dulled like me.
I am worn out. I am dulled from the once bright man who had been quick to smile and even quicker to have laughter flowing from even the hardest of stone hearts.
Not now.
Those times are just memories, fleeting and brief, much like her presence in my life. If I try to latch onto their particles, these tiny fragments of my time, they disappear like smoke. Curling, and fading around me, staying only long enough to warm my skin-but not my soul.
I should have known she'd be late.
I should have expected this.
Yet, I did the one thing I told myself I wouldn't.
I opened my heart to hope.
A stupid, foolish move. Something the younger man in me had done countless times before. The one who is now thirty-five should know better. The one who has life experience with women who have only used and abused him should know the rules by now.
Beautiful, smart and classy women only ever want the lowly working class hottie with the nice ass and dimpled smile for one thing.
Revenge.
Pure and sweet.
I'm the guy they see when the husband has been caught playing the field. I'm the man they have a little fun with when the money maker is away. I'm the bit on the side.
I'm almost a whore.
She's never made me feel that way. Not once.
Until now.
The longer I sit here-not checking my watch, not glancing nonchalantly at the entrance every time I hear the bell, not judging the seconds as frozen water returns to its liquid form-not doing any of those things, but still I recognize that she is not here. That she isn't coming.
That she may never come.
At what point does late become wishful thinking that she'll even consider arriving at all?
Today was supposed to be different. Today was supposed to be the one time that all the waiting and hoping and wishful thinking on wisps of dreams ended.
I was supposed to get my dream today. Today was meant to be my magic moment where unicorns are real and there are pots of gold at the end of rainbows.
Yet sitting here, the unicorns are really just horses with cardboard cones fitted to their heads. The pots of gold are tarnished and filled with chocolate money.
She's failed me. But worse, I've failed myself.
I should go. I should get up and leave now before I look as pathetic as I am beginning to feel. I should give the bartender a foolish half-grin and get my coat and walk out the door. I should walk out of this bar, this town, this country, even, and never look back.
I hear it's nice in Mexico this time of year. Hot and balmy, and maybe if I went to Baja I could learn to surf. There's no snow down there. No crisp, clean white wonderland that I walked through mounds of this morning in my effort to get here. Every small drift caused a spring in my step. All the stark nakedness, this bright blanket upon everything grey and dreary had me hopeful of what lay ahead in my life. A new life with her.
Or without, as the case may now be.
Maybe I'd even use that passport that I haven't touched since my cousin had one of those destination weddings in Fiji. I flew halfway around the world to see Garrett happily marry the woman of his dreams. His one. His everything. His Katie. I wanted that. I thought I'd found it with this girl. This woman who could hold a crowd with her entrance alone. Who could merely raise a brow and the unacceptable to her would become acceptable once more. All because of who she was with. Who she was attached to. Who thought he owned her.
One didn't own this woman. This ethereal beauty.
I'd come to discover that the first time I'd met her.
Late night or early morning, whatever you want to call the witching hour when the clock struck twelve. She hadn't been alone. She very rarely was. She'd walked in and his hand had been at her waist, a slight frown on her perfectly manicured brow. I'd thought at the time she was one of 'those' socialites. The ones who suffer through parties they don't want to be at, merely to be seen. Who bantered playfully with CEOs, sons and playboys with six figure bank balances whose money came from trust funds.
I hadn't seen her crack a smile the entire time she'd eaten the small meal that our hotels bar had on offer. When she left her date at the booth after an hour, I didn't think she would meet my eye when I asked her what it was she wanted to drink.
But she did. Her gaze had been steady with my own, so much so that it rocked me to the core. Her eyes weren't above average or overly different. But they were warm. So warm compared to the icy exterior and carriage of the woman who'd impatiently tapped her fingers from pinky to thumb and back again over the warm wood of the bar top I'd previously polished to its mirror like gloss. She'd held me, melted me with that stare. Burning me with those slightly muted colors that swirled amongst rich tones, contrasting sharply with the poise and refined outer layer she wore.
She'd merely gazed in my direction, asked me for the use of our phone and when I'd told her that it was for staff use only, she'd rolled her eyes and asked me for a favor.
The first of many. The first that should have been the last.
Shouldn't have been at all.
She'd wanted me to call her cell, then hang up once she answered.
Simple. Effective. Something I'd done for plenty of women before. Those that needed an out and didn't have the heart to let the date of the night down with harsh words. A simple, "emergency," and, "I'll call you," did the trick, let the hopeful down with a tiny thread of maybe-there'll-be-a-next-time, when in truth there wasn't even a this time.
Women like her, though, so confident and refined, they didn't ask for favors like this. They usually drank more and ate less. Answered in clipped, short sentences that divulged nothing of who they were, or who they hoped to be. Women like her simply didn't talk with the 'staff' like me.
Yet, she had. She'd smiled when I told her it, "wouldn't be a problem, ma'am." She'd smiled and said ma'am was her mother. She'd stared at me for a moment after that. Thirteen and a half seconds, to be exact. She'd stared right into my eyes and smiled when I'd nervously grinned in response. My 'assets' on show, the deep dimples in each of my cheeks always garnered a response from those that were privy to their hidden presence in my skin. They had been the sole reason for an increase in tips when I'd finally learned their usefulness in the business life had lumped me with.
When you're suddenly homeless and jobless at age seventeen, you learn to use the gifts god gave you. Even if it does make you go home late at night and scrub your skin raw to rid yourself of the shame. But every smile was another dollar in my pocket, every purposeful bend at the waist, slyly shaking my ass to some song on the speakers, was another bill paid. Every lonely, bored housewife or socialite who wanted more than to just try the creations my hands could make with ice and fruit and liquor was another step on my way back to college, and out of the mess that an embezzling father and suicidal mother had left me.
A look from her alone had changed my entire outlook that night. I no longer thought of this job and sweet talking pretty women as a necessary evil. Because here I'd met her. Here she'd given me her number and told me to use it, and not just for the ridding of one upper class Manhattan rat. No, I'd made the call and she'd left without a glance in my direction. I'd shrugged it off, just another good deed gone unsung - but her number still made its way into my pocket. A week later, she'd been back again on the arm of some Harvard boy, and with another look into the seemingly endless depths of her eyes, I was doing her a favor once more.
And so it went, every Friday between eleven and one she would arrive, a look, a call and she'd be gone. It got so I never needed her to write with that familiar looping scrawl the numbers that were ingrained in my memory. So firmly stuck in my head that I'd begun reciting them instead of counting sheep at night.
Six months of this, and then it had stopped.
It was then I began doing favors for a dark haired man with a look to him that raised my hackles every time he slid on up to the bar. She never looked at me after he started bringing her around. I'd started off thinking that she was a strong, independent woman. Someone who knew what she did and did not want. Yet with him, she was different. Gone were the fake laughs, the questions filled with false interest. They were replaced with a quiet I didn't understand.
This new man did everything for her, and then ignored her. He'd order her hard liquor and shots instead of her glass of white. He'd talk to his friends about her, as if she wasn't there. Yet she said not a word. Never a glance in my direction. I never even saw her phone. I did, however, notice the ugly chunk of rock that was a new addition to her left hand.
Just like that, it all fell into place.
There was never to be anything more in our game. I was nothing more than a pawn in her dating war. The buffer between her and those that weren't up to whatever standards to which her bar was raised.. What I couldn't figure out was the man she was with now. He blatantly ignored her. It was obvious that she was just a pretty thing to dangle from his arm. To look at, to hold, but not treasure like at least half of the men she'd had me send away would have done. Like I-on the odd occasion-had wondered about doing.
What was it about this man that made her settling? That had her accepting a marriage proposal from a man who obviously didn't know her? Didn't know and didn't want to get to know her. He was oblivious to who she was. The woman who laughed loud and snorted that one time her date somehow sucked a line of spaghetti through his mouth and out of his nose. The woman who would get this faraway look of sadness whenever they started talking about themselves and forget to ask about her.
She was interesting. She was intriguing-hell, even I had wanted to know more about her.
Things changed with this new man, this fiancé of hers.
Never once did a bored look pass my way. No tiny roll of the eyes to indicate it was time I used those familiar numbers to fake an emergency. It wasn't like we had a relationship… well, I suppose we did of sorts, but now it was like I was being ignored. I was nothing to her, nothing more than the bar man who'd helped her out once in a while, and the realization, the popping of my balloon of 'like' with her, staggered me a little.
I settled for getting him the drinks she didn't want, but drank anyway. I settled for watching this stunning woman with the most amazing eyes shrink in front of me week after week, and on some occasions, day after day. She didn't just come on Fridays anymore. There were Saturdays, midweek all-nighters and sometimes four day benders. They would stay until she could no longer hold her head up, and then he and a friend would practically drag her from the bar. My hands itched to do something for her with the way they manhandled her, not caring when her head bounced into the door frame once or twice on the way out.
I did nothing, though, because I was nothing to her, and obviously, he was something.
It was another three months of this before his eyes met mine. Dark and menacing. Giving me more than the cause I had already to despise him. It was he who asked me to fake a call, and wouldn't take no for an answer when I declined. When he brought up that he was old friends with the owners of the establishment and maybe he'd seen me drinking more than my fair share on the job, and how easy it would be for him to make a complaint … I picked up the phone and did as he asked.
Again, she never looked at me. He'd sweep out of the room with his so called friends after nothing more than a polite peck on her cheek and a 'Later, babe.' She'd sit there on her own for another few hours, then quietly put a few bills on the table and leave.
I relegated myself to the background as these events turned to second nature, of their arrival and his early departure. So much so, that I dropped the glass I'd been polishing- ever so cliché like-when her voice, the one I hadn't heard in months, met my ears.
"I suppose you think I'm pretty stupid."
I looked up into eyes that had haunted my dreams since I'd met her, and was stunned by the sadness and melancholy that lingered in their depths.
"Stupid?" I stuttered as I bent down to escape her burning gaze for a moment, and picked up the shattered pieces of glass from the floor.
She didn't say anything further, just waited for me to finish cleaning, and when I'd disposed of the mess, she was still there at the bar.
Stone cold sober. I hadn't served her a drink once that night and she'd come in alone. It was the first time I could recall she'd come in without someone dangling on her arm, especially him
Why I hadn't realized then, or even now, that it had been different, that her coming in on her own should have been worthy of my attention, I'll never know. Maybe I'd been too preoccupied with my thoughts of her that I'd ignored the fact she'd walked in the door.
"Yes. I've seen the way you look down at me. The stupid girl that drinks too much and lets her man walk all over her. I've seen the pity in your eyes."
I didn't know what to say.
We'd never spoken more than a few sentences to each other, and she'd accused me of something that I wasn't. Something that I wouldn't be with her. Not her.
"I think you're confusing pity for caring. Or maybe you've never had anyone worry about you before," I said softly, hoping that she could find the sincerity behind my words.
She blinked. The stormy blue-gray pupils disappeared behind thick black lashes and reappeared again, still making my heart stutter, skip a beat, for just that one second when their brilliance shone bright with the overhead lights.
Even as annoyed with me as she apparently was, she was still, still, unbelievably beautiful.
Stunning.
Wild.
"Worry?" she'd spit out, like the word was dirty and left an awful taste in her mouth. She'd stared at me for a beat, then stepped back from the bar, dropping a large note on the counter. "What's there to worry about?"
Then she was gone.
Days passed and I thought about the strange almost-conversation I'd had with her. The look in her eyes and the way she'd looked at me. But most of all, under the harsh words and hard stare, the little girl lost that was hiding just below the shadows.
A week later, there was a note in my locker from one of the other barmen in my locker when I clock in to start my day. An envelope with a question on the front, asking about 'the girl' that we both knew from the bar, and just why it was she was leaving me notes. I opened it without a seconds thought,, and inside, one of our napkins with the words, "I'm sorry."
She was there that night, with him and his friends and I prepared to be a part of the furniture. I prepared to be insignificant and invisible once more. Yet the moment he left, she was up off the chair and sitting at the bar.
"So, tell me a story," she'd said, her voice tired and strained but her eyes had been light, interested, aware.
"A story?"
She'd shrugged and she smiled, the first I had been witness to in… I couldn't even remember how long. "Isn't that what you bartenders do? Tell long involved stories and fix your patrons' woes?"
"And here I thought we were only good for remembering drinks," I'd said as I set down a glass of her favorite Zinfandel and was rewarded with a quirk of one brow, until she'd sipped and she'd sighed and the smile was back, bigger than before.
"A priest, a rabbi and the Easter bunny walk into a bar…"
That was the first night tshe'd stayed until the end of my shift.
Soon, I caught her eye before he'd even started to drink. Then she'd turn and give me a smile that warmed me to the tips of my toes as she walked in the door. After that, she'd come in on her own, and that was when the flirting really began.
I shouldn't have wanted her. The Harry Winston, five carat, pear-shaped diamond that sparkled on her left hand said taken... but her eyes, her eyes did not. Her eyes said, "I'm lonely." Her eyes said, "I like that you like me." Her eyes said, "I want to be here with you."
Then her eyes stopped saying these things, because her mouth said them for her.
I gave in.
I succumbed to what I wasn't supposed to want, and even though she was 'taken' and couldn't be mine, I wanted her to be. I wanted to show her what it was like to have someone listen and want to know her. I wanted to show her what it was like to be…
Loved.
When the bar was slow one night, she being the only patron we'd had in hours since he'd left, Felix cornered me and told me to go. He alone had been privy to the slight drop in my armor when she was around. I'd let her get past the walls I'd put up from the expensive women with their expensive taste. She was different. I knew it
I wanted to know it.
Felix said he'd close up. Felix nodded toward my golden-haired distraction and told me to take her home.
He never said whose.
Strangely enough, she took up my offer to walk her to her apartment, I knew enough by then to know that she lived only a block from the bar. It had felt so good, so right when she'd placed her hand in mine once we stood outside on the street in the cold fall air.
When we began walking, it was not in the direction of her home. When we stopped at the stairs to an apartment, it was I who produced a key and it was she that followed me inside. When I closed the door and reached out a hand to flick on the light, it was her voice, soft and feminine that stayed my fingers as they hovered just out of reach. It was her full lips that pressed gently to mine as her fingers wove into my hair.
That night, we didn't make it past the sitting room of my tiny studio apartment. We did, however, explore the threadbare carpet in the entranceway, the bench in the kitchenette and the one selling point of my humble abode-the bathtub.
She made me feel again.
She made every cell in my body come to life that first night. Bursting with energy from wherever her skin caressed my own. The revealing of pale skin when she slowly gathered her cobalt dress over her thighs, her stomach, her chest and, finally, off her too thin arms, was like the unveiling of a masterpiece. Her eyes dark and wanting matched my mood. The lust, the need. We'd flirted enough, touched, but not completely. This was everything we'd been slowly working toward every time he'd left her alone. Every secret smile, every parting glance, it had all led to this moment where she and I were more naked than without the garments that concealed our bodies during the day. The whole night had been like a dream, it had all happened so quickly.
It should have stayed that way.
It should have remained a one night stand.
Yet, the next night, and the next. She'd stayed back, or arrived just before closing. Our smiles had been filled with our secrets.
We had been fools to think no one would notice.
Soon, nights weren't enough for her. The few hours stolen between the end of my working night and the beginning of her social day were far too short. Our moments of shared bliss, of my body wrapped around hers, protecting her from the world outside the bubble we'd slowly made, hadn't been able to shelter her from the day when she was no longer within reach. I couldn't be there when she had to return to the world where the ring on her finger was more than just a claim to her name. She couldn't be mine in that way, but the night... the night was ours alone.
I wanted more. I pushed for it, knowing it wasn't mine to ask for.
I had fallen, though. Fallen so deeply into the blue of her eyes, the warmth of the smile that felt like mine. For the words she'd whispered hoarsely when she came. I'd made her give up more and more of her time. I'd stolen the day because our night had been too short. Not enough. I'd begged for moments, extra minutes and she'd given them to me. She would tell me, "anything for you, anything," and I'd believed her.
She was never on time to these rendezvous. She'd leave me waiting and wanting and then she would arrive just as I'd about given up hope. All the hours of mind-numbing clock watching would fade away because her lips would be on mine and we'd be falling back onto a bed that had likely seen more of its fair share of lovers engaged in situations much like our own. She'd never cared that the hotels we met in weren't of the five or even three star variety, and she'd refused to let me pay for somewhere more suited to a woman of her class . She hadn't wanted thousand thread count sheets, or chandeliers, or small overly priced Pringles cans in bar fridges. "Just you, only you," she would say and I would believe her. Every time we met only had me counting down until we could be together again.
Then he went away for business.
And our nights and days became one long together.
No apart.
No stealing the sun and giving it to the envious moon.
Because the moon hadn't been envious anymore. The moon thought he had it all.
Yet, night always turned into day. The two must always separate, only joining for brief moments at dusk and dawn, where the dark and light blended into pinks and purples washing over the cityscape. We'd lived for each moment. Spent every possible second of every possible twenty four hours in each others' company. We'd been completely wrapped up in each other, the dates, the love... because it had felt like that for me and I was sure she'd nearly said it once.
My world revolved around hers. She was everything, she was the air in my lungs and the extra spark in my step. I'd lived for her smile, for the sound of my name as she whispered good morning and good night. So preoccupied and crazy in lust were we, that we'd forgotten the reason why the Night forever chased the Day. We'd ignored the possibility of the Day's minions having spies in the night. That his friends were still around, even if he was not.
One Friday evening, she'd been waiting for me outside the service entry. She'd reminded me of a young Grace Kelly. What would have been a demure black dress on some was wrapped to her curves, accentuated the curve of her thigh where the hem hugged her legs tight. A perfect line of pearls curled around her neck and a gigantic black hat covered her face nearly as much as the dark round fames that hid her icy blues from my view. We'd watched Rear Window the previous weekend when she'd had a cold and I'd looked after her. Soup, back rubs, tissues-the works. Maybe the movie had been the cause of her change in style-not that she hadn't always dressed nicely-or maybe it had been something else, I'd never gotten to ask..
I'd stepped into the alley, my feet crunching on some stray gravel below caught her attention. She'd looked up and, taking a quick drag on the menthol cigarette she'd had, the house of cards we'd built so precariously began to fall.
"He knows."
Her voice had been soft, but the hidden edge behind those two words stopped my blood cold.
"Who?" I'd asked, stepping closer, but she'd only moved back. She hadn't wanted me near. It had been a stupid question to ask, because there was only one person that she would have been referring to. Yet, ask I had.
She hadn't bothered to say anything in return, just blew another steady stream of minty smelling smoke up into the air, creating a barrier between us. Not entirely tangible, but there all the same.
She'd told me he'd said something, but it had been cryptic. Some questions about where she'd been and why his brother had seen her downtown when she was supposed to have been anywhere but there.
I'd told her to forget it, that it was just one time. One person.
But it hadn't been. There had been more. More sightings.. more times that the sun had eclipsed the moon, creating black voids where her absence and my presence had been noted as one and the same.
I'd told her it would be fine.
She'd been shaking by that stage, shaking so hard that she dropped the last of her cigarette to the ground and had almost fallen along with it, but my arms were faster, shooting out to hold her at the last second. She'd collapsed against me, breaking that icy facade one last time, and had begged me not to let her go. Begged me to stay. Begged me to run away with her. Leave all our problems behind and be some modern day Bonnie and Clyde without the bank robberies.
"We don't have to run away," I'd said, gazing intently into those grey blues that had been opened wide, so frightened. "I'll look after you. I won't let anything happen."
And I would. I'd wanted to be there for her, be the person she could rely on now that she had finally let me in and I'd finally let myself believe in something. Someone.
She'd fought me tooth and nail. "You don't understand," she'd said, pounding her fists, such delicate bones under pale white skin had been merely a beating of butterfly wings against me. "He's not... he's not right. He's not a nice guy, Emmett."
I'd tried to assuage her, to tell her that he was just angry. That anyone would be in his position and that it would be okay now. If he knew, we could be something more. God how my heart had ached for that. But she'd rallied and ranted that he had connections. He wouldn't be happy. It could get... bad. I'd brushed it off and assured her whatever her worst thoughts were, I could fix them.
No one would hurt her. Not my girl. Not ever.
We'd arranged to meet the next evening. She had to get some things together and then she would be back at the bar. No later than seven.
It's getting close to ten.
She isn't coming.
She wasn't ever going to.
I'd just been that added pawn in her game of drama. Bored socialite seeks good time with cute and good in bed lower classman.
I was so, so stupid to think she'd want me for anything more. That it could have been anything more.
I pick up my glass, surveying the bar one last time with a long look from the door to the back and to the door again-she could have slipped in and not have seen me. Which is a lie, I'm in a quiet bar, it's been slow here all night, but even if I'd missed her, Felix definitely wouldn't have from his place at the bar.
It's no use. She's not coming... but I can't give up. Won't give up. Maybe I'll never give up, but I will leave this bar. I will go home and pretend to sleep and pretend to care about my day, until the night comes again and I'll be here waiting for her. I take my glass to the bar, and consider having one last drink before I go. She could come in at any time. She could still arrive.
Felix just shakes his head and wanders to the other side where the expensive liquor is kept. Fuck it, I'll work overtime for a few of these, anything to help me sleep tonight without her in my bed.
I hardly notice the two women that enter and sit down beside me, both idly chatting about this and that. I don't notice the subject change or familiar names when they take a breath and speak with a quiet reverence that is usually reserved for the old or the dead.
"She went to school with my sister and then..."
"... a friend of mine was screwing him on the side, what's good for the goose..."
"Still, she didn't deserve that. No one deserves that."
I slowly drift back to the present with these tiny scraps of conversation that I've picked up. I can't be sure in my scotch-fueled haze if they said the name I think they said. My one. My girl.
They nod and say how tragic it is. How it was all over the news, didn't I see it?
I shake my head and each word that leaves the taller one's overly painted lips has my stomach filling with stones of dread and my limbs almost floating in this unreal yet utterly realistic world. It can't be.
It can't be.
Felix turns the channel on the TV we rarely use apart from the odd game of PGA golf - our clients aren't exactly the sports mad type.
It's her. It's her.
I know the photo they're showing of her on the screen. I was there with her that day, and because they leave it up there for a while, I can actually make out my hand beside hers, my feet just that little bit behind and out of syncopated step.
I want to throw up. Yet I can't tear my eyes away from the screen. From her. All the while the women beside me continue their running commentary on everything I don't want to believe has occurred, has in fact, happened...
Felix pours me another which I think I drink, but I can't be sure. I'm stunned. In shock. She was right all along.
..."Hale, twenty eight of the hotel and financier Manhattan Hales was found stabbed to death today in what detectives believe to be a murder-suicide by her fiancé, Mr. Royce King. Police are calling it a crime of passion and are urging any..."
I can't hear any more, there's only one word on endless repeat in my mind. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
She's gone.
She wasn't late after all.
I do throw up then, attempting to aim over the bar into the sink we have there but mostly missing. The women who are sitting beside me raise their brows and mutter something as they pick up their Prada handbags and leave through the doors I'd spent so much time staring at only minutes before.
Gone. Dead.
Rose.
.
.
.
.
.
In the words of the great and epic Fngrcufs - "EmRo without the R is Emo"
Thanks for reading =D
Fan girl love to Fate_of_Gabriel who did a lil prereading for moi. She's my Emlice idol ;o) or just Emmett in general! AND to those homies who I'd pour a shot on the floor for - Momma, LazyAB, Smooshy Middle and my Moo.. can't be done without you. Huge thank you's for the betafishing from the deloverly and deawesome ilsuocantante, the pocket is open and stocked with oreos and Harry Potter on repeat.