Alex jumped in his seat when the kitchen door swung opened and Therese stalked out.
“Why do you have to ruin everything?”
Emily’s shriek came from somewhere inside the kitchen, her voice full of tears.
Therese winced and quickly shut the door behind her, then leaned against it, taking a deep breath and then giving Alex a shaky smile.
“Alright, I’m off for the evening. It was nice meeting you, Alex. I’m sure that I will be seeing you around Central.”
“Right,” Alex said, half-standing up from the table. “Uh, do you think I should…?”
Therese waved him off, wedging her feet into the shoes she’d discarded by the front door and collecting her purse.
“Don’t worry about it. She’ll feel better as soon as I’m gone,” Therese said curtly, as she reached for the door. “You think about what I said.”
She shot him a warning glare as she closed the door behind her. Alex decided not to notice that she was crying. He sat quietly at the table for a while, and then when nothing happened, he decided to clear the rest of the table. Alex entered the kitchen cautiously, his hands filled with glasses and silverware.
“Emily, are you okay?”
He eyed Emily carefully as he entered the kitchen, ready to turn around if she was still a mess. She was crouching down with a broom and tray, sweeping up the remains of what looked to be a broken plate, her face streaked with tears and her makeup smudged. She smiled thinly at Alex and nodded, then returned to sweeping. He suppressed an urge to give her a hug, and headed to the sink instead.
He rinsed off the dishes methodically, trying to give her time to compose herself. It felt a bit strange to him, being back in a kitchen. Even though it had only been a few weeks, he had gotten used to having access the cafeteria. Of course, he’d never cooked for himself as much as he had warmed food in a microwave, and there was a certain familiarity with the institutional feeding scheme.
“Dinner was good,” Alex said, keeping his attention on the dishes in the sink. “Those little potato things…”
“Fingerling?” Emily offered, sniffling.
“Right, the fingerling potatoes were great, and the fish was, um, very… great. Also.”
Alex heard Emily’s muffled laughter from behind him and felt a little bit better about the situation. Watching her cry made him feel weirdly helpless.
“Did she tell you things about me? Was she at least nice to you?”
“Who’s that? Your sister?”
Alex glanced over his shoulder at Emily, who appeared to be more in control, though he had a feeling that the wrong answer could well prompt another crying binge, if he wasn’t careful.
“She was pretty nice, yeah, in a weird sort of way. She was way harder on you than she was on me. We didn’t talk about anything in particular — I think she’s just being protective of you.”
Emily smiled half-heartedly, picking up a drying cloth and starting work on the dishes that Alex had finished cleaning.
“She seems to think I’m in imminent danger of having my virtue compromised,” Emily said, a tad bitterly, “if I’m left alone with you. That is a bit unexpected.”
“Oh?”
Alex tried not to get his hopes up.
“She’s always known,” Emily said, blushing and looking down, “what would be expected of me. My father has been very clear on what role I would eventually play in helping rebuild the Raleigh Cartel’s fortunes. I don’t know why she’s acting like she would bite your head off if you touched me.”
After a moment’s consideration, he decided that probably wasn’t a veiled invitation.
“I’m not sure,” he said hesitantly. “Therese seems… capable.”
Emily giggled.
“That’s one way to put it,” she said more cheerfully, shelving dishes. “And you’re right. Therese is one of the top Operators in the Hegemony, and certainly the most, how should I say… capable in our cartel. But, if you were to compromise my virtue, I wouldn’t be that concerned with Therese’s reaction.”
“Really?”
Alex braced himself, wondering how much worse it could get.
“No, I’d be more worried about my father,” Emily said, her smile unhappy. “He might collapse in sheer joy and disbelief.”
Alex didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. They finished up the kitchen in silence, and then moved to the living room. Alex was careful to sit down first, on one end of the couch, so that when Emily decided to sit down next to him, rather than leaving a buffer between them, it wasn’t awkward. He took a sip from his wine glass and hoped that it looked like he’d done that before, and ransacked his mind for something to say.
“You must think I’m a mess,” Emily said, sighing and leaning back into the overstuffed leather cushions. “My plan was so much cooler than this.”
“Really? Because this has been pretty cool. I’ve never really been over to anyone’s house before.”
Emily was openly skeptical.
“Never?”
Alex shook his head. On the balance, he figured it could be worse — he didn’t really want to talk about himself, but even more than that, he didn’t want them to sit in silence.
“Well, I mean, I’ve been inside other people’s houses, obviously,” Alex explained, frowning as he tried to remember. “But, I don’t think I’ve ever really been invited over to hang out like this. I’m sure that no one except my grandmother ever cooked me dinner.”
“That sounds sort of lonely,” Emily said, looking at him with what he desperately hoped wasn’t pity. “Though maybe things haven’t gone too well tonight because I’m sort of in uncharted territory myself. I don’t normally do this sort of thing.”
“Can I ask what your plan was?” Alex asked, looking away, cheeks burning.
“Oh. Uh, well, I thought you’d be all over me as soon as we were alone, so I didn’t think I would have to do that much,” Emily said nervously, her cheeks tomato-red. “I guess I didn’t realize how weird this would feel. I’ve known it was coming for years, since I was little. And I worried about it, all sorts of things, really, but now that it’s happening, I can’t even tell if you like me or not.”
“Do you like me at all?”
Alex evaded the question, still unable to look at Emily directly.
“I don’t really know you,” Emily admitted, after a short delay.
“Well, same here.” Alex shrugged in relief. “It isn’t that I don’t like you. I just don’t really get what’s going on, yet, and it seems really important that I figure things out. That, and,” Alex said, instantly regretting having continued on, “I’ve never, that is to say, well, this is all new to me. All of it.”
Emily looked stunned. Alex was fairly certain that she reached for her wine glass to buy herself time, rather than out of thirst.
“Are you being serious?”
She leaned forward when she asked, trying to look him in the eyes. Alex blushed, and wished he’d been able to turn invisible after all.
“Yes,” Alex said, hanging his head.
“All of it?”
Emily’s expression was somewhere between incredulous and pitying.
“My upbringing was not exactly conventional,” Alex said morosely, “and I was not quite as popular at my last school as I appear to be at this one.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Shit,” Alex said softly, rubbing his palms against his jeans, “this is exactly what I didn’t want to talk about out.”
Emily reached over and patted his hand, her expression pained.
“Don’t worry about it,” she urged. “We can talk about something…”
“My family died in a fire,” Alex said quietly, staring at the floor. “The general consensus was that I set it, though I can’t say that I remember doing anything like that. I guess I can’t say that I’m sure I didn’t, either. Anyway, I spent a long time in various institutions, because of that. The overall opinion of me back at home was, well, understandably low.”