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English
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Published:
2022-11-02
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1,011
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1/1
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Entertaining Our Feelings in the Dark

Summary:

Life after Highschool has been rough on Jake Holling, but in his lowest of the lows, he finds someone who can lift him up.

Notes:

This is what my first day of college amounted to, apart from me realising I'm such a loser~ I'm basically projecting on Jake here. S O R R Y

Work Text:

He was surprised when he found her fingers reaching out for his in the dark. Entangled together, they lay in the dark, gazing at the ceiling in the dark.

Jake Holling didn’t know how he had found himself here. With this girl he’d known ever since they were eight years old. He’s never actually thought of her as anything more than a friend… and she never had either.

And Jake didn’t know what she saw in him. He was someone most people reckoned as a grade A failure. Highschool had been Jake’s kingdom. He had been one of the most popular guys, he had friends, he was generally liked by everyone, even though he was a little bit of a troublemaker. He had hit on literally any and every girl who would look at him, with a special interest for a certain Gia Moran. He had dated quite a few too.

He had never in his life, hit on Emma Goodall. She was his crush’s best friend, she was his best friend, and he’d never actually ever thought of her that way.

So it was really surprising, when he looked back on his life, and realised just how little attention he had paid to her…. And yet she had been the one to hold his hand when he needed it the most.

Things started falling apart when he failed to get a soccer scholarship for college. His first and last job happened to be the one he had picked up in highschool for pocket change, and his friends had all moved away to high end places. Gia and Noah excelling in academics, Emma getting a scholarship to an art school, because of her photography, Troy moving away to train for the army, after his time as a power ranger. Jake felt like he was a failure, and a fight with his father, and his crippling disappointment was what had landed him up on the pavement. He’d been sleeping on a park bench for two days, when he saw Emma and a guy he didn’t recognise, at the movie theatre together. Recognising him immediately, she had dumped their movie, requested the guy to reschedule, and hung out with him instead, at the counter, till his shift ended.

And he’d told her everything. He didn’t want to cry, it took effort, but when she leaned across the counter and hugged him, comforting him, he couldn’t control anymore, and burst into tears, sobbing into her shoulder.

She asked him to come and stay with him for a few days, till his father’s temper cooled off, hopefully, and he’d be ready to have him back. Emma’s dad had been awfully co-operative. He lived alone, mostly because Emma was away at college, and her mother had died when Emma had been really small, and he had never remarried. It turned out Emma was back for spring break, and that’s when she had crashed into Jake.

“Awfully perfect timing, if you ask me” he’d said, blushing just a bit, and helped Mr Goodall with literally anything he could, from doing the dishes, to learning how to bake brownies for his hosts.

She’d also helped him to get into a course that would qualify him to teach soccer to younger kids, which he could do in his spare time, and get a job that paid more money than the one at the theatre, so he could afford his own apartment.

After three months, Jake felt like he owed every ounce of his success to Emma, who had quite literally turned into his cheerleader, his Guardian Angel, and somehow, his everything.

Sure, she had gone back to college, but she stayed in touch, texting him every day, calling him before dinner, just like she called her dad, taking an hour out to talk to the both of them. Meanwhile, Jake and her father had also bonded, and he asked Jake to stay over, even after he felt like he was earning enough that he could move out now.

Things with Jake’s own parents were going nowhere though, and while that did put him in depression, at times, he let Emma talk him out of it.

He didn’t know how he had fallen in love with her, but by the time he realised it, he knew he was in too deep.

Somehow, Emma knew it too. When she visited him in the fall, things happened between them, which he had never expected to happen between him and Emma, ever. Not even in his wildest dreams.

Which was why, the day Mr Goodall was out, and he found Emma wrapped around him in the dark, he didn’t know what to think.

On one hand, he considered himself insanely lucky, to find a girl who liked him for him, someone who had seen him at his best, and not been attracted, and then seen him fall, and helped him back up. She didn’t like him because he was some hotshot Power Ranger, or because he hung out with celebrities, or because he could sing, or dance, or be the perfect boyfriend. She liked him for him. She’d seen him at his worst, she’d seen him living on a park bench, she’d seen him shedding tears on her pillow, she’d seen him cursing his life. And she had stuck with him through all of that.

Emma was amazing.

And maybe that was why a part of him believed he didn’t deserve her. That she was wasting her life away with a good-for-nothing doofus like him.

But nothing he said in her defence worked, she always told him that she liked him because he was real, the most genuine guy she had ever met, and one of her oldest friends. She said she wanted to try this out with him, there was nothing wrong with giving him a shot, and he never showed any red flags. So what if he was down on his luck?

Jake didn’t know how to tell her how much he loved her.

But something told him, she already knew.