Everything that kills me makes me feel alive [Emily]

It was nice to have a day off to do something fun for a change. He’d asked Emily to get dressed up, and had been excited to take her to this hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that he’d heard about from a work friend. Mexican food wasn’t common in Britain, and John liked trying it. His friend had told him it was very authentic, and that was an alluring thought for John.

John was usually the type who liked to explore, to travel, to see new things. He was fascinated by different cultures, and every small adventure he had was just a tiny bit of life to him. It might not have been a trek through the wilderness, but it was a small escape. In many ways, John lived from these moments to more of the same. He hated the monotony and stability of normal life. He could only make it if things were interesting to him, if some external thing was keeping him stimulated and engaged.

As it was, the restaurant proved to be just what the doctor ordered. The atmosphere was unique, quaint. The paint might have been peeling off the walls, but the food had been incredibly tasty, and the music had given the place a very homey feel. John had made extensive conversation with the owner, to the momentary exclusion of his dining partner, but that wasn’t any different than usual, either. He knew that Emily would forgive him if he got a little caught up in it. He really enjoyed building those connections, even if they were evanescent.

While he spoke to the owner and his wife, all was well, but after the couple went back to work and their daughter came out of the back things got complicated. Long, dark hair, exotic, probably early twenties—the girl was gorgeous, and God, her chest. How did people order from her, with her blouse unbuttoned to the third button down? She was shapely and well-endowed, and John couldn’t help but admire her from afar, going far enough to point her out to Emily.

He had seen the look in his girlfriend's eyes the moment he had made the comment, but it had taken John considerably longer than that to really understand why Emily had been upset by it. John wasn’t the type of man who apologized for the hell of it. He was stubborn. He meant what he said, and he didn’t like to take crap. He wouldn’t apologize unless he meant it, and no matter how much he looked at her breasts, it was obvious they weren’t more than a B cup—nowhere near the size of the girl’s he had compared them to.

It wasn’t as though he was saying anything against her, per say. Emily had a great body, and John complimented it and worshiped it often. Her legs were long and shapely, and she had the best ass he had ever seen. She was, doubtlessly, a gorgeous girl. He didn’t understand why she had been so bothered by a simple observation. It took him almost all the way back home before he really started to understand why her feelings had been hurt. She always did seem so sensitive, insecure. He told her that she was beautiful all the time, but somehow it never seemed to stick. Maybe she worried that he thought she wasn’t good enough. That wasn’t true at all.

Big breasts or small, he liked her the way she was. He just wasn’t going to act like she was perfect or that other girls weren’t attractive. That wasn’t honest, for one, but also not fun. As a man, he felt he was entitled to enjoy what he saw around him. He had never been unfaithful to Emily since they began their official relationship, and he wasn’t going to let her make him feel guilty about what he was doing. Even so, he could tell that she was still worried about it, from the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes to her vague and quieter answers to his questions and comments. She was distracted in what John could only assume was worry and self-doubt. He hadn’t meant to do that to her. He wouldn’t apologize for admiring the other woman, but he would admire her some in return. She deserved to be cherished and he really tried to show that to her.

“Hey Em, what’s wrong?” He asked, looking at her. He knew she wouldn’t answer him. She never did. He knew she would say it was fine. Luckily, he already knew that fine was far from fine. “You know that girl has got nothing on you, right?” He asked, after a few seconds. “Sure, she’s got a great rack, but there’s a lot more to a person than that.”

Tonight was date night, which Emily honestly didn’t really oppose. A good portion of the time, things went smoothly when she and John went out -- but not all the time. They were out at a Mexican restaurant tonight, and the food was very good, but the conversation had basically been absent for the past ten minutes or so. Her boyfriend was talking, clearly and animatedly, but not to her. His attention had been focused on the owner and his wife. It was normal for John to want to find things out, to learn, to extend his already vast knowledge base -- he was like her in that way, which had been a major part of her pull to him from the beginning, but forgetting his social graces and who was important were sometimes stunts that he’d pulled. That was fine at home, when she could go do something else and let him drown in new information, but when it was in public, it made things awkward and less than comfortable for Emily.

Pulling at the shirt she’d worn just for him (it was, undoubtedly, one of his favorites) and crossing her legs a few different ways under the table had been ways she’d occupied herself in the midst of John’s verbal escapade. She took small bites every few moments of her enchiladas, which were tasty, but she was distracted by the thoughts that flew around in her mind. What was the rest of this meal going to be like? Her sitting there while he chatted with people that had no real significance? Asking if the tiles lining the walls were antique out of pure curiosity, when he could’ve been asking her how her day at work was or if she’d written her father a letter lately? She realized that sometimes he just didn’t think of those things, but when she had a night off to spend with him, she didn’t want to listen to him talk to other people. She wanted him to talk to her.

Emily thought that maybe things were looking up in terms of where he would focus his attention when the owners went back to the grills to complete the next orders from some recent customers, but she was proved quickly wrong. A comment about their daughter, who had apparently just come out of the back and gone completely unnoticed by Emily, stung. John’s blatant attitude about how much he was enjoying the two mounds atop her chest wasn’t something the twenty-two year old had wanted to hear much, either -- especially considering that hers were nowhere close to… what did her name tag say? Elena’s? size. He was talking to her like she was another guy, someone that would understand, relate, even. The next time Emily blinked, her eyes stayed closed for a little longer than normal, and she strained, trying not to sigh out loud.

Gently, she sat down her fork and listened to him talk about how gorgeous she was. Her appetite was gone, that was one thing she was sure of. Maybe she’d get one of those styrofoam boxes to take the food home and eat it later, but she was also fairly sure that eating it would simply make her think of the very incident that had caused the loss of appetite.

Awhile later, when they’d returned to John’s apartment for the night, she set her bag down carefully on the counter. She avoided his eyes, looking at the floor, and listened to him speak. There it was already. The knowing he’d upset her and trying to make amends without really knowing what he was making amends for. It meant something to her that he was trying, yes, but it meant something else that he wasn’t sorry for acting that way in public. Not that she’d ever say that to him… it made it easier to just resolve the conflict without going any more in depth about how she was feeling than she had to. Opening her mouth to spit out the processed, usual answer, she was interrupted by another comment of John’s. Lifting her eyes to finally look at her boyfriend for the first time in what felt like ages, she shook her head slightly, a small frown crossing her specially made-up features. It really felt like even that effort hadn’t been good enough to maintain his undivided attention for one night. “Yeah, I know.”

A heavy pause lingered before she ran her hand quickly through her hair and shrugged. “But.. you know I don’t have that, and I felt… not good, when it was supposed to be something that we were doing tonight. I haven’t seen you all week.” …. And to feel like that was undermined by some girl with huge boobs that you saw in the restaurant you took me to was less than uplifting.

To be completely honest, it hadn’t even crossed Johnathan’s mind that there could be more to his girlfriend’s  sour mood than his attentions to other women. It was so... common for him to get caught up in side-conversation everywhere he went, that he barely noticed the time pass anymore. He tried, most of the time, to involve Emily or whoever he was out with in whatever these conversations entailed, but there were times, like this one, where he knew that Emily knew little to nothing about what John was discussing. He was so consumed by the conversation that he simply forgot that she was waiting for him to finish.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care about her life, or that he didn’t want to talk to her. He did, of course, but when John was out... the whole world was waiting to see him. Trivial day-to-day things seemed to pale in comparison. If he’d wanted a quiet night of conversation about their lives, John would have asked Emily to stay in with him. His outings were an escape from his life. They were a journey and an adventure. The people he met and the things he learned along the way were simply a part of that experience. He didn’t want to miss a moment, especially when he was somewhere new. He tried to keep the conversation about what they were doing and seeing, or what they would do and see next.

This being said, pointing the other woman out was probably not necessary. It wasn’t as if Emily would appreciate it the way he would. He had just.. wanted to share that moment, he supposed. He hadn’t been thinking, and that was why he was in this situation in the first place, wasn’t it? It still didn’t registered exactly why she cared knowing that he found a girl attractive that wasn’t her, or looked differently from her. She was beautiful, but not perfect. She knew what her faults were, and things that he found less attractive. Likewise, he was  aware of some of his own physical imperfections, and didn’t think he would be jealous of Emily finding that attractive on another man.

He opened his mouth to counter her emotions with an explanation, as if that was supposed to make it better for her, but then he really listened to what she was saying. It felt not good to be compared to another girl, but the problem had been.. what? Feeling ignored? Had she felt that he would have preferred to be out with that other girl? That would be ridiculous. Elena—Elana?—had been incredibly short. That would have made many things awkward.

Not to mention the fact that John genuinely liked Emily. Even when he was still shopping for a new girl every night, Emily had drawn him in for more than just her body. He’d been attracted to her mind. That had been what he fell for, and why he’d begun his first true affair for her.  Flings and casual sex partners had nothing on a girl he was emotionally attached to. As much as he loved Amelia, he could never deny that the feelings he had for Emily ran deeper than just platonic. Especially in the beginning, their chemistry and attraction had felt magnetic, sending electricity through his body with their every touch. For John, they had never lost that little spark, even if some of the passion died down. At the end of the day, it was Emily he was coming home to. That’s how it had been for the past two years, and how it would be until they began to grow apart.  He loved her. Maybe not the way he had loved his wife, but well enough.

“I’m sorry it bothered you.” John said, taking careful consideration to his choice of words. That much was, indeed, true. Of course, John wasn’t the type to assume that an apology would solve a problem. “I just don’t see why it matters so much. You don’t have to have that to be gorgeous. You have plenty of other things.” He praised. “Doesn’t mean that she’s not pretty too.” He pressed. “I was just observing. I didn’t mean to take away from my time with you.” He said, cracking a slight smile as he put a hand onto her right shoulder and looked her right in the eyes as he spoke. John had a way of doing that. His was very direct, very confident. He looked others in the eye when he spoke to them, and he gripped them with a gentle-but-firm hand, just as he was doing with Emily’s shoulder.

“Let me make it up to you?” He offered. “I’d picked out a film to watch.” He admitted. John’s love of cinema had led to him buying the full muggle set-up. “...but you can pick what we do next, if you’d like. After-all, you haven’t seen me all week.”

She was genuinely surprised that he’d stopped to listen to her finish talking after he’d opened his mouth. Usually, he jumped right in to reassure her, praise her in whatever way he felt was fitting… and the feel of this situation was the same as all the others. He wasn’t really sorry for what he’d said, and she knew that, but she appreciated the effort nonetheless.

Emily didn’t regret any of this, per se. She didn’t wish she would’ve gone a different route. It had all been part of her sort of gathering herself back up after the issues with her mother’s death and her father’s new marriage…. and her new ‘family’, even though they were the furthest possible thing from that, really. A shrug and a small smile followed John’s words. At least he was attempting to make amends with her. That was all that mattered, right? “It’s not a big deal.” The brunette began, and then let her boyfriend finish his train of thought. Of course, she had plenty of other things… but not that. Otherwise, he’d have pointed it out on her body instead of an unfamiliar woman’s. She had to be careful to maintain eye contact. Emily didn’t want to go any more into this than she had to, she just wanted the awkwardness to be over so that she could utilize the time she did have with him this weekend.

Before she had to go back to work, away from him, where she had to keep things semi-secret. Only Elaine really had any knowledge of what was going on between them and she didn’t intend on telling anyone else. Her best friend was really the only one she could periodically lean on about this -- she didn’t trust anyone else. “You’re right. Of course she was. We have time together now, right?” She said, speaking softly, and offered John a sheepish smile.

His hand was firm on her shoulder and she felt a little better than she had in the restaurant, especially when he offered to watch a film. The films she and John watched together were usually interesting and somewhat educational, which made sense. They both loved to learn. Emily supposed that was one of the biggest things that had drawn her to him on that night in the first place. “That sounds perfect to me, actually. It would be nice to spend some downtime.” She said, showing some of her white, slightly crooked teeth when she smiled again, a little more genuinely this time.

Sauntering back over to the door, she dropped her shoes on the mat and then made her way into the living room to plop down onto the couch. “What’s this one about?” She asked, a childish curiosity creeping into her voice. The feeling of wanting to know things was overcoming the insecurity a little bit -- it often did that… coupled with pleasure that almost always happened later in the evening. He sure was talented with distracting her, changing the subject. Emily knew that, too, but she really couldn’t find it in herself to change anything. It just was how it was. “You always pick interesting ones. I might even recognize the title, if it was made while I was alive.” She laughed a little, tucking her knees up to her chest and scooting into the corner of the couch to retain heat.

John loved cinema. As a wizard, he had not discovered it until he was already an adult, but ever since he first stumbled upon the world of film, he’d been sucked into it. Much the way books often acted as portals to new world, films did the same thing. He could explore places he’d never been before from the comfort of his couch. He could do it with friends and family. He could do it with work in the morning. In fact, John could see much more of the world from his couch than he’d ever be able to see in the same amount of time on foot. That, more than anything, was something that he enjoyed.

John used film to give him a look into other cultures and languages and time periods. It truly brought life to stories he knew, and truly sucked him into stories that he didn’t. Though recreations of time periods were fascinating in their own right, John found that older films, those that actually did showcase different time periods, were even more interesting.

On top of this, movies were much quicker in books and often held more physical detail. There were things in films that would take hundreds of pages to truly describe in words. Minute details of body language and behavior. Intonation of voice, everything held a meaning. In two hours, John could get through an entire book, something that he had difficulty with, even as quickly as he read. Maybe movies were old hat to muggles, but John doubted that they would ever be that way for him.

This love of film had driven John to create quite a collection for himself.  He had paid a considerable amount of money for a DVD player, a VCR, a large-screen television set, and his growing collection of films. This was something he never would have done when he was living with Amelia and Carina, but now that he was alone, he thought it was important to do little things like this for himself. It was nice to have something to keep his mind off of things for a little while, and he was happy to have the luxury of ‘geeking out’ without judgment.

Amelia and Carina. John’s heart still ached when he thought of them, but he tried to put it behind him. Amelia, really, was better off without him. He’d been a horrible husband to her, and she really deserved better. He hated to admit it, but he couldn’t deny that he was considerably happier on his own, than he had been for the last ten years with Amelia, or even beyond. He still loved her, he always would, but things were better this way. He liked Emily, too. It was almost scary how easy it was to maintain fidelity to her. Even if his eyes wandered, and they sometimes did—tonight was a great example of it—Emily was the one he would take home at the end of the night.

He thought this was true, most likely, because of the freedom that came along with being unmarried. Emily wasn’t at his flat every night. She had her own flat, and her own life. He could still come and go as he pleased. He could still get up and leave for days if he could arrange someone to take over for him at work (and there were plenty of ambitious young witches and wizards who eagerly ate up the opportunity to spend a day as Healer-in-Charge). There was commitment, yes, but nothing final or particularly binding. If he ever sought to end it, it would only take a few words. He had been careful to keep finances separate and never moved to take things to a higher level, because he was comfortable here.

The only thing about his new life that still made John feel like he was drowning was the incredible distance between him and Carina. He knew he deserved it, and that was part of what it made hurt so badly. She took after her father in more ways than even she knew. He would have, and he had done the same thing to his father that she was doing to him, for the same reasons that she was doing them. This aside, every day he spent unable to reach her, it felt like a part of him was being chipped away. Was this how his father had felt? David had never seemed to care about him. John had tried to make Carina see that he cared for her, that he loved her. In many ways, she had been one  of the greatest things in his life. He adored her completely.. She had saved him from himself more than once. Unfortunately, this time he had just let himself drift beyond her half and he had destroyed that sacred bond. He hated it, but he knew from experience that he couldn’t push it. All he could do was be open and persistent and wait for her to come back into his arms.

He wondered how she would feel about movies. He thought that, perhaps, she would like them as much as he did. A curious mind and spirit, she had always been eager to learn things, explore, have experiences. Those were things she got from both of her parents. She would love it, he decided, and that was even more of a reason for him to continue his collection. One day, maybe, his little girl would have a chance to sit down with him and travel the world in one afternoon...

John was happy to hear that Emily had forgiven him and was already looking forward to watching the movie that he had chosen for them. He had spent some time at the film shop that afternoon, and he’d come home with a small stack of films, but one in particular had really caught his eye. It was about an unconventional English teacher at a private school who changed boys lives through engaged learning and literature. Both he and Emily were avid readers, and both of them had always loved learning. Those two things together made John think that he and Emily would genuinely enjoy the film. Though not teens anymore, John vividly remembered his own struggles to find himself and his goals, as well as his conflict with his parents and their divorce. Emily, too, was just growing out of her teen years. She might appreciate the themes, too.

“It’s called,” John checked the label quickly. “Dead Poets Society. Have you heard of it?” He asked, putting the film in and setting things up for them. “It’s about this Professor at an American private school that teaches a group of young boys life lessons through literature, I think it said.” He explained. He took a step back to make sure everything was working correctly—John sometimes still had trouble making the appliances work, and the TV always seemed to have some sort of unexplainable problem whenever he let his wand get too close to it. Magic in the air, apparently, wasn’t great for electrical appliances. As the previews began to roll, he was satisfied.

“Would you like a beer?” He asked, heading to the kitchen to grab one for himself. He popped the top off of his and took a sip. He left the cap on the counter as a reminder. John had already had one at the restaurant. Two was enough for that night.

Humming in recognition, Emily nodded her head up and down a few times. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of that. That’s all, though. Never seen it or really known what it’s about, I don’t think.” Slowly enough, she was forgetting (or convincing herself that she was) all of the things that had happened while they were out. While she enjoyed going out, staying in was often preferable, because there were less things to distract them. When she said them, she mostly meant John. As a general rule, Emily was good at staying task-oriented and not becoming derailed from the original goal, unless, of course, she was in a library. That was a whole new ballgame that she knew would always be a struggle for her to win.

Being muggleborn, Em was no stranger to movies. In fact, they a major chunk of her cultural capital. She immensely enjoyed sitting down and watching them -- even if they weren’t very good movies, they still gave her something to think about and pass the time with because she could criticize their flaws instead of praising their graces. That was something she did all too easily with a number of things, including people, which weren’t really ‘things’. It wasn’t an attractive trait to be hypercritical, and she’d been told that by a number of people she was close to and even those she didn’t know all that well, but she’d never really been able to change that for anything. It was just who she was. It wasn’t as though she wasn’t aware of everything that was wrong with her, too.

While the actual films were a treat, another nice part about sitting and watching television with John was that she knew they were both focused on the same thing, were observing the same events take place. She didn’t need to worry about him staring at a Mexican girl’s rack or exclaiming about how gorgeous the rustic decor was. It was just the two of them and their film tonight, which was more of a relief than possibly anything else could’ve been. “A beer would be lovely!” She said with a touch more enthusiasm, just loudly enough for him to hear.

Emily didn’t really have a naturally loud voice. She was more the soft-spoken type. It took a lot more work for her to raise her voice than it did for her to speak in subdued tones, anyway, and that didn’t make her a mumbler. She spoke with clearer diction than people with horrible Scottish brogues did and always made sure people could understand her and that she was being eloquent. Em knew she would’ve been entirely embarrassed of her carelessness otherwise.

“Is it still that tasty kind from last week? I quite enjoyed that.” Emily wasn’t much of a drinker. Neither was John, so that made things easy, but it was nice to have a couple of beers on the weekend or a glass of wine at dinner. They had a similar mindset there. Realizing she was holed up in the corner by herself, she scooted towards the middle of the couch to allow her boyfriend to sit next to her. What good was sitting on the couch together if they were on opposite ends? Generally, she didn’t crave physical contact from others, either, but it seemed to make a difference when it was just the two of them, in private. It was a different kind of relationship that felt a little more complete with that aspect added in, she supposed.

“Oh, God, is that Robin Williams?” Emily laughed to herself while waiting for John to return. “I remember him from some other movies. He can be quite funny, I remember…”