Needs, Wants, Desires, and Dreams

Dream a Little Dream of Me

A/N: Heads up that this chapter will either make you happy or mad. There's no in between :)

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Alison knew what she had said to Emily walking out of that conference room over a week ago. She knew that her words were harsh, but she also knew that in the moment, it was exactly how she felt. The unease didn't reach her stomach until a few days ago when the actual completed paperwork arrived at her door. Over 50 pages of documentation summarizing a 4-year marriage, 8-year relationship, and nearly 20-year friendship in clauses and paragraphs. She read through the whole thing in detail making sure that Emily was receiving everything she had promised her. And she felt okay until reaching the last page. As the plaintiff, it was Alison's responsibility to sign first before sending the document to Emily. She had 30 days, but here she was already half a week in and the thought of adding her signature still made her sick to her stomach.

"I'm so sorry you're having to go through all of this..." Aria lamented to her sister-in-law while sitting on the loveseat in Alison's living room.

"Here's the thing, though. At this point, part of me really does want to sign the papers and be done with it."

"And the other part?"

"Remembers who I fell in love with."

"Al –" Aria pouted as she looked down to her lap where Alison lay her head. Aria's fingers brushed through her hair as they caught up on each other's lives since Christmas with Aria's kryptonite being white wine, while Alison sipped on an espresso. "You can't get caught up in what was."

"That's so fucking easy for everyone to say though. Think about it. If Jase, god forbid, ever did something so out of his typical character that he broke your trust completely, would you actually be able to let go of the man he was when you first met?"

"I mean – "

"And his lack of judgment would be one piece of the millions of moments you've shared together. You'd let one millionth of a relationship completely change your love story?"

"Sometimes it has to. This wasn't just a momentary lapse; Emily went out of her way for a better part of the year to hide the truth from you."

"It hurts to even look at her knowing that her hands have touched someone else.. But in that same breath, I still have never gotten closure. Every time I pick up that pen thinking that I'm going to sign on that line, I go back to a conversation Emily and I had before Christmas."

"And what was that?" Aria asked, bringing her glass of wine back up to her lips.

"I remember her saying that the best word to describe how she felt was 'heavy'. That it felt like she was holding up a boulder every single day trying to prevent my wreck and our miscarriage from invading the present. That getting engaged was her way of trying to move past it and forget. But that when she looked back on us, all she wanted was for a piece of our dream to come true before it was ripped away from us. That all she did in her silence was dream of what could've been..."

Alison's voice drifted off as she became caught up in her memory. Her right hand, which had been delicately perched on her stomach, had moved up to her face. The nail of her thumb now traced back and forth on Alison's lower lip as she thought back to nearly two months earlier.

"... she fucking kissed you, didn't she?"

Alison's eyes shot open, "No. No, that isn't what I said."

"But I know that fucking face Alison. It's the same damn doe eyes that walked through your front door after telling the rest of us that you and Emily were going to get coffee halfway across campus before it turned into a make out session. It's the same distant stare you had when you told all of us that you were planning on proposing. It's the same upturned grin you had plastered on your face when she walked down the aisle."