On a day that had been long, and tiring, and far more complicated than it needed to be because of other people’s problems, Emma received an email that was meant for someone else.
She was at home, on the couch, and had taken her laptop into the lounge with her when she got home, just to check if anything was going on. Anything at all. Messages from work, or something interesting in the news, or just people wanting to gossip with her who couldn’t be bothered trying the phone. She was tried, and her feet hurt because she’d worn nice shoes even when she knew she’d be standing up half the day, and she was just a little bit lonely, too. Lucy wouldn’t be home until late because her firm always had drinks for the associates after their weekly department meetings and the drinks always turned into dinner, and staying out half the night.
Emma didn’t mind that. She had wine, and she had the TV, and later she’d warm up a box dinner from the freezer, but she did miss Lucy sometimes, and she thought it was quite sad that the most interesting thing in her evening was probably going to be her email.
She sat down, and looked through the messages, and saw one from someone she didn’t know, saying, “I had a great time.”
She looked for a moment, puzzled, and opened it.
And then stopped. And looked again.
“Em,” the message said. “I had a great time. I can’t stand how good you taste. I want to again. I really do. Alyssa.”
Emma sat there looking at it, wondering if it was a joke.
She looked at the email address it had came from. A big webmail service, so it could be someone playing a trick.
She didn’t know why they would, but it could be.
Or it could be some kind of bizarre identity theft. She worried about that for a moment. That someone had stolen her email account and was using it to seduce Alyssas all over town.
She didn’t think so, though. Not once she thought about it. More likely it was just a mistake.
She looked at the rest of the email, trying to work it out. The email had been sent to her own address, by the look of it. To her private address, not her work one, and not the one she and Lucy shared to use for their families. It had her name at the top. Her exact name. It seemed to have been intended for someone with the same first and last names as Emma, which was probably why she’d got it. Her name was basically her email address too.
It made sense why she was seeing it, she decided, but it had to be some kind of misspelling or mistaken identity. Perhaps a wrongly spelled surname, she thought, or perhaps the right name, but completely the wrong email company. Something like that.
It definitely wasn’t for Emma. She didn’t know any Alyssas, and hadn’t done anything with anyone, lately, except Lucy, that would let someone find out how she tasted.
She was sort of interested in what Alyssa and the other Emma had been doing, though.
Not interested, precisely. It was pretty obvious what they’d been doing. Emma couldn’t think of anything else that taste could mean but what it seemed to mean.
Not what they’d been doing, but how they’d ended up doing it.
She liked things like this. Little leftovers of people’s lives, showing where they’d been, and what they’d done, and that they’d been happy. People holding hands in public, and staring at each other. People telling stories about how they met.
This was what this was.
It was kind of funny, as well. As a story. Sending something like this to a stranger by mistake. Not funny like a huge joke, but as an oddity of life. Something funny and human and wonderful. And it was curious, too, that of all the people involved were obviously into women.
Somewhere in the world there was another Emma, with the same name, who was into Alyssas too.
That was a pretty strange coincidence.
Emma sat there thinking, and getting kind of involved in the whole thing. In her own mind, at least. Wondering about it, curiously. In a way, she thought, she was part of it too. In a very tiny way. She’d unintentionally got mixed up in their hookup planning, so now she was part of what mattered in these two other lives. Two strangers lives, that had brushed hers in passing. Like sleeves touching on a train, or someone’s perfume left in an empty elevator.
She quite liked that idea.
She felt part of it, and as well, she felt strangely fond of Alyssa and the other Emma. It was as if she knew them, now. Because girls like them really ought to stick together, she thought, even if only in spirit. She should send them nice thoughts.
She hoped they had a good evening planned. She really did.
It had to be better than she was going to have, on her own, at home, anyway.
She sat there for a while looking at the email. Wondering about it.
She wanted to keep it, and show Lucy when she got home. Except that she knew she wouldn’t, because it would be late, and Lucy would be tired, and she didn’t really find things like this as touching as Emma did anyway.
And because, the more she thought about it, the more Emma knew she shouldn’t show anyone. Her getting it was a mistake. It had happened, and it was too late that she had, but now, for Emma to let anyone else see, that was just nasty.
It was quite a touching email. It was far too personal to laugh at.
She’d feel awful if someone did that to her.
She wanted to share it, just because it made her happy, but she wouldn’t. She’d keep it to herself.
She had another glass of wine, and thought about making something for dinner, but she couldn’t be bothered getting up.
She kept watching TV.
Half an hour passed. She spent half an hour wondering about the email.
Her mind kept wandering. Just thinking about it, unexpectedly. Wondering who Emma and Alyssa were, and how their night was going. How good it would be, really, since Alyssa’s plans were obvious. Emma wondered who they both were. If they were just hooking up to fuck, or if they were falling in love. She wondered what possibilities they had, and where they thought they were going.
The TV show she was watching finished.
She sat there, thinking, and then picked her laptop up again.
There was nothing new. No email from Alyssa say oh fuck, I’m sorry, whoever you are please ignore that.
Emma had almost expected that. She’d been starting to wonder how long it would be before Alyssa realized what she’d done.
Maybe Alyssa was worried about looking silly, Emma thought. Emma knew she would be. Emma would be mortified if she sent the wrong person a message like that.
Perhaps Alyssa cared enough she didn’t want to say a thing. She might be hoping it was a bad address, and the message hadn’t gone anywhere, and no-one would ever know.
Emma sat there waiting, anyway. Looking at the screen. She didn’t know why, when she’d already decided she wasn’t going to hear anything else.
A few more minutes passed, and Emma started to wonder if she should say something to Alyssa.
She’d been assuming that other-Emma and Alyssa would sort it out. That Alyssa wouldn’t get a reply, and then she’d try the phone. Something like that. And that it was probably better for Alyssa if she never knew for sure that anyone had seen what she wrote. That Emma shouldn’t throw it in Alyssa’s face.
Now Emma started to worry that Alyssa might not realize what had happened. Emma started to get worried, for Alyssa’s sake. Worried especially, because of who they all were. Emma felt for Alyssa. She knew people like Alyssa. She didn’t think she knew these two, but she knew people like them. She was like Alyssa herself. It was complicated enough for Alyssas to lust after Emmas without email-address mix-ups too.
Perhaps Alyssa only had the email address. Perhaps whatever had happened, they hadn’t had time to write everything down. A fleeting moment together, a quickie in a car, then the hurried scribble of an email.
Maybe Alyssa had that, and nothing else. No other way to get in touch. And maybe she was sitting there, waiting, hoping she’d hear back, but slowly getting disappointed.
Emma felt bad for her.
She shouldn’t, because Alyssa was a stranger who Emma would never meet, but Emma did. Because Alyssa wanted an Emma, not a Steve.
Emma sat there, trying to decide. Whether it would be worse for Alyssa to have Emma tell her, if she already knew she’d made a mistake, or worse for her to not know what had happened, if she hadn’t.
Then Emma had another thought. A horrible thought.
Maybe the other Emma had used Alyssa, had her fun, and deliberately left a fake contact so she didn’t have to deal with the aftermath of whatever they’d done together.
Maybe Alyssa was waiting, hoping, not getting an answer, wondering what had happened, and would never hear from other-Emma again. Maybe she’d just be left wondering, a bit hurt, upset, and never quite sure.
That would be awful.
Not knowing for sure was far worse than just being told no in the first place.
Emma suddenly felt awful for Alyssa, even though she had no reason to think that was what had happened.
She felt awful, and then suddenly guilty too. She suddenly realized she was part of this too. She was part of Alyssa not knowing.
By not answering the email, Emma was letting Alyssa think the message had got through, when she knew it hadn’t.
She sat there, wondering what to do.
Any other day she might have just left it. But tonight she’d had a couple of glasses of wine, and she was on her own until Lucy eventually turned up, and she felt bad for Alyssa.
She really just felt bad for Alyssa, who might be waiting, and disappointed, and never be completely sure if she was being turned down, or had just made a mistake.
Emma opened the email, and looked at it again.
She thought for a moment, then decided.
She wrote, “Hey.”
Then she sat there, thinking. She didn’t know what else to say.
After a while, she added, “I’m sorry, but I’m not who you meant it for. I just thought I should let you knew. I feel awful for you, and I promise I’m not laughing and haven’t told anyone else, and I hope you’ve got another way to get in touch with her.”
She looked at what she’d written, wondering if she should sign it. She didn’t, because she decided writing Emma might just make it confusing, even though it was obviously from another Emma.
Instead, she wrote, “And I hope you’re okay too. Take care.”
She sent it, and almost closed the computer and put it away.
Then stopped.
And waited.
She didn’t know why.