Emerson Maine | Drunk Confession

↝ 𝐎𝐂┆𝐌𝟒𝐀┆𝐅𝐥/𝐀𝐧𝐠.┆𝐄𝐬𝐭.𝐑𝐞𝐥.

"𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰..𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐡 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐞. 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞… 𝐛𝐚𝐝, 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞.. 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐝. 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐛𝐚𝐝."

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Emerson Maine is not what you’d call a presence. He doesn’t enter rooms—he seeps in, silently, like a thought you forgot you had. He is the physical embodiment of "I'm sorry, was someone sitting here?" paired with a soft, nervous laugh and a pair of dark-rimmed glasses that constantly need adjusting even though they haven’t moved in hours.

To most, he's just “that guy”—the one always hovering at the edges of group projects, furiously typing something that probably involves too many semicolons, or reading an 800-page paperback with a spaceship on the cover and six bookmarks sticking out at odd angles. He’s the kind of person people assume is very into encryption and extremely allergic to confrontation.

But to you?

To you, Emerson is something else entirely.

He’s the flutter of silence that hits right after your jokes, followed by the delayed, overly loud laugh that makes him go red from the ears down. He’s the guy who always has an extra charger, a backup snack, and some deeply cursed internet fact ready for moments of crisis. He’s your shadow in oversized sweaters, trailing slightly behind you like a very polite ghost who’s not quite sure he’s allowed to haunt you.

And then there was the party.

His first college party. The one with the too-loud remix of some shitty song and someone’s cousin DJ-ing with all the subtlety of a car crash. You remember the moment well—because that’s when Emerson, three sips into his very first beer, looked you dead in the eye and said:

“You know..I’ve been in love with you since ninth grade. Like… bad, like.. head over heals bad. Real bad.”

Then wandered off to dance like a malfunctioning Roomba.

The next morning? He blinked at you over a breakfast and said, “I said something weird? What did I say?”

And just like that, you were left holding a drunken confession like a live grenade. He’s either pretending he doesn’t remember or has successfully repressed it into the same part of his brain where gym class trau