The One with the Thanksgiving Reunion

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Isn't this the best part of breaking up,

Finding someone else you can't get enough of?

(Liz Phair – Why Can't I?)

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(November 2008)

Tris had been lying on her bed for the past hour, trying her best to ignore all thoughts about how pathetic it was that she was holed up in her bedroom, reading The Great Gatsby, while her brother was out on a date with Susan – his high school girlfriend, who had not broken up with him when he left Chicago to go to Yale. She and Four had broken up only a month and a half before, after almost three years together, and just thinking about him still hurt enough that she found herself thinking very seriously about going to the supermarket two blocks away, just to buy a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream – which she'd expertly pair with a bunch of sappy rom-coms, just like Hollywood had taught her.

She probably would have, but it was so cold outside that even the two flights on the fire escape that separated her bedroom from Eric's felt like an insurmountable obstacle.

It was dumb luck that Eric's family lived two floors above hers, and both of them saw that as the single reason why they'd become friends so fast – Eric's bedroom, specifically, had seen hours of random conversations, back when they were just getting to know each other. In the short time of an year, they'd grown so close that her afternoons felt oddly empty after he'd moved to Los Angeles, two years before.

He'd tried his best to keep in touch, though. None of her texts went unanswered for more than a few hours, and he'd always find a way to spend at least a few minutes chatting with her on MSN every day. When she'd decided to apply to Juilliard, he'd helped her through the whole process, and when her acceptance letter arrived, he was the first person she called. He'd also been the first person she called when Four broke up with her, and Eric had patiently listened to her during seemingly endless phone calls, supporting her without ever reminding her that he actually hated her ex's guts.

In spite of all that, they hadn't seen each other since his mother's birthday, almost a year earlier, and she missed him – a lot.

But he was just two flights of stairs away from her now. Maybe he'd even have some ice cream hidden away in the freezer, and even if he didn't, he'd still be a better company than Ben, Jerry, and Bridget Jones.

She threw the book aside and got up, grabbing her light grey hoodie from the desk chair on her way out of her bedroom. Her parents were in the living room, watching Anna and the King for the umpteenth time, and she hesitated before walking into the room. It was hard not to remember why she and Eric chose to sneak into each other's bedrooms through the fire escape, even during the winter, when the "normal people" approach involved getting past her parents.

"Eric and I are going to watch a movie," she lied, hoping there wouldn't be any follow-up questions – and that Eric was actually home, otherwise she'd have to find somewhere to hide for the next two hours.

Much to her surprise, her mother's reply was an uninterested, "Okay, sweetie," and Tris nearly ran out of the apartment before her father got a chance to say anything that could ruin her plans.

Eric barely had the chance to react to the sight of his best friend, standing on his doorstep, before she wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him into a tight hug.

"God, I missed you."

He pulled her even closer, ignoring the weird rush of anticipation that went through his body when he buried his nose in her hair.

That was still a somewhat new feeling for him. Surely, there had been times, in the three years they'd known each other, when he'd had to pretend there wasn't any sexual tension between them, but that wasn't unexpected, considering they were two teenagers spending way too much time together – alone, more often than not. Still, he'd never actually wanted to rip her clothes off or anything like that.

It all had changed two months earlier. Their relationship had been filled with oversharing and sexual innuendos before, mainly because Eric had no concept of boundaries, so it wasn't all that weird that they'd spent the night exchanging a series of texts including way too much information. The unexpected part was that those texts prompted a drunken confession along the lines of 'I'm just super horny right now' and, before they knew it, they were debating whether she'd just cheated on Four.

As it turned out, all those sitcoms they'd watched together were right: you can't unfuck your best friend, even if it happened through text messages – once that line has been crossed, you can't ever go back to being 'platonic'.

"Do you have any ice cream?" She asked, stepping back to look up at him. She seemed to be on the verge of tears, and that was all he needed to understand why she'd just showed up on his doorstep, after one day and a half of radio silence.

"Four?" He asked. She nodded, giving him a sad look, and he sighed. "Tris... you're eighteen. You're living in the second best city in the country. You should be getting drunk and hooking up with that hot guy from your Drama 101 class, not eating your weight in ice cream and crying over a loser who expected you to give up on all of your dreams for him."

"He didn't expect me to-" She started to protest, but he interrupted her.

"I'm so not having this discussion with you right now," he said, in a tired tone. "All I'm saying is, I'm not letting you wallow. Not today. We haven't seen each other in ages, you barely told me anything about New York, and I have some pretty big news to tell you about, so can we just- Can we just have a Four-free day today? Please?"

She hesitated, biting her lower lip. He watched her intently, hoping she'd understand that he wasn't bluntly ignoring her feelings – for the past six weeks, he'd done nothing but be there for her. He just needed a break from the role of 'supportive best friend'.

Finally, she said, "Fine. But I still want ice cream." She smiled at him. "And for the record, LA is not the best city in the country."

He laughed, taking her hand and pulling her into the apartment. "How would you know? You've never been there."

"Babe, I don't need to go all the way to California to know that the best thing about LA is you."

"No ice cream," he said, closing the freezer door and turning to look at her, smiling at how legitimately upset that statement had made her look. "We do have beer, though. It's the next best thing."

She rolled her eyes at him. That offer, as tempting as it sounded, felt wrong in so many levels, but she knew he'd have a comeback for every single one of her protests – having a beer with him was nothing compared to attending a college party, and she knew his parents would just say they'd rather have them drinking at home.

Besides, it was Friday night somewhere, wasn't it?

His bedroom looked exactly the same it did in her memories, frozen forever in the summer of 2006. It was a comforting notion, in a way, considering how much Eric himself had changed since the day he left Chicago – even his accent was different now, and Tris had a hard time remembering he'd once been a regular-looking seventeen-year-old.

He'd always been handsome, enough to be the object of way too many high school crushes, but over the past two years he seemed to have left all teenager awkwardness behind, and Tris was sure he now had girls falling at his feet everywhere he went.

She shook her head, trying to ignore the unwelcome thoughts, and sat on his bed, resting her back against the wall. He took a pack of Marlboros out of his back pocket and sat next to her on the bed.

"Do you mind?" He asked, looking at her like he really cared about her answer. She shrugged, and he cracked the window open, pulling a cigarette out of the pack.

"So... You said you had big news."

He gave her a wide smile, looking more pleased with himself than she'd ever seen him, and sipped at his beer before replying, "Remember that audition I had, a couple of weeks ago? The one for that action movie?"

"Of course I remember. It was all you could talk about for days."

He chuckled, deciding to follow his own rules and not to bring up the only thing she had been talking about for the past few weeks.

"Well, guess who's signed a contract for his first movie?"

"Are you serious?" She gushed, hugging him as best as she could given their positions on the bed. "Babe, this is awesome!"

"I know!" His smile widened, if that was even possible. "I'll be honest, it's one of those shitty movies with a budget that's way too low for the kind of shit they expect to pull off, but it's a role. With actual lines!"

She laughed, playfully slapping him on the shoulder. "I told you you'd make it one day!"

He shook his head, still smiling at her. Truth be told, he'd been cast for a very small role that was likely to lose a huge chunk of its already limited screen time, by the time the producers settled on the final cut. It was a far cry from 'making it', they both knew that, but it was a beginning, and Eric definitely needed one of those. He'd been trying to find a way into the industry for two years, and finding nothing but closed doors had been so frustrating that, at times, he'd been tempted to come back to Chicago once his lease expired.

It all had changed when he met Claire, the daughter of a big-shot agent who decided to make him her newest project, for reasons unknown to him. Her first act as his fairy godmother had been getting him a few auditions, and the contract he'd signed on Wednesday afternoon had been the result of one of those.

She'd assured him he wouldn't need her superpowers for much longer. He hoped she was right.

They spent the next hour or so talking about all the things they hadn't had the chance to tell each other during their time apart – including a long conversation about Eric's 'experiments' with sex and drugs, and and even longer discussion about how their experiences with living alone had been stacking up against each other.

The points in common were obvious: they'd both moved to a huge city halfway across the country, intent on pursuing their acting dreams. In a way, their choices flawlessly matched their personalities, and both of them agreed they'd be miserable if they'd chosen the opposite coast.

That was where the similarities ended, though. Eric had never hidden – not from her, at least – that LA had been a huge let down. Truth be told, he couldn't see himself living anywhere else in the world - he loved the city and the people and the atmosphere, and most of the time it felt like home in a way that Chicago never had. But he'd moved to California with so many expectations, only to find himself stuck in a job he hated to pay the bills for the tiniest apartment ever, which he shared with the world's worst roommate. His acting carreer was years away from even getting started - someone had even misspelled his last name in the files for one of his auditions - and there was exactly one person in the whole city of Los Angeles who he considered his friend.

Tris had once joked that he made it seem like the Friends theme song was about him and his life. He thought she had no idea of how right that statement felt.

She, on the other hand, was living a fairytale. She was in love with the City, Juilliard was exceeding her expectations, and she and her roommate had become instant best friends.

Moreover, she clearly saw New York as her beacon of freedom. Moving out of your parents' house is always a huge step towards personal growth – Eric himself had learned more about responsibility during his first few months in LA than in his whole life – but for Tris it was about much more than maturity. She'd grown up with overbearing parents who controlled her every move, and now that she was free from their judgement, she was also free to do whatever she wanted with her life.

Including, apparently, having a beer with him at ten in the morning.

They'd already had two bottles of beer each, and Tris was now lying on the bed, with her head on his lap, singing along to All the Small Things while Eric absent-mindedly ran his fingers through her hair. They were listening to an old mix CD he'd found earlier that morning, revelling in all the memories it brought back.

He'd burned that CD in the summer before his senior year, and it quickly became his official 'driving home from school' soundtrack. As a result, he and Tris must have listened through the whole thing about a thousand times.

She'd sing along to All the Small Things every time it came up, and eventually, he started seeing it as her song – he'd even started using it as her ringtone, after he moved out and she started calling him more often.

"What?" She asked, laughing, the second the song ended. Eric shrugged – he wasn't even aware of the way he'd been looking at her.

"I just like it when you sing," he lied. She sat up and turned around to look at him, her face mere inches away from his.

"You're lying," she said, in an accusatory tone. "And now I'm officially curious. What were you thinking about?"

He sighed, looking away from her eyes. He'd rather die than admit to something as silly and straight-up girly as having a special ringtone just for her.

But maybe that admission wouldn't be as horrible, compared to the memories her sudden proximity brought up.

He still remembered every time they'd kissed, during the two final rehearsals and that one final performance, but he'd lost count of how many times he'd wanted to kiss her. He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't been drawn to her – in all honesty, that was probably the reason why he'd offered her a ride home for the first time – but he'd never felt comfortable acknowledging it, because the circumstances were less than ideal. But now she was single, and although they kept refusing to bring up those texts, that whole conversation made him wonder if she felt the same way about him.

"Well?" Her voice snapped him out of his thoughts, making him look at her again. "Are you ever gonna kiss me, Eric?"

He smiled, leaning in even closer to her, so the tips of their noses touched and his forehead rested on hers. Her eyes were filled with expectation and desire, and he was sure he was looking at her in the exact same way.

He ran his fingers up her arm, smirking at the sight of her eyes fluttering closed and the sound of the contented sigh that escaped her lips. He buried his fingers in her hair, tilting his head just enough to allow their lips to meet.

The moment their lips met was the proverbial last straw, and suddenly they were caught in a wave of desperation, like they both wanted to make up for three years of lusting for each other. Her lips parted to allow him in, and his hands travelled down her body, looking for the hem of her shirt. Soon enough, she was straddling his lap, her nails digging into his scalp while he kissed his way down her neck, his touch sending shivers down her spine as his hands pulled her shirt up.

She pulled away to take her own shirt off for him, and they looked at each other.

"Are you sure?" He asked, his voice barely as whisper. Truth be told, he didn't know exactly which answer he was expecting, because he wanted her so badly – but he was also well aware that having sex with each other might just be the one thing that could ruin their friendship.

She had her own doubts to worry about. Sleeping with Eric felt daunting, his two years of one-night stands making her feel shamefully inexperienced – he would be the second person she'd ever slept with, after all. Not to mention that he deserved better than being her rebound.

Still, all that felt insignificant when compared to the way he made her feel, especially when he looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered in the world. So she smiled at him, pulling him in for a kiss.

"Of course I am."

She wouldn't have ever picked him for a cuddler, so it was a least a bit surprising when he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer and telling her not to go anywhere. For a while, they just laid on his bed, their bodies wrapped around each other, neither of them daring to say anything that could ruin that moment.

The silence had just started to feel uncomfortable when Eric shifted slightly on the bed, looking at her. "We should do this again," he said, his voice transpiring a hint of nervousness, like he was afraid she wouldn't agree with him. She immediately glanced down, which made him chuckle. "I don't mean now. Just... whenever we can."

"Whenever we can?"

"Yeah. You know. The next time we're at the same city, if we're both still single." He shrugged. "Or maybe in another life, when we're both cats."

She bit her lower lip, trying to come up with a single reason why that would sound like a bad idea. She'd heard a few stories about benefits ruining otherwise happy, everlasting relationships, but she couldn't see her and Eric falling in love or being jealous of each other, so how bad could it be, really?

She raised an eyebrow, giving him a mischievous smile.

"And how do you feel about starting now, love?"

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! The always lovely murmelinchen asked me to write it, and the idea for the beginning just wouldn't leave me, so here it is.

My special thanks to Felyneve, who saved me once again in this one.

I know you're all expecting the sequel to the story. It will exist. One day. It's halfway done, actually, but I wanted to post this one on Thanksgiving (or rather on Black Friday; it's two AM already for me).

Please review!