Author's Note: Okay, so this a three-shot. It's short and sweet, and not very long at all! Tell me what you think!

R&R

~iambookworm

For The First Time

Chapter 1

I Have To Tell You Something

"I have to tell you something."

With these words, he stands up, beckoning to his long-time girlfriend. She smiles slightly, confused, but follows alongside him, content just to be with him.

"Is it a secret?" she asks, her voice light, teasing.

He smiles slightly, but it feels disconnected, and she can see the strain.

"Yeah."

"So where are your mates?"

He looks down at her. His face is full of confusion. "What do you mean?" he inquires.

She gives that smile again, the one he's christened, "The Slight Smile" in his head.

"I mean, they know all your secrets. Hence the question."

He does the half-snort, half-laugh thing he does while he runs his hand through his hair; the one she calls, "The Nervous Snort/Laugh/Hair Run" in her head. The NSLHR for short.

"Well, you see, they're not in this secret."

"Oh?"

He only nods.

The silence falls again. They are walking still, and she wonders where. Eventually she asks, "Where are we going?"

He pauses, looks down, does the NSLHR again. "Or is that a secret, too?" she dares, her emerald eyes sparking with a challenge.

He is looking at her, his hazel eyes uncomfortable, perhaps contemplating that which he must tell her, before the NSLHR is back again, and he breaks eye-contact with her, suddenly awkward.

"Sort of" is his only reply.

She looks down, disappointed.

There is a pause.

"Are you breaking up with me?" she asks suddenly, her voice sad and low, her eyes, though downcast, he can tell, are shining with unshed tears.

A blockage, like a large knot, in her throat. She doesn't understand.

There is a sudden tightness in his chest. He can't follow through. He doesn't know why he even considered it anymore. He needs her. He needs her so much, he can hardly breathe.

"No!" he gasps through his own obstacle in his chest. "No… I… why would you even think that?"

She looks up, her eyes are still shining, but now they are fierce too. "Because," she spits, the emeralds sparking, the fire that wreaths her face seeming to crackle, "because you stare at Victoria's butt! Because you ogle Lindsay's chest! Because you would rather spend time with your best mates than me, and I know they're your brothers, but then what am I? Because you flirt with Roxanna! Because you hardly ever say my name! Because I know you wish I were someone else! Because… sometimes… sometimes… I need you. I need you, and you aren't there. Because no matter how much I need you… you don't need me."

He stands there shocked; his mouth has fallen open, his eyes are filled with something indescribable—pain, perhaps—and his hands are limp at his sides. For once, the hand is absent from his hair, the laugh all but dead in his throat, the slightly condescending snort stopped as all the breath abruptly wooshes out of him.

For the first time that night, for the first time in a while, he says her name: "Lily…" His voice cracks suddenly. He tries again.

"Lily… no. No… that's not… no…" He can hardly breathe from his pain, her pain, all their pain melded together inside him.

"It's true though. All of it. It's true." And she bites her lip, hard, so she won't cry.

"No… please, Lily. Let me explain…." He is shaking. He needs to tell her… tell her everything.

"Why are we even here, James?" For the millionth time, she says his name. "Why is it, that when I say your name, you don't say mine? Who am I to you? Another girl? Another…." she pauses, and her eyes are filled with bitterness as she spits out, "Another hook-up? Who, James? Who am I?" Her voice is low now, filled with sorrow that tastes so sour on her tongue she wishes she could spit it back up.

"No…" Without thinking, he slips into his old habit, the one he had before they started dating. "Evans…"

She gasps in shock at the use of her surname. She feels as if someone has stabbed her in the heart. As if her heart were crystal glass and James Potter took it out, held it in the palm of his hand, just for a moment, a long, sweet, terrible moment, and then dropped it, letting it shatter into a billion fragments on the floor.

Her breath is short and fast, everything except for the boy in front of her iw spinning. He is in painfully clear focus as her words spill out.

"So that's what it's about. You were going to break-up with me. Well, now I've saved you the trouble. Why don't you go find Roxanna, or Lindsay, or Victoria?"

And what she's said is true. He was planning on breaking up with her. He had reasons before, but now they are lost. And he realizes what a fool he is.

After he has swallowed her whole, tasted her, then spit her out again…

"Don't… no…. Stay, Lily, please."

"Give me a reason."

He is floundering in open water, and a ship is in sight, but he can't make that leap of faith yet, can't give up his last bit of energy to wave at it, with only the slight hope it will notice him. And he can't do it yet, so she presses her lips together, feeling drowned by the salty water, and says, "I love you. But I can't love you, if you don't love me."

And she is gone, the only trace of her presence a slight whiff of her perfume and the memory of what could have been.