"I have to go," said Ezra Fitz as he gripped his young girlfriend's hands. The way he was clinging to her was a sharp contradiction to the words he was saying. "You're the only thing holding me here," he went on. "Your dad would know something was up if I don't take the job transfer." For the first time he felt his heart tangibly break as he watched Aria Montgomery fight the tears he saw welling up in her eyes. Taking in their surroundings, he realized that she must see the same water in his eyes. How could he not get emotional? This would be one the last times he saw Aria for a long time, and probably the last time they'd ever be in this apartment together. There were so many memories here. There was the time they took "couple pictures" with paper bags on their heads because they couldn't risk a real picture of them together, or the time she stayed the night because they thought he would have to resign from Rosewood Day the next morning, or the time she opened up to him about "the Jenna thing." The list could go on and on.

The tears had finally started to leak from her eyes and Ezra took her face in his hands. "A year. A year max. The second you turn eighteen, the second you pick a college, I'll be there. I'll find a job near the school you pick." He saw the fear in her eyes, the unnecessary fear that he would forget about her, that he would find someone else. "Aria, you ARE the girl for me, he reassured her. " I wouldn't have risked my freedom, job, reputation to be with you unless I absolutely thought you could be the one. Aria, I know we can't now, but one day I want to marry you. I figured a promise ring would look to obvious on your hand, so I got you this."

He pulled a pretty gold necklace with a heart hanging from it. "A promise necklace?" Aria giggled through her little stream of tears. Ezra nodded and turned the heart around. On the back, in tiny print, there was an engraving that said "Ezra + Aria." "Its perfect," she choked out as she lifted her hair so Ezra could put the necklace around her neck.

"I got a long chain so you can hide it under your clothes. This whole leaving thing would be kinda pointless if we were showing off our commitment to each other. Of course, you can put it on a shorter chain if you'd prefer it," Ezra said as he let go of the clasp and let the necklace hang around her neck.

Aria pulled her dark blue shirt away from her neck and let the necklace fall into the shirt. "No, I like it this way. Its closer to my heart." Aria leaned in and gave a soft, gentle kiss on his lips. "I'll wait for you, I promise," she whispered with just centimeters of space between their faces.

"Thank you," he said as he leaned back, "but I don't want that promise." Her brow scrunched, trying to decipher what he meant. "Don't get me wrong, I want you to wait for me. But," he took a deep breath," if you find someone else, please just… just tell me. I don't want to hold you back and I don't want to be pining over you if you've moved on. So I want you to promise that if your feelings change, you'll tell me."

Aria nodded, "Same here."

"It's a deal," Ezra assured her.

Aria let a small, dry laugh escape her lips. "I feel like we should shake hands and sign a contract of something."

"How about this," he pulled Aria off the coffee table she'd been perched on and onto the couch, "we seal it with a kiss." He tugged on her legs which had been lying on his lap and pulled her even closer to him. This kiss was different than their usual. There was a depressed and desperate undertone and the way Aria greedily held onto his face told Ezra that there would be many more kisses before the night was over.

It was three hours later. Aria lay with her head on Ezra's lap. Ezra's eyes slowly flickered open and he realized that even in his state of half consciousness he had continued to stroke Aria's hair. It wasn't until Aria released a loud sigh that he knew she wasn't asleep. "How long have you been awake?"

"Just about ten minutes. I've been watching the clock." It was only then that Ezra thought to see what time it was.

"Aria!" he said slightly startled. "Its three minutes 'til your curfew. I'll drive you home and drop you off at the end of your street so your parents don't…" He trailed off because when he tried to stand up from the couch, Aria didn't make a move to sit up. In fact it seemed as if she was actually pushing her head harder against his legs as to keep him from standing.

She rolled onto her back so that she was looking up at his face. All she did was slowly shake her head back and forth. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and as he did so he realized this would be another one of those moments engrained into his mind. Another time they had a conversation without needing to use words, one of the many things that made their relationship so special.

"I don't care," Aria shook her head. "I don't care that I'll be late, I don't care what my parents will think, I don't care how they punish me. This is my last night with you and I'm not following their stupid curfew."

"Then I don't want to waste our time sleeping on this couch," Ezra said. "It might be crazy, but do you wanna go on a real date?"

"What? It's 11 o'clock at night. Everything is gonna close soon."

"We'll make it work. The ice cream shop is still open, the movie theater is doing a special midnight showing of some random movie tonight, and after that we can just walk around town." Ezra's eyes shone at the prospect of being able to hold hands and kiss in public, even if it was nighttime and even if it was only this one time.

"Let's do it!" Aria agreed as she slid her left arm into her leather jacket.

They were walking aimlessly, eating the left over movie popcorn, when they realized they were right underneath the clock tower. The same clock tower they had kissed under in the rain. Aria walked over to the same bench she had sat on when she was waiting to see if he would choose her that night not too many weeks ago. "I was so scared you weren't going to come that night."

"I wasn't going too," Ezra said distantly, thinking back. "I had told myself that it would be best for both of us if I didn't come. I told myself I would call you the next day to say that it was over and that talking about it face to face would only make things more confusing. So to keep myself from thinking about it and changing my mind I went into autopilot. That obviously didn't work because I was halfway here when I realized that I was coming to you, not going to my apartment. I knew I couldn't fight my feelings for you anymore."

They stood there silent. Both thinking about how much they had been through together and how they wouldn't change any of it, no matter how things worked out. The shiver that went down Aria's body is what brought Ezra out of his trance and he realized that the temperature had dropped dramatically since they had first started walking. "We should probably head back to my apartment. It's getting really cold out here," Ezra said as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder.