Disclaimer: I do not own Heartland as I have said many times over.
Scrabble My Heart:
Amy tilted her head back and laughed as she ran a hand through his long, light brown hair. Her gray eyes sparkled when she looked around at all the friends surrounding her.
Her friends and life at college were great, but nothing compared to being with her family and friends at home. It was like eating generic potato chips or the authentic Lays. Generic satisfies your hunger, but it's not quite like crunching into a genuine Lays potato chip.
Amy shook her head and smiled wryly as she realized she had been comparing her friends and family to potato chips.
As Amy reached over to the shiny coffer table to pick up her can of coke she heard footsteps behind her and the squeak of her old front door opening.
She looked at the circle of people around her and wondered who it could be. Everyone was already here. Matt, Soraya, Lou, Scott, Jack… these were the most important people in her life. Who else did she need?
Turning her head Amy saw that the one person of whom she had finally almost managed to rip all the memories of their time together out of her heart had just walked into her kitchen.
There wasn't even an awkward silence. No one seemed to realize that having Ty Baldwin walk into her kitchen was extremely awkward for Amy. These were the people who were supposed to understand her above all others. So why was he here?
Amy didn't look his way. He sat down across from her on the couch next to Matt. Amy didn't look his way. Soraya poured him a glass of ginger-ale. Amy stood and walked away from the group and upstairs to her room. She didn't look his way. As she started to cry on the way up the stairs she did not look his way.
But her heart felt his presence.
Amy curled up on her bed, and wrapped herself in her plaid bedspread. She closed her eyes and tried to stop the tears from coming.
"Why?" she muttered as an unwelcome tear slid down her pale cheek. She felt her lip starting to tremble and she hated herself for it.
"Why?" she echoed again. Why did he have to come now? Now - when she finally welcomed his absence. Now - when she finally understood that it was better for the two of them to be apart. Now – when she was sure that she could live without him – that was when he reminded her that maybe she wasn't so certain.
Amy had buried her face into her pillow for a few minutes when she heard a knock on her bedroom door. Her heart quickened.
"Amy?"
It was Soraya – safe, peaceful, Soraya.
"Yes?" Amy called, trying to make her voice sound normal, but realizing that she fell incredibly short of the mark.
"Can I come in Ame?"
Amy nodded, and when after a moment she realized that Soraya could not see her gesture through the door Amy called for her to come in.
Soraya poked her head around the door, her tan face downcast, and her eyes filled with concern. She walked quietly over to sit next to Amy on the bed.
"Are you okay?"
Amy smiled slightly, loving that Soraya didn't need to ask what was wrong. She just knew. It probably wasn't very hard to figure out, but still it reminded Amy that she had made a very good choice in her best friend – and that felt good to be able to commend herself for something.
"I'm… fine," Amy muttered, not looking at Soraya. Even though Amy was the more serious of the two girls she had never been the stronger. Sure... sometimes she acted stronger, but at the core Amy knew that Soraya had always been a stronger individual than herself.
"No you're not," Soraya said, looking down at her best friend with worry, "do you want to talk about it?"
Amy shook her head, but then said only, "It's like… I want him to be gone, I'm fine with him being gone… and then… here he comes again."
Soraya sighed in empathy and put her hand on Amy's arm, "Do you want to come downstairs?"
Amy felt her heart flop around in her chest, and became angry at the fact that she did want to come downstairs. She did want to see him. She hated that he felt so right.
She flopped off her bed, and smoothed her hair.
"Do I look like I was crying?" Amy asked seriously.
Soraya just laughed, "You're fine, Ame."
Amy steadied herself, put her hand against one of her walls and took a deep breath and then proceeded downstairs with Soraya at her side.
When she saw Ty sitting at the table she wanted to run upstairs and hide again, but she just smiled a small smile in his general direction and sat in the seat farthest away from him.
Everyone was sitting around the table playing Scrabble, which was Amy's favorite board game.
"Do you want to play, Amy?" her grandfather Jack asked, peering over at her curiously. She knew it would look weird if she didn't play so she accepted the invitation and began to set up her pieces in front of her.
Amy did as she always did and set them up alphabetically, glad to be doing something that she was so comfortable, when the rest of her was falling apart. She could see Ty out of the corner of her eye, and it was painfully hard to keep her eyes off of him. He was staring down at his letters, and a lock of his dark hair had fallen across his beautiful green eyes. Her eyes grazed over his high cheekbones and she longed to reach out her hand and touch them, despite the fact that he was extremely far away from her.
All of a sudden Amy realized that she had been looking so hard that she had stopped breathing, and she took a huge gulp of breath. Everyone at the table looked over at her, but Ty was the only person she saw.
For the first time that night their eyes connected and she w that she was lying to herself when she said she didn't want him. He was the one thing that she was certain she did want.
He continued to look at her for a second, and then an unidentifiable emotion crossed through his eyes and he turned away from her and back to his game pieces.
Amy felt her drop as he dropped the connection between the two of them. Heat did not enter her cheeks, but left them as she prepared to put a word onto the game board.
After a brief assessment of her pieces the only word that she could figure out to play was the word "fear".
She clanked down the pieces, feeling as if the noise they made was too loud.
A silence had fallen over the room ever since Amy entered it, but then Jack cracked some joke that Amy didn't think was funny and everyone started laughing. Amy steeled herself against the laughter, reluctant to join in, and unsure if it was even a possibility under the circumstances. It was like they were outside her; as if she was surrounded by a little bubble where laughter and joy did not exist, where a beautiful mocked her with his gorgeous persona but where she was very aware she could never reach him.
Amy continued to place piece after piece on the board, but the game just wasn't working out for her. Usually she was very good at scrabble but tonight certainly wasn't her night, and as the game ended she only had 50 points – an all time low for her.
"Better luck next time, I guess," Lou said, tousling her hair as she stood up from the table and wandered over to clean up the counter top.
Amy couldn't even muster up the energy to pick herself up out of her chair, and so as Soraya and Matt prepared to leave she hugged them from in her chair.
Soon enough it was only Lou, Scott, Ty, and Amy left in the kitchen. Amy tried to make sure that her breathing was steady, but she couldn't ignore the irony of the situation. Lou and Scott - a wonderful pair of young newlyweds and Amy and Ty… a horrible mistake of Amy's youth.
Lou started to dry her hands with a towel after she finished washing the dishes, and looked over at Amy with a concerned look on her face. "Scott and I are going to go now, Ame. You…" she seemed unable to figure out the right words, but Amy wasn't even listening because she had realized that soon Ty and she were going to be in the same room – alone. Her heart started to race really fast, and she almost didn't realize that Lou and Scott were each giving her a hug.
She was certainly aware of it when they were gone, though. Amy felt the heat rush to her cheeks and her heart was pounding in a way that she thought it would pound if she was about to have a heart attack. She wondered if that happened. Did nineteen year olds have heart attacks?
"Amy…" Ty started to speak and Amy felt inclined to scream loudly, but nothing came out, and besides Jack was asleep and he wouldn't want to have to handle a screaming teenage girl.
"I have to go to bed," Amy said, gritting her teeth and pausing after each word. She was aware how odd this sounded, but she wasn't doing it on purpose – that was just how the words came out.
She stood up out of her chair, surprised how easy it was to get out of her chair when she was trying to avoid what she thought might end up being an emotional moment.
As Amy drew near the stairs Ty stepped in front of them, and Amy wasn't afraid like she could have been. He moved so smoothly, not in a jerky fashion like most people would have. It almost would have made her feel safe if she didn't feel so nervous.
"Stop, please. Play Scrabble with me."
Amy was confused by this.
"We just did play Scrabble together," she reminded him, still not looking up into his eyes.
"Please?" Ty pleaded, and the sound of his voice was so genuinely wistful that she couldn't avoid sitting down next to him and beginning to play.
This game didn't go much differently, and Amy couldn't figure out a single word to place on the board.
"What happened to you?" Ty said, his voice sounding much to light for the moment?
What happened to her?
He had meant to ask what had happened to her scrabble skills, but she had taken it as so much more? What happened to her? What had happened to them?
"I don't… know," Amy muttered, answering all three of those questions simultaneously.
"Here…" Ty said, leaning over, and pouring a few pieces out in front of her, "let me help you."
"No," Amy resisted, moving away from him, "I'm good."
"You're great," Ty said softly, "But not tonight. So let me help." It was somewhat of a command, and Amy felt like she had no ability to deny it so she just sat there will he rearranged the letters, but stared off in another direction.
"Amy," he whispered softly, brushing one of his fingers on her arm, "I found the answer."
Amy jerked her hand away from his warm touch, though she desperately wished to stay like that forever. She refused to look down at the word he had spelled out.
"Amy…" he muttered, sounding downtrodden. He didn't touch her arm this time. His voice sounded so ghastly that she found herself looking down at the pieces.
Right near her right hand were the letters ILOVEYOU.
Amy felt her heart jump in her chest.
Ty looked over at his and his eyes were so earnest that she knew it was true.
"First of all, that's three words. So it doesn't even count. Second, it's only 14 points. It's not even a good answer," she snapped, unsure of where this rude emotion had come from.
Ty looked up at her, his green eyes serious, "It's the best answer I know."
Her heart broke at that moment, "It's not a good enough answer, Ty. Love doesn't even mean anything. It's just a word."
"Amy," He whispered, reaching over and touching her arm again, "Do you really believe that?"
"Yes," Amy said, turning away from him.
"When I was lying in that bed in a coma did you think that love was just a word?"
"Yes."
"The first time that we kissed…" he seemed to drift far away for a moment, and then he returned back to the present moment, "Did you think it was just a word?"
"Yes," she lied.
He didn't say anything for a moment, and then he reached up and turned her face towards him.
"Just give me a chance. I can show you, it's not."
"How?" she asked, looking at him only for the second time since he'd spelled the letters – oh, those accursed eight letters.
And then he kissed her.
The kiss lasted for a moment before Ty pulled away and stared intensely into Amy's eyes, "Love is a word, Amy. But what I feel for you is not just a word."
"Stop," Amy muttered, barely noticing that she had started crying.
Ty's green eyes filled with concern, "Amy, I won't love you if it hurts you."
"It… doesn't…" Amy whispered, wiping a tear from her own cheek.
"Then why are you crying?"
"It hurts when you don't love me, Ty…" she whispered, and she wanted to die. Saying those words were like exposing her soul.
Ty put his finger under her wet chin, and looked solemn, "I always love you, Amy."
Amy didn't say anything, but she nodded her head, and laid her wet cheek on Ty's shoulder.
"Amy?"
She answered his question before he would ask it, "Yeah, Ty. Me too."
"Do you want to keep playing Scrabble?" Ty asked her with a smile, and she started laughing, and shook her head.
"No thanks, this already feels better than a triple word score ever could," Amy said with a smile, and closed her eyes as she rested her head on Ty's shoulder again.