A/N: Oh, hello! I got inspiration for a new story. I decided to take an interesting approach with this one. I feel like we're always seeing these stories where Will is the good guy and Carl is the bad guy, so I thought, well what if we change that? What if this time we make Will the bad guy and Carl the good guy? Let's see where this journey takes us, shall we?

Song used: City Kids by Flyleaf.

Chapter 1: City Kids

"Hey. It's me. I heard you're in town. Uh, give me a call. I'd really like to see you again. Okay. Oh, by me, I mean Will. It's Will. Will Schuester. Okay. Bye."

"Hey, Will, it's Emma. Um…yeah, I'd like to see you as well. I'll be over near the lake this afternoon. Maybe I'll see you there. Okay…bye."

Walking through the city we grew up in
Everything is changed again
I remember fighting to believe in
Truth and how the Good will win
When we were young, almost in love
Too scared to reach out for what was

"So I can't believe you're actually here," Will said, glancing over at Emma. They'd long since left the lake and started wandering all their different routes around town, doing so in complete silence. Neither of them wanted to say something to potentially create an issue, or address the elephant in the room. That ring on her damn finger.

Emma let out a half-laugh and nodded, shoving her hands in her pockets and looking straight ahead, still not ready to look Will in the face just yet. Her breath made puffs in the chilly December air. "Yeah, I know. It's been a minute."

"Is that what we're calling five years away from home now?"

She nodded a little, "Yeah, I guess we are." She was silent a moment before finally looking over at him. "Everything's different. I swear every time I come home, things change. I just found out last night that the frozen yogurt shop downtown closed because Mrs. Laninsky couldn't keep up with it anymore. Sort of bummed me out."

"Oh, yeah, that's been gone…three years now? It's a sex toy shop now."

Emma gave him a quizzical look. "People in Lima buy sex toys now?"

"I guess so. It's one of those chains, though."

"Well I guess as long as it's not a local starting it, then…"

"So how are things with you? With the…" Will trailed off, his eyes darting down to her pocketed hand before down at the ground.

"With the husband?" She asked quietly, turning to stare him down. It was his own fault. "Things with my husband are great. Things with me are great." Her pale hand made an appearance, moving up to scratch the bridge of her nose delicately. Her eyes squinted and her eyebrows came together they way they always did when she was about to say something potentially awkward. "We're considering starting a family soon."

"Wow," Will managed out, a lump forming in his throat at her words. Did she have to use the husband word so many times?! "That's…great, Emma. You don't think it's too soon or anything?"

"It's been almost three years."

"Seems short."

"Well it's not any of your concern anymore, is it?" Her eyes darted towards his again and she bit the inside of her cheek.

Silence settled over them, reminding the pair why they were so cautious to start a conversation in the first place. Things between Will and Emma hadn't ended on the best of terms five years ago, forcing her to move away Lima. In silence, they wandered the familiar streets, neither of them needing to speak about where they were going. It was almost as if they were magnetic; they just knew without words.

"I miss how we used to be," Will said to her quietly. He wanted to reach out and run a hand over her hair. Pull her into a hug and kiss her head and tell her he loved her. But it wasn't that simple anymore.

"You can't miss it that much," Emma said quietly. "You're the reason we're not how we used to be."

"Do you miss it?"

Tears started to come to Emma's eyes and she nodded a little, looking away from Will. "Of course I miss it. I fought for it." She sniffled just a little, reaching up to brush her tears away, her eyes on his for a moment before she chose to look straight ahead again. "I asked for honesty. I asked you for nothing, but honesty."

"I know," Will told her softly. He reached out and took her shoulder gently. "Emma, I know."

"Do you know how many nights I laid next to you, and I tried to convince myself that you were being honest? That you and I would come out strong and on top? Because we loved each other - or I thought we did - and good things always prevail. Do you have any idea?" She looked at him before pulling her arm from him gently.

Will just remained silent, walking beside her. He still felt awful, but there was nothing he could do or say to make it better; nothing he knew she'd hear. Because there was nothing that could fix it.

Falling silent again, Emma swallowed hard, looking down at the sidewalk. Minutes later, they turned down a street and Emma realized the all too familiar street they were walking down: Will's street growing up. She bit her lip as they came upon his house and she stopped, biting her lip as she stared up at the house that they'd filled with so many good memories, and too many bad.

Walking past the house that you grew up in
Man, it looks so different now
Remembering the story of your first kiss
The feeling of my heart ripped out
When we were young, almost in love
Too scared to reach out for what was
Looking back, we try to laugh
City kids, the ghosts of past

"Wow," Emma said, staring up at the one story pale yellow house. Nobody lived in it now. Nobody appreciated the porch, or the swing in the corner of the yard. She could see into the living room, the empty shell of her comfort place. It broke her heart, but it was a perfect reflection of how she'd felt inside.

"Yeah, my parents sold it a while ago. Dad took the whole retire to Florida thing a little too seriously." He chuckled a little. "It looks so different without them here, right? I keep telling them to come back so Lima feels the same, but with them gone and with you gone…"

Will shrugged. He looked over at Emma and he saw her face crumpled as she tried to hold back tears. Immediately, he felt awful, realizing what Emma was actually remembering about this house. A surge of pain went through him, and again, he knew there was nothing he could do to fix it.

"So," Emma said, curled into her husband on the swing, resting her head against his chest. "Tell me the story of your first kiss."

She already knew the answer; she was his first kiss during their sophomore year of high school. They'd gone to the park down the street and Will helped Emma climb on top of the monkey bars. They sat perched there and she dared him to jump. He said he would if he got something in return, and then he dared her to kiss him. When she'd blushed, he smiled at her widely and leaned in to kiss her again. 'Don't worry,' he'd told her, 'that was my first kiss, too.' Emma laid with him, closing her eyes and waiting for him to recount the story that she loved so much, but the smile on her face quickly faded when he started telling her his story.

"It was eighth grade, at the end of the year graduation party held by the school," he told her, and she could hear the smile on his voice at the memory. "Elizabeth Matthews. She was a year older than me, and she was there because her younger sister, Meredith, graduated with us, remember? Anyway, in one of the abandoned classrooms, a group of kids were playing spin the bottle, and I thought, 'Well, I'm a high schooler, now. I can play this game!' So I did. It landed on here, and damn, that was a great seven minutes in Mr. Peterson's supplies closet." Will chuckled at the memory, and Emma tensed against him.

"What?" Emma asked, unable to hide the hurt and disappointment on her face. She felt like her heart had been ripped from her chest; he'd been lying to her for…ever. They're whole relationship. He'd lied.

"What?"

"When…you told me I was your first kiss. You've always told me I was your first kiss."

He could hear the tears in her voice, and he knew right away that he'd done something terrible.

"You were," he tried to backtrack.

"No, I wasn't. You just said it was Elizabeth Matthews in Mr. Peterson's classroom summer after eighth grade!"

She sat up and looked at his face, and the look in his eyes was all it took to know that every suspicion and every worry she'd been having for months was her reality, not her paranoia. She could see the lies all over his face, and her lips burned with the aftertaste of a million kisses left over from all his late nights 'studying'.

"Who else have you kissed?" Emma asked calmly. The calm before the storm.

"What are you talking about?" He tried to act offended, but Emma had known him since they were babies, and she knew when he was lying. How could he have thought he was getting away with this all this time?

"Will, answer the damn question. Who else have you kissed?" Her eyes were on his, daring him to lie to her again.

"Terri. Del Monaco."

"Oh, my god." Emma leaned forward, resting her head in her hands, propped up on her knees. She felt sure she was going to be sick. She took a deep breath, trying to swallow through the crushing feeling pressing on her lungs. "How long?" She asked, barely loud enough to be heard. She didn't even have to ask if it was before her; she knew that it wasn't.

Hesitation.

"A year."

"A year?" Tears were present in her voice and she took a deep stuttering breath, resisting the urge to look at him, fearing her resolve would shatter.

"A year on December ninth," he added, just to add insult to injury it would seem.

Emma coughed out a sob, standing up and turning to look at him, rage, hurt, fear, sorrow fleeting across her features, though her eyes just looked shattered, like the confession had turned off the lights in her.

"You…" she pressed her fingers to her mouth, staring at him as tears fell down her cheeks. She swallowed hard. "Your anniversary…is our wedding anniversary?" Her eyebrows pulled together, and when Will nodded, she lost it.

"How could you do that to me?! TO us?! YOU WANTED THIS!" Emma took a deep breath, trying to get air in her lungs. "GOD! For - for MONTHS I have felt it. I knew it was different, I knew you were pulling away from me. You never loved school much before, and you never…you never wanted to sleep with me…I —"

"Emma," Will stood, holding out a hand to her, beckoning her to him. "Emma, let me explain.

Emma looked at him, but she just…couldn't. She shook her head, staring at him.

"Look, you kissed Liz, and that's fine. It happened, and it was so long ago. It's upsetting that I've been lied to for years, but that's nothing. This?" She gestured to him, swallowing. "You're cheating on me with a cheerleader we went to high school with, and not only have you been seeing her for a year, but you started seeing her on our wedding anniversary. And told me that you weren't going to make it home last year because you had an exam that night that you had no control over. WHAT WERE YOU EXAMINING? HER ASS?"

"Emma, please…let me explain. Let me fix this."

"A year with her," Emma said, with a laugh through her tears. She shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. "And four years of marriage with me down the drain. You'll hear from my lawyer - your dad, funny enough - soon." And with that, she'd stormed away from Will's parents' house, never to return there again for almost six years."

"I never saw her again," Will told Emma suddenly, looking over at her, his head shaking. "I couldn't after you left."

Emma looked over at Will, anger flickering over her face. "So, you could only see her when coming home to your wife, who had cooked you dinner and put her education on hold so she could be a housewife for you, was so terrible, you had to sneak off to a motel to bang some skinny blonde?"

"Emma, no! No, that's not what I'm saying!"

She took a deep breath and let it out in a gust, shaking her head, anger erased from her features. "No, it's fine. I guess, we weren't quite as in love as we thought we were. Or at least, you weren't quite in love. I was. So. I guess that made us almost in love."

"Emma…"

"It's fine, Will. Seriously," she lied. "Besides, I got my revenge, right? I nailed you in the eye when I threw my wedding ring at you during our divorce hearing."

They both thought back on the memory and forced a laugh. Emma's eyes darted towards the porch, and if she thought really hard, she could see her twenty-two year old self laying there with her husband, peaceful and happy. The calm before the storm.

When you were just a girl you wrote a letter
It said that we were dearest friends
I push myself to read a little further
It said we would be 'til we're dead
But we were young, almost in love
Too scared to reach out for what was
Looking back, we try to laugh
City kids, the ghosts of past

Taking a deep breath, Emma turned away from the house, leaving Will standing in the yard, and it was oddly reminiscent of the last time she'd left this house. She bit her cheek and sighed out her breath, her hands shoved back into her pockets.

"I read the letter," Will told her suddenly.

"What letter?" What letter - hah! Emma knew the exact letter he was talking about.

"The one you wrote me. The one you gave me after our divorce was settled."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, with her back still towards him.

"Dear Will," he started out. She heard the paper unfolding in his hands and she turned just a bit, looking at him over her shoulder as he continued to read aloud.

"Dear Will, don't make fun of me, but I'm writing you this letter. We're currently in Miss Sinsters math class and you're sitting in front of me, clearing struggling on this math test. I told you you should come over and study with me, but no. You wanted to play football with your brothers. Well, how's that turning out for you? Can you hear me snickering every so often?

Anyway, that's besides the point. Last night, you asked me if I would be your girlfriend after your soccer game. I need to tell you now that my parents aren't happy about it, but you're never going to know that because I don't want to hurt your feelings. So I'll write it here instead. But after they go angry with me last night, I went upstairs and I laid down in my bedroom and I just…you're my dearest friend in the whole world, so no matter what, let's keep it that way. I want to always be honest with you, and I really want you to always be honest with me. I've known you my whole life, and I would really hate to mess up this friendship we have. So just know that I really care about you. Honestly, I love you, and I can say that here because you'll never see this. So we're always going to be best friends. Forever. Until we're dead. And even way past then. Always yours, Em."

Will folded the paper in his pocket and looked up at her, eyebrows lifting slightly. "Do you remember that?"

"Of course I remember that. Why do you think I gave it to you?"

"To make me feel guilty." Will paused. "It took me a year before I could make myself read past you saying that you always wanted honesty. That's all you've wanted your whole life, and I'd ruined us before we even began."

"Yep. You did."

"And now, you're remarried."

"Yep."

"And you want to start a family?"

"Yep."

"Is there anything that can make you stop?"

Emma looked at him and shook her head. "I'm twenty-seven, Will. I'm not a kid anymore, who can be talked into getting married after my high school graduation and believe in every promise that you could possibly make to me. It's time to grow up."

"So then grow up. But grow up with me." Will looked hopeful.

"No."

"Emma," he walked over and reached for her hand, his eyes on hers. "Please."

She stared at him, unable to believe he was being serious right now. After everything he did, he was asking her to leave her husband - who genuinely loves her - and take a risk at Will's childish behavior again.

"Don't you see me, Em? Don't you recognize me?"

Emma nodded, looking down at their hands. "Of course I recognize you. A woman never forgets her cheating ex-husband." With that, she pulled her hand away from his, looking up into his eyes. "I have to go. My husband is meeting me for dinner."

With that, she turned, walking away from him, just like she had five years ago. He tried to see things differently, but he couldn't. Twenty-seven year old Emma walked away, but he just saw his twenty-two year old wife slipping through his fingers once again, a shadow of the woman he once loved; the woman who once let him love her.

City kids, the ghosts of past
Looking back, we try to laugh
City kids, the ghosts of past

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Glee, Will Schuester, Emma Schuester, Terri del Monaco, or Carl Howell. I simply use them to tell stories. They are all property of GLEE, FOX, RYAN MURPHY, et al.