Boy trouble, we've got double
Don't know what to do

"Boy Problems", Carly Rae Jepsen

Emma wasn't picking up her phone – again – and Brooke tried to tell herself that this was not a big deal. Emma had just gotten back and she was going through stuff. After all, that whole Piper Shaw fiasco had been entirely aimed at her, and Brooke couldn't even begin to imagine what that must have felt like. Petrifying, revolting, isolating. Those were words that came to mind, and of course they affected everyone in the Lakewood Six, but Brooke couldn't tell Emma that because she couldn't even pretend to have it worse. She was known for being brutally honest, so she had to be that way with herself right now. Besides, she had a soft spot for her girls and didn't want to hurt them any more.

Everyone was left to pick up the pieces in their own way and she was not ready to lose more friends…over some boy.

Brooke definitely still needed someone to talk to. The rest of us just partied the crazy away, as she had told Emma. But that unsurprisingly backfired nonetheless; all it did was push the 'crazy' deeper in, in even closer proximity to the painful memories associated with recent Lakewood history. Brooke still couldn't really believe that she had lost pretty much all of her closest friends over the course of a year. Her girl friends; people she could rely on unquestioningly when it all went to shit – with school, with family, with boys. Boys. Jake.

Just thinking about him made Brooke's blood begin to simmer where she sat on Jake's front porch. She was waiting for him to greet her; sweep her off her feet. Brooke didn't know how long she'd been there, but she remained resolute in staying a few moments longer. Sometimes, she was so hopeful it was a little sickly. Regardless, Brooke didn't really want to go home right away. Not after the conversation she'd had with her dad. For one, she just did not want to deal with her father at all. She hadn't all summer, and didn't want to start now. For another, she'd basically told him that she and Jake were together and it was dreamy and amazing and perfect; Brooke had called Jake a good person and meant it with all her heart. To go home dejected would actually sting. Maddox pride, after all.

Brooke angrily yanked a card from her purse; the one Jake had left on her car earlier that evening. She wanted to remind herself that maybe they could work this scuffle out. But it was beginning to look bleaker by the second. "'I'm sorry.' Yeah, you should be fucking sorry," she mumbled to herself, tossing it randomly into a bush in the garden. She pulled out her phone and stared at the single, solitary message he'd sent her since he went AWOL. He hadn't even replied to her messages from tonight. She felt tears welling up in her eyes, but tried her best to push her feelings back down.

She didn't understand why he was being this cruel.

That was not an overstatement. Jake knew her to her bones – her core – by now, and if there was one thing that got to Brooke Maddox the most, it was being ignored. Now this wasn't Maddox pride nor entitlement. When people blanked Brooke for extended periods of time, she always figured it was her fault. She was terrible at dealing with the silent treatment because it left her with an overactive imagination. What did obnoxious, blunt, selfish Brooke do now? She probably deserved it for being so awfully egotistical or rude or—

Maybe this time it was her fault, but she had already fixed it! She wanted to tell Jake that, let him know that they could stop dating in secret, even if her father hated it.

Forget this. Brooke brought up her contact list on her cell, lamenting the fact that she couldn't really call anybody. The only people she could consider her friends for the past year had been the Lakewood Six. She couldn't call Kieran; she honestly only saw him as 'Emma's boyfriend' anyway, and they hardly bonded. Noah… Brooke hated to think it, but he always somehow managed to make everything a tad too creepy, and she really didn't need that right now.

"Alright then. Looks like you're a lucky girl, Audrey," she murmured, and dialled the number.

Audrey sat in her car and sobbed, arms wrapped tightly around herself, desperate to stop shivering. A myriad of emotions were going through her at the same time and she needed some other way to expel them. She'd already puked the second she was a safe distance away from that storage compound.

The image of Jake's disembowelled body wouldn't leave her mind. The smell was much worse. No. Actually it was the fucking message pinned to his damn body that took the cake.

See how I finished the job for you Audrey?

She didn't do this. She didn't want this.

Every repressed emotion Audrey had fought to keep away all summer was slowly clawing its way out into the open and it took everything in her being to not scream. She had lived on edge ever since the Piper revelation, fraught with anxiety over her connection to a murderer, but unable to tell anybody about it. It was much easier to cope with when Emma was away, even with all the stupid pranks people seemed to love pulling on her and her friends. Although Audrey hated to admit it, it would have been better for her if Emma had stayed away from Lakewood. Of course, that would mean a lot of pain and hurt for everyone else here, but her face was still a great, sore, terrible reminder that Piper was Audrey's fault.

And now this shit happens. Something she couldn't ever share with the others. Audrey was completely, utterly alone in this.

She tentatively glanced at the empty passenger seat of her car, almost praying those little scraps of paper containing that cryptic message had somehow disappeared. That her finding Jake's mangled body was nothing more than the most vivid, disgusting nightmare; one that a creepy subconscious cooked up thanks to all the morbid talk she'd heard while growing up in Murderville.

It wasn't. She got out of her car and puked again.

Audrey felt absolutely drained and terrified, livid at herself as well as the situation; a new killer was on the loose. She totally understood why she was targeted but why now? It had been radio silence all summer, and if it were just about exposing her dirty secrets, it wouldn't have mattered what month of the year it happened. But the killer had let it stew for months, then sprung this up on her, and it so happened to involve Jake. A total doofus, but her friend. She had just seen him at Emma's welcome home party. They had had drinks, made jokes, celebrated something good. This was all too coincidental, which made it even scarier. Someone was watching them. Someone knew about her – about her friends – and they wanted to torture them. But what for?—

Audrey's cell phone suddenly rang and forcibly jerked her out of her thoughts as they spiralled out of control. This was starting to reach sensory overload. She made it a point to ignore it if it was Noah again. She could not deal with his enthusiasm for murder stories right this minute.

Audrey fumbled for her phone with shaky hands and upon noticing Brooke's caller ID, almost tossed it as far away from her as possible. It felt like odd, divine retribution that Jake's girlfriend was calling her right after Audrey had found his body. She let it ring out, but Brooke remained persistent and called twice more. Audrey then knew she had to answer it – it could be really important – and took several deep breaths to try and steady herself before accepting the call.

"Hey Brooke!" That was too peppy. Dial it back, Audrey, because it's sounding a little fake, she chided herself.

"Oh good, you picked up!" Brooke exclaimed. "What took you so long anyway? Listen, I know this is really short-notice but…what are you doing right now?"

I just found your boyfriend's dead body in a storage unit. His intestines were hanging out and I'm implicated in his murder, but I sure as hell did not commit it.

"Um, uh, nothing," Audrey replied, fully aware of how oddly disjointed and jumpy she sounded. Deep breaths; one, two, three. "Nothing, I'm just…at home. Homework, you know. Phone was on silent, didn't hear it buzz."

"Okay well, can you ditch that? I am dressed up and totally bored. I want to go out."

"Dressed up? For your dad's photo-op thing?"

"Oh no, I skipped that. I wasn't ready to parade myself around for the Maddox political campaign, so I just told Daddy I was flaking. As it turns out, there is nothing to do around here when none of your friends are answering their phones and no one's spontaneous anymore. I mean look at you! Doing homework. It's like 8pm. What kind of teenagers are we?"

Was it that early? It felt like hours had passed since Audrey had found Jake.

"Yeah, well," Audrey stammered. "Y'know with what happened a few months ago… I don't think we're all too crazy for wild nights out if it isn't a house party or whatever."

"True. Okay fine, we can not go out. Let me come over to yours."

"Brooke, I don't know—"

"—Please, Audrey! I just really need a place to be. I—"

Brooke paused long enough for Audrey to really notice something was wrong. She should have picked up on it earlier anyway; when was the last time Brooke actually called Audrey to hang out one-on-one? And called that insistently? The last time they even had close to any kind of moment was at Brooke's party the night Piper died. Audrey could admit to still thinking about it from time-to-time, in fact; it had been plainly nice. Honest, but sweet. A good counterpoint to the utter shitstorm surrounding them at the time.

But they only saw each other in groups since then, mostly hanging out when Noah and Jake were around. So there weren't any other opportunities for that to happen again.

"I just really need a place to be," Brooke repeated. "We could go somewhere or I could pick you up and we'll sit in my car and just talk. I don't care. I just don't want to be alone right now."

She sounded so…sad. But not pathetic. Brooke Maddox was never pathetic, and that reminder almost made Audrey chuckle; she held it in and instead cracked a smile to herself. It was comforting to know that kind of resilience could exist out there, especially in someone like Brooke, who'd suffered a lot and lost so many people. She was actually stabbed and left to die in a freezer. Many people seemed to forget that happened, and maybe that's in part due to Brooke not wanting to bring it up too much. Yet, Audrey didn't notice her changing for the worse over the summer. Brooke had remained as she had always been – a rock – just much nicer. Softer. Much more human.

Audrey sighed, casting another glance at the damning evidence on her passenger seat. This was going to be difficult. The cops better not catch me speeding home.

"Alright, you can come over, but give me, like, half an hour, okay? I just…wasn't expecting anyone tonight."

Audrey could already imagine the smile on Brooke's face at her quiet, "Thank you."

And in a way, that began to calm her down.

"I like your room," Brooke mused. "It's a lot less dark than I expected. You really have, like, zero black in here."

She sat mermaid-style on Audrey's bed, curiously gazing around at the walls covered in posters and photographs. She had put on a sweatshirt she had borrowed from Audrey, which obviously clashed starkly with her full face of makeup and little black dress, but she still looked infuriatingly beautiful in her mixture of sloppy and made-up. Audrey couldn't remember a time when she didn't actually think that about Brooke.

Audrey was perched at her desk a little awkwardly, suddenly acutely aware that this was the first time in a while that a girl had been in her room. Obviously, not just any girl; someone who could have easily been queen bee at school, but turned out so different from what was expected of someone like her. That coupled with the reality of the Jake situation played saliently in the back of Audrey's mind. She had come home in a rush, practically flew in and out of the shower and shoved the incriminating message from Jake's body into one of her drawers; she made sure to lock it too. Now that the adrenaline was dying down in her system, she was slowly beginning to realise she actually had to interact with Brooke as normally as possible.

"Why do people still think girls who dress like goths somehow hate colour?" Audrey retorted.

"Oh, you know I don't actually think that," Brooke said. "That was a joke."

"Well, work on your material, sister, because it wasn't very original or funny."

Brooke just giggled in reply and laid back in Audrey's bed, eyes shut for a moment with her arms splayed above her head. Again, infuriatingly beautiful. She actually looked at ease, which was the complete opposite of what Audrey felt. She wanted to be there for Brooke so badly; her call was enough of a cause for concern. But the fact that Brooke had even reached out to Audrey also seemed somewhat unexplainable considering how they had barely spent time together. Well, maybe they could if they were given a chance and this was it.

"Listen, Audrey, I've never had to be funny all my life, looking like this—" Brooke vaguely gestured to herself, "—so don't judge me!"

She looked up and gave Audrey a sly little wink and smirk.

"Wait…was that self-deprecating humour? 'Cause that's actually okay," Audrey replied, chuckling slightly too. Yet, she must have still looked visibly distracted, because Brooke sat up in a start, frowning at her.

"Wow, something is seriously up with you tonight."

"What? No, nothing. Everything's fine." God, Audrey, just shut up for like two seconds.

"You honestly look like you're about to cry, which is weird, because it's you; little miss tough girl," Brooke said. "I hardly think math homework did this to you."

No. Your boyfriend did.

Still, Brooke did look very worried. She slowly slid of the bed and walked towards Audrey. Brooke tentatively putting her hand on Audrey's shoulder, as though she wanted to be reassuring but unsure if physical contact was acceptable. Audrey didn't shy away – far from it; she took Brooke's hand in her own and squeezed hard.

"I just—" she still had to think of a lie, and fast, "—it's…it's Emma."

Brooke tilted her head slightly, confused. "What happened? Did she say something to you?"

"No, I'm just worried about her, that's all." Amazingly, that semi-lie came out smoothly and convincingly. "Like, she's just gotten back, and it's been hard for her to cope. I know she wants to act like everything's fine but I don't know. I just don't know what to do to help her."

"Tell me about it," Brooke said, shaking her head and sighing. "I don't know how to act around her. Like she wants everything to be normal from all of us. But we've all changed since she left and I don't even know if that's the same Emma we're talking to. Normal's gone. We might not get it back."

"I was surprised you called me tonight, to be honest," Audrey said. "I mean, you and I aren't exactly tight."

"Well, I think it's time we changed that," Brooke declared. "You and I are more alike than we think, Audrey. Especially after last year. I think we both hate being alone."

Neither Audrey nor Brooke let go of each other's hand; they just shifted positions as Brooke rested her head in the crook of Audrey's shoulder, burrowing her cheek into her. They stood like this for a few moments, and for the first time all evening, Audrey felt the tension at the back of her neck subside slightly. Her own cheek rested on Brooke's crown and she couldn't help but catch a whiff of her shampoo, citrusy and sharp; it was both surprisingly and predictably unfeminine for someone as feisty as Brooke. Audrey inhaled deeply, realising just how exhausted she was.

But she kind of had to ruin this practically perfect moment. "Brooke?"

"Mm-hmm?" She sounded wistful but calm.

"I told you what's bothering me." Sort of. "It's kind of your turn to talk now."

Brooke groaned slightly, pulling away from their embrace reluctantly so her eyes met Audrey's. Her usual giant doe-like gaze was narrowed into one of mock frustration.

"Can we maybe not? Can't we just have some fun instead?" Brooke pleaded. She flashed her best dazzling, pageant-winning smile hopefully at Audrey.

"You think that's covering it? You're doing your Miss Popularity routine again; you think just 'cause you're pretty, I'm gonna let this slide! No, come on, tell me!" Audrey exclaimed, half-seriously.

"You think I'm pretty, Audrey?" Brooke responded cheekily. That made Audrey's heart skip several beats, and she had to fight the smile tugging at her lips.

"Come on," Audrey said. "We'll do fun things in a minute, okay? We'll get take-out and watch crappy movies all night if you want. I'll even let you put nail polish on me and I don't wear that stuff. But you asked to come here for a reason, so tell me what's going on."

Brooke couldn't find the words. She knew Audrey was right. Ignoring her Jake dilemma wasn't going to make it go away. Still, she felt that if he was going to keep ignoring her when she was clearly up for apologising and making things better, he didn't deserve her time...two can play at that game. It was so much easier forgetting these boy problems when she could have her girls only moments.

"It's just Jake. Aka nothing," she said airily, waving her hand in the air inconsequentially for emphasis.

Audrey's eyes widened slightly. "Jake? What about Jake?"

Weird, she sounds kind of…frantic, Brooke thought.

"I swear, Audrey. It's…nothing. I just miss that stupid boy, I guess. Like we argue sometimes, but our last fight was big. And now he's completely ignoring me, so…there's nothing I can do to fix things. I can only move on."

Audrey remained silent, which would have been an understandable reaction if not for the fact that Brooke noticed she also visibly stiffened, with that dark remote look she had sported earlier returning to her features. Not that Audrey wasn't a nice person and didn't care about her friends at all, but it was still strange and uncharacteristic for her to react so strongly…about Jake. They got along, but were never on the same wavelength long enough to have an actual conversation; from what Brooke observed anyway. So Audrey seemed deeply unsettled, and Brooke couldn't figure out why.

"Hey, it's okay," she offered, touching her arm gently. "You don't have to feel so sorry for poor, fragile Brooke. I'm not cut up about it. Not right now, anyway. Not when I have you."

That brought a slight smile to Audrey's face at least. "He didn't hurt you?"

"He did," Brooke said. "But maybe I can stop thinking about it for a few hours."

"You know, you can stay over if you want. My dad honestly doesn't care if yours won't."

Brooke rolled her eyes and laughed mirthlessly. "Daddy wouldn't even notice."

"Brooke." Audrey looked serious. "I know he's kind of a shitty dad but…maybe you should like text him or something. To be safe."

Brooke took a moment to study Audrey, still trying to figure out what else had changed over the course the last fifteen minutes of their conversation. It was only weird that she cared because Audrey would've probably been the first person to throw someone like her father under the bus for being so secretive.

At the same time, her brain was getting lazy and hazy, and she really wanted to stop thinking about boys and men and anything else to do with them for the rest of the night.

Let it go for now, Brooke, she told herself.

"Okay, okay," she said, resignedly. "I'll leave him a voice message later. Happy? Now can we have that fun we were talking about?"

Audrey nodded, a smile spreading across her face. And it did look genuine. She stretched her arms outwards to give Brooke a hug, and it was gladly accepted. They stayed this way for what felt like a long time. Brooke felt Audrey's hand reach up and cradle the nape of her neck; she smiled and sighed contently, gripping Audrey tighter around her waist in response. It felt really beyond nice being in her arms, and something told Brooke not to let go.

But she was still the first one to.

A/N: Another introspective piece that I'm trying out, and something that will actually have chapters! Disjointed ones, but still. This goes without saying, but for clarity's sake, this chapter is set somewhere after 2x02 "Psycho", bleeding a little into (...no pun intended) 2x03 "Vacancy". As usual, many thanks to Nightmaric for being a great beta, and soothing my nervous baby writer soul. Favourites and reviews are always appreciated. Thanks for reading!