This is probably the last thing you expected to see from me, another short. And something that's NOT Angela/Eric! (Although there's a friendship crumb tossed in during part 2, lol. I couldn't resist. ;-) )
I will admit I went back and forth over whether this should go here or in the Girl Meets World side and I'm still not entirely sure where it belongs. This my attempt to correct the total and complete lack of effort (to put it mildly) on the writers' part when it came to Angela, her character, and closure with Shawn in the GMW episode Girl Meets Hurricane, so I'm tentatively posting it here. If, in the end, it needs to be moved I will move it.
Cory, Riley, Maya, Katy, and Topanga have brief cameos in the beginning, but otherwise it is strictly Angela and Shawn. And in fact this chapter (the first of two chapters) will mostly cover what happened the last time they saw each other prior to Hurricane. It's complicated, messy, and emotional...just like Shawn and Angela's relationship was. Chapter two will be up later this weekend and will be an ACTUAL conversation between them. Not the rushed few minutes BMW/GMW writers saw fit to provide.
The title comes from a beautiful, bittersweet song by the same name written by Billy Joel.
"Hi, Shawn."
He froze. He'd know her voice anywhere. Some nights it haunted his dreams. He dropped the tray he was holding that contained the extra coffee and muffins to the counter and slowly turned to face her. "Angela." It was almost criminal how little the years had changed her.
"It's been a long time."
"What are you doing here?"
"I was in the city for work. I finished early so I thought I'd take advantage of the extra time and catch up with Topanga. Lately we've only been able to call and email. I couldn't pass up the chance to see my best friend in person. I heard she bought this bakery and I thought I'd check it out, show her my support. She didn't tell me that you'd be here today." She placed her order with the person behind the counter before turning her attention back to Shawn. "Since you are here…is there any chance that we can talk?" Her eyes darted to the window and she realized they had quite the audience. Apparently Cory was training his daughter in his busybody ways. "In private?"
"Um…yeah…I guess." He knew they would find no privacy here. Once they each had a coffee in hand he asked, "You want to take a walk?"
"That would be nice."
Riley and Maya sat dumbfounded as they watched Shawn and Angela exit the bakery and continue walking without paying them a passing glance. "Where are they going," Riley asked in a screechy whisper. "This isn't the plan. This whole day is ruined!"
"Let's give them a minute," Maya said, hoping her voice didn't betray the total panic she was feeling. She kneeled on her chair to see where they were headed. "Then we follow. They're going for the park."
Just then the door to the eatery opened and Topanga appeared outside. "Girls, it's getting busy in here. I could use your help."
"Sorry, mom, we can't. We have to…"
"I know what you're planning to do and no, you're not going to follow Shawn and Angela." She could practically see their teenaged minds start spinning the moment the former couple left and she wasn't about to let their much needed conversation be interrupted. "Come inside and help."
"But mom…"
"Mrs. Matthews…"
"I'm not asking. I'm telling you to get your butts in here and give me a hand."
The girls reluctantly got up to follow Topanga inside. Riley shot a look to her dad and Maya to her mom, imploring them to continue on the spy mission.
Cory stood, stretched, and let out a loud, over-exaggerated yawn. "You know, it is a nice day for a leisurely stroll in the park. Katy, care to join me on the stroll?"
"Cory Matthews, don't you even think about it!"
He grimaced at his wife's voice. "Aw, man!"
"You come help, too. These dishes won't wash themselves."
He sighed and dragged himself towards the door. Now how was he going to know what happened? Shawn had always been vague about what ended his relationship with Angela and Cory didn't see that changing now.
"Can I get another cup of coffee," Katy asked quietly. She wasn't sure what to make of the last few minutes.
"To go, right," he added with a hopeful tone.
She thought for a moment. "No…for here."
/
/
They walked in silence for quite a while, neither one of them sure where to start the conversation. Eventually Angela began. "How have you been?"
Shawn stopped in his tracks. "Are you serious?"
She's confused. She thought that was a safe question to start things off. "What's the matter with you?"
"The first time we talk since you dump me and slam a door in my face and you ask how I am?! That doesn't seem a little backwards to you?!"
"Whoa, I dumped you and slammed a door in your face? Have you taken a creative writing class since the last time we saw each other because you've developed a remarkable talent for rewriting history."
"You ended our relationship and told me to leave your apartment. I was there."
"Who ended it is debatable. Do you happen to remember the conversation that led up to you walking out?"
Shawn found the closest bench and sat down. Of course he remembered that conversation. He'd lost count of the times it's replayed in his mind. Each time he yelled at himself to say something different, to not give her that ultimatum. But every time is the same and it always ended with him and Angela on opposite sides of her door.
/
/
Early January 2002...
"Wow, you're making me breakfast, too?" Angela wrapped her arms around Shawn's waist and kissed his cheek. "And I thought last night was the real surprise," she said with a smile. "But cooking? Wow."
"I'm an unpredictable person."
"Trust me, I've always know that." She moved to the coffee pot and prepared a mug. "So, can we talk?"
"About what?"
"Come on, Shawn, don't get me wrong, I love seeing you and last night was amazing, but what brought this on? Why show up out of the blue now?"
He transferred her eggs from the pan to a plate. "I missed you. Isn't that enough of a reason?"
"Oh, I've missed you, too." Angela wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest, enjoying the steadying sound of his heartbeat. When he hugged her back and held her tight she wanted to cry. She'd waited for over a year to be this close to Shawn. Phone calls, letters, and emails were nothing compared to being in his arms again. "I've missed you so much."
"Yeah, well...your scheduled year abroad ended months ago," he responded in a slightly bitter tone. "You're the one who decided to apply for the writing program."
Mr. Feeny had told her about a summer program a former colleague of his taught at Oxford University and encouraged her to go for it. Never in a million years did Angela believe she would be one of the few students accepted. But two weeks before she was scheduled to return home she got the letter. The phone call to Shawn was difficult, especially since she never told him she applied in the first place. That, she recognized, had been a mistake, but Angela really didn't think she had a chance so she assumed it would be a funny anecdote for her return: the story of how she applied at- and was rejected by- Oxford. "Shawn, Oxford is a once-"
"Once in a lifetime opportunity, I know." It was funny how all of these once in a lifetime opportunities- time spent with her father, programs at Oxford- kept her away from him. "It's just...you've been gone a long time. This wasn't the plan."
"I know." Once the summer program ended she looked into applying as a full time student. She felt far more challenged here than anything that was ever offered to her at Pennbrook. "But I'm doing this for us."
"For us," he scoffed, "really?" He moved away from her and walked back to the stove. He removed the pan and placed it in the sink. "Well, thank you. I hadn't known the pain of separation before. There's one life lesson checked off the list."
"Stop it," Angela pleaded quietly. "In the moment yes, this situation sucks, but if you look at the long term benefits for my future, our future- it can be huge."
"Do we have to talk about this now? Can't we just eat?"
She wasn't sure how they were supposed to shove down all of the issues that were now out in the open, but she agreed. "Sure. You did make a nice breakfast...at least it looks nice. We'll see if I end up with food poisoning," she joked.
"I cancook now. I can cook a few things anyway. I won't starve."
They ate in silence for several minutes. Every time Angela stole a glance at Shawn his sole focus was on his plate. "Topanga sent me pictures of the baby. I can't get over how cute she is. I wish I could've gotten to New York to see everybody over Christmas, but my dad had some time off and that last assignment was pretty scary. He had a few close calls. So I wanted to see him. I told Topanga my Spring break belongs to her…that is whatever time I have left after being with you."
He nodded. Little Riley wasn't even a month old yet and he already had more pictures of her than he had of anything or anyone else because Cory wouldn't let up and sent them multiple times a day in an attempt to lure him back to New York. Shawn met the baby in the hospital. He was the first person to meet her after she was born. It was Riley- though she was much too young to realize it- that made him leave. She made him realize that he was doing nothing with his life. Everyone was out and doing things: getting jobs, traveling, going to school, having babies. What was he doing? All Shawn was doing was sitting by the phone or computer waiting for Angela to contact him which, to her credit, she did fairly regularly. But it wasn't every day like they had promised each other.
Shawn was sitting in that hospital rocking chair with his best friend's daughter in his arms when he realized what he had to do. Cory and Topanga already had their future. They had their family. They were set. Now it was his turn. He was going to get on a plane and go get his future…his family…and bring her home. It was time for Shawn Hunter to get his happily ever after. He was stupid for having waited this long and letting her get away in the first place.
"Shawn?" Angela reached across the table for his hand, smiling when his eyes met hers'. "Where were you just now? I was having an entire conversation with myself."
"Sorry."
"That's okay. What's going on? And don't even try and tell me nothing because I can obviously see that it's something. Come on, what is it?"
He took a deep breath and tried to summon the courage that he'd lost at several instances last night and a few times already this morning. "Marry me."
Angela's mug fell from her hand and back to the table. She searched his face for any sign that he was kidding. He was completely serious. "What did you say?"
"Let's get married," he repeated, this time trying not to sound quite so scared to death this time.
"You're…you don't mean that." She got up from the table and walked to the living room. "You can't mean that."
"Why not? Let's get married!" Shawn found the more he said it, the more confident he was that it was the right thing to do. "Let's get married right now!"
"Why not," she parroted. "Um, okay, yes, let's list all the reasons why we're not ready to get married. Reason one: I'm still in school and you…the last you told me you were taking a break from school and working a couple part time jobs. What are you doing with your life?"
"That's a question I've been asking myself for a long time."
"You're proposing because you're bored? Shawn, get a hobby. Go back to poetry or photography."
"Do you love me?"
"Of course I do, more than anything. You shouldn't have to ask that."
"Then marry me."
She resumed pacing. "Reason two: We have no money. What would we live on? And please don't say we'd live on love. That's a Cory answer. Love doesn't pay the bills."
He took a seat on her couch. "Do you remember right after Cory and Topanga got married they couldn't handle living in that crappy dorm and wanted to run home crying to Amy and Alan to fix everything for them?"
"Yeah."
"We promised each other that one day we'd be broke and miserable, living in a crappy apartment of our own that we would get to fix up. Then we'd be broke and happy because we got to make our home beautiful together. Don't you still want that?"
"Shawn…"
"Don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then let's have it. What are we waiting for? The future? The future is now."
"Please don't do this."
He reached out, grabbed her hands, and pulled her down beside him. "I know that on paper it may not seem like a good idea right now, but we love each other. We've had our ups and downs and I know sometimes I've been kind of a jerk and not always the best boyfriend, but-"
"Shawn-"
"-let me say this, please. If you let me, I promise I will do my best to love you and make you happy. And you already make me so happy without even trying so you don't have to worry there," he said with a laugh. She was making him very nervous. The longer he kept talking however, Shawn figured she would see things his way.
Angela closed her eyes in a failed effort to keep her tears at bay. They slid down her cheeks anyway. She squeezed his hands tight. "Shawn, baby, I love you, I do, but…"
He put a finger to her lips. "No buts," he whispered, "no buts. I love you, you love me, and at the risk of sounding like that big purple dinosaur and The Beatles, isn't that all that matters? All we need is love. Who cares about the rest of it?"
She kissed his fingertip before removing his hand. "I love you, but I can't marry you…at least not right now. I'm not ready."
"Why not?"
"This past year has taught me so much about myself. When I first left you to be with my dad I was scared. I was leaving a life I loved, people I loved, and a life that was familiar to me."
"And?"
"I didn't know I could enjoy hanging out with my dad so much. He's not always able to call me for security reasons, but he can usually send a quick email or text most days. Sometimes it's just a smiley face or 'I love you' but I know he's thinking about me and that he's okay." Before their year together it wasn't uncommon for Angela to go weeks without hearing from her dad simply because he didn't want to bother her.
"What does that have to do with us?"
"I'm more independent. I've learned that I can count on myself and depend me. I thought that was true before, but now I know it is. I'm living in a foreign country all alone."
"It doesn't have to be that way. You can come home. I'm sure there are a ton of schools in the United States just waiting to have their asses kicked by you."
"Shawn, I like it here. Oxford has challenged me in ways I never thought possible. I love that. I'm meeting people from all over the world and learning all about-"
"Oh, I get it. New people? Is there another guy?"
"What? No! Of course there's no other guy! I love you. I'd never cheat on you. Why would you even think that?"
"I don't know, you say new people and I…"
"You immediately think back to what new people meant to you freshman year when we broke up," she challenged.
"You're really going to throw that back in my face?"
"Fire false accusations of cheating at me and I can say some crazy things." Angela took a deep breath and ran her hands through her hair, gathering it up into a ponytail. "I think we need to take a break and figure out what we're saying because right now we're going in circles."
"I don't need a break. I know what I want. I want to marry you and I don't understand why, if you claim to love me, your answer is anything other than yes."
"I can't explain it any clearer than I'm not ready to get married and I don't think we're ready to marry each other. Before last night it had been more than a year since we were in the same room. Shawn, we're not the same people we were back then. Yes, we've kept in touch through emails and on the phone, but that's not the same as living day in and day out together and I'm not about to use a marriage as a trial run to see if we're still compatible. I love you too much for that." She reached for his hands, but he pulled away. "Just because I don't want to get married now doesn't mean I never want to marry you. We're still so young. We have plenty of time."
"What if we didn't?"
"What?"
"What if we didn't have all the time in the world?"
"What are you saying?" Her stomach fell. "Are you sick or…or are you-"
"No." Shawn pulled her close for a hug. He was mad, but he hadn't meant to worry her like that. "No, I'm not sick. I'm perfectly healthy."
She smacked his arm. "Don't scare me like that! I thought you were going to tell me you were dying."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
"Then what did you mean? Why wouldn't we have all the time in the world?"
"If we don't get married now, what are we even doing, Angela? Are we dating? Engaged? What are we?"
"We are a couple who loves each other very much. Shawn, I mean it, I love you. And if you want to get engaged or do the whole promise ring thing, I'm on board. But I'm not running out and marrying you today."
Shawn stood up and moved over to the window. He winced involuntarily at the cars driving down the opposite sides of the road. "I guess that's it then."
"What's it?"
"I want to get married and you don't. It doesn't get any clearer than that."
"I said I'm not getting married today. Big difference."
"Not to me."
She walked over to him. "What are you saying, either we get married right now or what…we're done?"
"That is what I'm saying, yes." The words sounded so strange. Shawn came here with a proposal and marriage in mind, but it wasn't supposed to go like this. Now he was giving her an ultimatum? In the back of his mind he knew this tactic was going to blow up in his face, yet he couldn't seem to stop himself. "It's now or never, Angela, your choice. Either you love me enough to marry me or you don't." Her reflection was staring back at him from the window.
"Shawn…I…"
"I'm going to get dressed." He made a quick exit so he wouldn't have to see her wounded expression any longer than necessary. When Shawn woke up today he thought this would be the happiest day of his life. How was it turning into one of the worst?
When he came back to the living room several minutes later Angela was on the couch with her head in her hands. "Angela?" Shawn sat on the coffee table directly across from her. Close enough to reach out and touch her, yet he couldn't bring himself to comfort her.
She raised her head and looked at him. "I watched my parents' marriage fall apart because they were two people who shouldn't have gotten married in the first place. But they did. They got married on a whim as my dad was about to be deployed. They thought they were madly in love and figured the whole two months they knew each other prior to that was enough time to know. But it wasn't enough time to know anything. They didn't think about what went into a marriage and even less into raising a kid. My mother found out she was pregnant with me eleven days after dad was deployed."
"You never told me that before."
"Year after year, move after move, deployment after deployment I watched her grow more and more unhappy with her life until even I wasn't enough to make her smile. I used to long for the days daddy was home until him being home meant constant yelling. Then one day the yelling stopped. I came home from school and he came home from his post and she was gone. She left a note saying how she was sorry, but she couldn't do it anymore, that if she would've known back then all that went into marriage and family and…and taking care of a child…she would've known she wasn't ready and her choices would've been different."
"Angela, I…"
"I refuse to be my mother. I'm not going to get married and begin a family on a whim and then in ten years be full of nothing but regret."
"It won't be like that for us." He fell to his knees in front of her and held her face in his hands. "I promise you it wouldn't."
"How?"
"Because we've been through so much already. We come from broken homes. We've seen what creates them. We know what not to do. We're light years ahead of our own parents."
She removed his hands from her face. "And yet you're still trying to talk me into a marriage I've told you I'm not ready for. Why can't we have a long engagement? Why isn't that good enough? Or why don't you move here?"
"To England?"
"Yes, move here and we can get to know each other again. You'd have to if we got married anyway."
"You wouldn't come home with me?"
"Shawn, I go to school here. For the next year or two my life is in Oxford. Maybe longer if I decide to pursue my Masters degree. My professors are really encouraging me to go for it."
"I don't believe this," he muttered, a new wave of anger washing over him. She was making all these plans without consulting him. "When is it my turn, huh? I let you be selfish. You had your chance to be the selfish one when you left with your dad. Now it's my turn!" Shawn knew this was coming out wrong, but he was desperate. He was grasping at any straw he had. "You owe me a selfish decision."
"Is that really how you'd want to start a marriage, by treating it as a selfish decision?"
"I love you and want to be with you. I want us to start our lives together. Right now. I think we've waited long enough, don't you?"
"I love you, too, but…" She let out a shaky breath. "…I'm not going to change my mind. I can't get married right now. I'm not ready. And the fact that you don't seem to get that, it shows how much we've changed and how much you don't get me anymore. The old Shawn wouldn't be trying to pressure me to marry him."
"The old Angela would've had enough faith in us to believe we could make it through anything." She said nothing in response. "You're saying no?" He wanted to give her a chance to realize what she was giving up.
"No, I'm saying not now. You're taking that as a no." Angela watched as he once again went towards her bedroom. "Where are you going?"
"To pack my bag and call a cab."
"You're leaving? Just like that?"
"You've made it perfectly clear where you stand, Angela. I'm here and I'm trying to make our relationship work, but I seem to be all alone in that. "
"Go to hell."
"Too late, I'm already there."
Angela was standing near the door the next time Shawn came out several minutes later. She was wrapped in the gray blanket from the back of the couch, unable to shake the chill that had suddenly come over her. Her cell phone was in hand, as she had just sent a text to her father, asking him to call whenever he had time to talk. Maybe he could help her make sense of this. She didn't understand how it all went so wrong so quickly. Twelve hours ago when she answered the door and saw Shawn standing there she thought it was the beginning of a new phase for both of them and their relationship. She supposed she was right. She just didn't realize that new phase was the end.
"Are you sure," he asked, wanting to give her yet another chance.
"Yes," came her hushed reply.
"Because once I'm gone, that's it. I'm not coming back."
"I know."
Shawn had his hand on the knob before he turned around again. "I just want you to remember something, Angela. You're doing this, not me. I'm trying to make us work here. I'm trying. I have faith. You don't. You're giving up on us." His mind screamed for him to shut up as her tears silently fell, but his mouth and bruised ego had another plan. "Five, ten, twenty years from now when you're all alone and traveling from place to place with your brilliant career- because I know you'll be brilliant at whatever you do- just remember that you had someone. You had someone who loved you and wanted to spend the rest of his life with you, but you pushed him away."
She shoved him away from her door and whipped it open. "Get out," she ordered through what were by now angry tears. "Now!"
He stumbled out into the hallway and knew from her tone that he had gone too far. "Angela, I'm-"
Shawn didn't get another word out before the door was slammed in his face. He stayed there for a few minutes, hoping either he'd get the nerve to knock and apologize or she'd come running out and change her mind. Neither happened. He only left when he couldn't stand to listen to her cry anymore.