A/N: I've been trying to work on this for the past month to get this you guys sooner, but I literally just finished this morning. Please excuse any grammar mistakes, it was hastily edited.
This one is definitely for you guys. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I wished for rights for Christmas, didn't get it.
They always assumed that she would be going to university in California, so it was a complete shock when Katie ended up picking a school in Maine ("Across the country - literally!" Her brother's words). She jokes that she was tired of the Pacific Ocean so the Atlantic seemed the next best choice. Her family was saddened, obviously. Carlos was confused ("Since when were you old enough to go to college?") and Logan was jealous. ("Do you know how much history is in Maine?"). But He knew the truth. He's always known the truth, so he says nothing.
He didn't even bother to show up the day she leaves. She says her good-byes and I'll-miss-yous to the rest of her family at the airport. And remembers to leave her mom a turn-by-turn map to her dorm room if she ever needed to see her (she makes Kendall promise to dissuade their mother if ever this happens). Carlos weeps loudly into Logan's shoulder much to his chagrin. She promises her pseudo-brothers that she'd be back to visit whenever she could.
It didn't turn out to be much. No one told her that university was so time-consuming. She spent Thanksgiving locked up and studying for finals while her roommate made out with her current flavour-of-the-week on the bed next to her desk. She doesn't think she'll ever be able to erase the sight from her brain.
Her one friend invites her to come back with her over winter break to Alaska. Katie misses her family, but when was she ever going to have a real reason to go to Alaska? So she doesn't get to go home then. It was for the best. She heard that He was dating someone new.
Spring break. Enough said.
Katie has to spend a couple of weeks after term (and first-year) ended to look for a place to stay for Sophomore year.
"The good places are gone in seconds," her roommate warns.
Katie doesn't want to spend another year listening to the slobbering of lips or coming home to a tie on the doorknob and resulting in sleeping on the common room couch. So she takes the time to look for a decent single room apartment she can call her own. She swindles her brother for some extra cash so that she doesn't have to walk a hundred miles to and from campus ("What if I get kidnapped?"). And so she found a place exactly what she wanted.
Katie gets home just after the boys start their summer tour. She spends a few weeks being smothered by her mother. She celebrates her birthday with her mom and Buddha Bob just like she always has. This wasn't the first time her brothers have missed her birthday. They call and video-chat. Logan is the one who breaks down this time ("I haven't had an intelligent conversation for a year!"). But He's missing.
"Taking a nap," Kendall explains.
She's fine. She really is. And when she receives a birthday card (completely free of personalization) in the mail a few days later with no return address, she's still fine. She really is.
She meets a boy when she returns to school. He doesn't last long. Not long enough to invite him over to Thanksgiving dinner when her mother and brother come visit. The others went to visit their own families. Their blood families.
Her professor wants her to stick around for the holidays. She needs a volunteer for some paperwork. There might be an internship involved if all goes well. She misses another Christmas with her family.
Carlos surprises her during Spring Break. Logan's told him about the lobster over here and how it tastes different from California. ("This stuff is amazing!"). She knows. Her pants can attest to that.
She gets the internship. All summer. ("You're heading in the right direction, Ms. Knight.") Her mom doesn't handle it too well. She spends her birthday looking over legal manuscripts of documents that smell like they're at least a hundred years old.
She gets another birthday card. She adds it to the other one (and all the other holiday cards). She stares at the little pile. She's separated the cards from the envelopes. She reaches for the envelopes and runs her fingers over the familiar handwriting. The only clue that these cards were sent from a person. The person.
Third year starts as a whirlwind and Thanksgiving passes without her knowing. Her apologies to her mom doesn't abate her until she promises that she'll be home for Christmas.
Logan is the one to race to her when she lands. He starts muttering all these seemingly nonsensical but sensical things (because it's Logan) and she tries her best to keep up with him. He's satisfied.
He's not there when they get home. At the studio recording and then headed straight to Minnesota for a couple of weeks. He went back for his mom's wedding to some cosmetic-related big-wig. Katie has to leave a few days earlier than expected. Her landlord called and said there's been a flood.
She starts seeing someone again. She spilt coffee on him. She's not usually clumsy, but it's slippery in Maine. It lasts a bit longer this time, and it's serious enough that she goes with him to visit his parents over Spring Break. It's not so serious that she overlooks the girl she found in his bed right before end of semester.
The summer before her last year of undergrad finds her spending it in Italy. She's decided to take a study-a-broad program. She's seen England, sure, but she never made it to Italy and she's always loved the idea of Italy. Katie spends the summer soaking up the sun, learning the romantic rolls and dips of the language, and revelling in the art, culture and people.
Her brothers join her for twenty-first birthday when they schedule a show in Italy. It's a milestone and she's more than happy to become an adult with the people she loves.
She refuses to acknowledge that she cares that He didn't show up. She doesn't care that he's too busy on a date to celebrate with her. She also throws away the card this year (she'll also refuse to say that she picked it out of the trash later).
She goes back to Maine more confident than ever. She's an adult now and she's almost done her undergrad. There's no slacking off this year. That just means no boys or booze. She can handle that.
She misses home and she can't wait to go back to her family, so she doesn't throw a fit when her professor requests for her to stay over Thanksgiving to do paperwork again (she nearly does but buys a new pair of shoes to make her feel better).
Katie's books a ticket to go back for Christmas. But Christmas is cancelled this year. Her nana's dying. The Knights fly back to Minnesota to not celebrate.
She goes back to Maine for her last term. Everything is a little bit different. She runs her hand across the brick walls and sniffs the air when she passes the mess hall. She decides that she will miss this.
She's finished school. She goes out to celebrate with her classmates and for the first time in her life (she's not counting her first Spring Break because she'd rather pretend that week didn't happen), gets absurdly drunk. She doesn't remember that night very well and she regrets remembering the morning after. She ignores her brothers' laughter when she tells them all about it over a video-call.
It's a few weeks before graduation. She chooses to stay in Maine and pack up all her belongings in cardboard boxes as she waits for her family to fly out. She can't believe it's finally over. She knows she's not normally the sentimental type, but she's been housed in this apartment for a good three years, it's hard to let go.
She waits to pack up all her personal items (all the cards and envelopes). She promises herself that she's only holding onto them because it'd be a waste to get rid of perfectly reusable cards (they're all blank except for the greeting card message). She thinks about burning them, but then she realizes that she A) doesn't have a fireplace and B) she doesn't want to accidentally cause a fire hazard (the one she started when she first moved in was embarrassing enough). After staring at the cards splayed across her kitchen bar for at least a good hour, she decides that she's angry and not sad at all. What gives Him the right to decide that blank cards were a good idea? They were stupid. He was stupid. She promises herself that she's going to donate the cards the next day. She puts them neatly into a shoe box and leaves it on the counter so she won't forget.
Katie knows her family well. So when her doorbell rings, she smiles because she knows that it's her mom and brothers on the other side, trying to her surprise her. She swings the door open to find that she's wrong. She's really really wrong. She does the only thing that makes sense. She slams the door shut. She thinks that maybe if she waits it out, they'll think that she's not home (she's in shock and maybe not in her best state of mind to think of the illogicality of that).
"Katie, I know you're in there." A pause. "You already opened the door."
She groans. Then runs her hands down her hair. Just because she was angry, doesn't mean that she can't look awesome. She opens the door again, leaving it open as she walks back into her apartment.
She manoeuvres around her boxes and sits down on the couch (what if he tries to sit beside her?). She immediately gets up and rushes to the armchair. Distance is safety. She listens as the door closes and the footsteps approach her. (Was that water stain on the wall always there?) She can feel eyes staring at her from across the tiny room.
She clears her throat and says something stupid about it being a really long time. She knows she's talking to the wall, but it's better this way (She ignores the way the eyes are making tingles run up and down her body).
Katie gets up and goes to the kitchen ("Where are you going?"). It's not polite of her to be a bad hostess. She needs to get something for them to drink. She stares at her coffee machine (she hasn't boxed that up yet because she's grown addicted to caffeine over the years and she needs her morning coffee). She puts on a pot and watches as the dark liquid drips into it. She watches until the last of it drops and turns the machine off slowly. She pours two cups and turns around to her kitchen bar where she keeps her sugar. She didn't even realize that her guest had followed her and was now sitting down across from her. She mutters something about milk and goes to grab it from the fridge.
She takes the two steps that returns her to her original position and she almost drops the carton of milk in the process. The shoebox. She left the shoebox right on the bar counter and it was just sitting there less than two feet away from them. She breathes in and sets the carton on the counter. She takes the sugar and pours it into her cup. Finally, having nowhere to go, she looks at Him.
She regrets it immediately. He's still as gorgeous as she remembers with his big hazel eyes and straight, straight nose. It's difficult to pull away from his stare. She lifts the mug so that she doesn't have to speak first. She does so anyway. She asks him what he's doing here.
He tells her a story about a phone call he got the other night. A girl he knew very well, was clearly inebriated. She called to tell him that she hated him. Hated him. She hated him for missing birthdays and Christmases and Thanksgivings. She hated him for ignoring her existence for four years.
At this point, Katie is breathing harshly. She didn't bother checking her call history on her cell phone the morning after her end-of-term celebrations. She didn't think that she was the type of person to drunk-dial someone (Wasn't anyone watching her back?). She' s about to give a really awesome excuse about her roommate (or ex-roommate because she clearly has none) daring her to do something stupid. When he leans in.
He's still telling the story. She can't believe it hasn't ended yet. He says that the girl went on to say that she hated him because she couldn't hate him.
She has to admit, even when intoxicated, she's rather profound.
He gets up and moves around the counter so that he's right in front of her. She steps back and runs into the sink behind her. She's trapped.
She narrows her eyes when he starts chuckling and demands to know what he finds so funny.
He pierces her again with those eyes. He tells her how he already knew that last bit of the girl's reasons for hating him. It was the reason she left in the first place.
She vaguely remembers that conversation (she remembers every single word that passed between them and maybe runs them through her head whenever she has a free moment). She tries not to cringe at her past. Tries not to desire curling into a ball when she thinks back at how she vain she was to think that she could easily express her emotions and not feel like she would suffer from its consequences, that she would regret ruining something so vital to her being. She doesn't want to acknowledge that the lack of his presence has affected who she's become.
She also doesn't want to admit that his non-response that day hurt her more than anything she had ever experienced (she was too young to remember her dad passing). She's better than those girls whose lives revolve around love and boys. She's independent, intelligent and inferior, oh wait, superior. She shouldn't have to wait around for anyone. She refuses to.
He's talking again. There's a slight buzzing in her ears that's drowning out his words. She needs to focus. Something about not saying anything because he was surprised, something about him not thinking he felt the same way at the time, something about him wanting her to live her life before settling down.
She narrows her eyes and tells him to shut up. It feels nice, she hasn't done that in a while. Katie pushes him away and tells him that those were terrible excuses and they didn't even line up. She can feel herself shaking. And all those words she's been building up for years comes pouring out. He could have told her that he didn't like her and gotten it over with. She would have been able to move on. She wouldn't have had to leave her family and live across the country because she couldn't live with his pitying looks. She would have been happy if he just told her the truth.
She marches over to the accusing shoebox filled with cards and throws it at his head which bounces off him with a resounding thud.
He reaches for the contents of the opened box after grabbing at the injured spot. He sees the all the greeting cards and for a second she wonders if he recognizes them. She cynically thinks that he didn't even bother reading the message, just selecting them at random. He slowly starts sorting through them and then she freaks out internally. He's going to think she's kept them on purpose and probably goes through them every night before bed (she's done it once or twice. Ten times, max).
A growl emits from within her causing him to look up. She calls him an idiot for sending her blank cards and that he can take them back. She doesn't need them. She's never needed them.
He looks sadly at her and rummages through the box again. He finds the one he's looking for. She recognizes that it's the first card he ever sent her. That's when it hits her, he does look at the cards, he had specifically picked one for her at every occasion. For a moment she wants to forgive him for every seemingly terrible thing that she feels he's responsible for.
He sighs and says that she's right. That day that she told him, he wasn't thinking any of those things, he wasn't thinking at all. He just remembers feeling scared. That fear made him mute. Mute for four years. He raises the card and tells her that this one told her he missed her. He puts it down on the counter and searches for another, the second. This one said that he wished she was home for the holidays because he still misses her. The third one is from her second birthday that he's missed. This one was that tells her that he wishes that he had the nerve to come visit her, but he's still scared. He scrambles around and finds the card for the birthday after. She remembers that one, the one in Italy. He hesitates and tells her this one was angry. Why hadn't she called him. Why hasn't she tried to contact him?
She starts yelling at him again. Telling him it was his fault that he missed her that year. She was in Italy and he was on a date! It was her birthday. She wanted to see him. She breathes heavily and realizes that he's right. She didn't even try to talk to him during the past four years. He, at least, sent cards. She left nothing. She gave him nothing. She caused as much pain to herself as he did.
She sighs again and instinctively takes the box from him. She looks down at the cards. And it's clear now. Each card says something. Each card was his way of reaching her.
What was he scared of?
He gives her a small smile and tells her that she knows.
She does.
He was afraid of falling in love with her (she wants to hear the words).
And? She looks at him. And wonders what he's going to do now. He chuckles slightly and says that it's kind of perfect that she threw that at him. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls a crumpled blue envelope (he's clearly sat on it). It's for graduation, he tells her.
She shakily takes it from him. She stares at it, but puts it down.
He stares at her incredulously (Isn't she going to open it?).
No. Not this time. She wants to hear him. She needs to hear him.
His mouth opens slightly and gasps for air for a minute. It's easy for him to write down (or not, in his case) the words, but it needs to be easily said. They need to be able to speak to each other. He looks around, anywhere but her (reverse deja vu). He looks down at his hands. Breathes (she swears it's at pace with hers). He finally looks at her and opens his mouth again.
Something hits her. Hits her hard. It causes her to take the three steps in front of her to physically reach him. She's surprised him, she can tell by the enlargement of his eyes. She doesn't care. She doesn't need to hear the words. She knows. She knows. Her arms pull his head down to hers and she kisses him. It's desperate. It's hard. It's nothing like a first kiss should be, and it's perfect.
They pull away after a millennium. She blinks at him and asks if he's ready now.
He smiles and pulls her closer to him (she's never to going to leave him, not if he can help it). He's ready, but so is she. He reaches around her and pulls the card out of the envelope. She takes it from him. She smiles as she reads the card. She looks up at him and grins.
The blank card reads, "I love you. -James".
A/N: This was supposed to feel more organic in the sense that there's supposed be some intentional bad grammar, exaggeration, angst, lovey-dovey moments and Jatie. Of course, Jatie.
Well, this is my end-of-the-year one-shot gift for you guys. I hope it was worth your read. :)
Happy Holidays, readers. Thanks for sticking with me for another year!
Dawnindanite