Never

Disclaimer- Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys are not mine, and no one else in this story is mine, either. Enjoy, and I apologize if it is OOC!

I stared blankly out one of my windows in my large, sweetly furnished room. There were clouds moving in from the left of my view, and clouds slowly drifting past my right. Thick, tall, black-gray clouds.

Rain clouds.

Seeing rain clouds didn't bother me so much as it might seem. I'd learned to love the rain recently. It was a nice change, and change was what everyone needs from time to time.

I'd had a change. A change with people. A change with Ned.

He'd gone off away, traveling for college, looking or some suitable job, playing football more. We were still somewhat close, close friends, really.

We called every few days to just update each other on our lives. To talk things over. To have a friend, kind of, along with our other friends, of course.

It was fine with me. We didn't really break up, just drifted into a new realm, where we were friends. I seemed to know him better now.

I sat at my tidy desk and examined some things on it. There was my case journal, so recently used in finding the culprit of a robbery, with its neat Number Two pencil laying next to it.
There was a little lamp to write or read with. A romance novel I'd started reading that Bess suggested. Some desk tools. And pictures.

There were some pictures of case resolutions, like me with the mayor or the police chief. There was some framed newspaper clippings of headlines of things I'd done. There was some pictures of when I was little, me with me late mother, or me with my father. There was a photo of Ned, and one of me with my two closest friends, cousins Bess and George. And there was a picture of some other close friends, Frank and Joe Hardy with me.

Pictures from when I was small or when I was ten or eleven, some pictures of my mom when she was alive, some of me now. So many things I'd want to never change.

I looked back at the window from staring at pictures on my desk, and some that were around my room. The clouds had turned a violent shade of black, a strange contrast from my light blue walls and white finished room. Rain was slowly beginning to drip fom some clouds high above my second story space of my family's house.

I walked over to my larger window and sat in a small corner chair with a blanket. The day was startlingly cold for May, much below the normal or seventy or eighty, going into the sixties and dropping to the fifties.

Rain started to drop faster, sheets coming down and soaking the windows and bricks of my house. I just sat there watching it for a while, thinking over some recent events in my novel until the phone interrupted my thoughts.

My small, corded wall phone hung next to my bed. I reluctantly stopped thinking about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy and walked over towards the loud machine.

I slowly picked up the phone, because if you were me, you could never be sure who was going to answer when you said hello. It could've been Bess or Ned, or it could be some criminal with a deep vengeance for me.

"Nancy? Are you there?" the voice of George Fayne asked me.

"Hi, George," I said. "Sorry, I spent forever getting to the phone."

"What took so long?" George asked unconcernedly.

"Oh, I was just thinking about that novel Bess lent to me. It's so good."

"Bess has been bugging me to read that book for ages. Anyway, I called to ask whether the power was out at your house. The power is really just off and on here," George explained.

"No, I'm using the phone from my room, so the power can't be out. But it is raining really hard over here, pouring, really," I answered.

"Oh. Well, I should probably get going now. Bess was coming over to my house for a while with her parents stayed with my parents and hers talked. But they were supposed to be here ten minutes ago. So, bye Nancy!"

"Bye," I laughed.

I set down my phone, smiling. I considered going back to my chair, then thought back to my dad and Hannah and went downstairs to check up on them.

"Hannah? Are you here?" I asked.

"Oh, hi Nancy. I'm just in here making cookies," my nice housekeeper told me. I had thought of her as a second mother since my own mother died when I was three.

"Where's dad?" I inquired to Hannah.

"Oh, just in his study reading."

"Okay. Thanks Hannah!" I said happily.

I walked back upstairs to my bedroom again, thinking about my book.

I continued thoughts like that until the doorbell rang. Who could possibly be out in this rain, and why come to my house? Was my father expecting someone?

I was getting up and opening my white door when I heard Hannah greet someone downstairs. I quietly went back into my room, because it was probably just someone to see my father. But he hadn't even left his study, as his voice wasn't to be heard.

My curiosity was uncontrollable. Did that mean somebody had come for me? And if so, who was it? Bess and George were busy, and it would have been a bad idea to drive across town in this rain anyway. Ned was somewhere far from River Heights, and none of my other friends from town should have been driving all this way anyway.

But I just waited in my chair, going and taking the book from my desk to read it.

I had just gotten a few pages in when I heard my door open. I turned around instinctively.

I saw a familiar face. A face I knew so well. A face I could never be sad to see, or get tired of seeing. The face of Frank Hardy.

"Frank!" I cried jumping out of my chair and throwing my arms around him.

"Nancy! It's so good to see you again," Frank said, a smile wide ok his face and happiness evident on his features.

"Where's Joe?" I asked, removing myself my around him.

"He's driving around your town looking for some place to eat."

"In this weather?"

"He's my brother and I still don't understand him sometimes." Frank smiled at me, watching me laugh.

"Why're you guys in town?" I asked, although it didn't really matter, they were there and that was what was important.

"We're just stopping by to visit you. We don't really have a place to stay yet, but we came to see you. It'd had been too long for the both of us," Frank told me. Frank and Joe were like brothers to me, close friends that I wanted to keep around forever.

"Well, if Joe's hungry, I'm guessing you are too," I said, knowingly. "Hannah's made cookies and we could make some sandwiches or something."

"That'd be great." Frank sighed. "You know us all too well, Nance."

I laughed joyfully. It had been too long since I'd seen them, too.

As we walked downstairs a thousand opportunities seemed to pop up in my head involving me and Frank. We were so close, they seemed almost natural.

Once we had gotten out food from Hannah, we realized that the work-cluttered dining table would do no good to eat at.

"We could…" I tried to think of ways to solve our problem.

"We could have a picnic," Frank suggested.

I looked incredulously at him. "In this rain? We'd get soaked!"

"Who cares?" he said, and burst out of the front doors. I followed, giggling and grinning like I had months ago when I saw them last.

I noticed Frank sitting down on the wet grass with his food and motioning me to join him. I just laughed. He was already covered in water, from his shirt to his jeans and tennis shoes.

I sat down beside him, looking down at my soaked dress and flats.

"I told you so," I said playfully.

"It's just a little water, Nance."

We sat there, eating and talking, catching up on each others' lives.

When we had finished, we just sat there in a comfortable silence until music starting playing loudly from a neighbor's window. It was one of those ballads that was on the radio a lot. The slow music was soft and sweet, the words filled with romance.

Frank stood up and offered me his hand.

I smiled, and stood up to take it. We walked over to my driveway and started dancing a slow and clumsy waltz, me slipping on puddles every other turn. The music turned into an instrumental part and we just swayed back and forth.

I rested my head on Frank's shoulder and whispered into his ear. "I missed you. I missed solving cases and just talking to you."

"Me too," he said quietly. "I never want to be away from you this long again."

We stood still for a long moment, our faces blank, but our eyes full of joy. When the last words were spoken by the singer, Frank leaned his head in slowly to mine and kissed my lips so tenderly and sweetly. We stayed like that for a minute or two, then broke apart.

I sat back down on the grass quickly, seeing a car come down the street.

The blue rental pulled up in front of my house. Frank was still standing, but now over the picnic mess.

"So," Joe Hardy said as the window went down. "What's new?"

I smiled and started laughing, watching Frank's cheeks grow red.

"Not much. Just a happy reunion that's still going on," I said, running up to the car, my strawberry-blonde hair flowing behind me.