Author Note: My first Fan Fiction ever... if anyone has any tips please feel free to share. This is from Ste's POV. M for later chapters

Chapter 1

"The thing is though... you can't hide forever"

I hadn't spoken to Amy in years, and I had spent the better half of my Sunday listening to the voice mail she had left me four hours earlier. She wanted to see me, she was getting married and she wanted me to come. The one thing that played over and over in my head was what she said at the end of the message "you can't hide forever". Was I hiding? People move away, and lose touch with old friends, it happens all the time...yet despite my rationalizations, I knew she was right. Just thinking about going back there, even considering it made me feel nauseous. I couldn't wrap my head around how Amy could stand to be there either.

How could she want to see me? Just hearing her voice sent me into days of chain smoking and nicking too much of my roommates vodka. Amy was always stronger than me, the whole of the time I knew her she carried me through every crisis I ever had. I never understood her then either. I was awful to her when we were kids, but she still kept me close to her, forgave me.

She called three more times, three more calls I ignored. Each message she left sounded more hopeless. I couldn't wrap my head around why my presence at her wedding was so important. She said she "needed me" that things were changing so quickly and she was excited but she needed her best friend. She "needed" me...a pang of guilt sat in my stomach and refused to leave me for days...she needed me...I could still hear so clearly that exact sentiment except more desperate and wrenching... "I need you, Ste...please" I could still see her beautiful pained face, it still haunted me from time to time but lately its been non-stop. I still left her, I ignored her then...I'm ignoring her now, or I guess really I never stopped.

Two weeks later, a gut feeling is what got me to that bus station. The guilt I was feeling had transitioned into something...more. All my usual tactics of escapism were failing me since Amy's calls. It was with some random guy, in some random club in a bathroom stall getting head while trying to snort a bit of coke this guy had provided off the side of a toilet tissue holder that started me realizing how pathetic it all was. I had spent the last couple years imitating fun. I was thrusting my cock hard into this guy face and wanting to cum faster and shove this shit up my nose because the quicker the high sets in coupled with that slightly euphoric feeling after cumming, the quicker I could maybe forget for an hour or two. Sometimes it works but then I always come down, and the wear of how hard I had to work to get rid of the thoughts in my head was starting to take its toll. Holding down working while balancing my "social life" was getting near impossible.

After a few days of partying a bit too hard my roommate Jack presumably tired of my near constant hung over state abruptly shouted at me one day "Deal with your shit, man". Now I know that it wasn't exactly poetry but lying there on the bathroom floor his words started to affect me. What I was doing wasn't working. Amy had lost exactly what I had lost, 3 years ago we stood outside that burnt out old shithole we called home and both of us were hollowed out husks, broken souls wandering around, then one day she started to get better, and I never did. I felt like subject B in some weird experiment. Amy and I both had been ripped to pieces and Subject A stayed in her hometown and knowing Amy was the perfect grieving angel while subject B moved to some seedy town, fucked the ass off every willing man to cross his path while scarfing down any drink or pill offered to him. Subject A is now well adjusted and getting married while Subject B is still scattered in pieces, wandering aimlessly. I didn't know how to begin to "deal with my shit" but the feeling in the pit of my stomach told me it was back where I ran from.

I didn't call Amy to tell her I was coming or that I was coming weeks earlier than she had planned. I would start to then fear would grip me and I'd consider not going through with coming at all. Getting off the bus wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I had pep talked myself into some self healing resolve to get off the bus and I was starting to feel brave. I caught a cab into the center of town and it looked exactly the same. I was struggling to think of any place to visit that had a happy memory attached. I ended up in the park just sat on a bench and thats when I called Amy. To say she was surprised was an understatement. First the shock that I called and then the news that I was in town, she came to meet me immediately. Maybe five minutes after hanging up I hear a timid "Ste?" from behind me. At first I thought she had to have run to get to me that quickly...then I remembered the town is about the size of a postage stamp so it wasn't much of a feat. I stood and turned to face her as tears welled up in her eyes

"Aww, Ames don't cry.." I said as she wrapped her arms around me.

"You'll stay with us!" she exclaimed after she released me.

"Now, who exactly is us?" I asked wearily, Amy never had the best taste in men. I found myself suddenly concerned for her. I hadn't been an active part of her in years but seeing her face had reawakened my best friend feelings of obligation.

"Oh...you remember Lee don't you? He was there for me after..." she trailed off.

That night we all three had dinner at Amy and Lees house. Every topic felt like a minefield. I was going to ask about Lee's job but I had a strong feeling he had left his dream job in New York to come home to see to Amy. The why of it was is what no one wanted to talk about. This huge thing had colored all our lives, really it had affected every facet of our lives and the people we were now, it was impossible to talk about anything without it being in the background. Lee strained to be the jester and we all pretended the situation wasn't awkward.

"Where did you go?" Amy finally asked. Her face was serious, but I avoided the question. There was no good reason not to answer I just didn't want to. I didn't want to talk about what I was doing now. Not that it mattered where I went. I could have went anywhere the location wasn't the point.

"Ste, have you been alright?" The answer was obviously No, but I said yes. What I really wanted to do was crawl inside her mind see if underneath all this happy families business she felt like I felt. I watched her smile sweetly at Lee as he cleared the dinner dishes, and it was such a normal thing. She was just a normal young woman marrying a nice normal young man. I couldn't wrap my head around it. After a few drinks I got this floating feeling, this thought that maybe nothing bad had ever happened. Maybe all that was the nightmare and this is reality. I'm just visiting with my best friend and her soon-to-be husband and everything is and always has been fine.

I was lost in thought as the two of them chattered on about the wedding until something Lee said caught my attention. "when the baby comes..." Suddenly I was snapped back into reality. I looked at Amy and she knew.

"Ste, I was going to tell you."

"Its fine, its a normal thing, its fine..." I tried to reassure her as much as myself. But it didn't feel fine. Amy was going to have a baby...with Lee. Everyone was quiet. The two of them were watching me like I might explode. I wondered how they knew I was unsettled. We hadn't talked in years, how could they possibly know I didn't have my life together...but some how they both knew the truth that I was weak and rubbed raw and that this wasn't fine.

"I...I...don't want you to think this was something I did to replace them Ste...I don't want you to think that...I've been trying to think of a way to honor them...maybe the new baby's middle name could be something that honors them both...I just haven't figured all the details out" Amy spoke slow and cautiously the way she used to when we were kids when I used to fly off the handle too easily.

"Well if its a girl you could name her Leah 2 and if its a boy..."

"Ste, No...you know thats not what I was saying." She was pissed at the assertion but I didn't care.

"No really Ames, I think its great...really great.." I said sarcastically.

"God, you always do this..."

"Do what?"

"This! Everyone has to feel how you're feeling...I won't be unhappy that this baby is coming, I won't feel guilty about that." tears welled up in her eyes but it only made me angrier for some reason. I had to leave the house. I had to get some air. I left her crying with Lee now wrapped around her. I walked out the door without saying a word thinking that was certainly record time, I had been in town only a few hours and had already shit on Amy's reunion expectations.

The anger I had was prickling at every nerve and I felt like if I walked far enough or fast enough I could get it to stop but it doesn't stop. I ended up in front of Chez Chez and it's hopping. I weave through tons of faces, none of them familiar until I spot Cheryl at the bar, I turned my head away so she wouldn't notice me. I scan the room because I need to find him like I needed to find him 3 yrs ago.

Being in town only a few hours had already sent my mind ablaze. This haunting ghost of the past was looming over me, covering every bit of that club in this sickly fog. I was a mad man crashing through that club wanting answers like I did years ago. I just needed him to finally tell me. I felt like maybe I could finally rest if he would just tell me what I needed. Maybe tonight maybe after all this time...finally. I had been looking for blood then, but now I just needed the truth.

Finally, I saw him. I dead stoppped and stared. He was standing there looking exactly the same. The same posh suits, the same ridiculously pointy boots, the 'tache. He was overlooking the bar from the upper deck.

"I didn't have anything to do with it Steven." he had first said to me in a quiet, reverent tone the night it happened, tears unabashedly falling from his eyes. I took them to be tears of guilt then.

"I didn't have anything to do with it Steven!" grew louder months later the night I left, he had roared it at me as I stormed down the stairs out of the club. He was angry and desperate that night, but then so was I.

This night after spying him my anger suddenly turned into something more like nervousness as I stood there watching him. And then he turned his head my way. His stern business stare suddenly shifted and he stood upright with his mouth open, his eyes softening into this wide eyed shocked look that struck me as almost vulnerable. He had spotted me. All my resolve had left me. I didn't want answers anymore, I didn't want to "heal" all I wanted was to forget again. I turned to leave, I quickly maneuvered my way out of the club and I took a deep breath of cold air and darted down an alley away from the club hoping he'd think he was mistaken. Maybe he didn't really see me. Then I heard those footsteps behind me, I quickened my pace but then so did he...

"Steven..."