She'll be fine..
Shawn was sure she would be as he watched Juliet walk outside the drive-in doors. He wasn't worried about her feeling hurt or sad or any of those things. Not over him anyway.
It was the adrenalin of it all. That's why she had taken a chance and asked him out tonight.
Hey life is short and we could all be screwed over by a serial killer anytime. Let me take up scuba diving and ask Shawn out.
Come tomorrow and they would go back to their convenient and frustrating as hell game of denial. He had no doubts about it. It wasn't like he doubted the genuineness of Juliet asking him out. But he knew her well enough to know, that she never dwelled too long on things like that. At least not on the outside. She wasn't the kind of woman who made men the focus of her life.
So she asked him out… It was a big deal considering he'd tried the better part of three years to get her to see him that way. At that moment he'd wanted to say yes so badly. But there was Abigail.
Abigail, who was waiting back there, wondering why he was taking so long with the pop corn. The one, who gave him a chance, despite the fact that he had stood her up once already. How could he possibly ditch her and go with Juliet? It wasn't fair to either of them and no matter how hard it was to turn her down, he was glad he had done so.
But then she had to go and kiss him. Juliet with the blue eyes and the blond hair and the really really sucky timing just had to lean forward and kiss him on the cheek in a way that made being the good guy an extremely difficult decision to stick with. The jolt of electricity that ran up his spine was enough to fry his brains out. Quite frankly, even his 27 seconds lip action with Abigail at the reunion had nothing on that chaste little peck on his cheek.
It was wrong that she should affect him like that. Like he'd been punched in the stomach and stopped breathing for a few seconds as Abigail so eloquently pointed out. Juliet simply had no right, doing that to him. He'd been fine, happy to be with Abigail and she'd just messed it all up with her big moments speech and dangling her pretty little carrot stick in front of him. Where were all the excuses of working together and mistakes now? She could change her mind so suddenly and he had to fall in line just like that huh?
Determined to enjoy his date out of sheer vengeance, Shawn pushed Juliet and anything to do with her firmly out of his mind and concentrated instead on Abigail. Gus being there helped more than he cared to admit. This way, it managed to be casual and rather unromantic but fun nonetheless. Something that he needed right now, given the day he'd been through.
But he should have known that it was easier said than done. There was a reason why he was hung up over Juliet since ever. She was different and special and more important to him than anyone else and she had a way of clouding his thoughts that made it very difficult not to think about her. Difficult to be angry at her and her sucky timing. After all, she'd been the one to lay her heart on the line. Honest and sincere, so unlike his hinting and flirting and trickery. He was the coward for never asking her out properly, for not showing her he was more serious about her than any middle aged SWAT commander could ever be. If he'd only had the courage and told her that, they would have been picking out china patterns by now.
Instead here he was, turning down the girl of his dreams and settling for lukewarm companionship with another girl who never really made him feel the way Juliet could. Even back in high school, when he was crazy about her, she didn't make his insides melt into mush with just a look. She didn't make him have nightmares about her being in danger. She didn't make him feel seething jealousy over older men.
He glanced towards the passenger seat at Abigail, absorbed in the movie. She offered him a smile and he smiled back. Even though, he was going through hell, Shawn knew under normal circumstances, he would have enjoyed this date very much. It was easy being with her. Simple and uncomplicated. He would have almost definitely asked her out a second time. Shawn knew him and Abigail would be good together. But he didn't want good, he wanted great. He wanted the kind of love that people in movies had, the kind of love that he knew he could have.
Shawn didn't want good or easy. He wanted Juliet.
