Mac looked at Martin and saw that Martin was being serious. He was also skinnier and paler than he used to be.

"Martin, I agreed to do this for you, now I demand that you answer a couple questions for me."

"What?"

"How has losing Ruthie really affected you?"

"Mac, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I barely even go outside any more. I haven't played baseball in over three months." Mac looked at his friend.

"I'll see what I can do about Ruthie, okay? I'll talk to you tomorrow." Martin nodded and walked away and that left Mac by himself.

"Why?" He asked to himself. It wasn't just Martin that had a hopeless crush on Ruthie, it was Mac as well. Well, Martin does deserve her more, he's liked her for far longer than I have and he was the one who acted on it first. He turned around walked into Camden's House.

"Hey all!" He said to declare his presence.

"Who is this?" A voice came and he looked over and saw Mrs. Camden.

"Hi, Mrs. Camden." He said politely, hoping no actually praying that he wasn't giving too much away.

"Hi Mac, we haven't seen you in a while." Mac nodded.

:"I'm sorry, I've been busy with college and stuff. Hey, is Ruthie here? I kind of wanted to talk to her." Mrs. Camden nodded, nothing in her eyes betraying she knew what was going on. The only thing in them was genuine puzzlement.

"Yeah, she's upstairs in her room." Mac nodded and went upstairs.

"-And he comes up to me and he's all like 'Ruthie, I love you, don't you see now we can be together' and I'm just like 'Martin, I'm over you'. No, I'm not but I can't trust him, he's probably going to find out that he got another girl pregnant. I don't care that Aaron wasn't his and that he was Simon's. He knew I liked him and he went off and slept with Sandy."

"I hope I'm not barging in on anything but can I talk to you for a couple minutes?" Mac said while he came inside her room. Ruthie nodded and talked into the phone again.

"Lucy, I need to go, someone's here. Yeah I'll talk to you tomorrow and maybe me, you and Savannah can go out to lunch. Bye." Ruthie slowly hung up the phone and looked up at Mac.

"What?" She said, rolling her eyes. She knew what Mac was here for.

"Ruthie, why won't you take back Martin?" He asked her. Her face turned to surprise when he finished.

"Mac, he pretty much betrayed my trust when he slept with Sandy, okay? Who says that he won't do it again?"

"Ruthie, he had no idea that you liked him."
"Seriously? He was lying. I made it pretty obvious okay?"

"But you still love him!" Mac said, a hint of a smile in his eyes.

"So? You can love someone and not do anything about it, that's what I'm doing."

"That can't be the full reason why you won't take him back." Mac said.

"Do you want to know the full reason?" Ruthie said, anger and something else in every single syllable.

"Yeah. That's why I came."

"Because I like you!" She said loudly.