A/N: Wow, guys, thanks for the amazing feedback on the first chapter. The reviews were absolutely awesome, and I had quite a few hits to my profile, so I'm hoping some other people read and enjoyed it too. Here's the second chapter. I hope you enjoy.
"Lucas?" Haley questioned, rolling over in her bed. Before she could stop herself, she had rolled right off. She hit the ground hard and opened her eyes. She looked around, thoroughly confused.
"Hales? Did you just fall out of bed?" Lucas asked, laughing lightly in her ear.
Haley didn't respond because she her mind was too busy taking in the sight of the room she was in. The walls were plain white but adorned with pictures of her and Lucas, various family members, and a few people she did not recognize at all. There was a large bookcase pulled up against the wall adjacent to her and over it, hung a banner proudly spelling out 'Duke University.' She looked back at her bed and immediately knew why she had fallen off; it was a single bed and hers at home was a queen size. The bed had royal blue sheets that coincided with her Duke banner. She rubbed her eyes out and tuned back into Lucas on the phone.
"Are you there?" he asked again.
"Oh-yeah, I'm here. Luke, what's going on?" she said, looking back for a moment at the phone in her hand. The phone in her and Nathan's room was black and this one was white.
"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you up, Sleeping Beauty," he went on, still finding something about this situation humorous.
"Did you have something to do with this?" she accused.
"Do with what?" he asked, innocently. "Listen, Haley, sorry but I don't have time to talk. Just, can you go in the kitchen and see if my i.d. is on the counter? I think I left it there and I'm going to be completely screwed if I can't find it."
Deciding not to argue, she got up and went to the door on her left. Opening it, she saw a bathroom with walls the same colors as the one in the bedroom. Shaking her head, she ventured to the second door in the room and saw it led out into a hallway. She followed the hallway down the direction that didn't lead to a dead end and found herself in a spacious common room that was split by a counter into a den and a kitchen. She walked up to the counter and saw a breakfast laid out with a cute little note written in Lucas' scrawl reading, 'Love ya, bff.' Smiling into the phone, she asked, "Luke, did you make me breakfast?" As confused as ever, she still felt a rush of affection for her best friend.
"Yeah, thank me later. Is my i.d. next to that note I wrote?"
"Oh, sorry. No, it's not here."
"Well, can you check next to the stove?"
Haley twirled around and walked over to the countertop stove. Next to it laid a University of North Carolina i.d. with a picture of Lucas and the name Lucas Scott written across the top. "Yeah, it's here."
"Thanks, buddy," he replied, sounding relieved. "Well, I'll be home in a couple of hours. Enjoy your breakfast."
"Lucas, wait!" she shouted, but he had already hung up the phone.
She pushed the end button on her phone and nearly threw it onto the ground. She knew none of this made any sense, but she just couldn't shake the feeling that it was all real. And that was what made the least sense of all.
Walking back through the apartment, she could see touches of her in all of the decorations. There was no shortage of pictures of her and Lucas around, either. Everything was so surreal. She knew that this had to be where the two of them lived together. There was no other explanation. Everything was laid out exactly the way she would have laid it out. She tiptoed back into the room that she had woken up in and continued to look through it. What she couldn't wrap her head around was why there were no pictures of anyone she knew besides Lucas. Despite spending most of her childhood with just her best friend, she had made other friends. And then there was Nathan…
Shaking her head, she thought back to her last encounter with Nathan. She remembered how she had felt the night before; how she had told him that she would be leaving him this very morning.
Only it wasn'tthis morning. And she wasn't in her house. And Nathan wasn't here, nor was her son.
She felt a slight surge of panic go through her as she remembered Jamie. She ran back into the kitchen and dialed Nathan's cell number into the wireless phone as quickly as possible.
It rang only once and went straight to a woman's cool voice: 'We're sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and-'
After Haley hung up, her eyes scanned the common room again. She spotted a picture next to the loveseat that was the focal point of the room. She ran over to it and picked it up in her hands. The picture was of Lucas and her at their graduation from Tree Hill High. It had clearly been taken after graduation, as they both had diplomas in hand and had unzipped the front of their blue graduation robes. She swallowed deeply as she realized that in the picture, she was clearly not pregnant.
She replaced the picture on the side table and fell back onto the couch. She distractedly ran her left hand through her hair before being struck with a thought. She held her hand out in front of her. There on her fourth finger sat her beautiful rings. She sighed in relief at finally seeing something that made sense. In fact, everything she was wearing from the night before seemed to be exactly as she left it.
After her moment of joy, she let fear overtake her again. There was only one thing left for it: she must have finally completely lost it. The stress over fighting with Nathan had made her go crazy. Now, she was seeing apartment buildings, hearing Lucas, and imagining new identities. She lied down and closed her eyes, hoping when she opened them, she'd be back in her room.
Much later, she heard a door squeak open and immediately, she leapt up from the couch. When she saw her best friend entering the room, she ran into his arms, already feeling tears washing down her cheeks.
"Lucas, I don't know what's going on," she whispered, as he dropped everything to wrap his arms around her.
"Hales, are you ok?" he replied, brushing a piece of hair from her face, looking back at her.
"I don't belong here. I'm not supposed to be here and I just want to go home!"
He walked her over to the bar stools in front of the counter and made her sit down. He went about, fixing her a glass of chocolate milk and speaking at the same time. "Is this about last night?"
"I don't know," she replied meekly, reaching out for the glass he had placed in front of her. "Maybe."
"I can't believe you didn't even eat you breakfast," he teased, sitting on the stool next to her and swiping a piece of egg. "I told you, Hales. There's somebody out there for you. You just need to stop worrying so damn much."
"What?"
"You know, after what you said last night, I got to thinking. I know a couple of guys at UNC I could probably set you up with.
"What?" she repeated, turning to face him.
"You were saying last night how you were never going to find a guy and you should have just stayed in Tree Hill because it makes no difference where you are. I mean, I knew you were upset, but I didn't think you'd still be moping this morning."
She gave him a look and he smiled.
"I'm just kidding. But really, it's not like you to miss class."
She set her glass down firmly on the counter. "So, let me get this straight. I was here…last night?"
"Of course you were," he replied, looking confused. "Normally, I'd ask if you were drunk but I was with you all night."
"So, I live here?"
"Hales?" He put a hand up to her forehead, looking concerned.
"I'm fine," she replied, swatting it away. "We go to UNC?"
"No, I go to UNC. You go to Duke. Haley, you need to tell me what's going on."
He had that dead serious look on his face that Haley remembered he had worn so often before she had been with Nathan. She figured he had felt he didn't have to be quite as protective once she had Nathan the guard dog around twenty-four seven.
"I just don't feel good," she answered, shaking her head, hoping to clear out the cobwebs and remember something of what Lucas was saying. "Do you know how many classes I missed?"
He still looked very concerned as he stood up from his chair. "You keep that schedule in your room." He walked back down the hallway towards the door she knew led to her bedroom and she slowly followed him. She had completely ruled out that this was all some elaborate trick because this was way too elaborate.
When they entered her room, Lucas pointed at a day planner sitting on a desk to the left of her bed. She jumped in front of Lucas and flipped it open. Immediately, she regretted the move; she had no idea what day it was.
"December eighth," he threw helpfully over her shoulder.
"I knew that," she answered back, grinning in his direction and hoping he bought it.
He did. She flipped to the date and saw she had three classes she had already missed. The only other thing written on the schedule was 'Tutoring with Lamont.' She wanted to ask Lucas what that meant, but she knew she was going to have to be more backhanded in the questions she asked him starting now. He seemed to be quite prepared to ship her to the loony bin already.
"Ok, well, I have to be at school in an hour to tutor Lamont," she told him, wishing she had any clue what that meant. "So, shoo. I have to get dressed." She waved her arms, signaling for him to get out and slammed the door in his face. With that, she sat back down and started going through her planner.
She soon found she wrote nothing useful in her planner; only the dates and times of her classes and tests. It looked like she tutored Lamont three times a week and another boy named Marcus once every two weeks. The best clue her planner gave her was that Lucas' twenty-second birthday was coming up in a week, which would make her…
"Twenty-one again," she sighed to herself, slamming her planner closed. Despite having surmised that she had somehow traveled back in time, she still couldn't figure out why everything seemed so different this time around.
She scanned the pictures all over her room again, looking for some sign on Nathan among them. But it was plain and simple; her husband was nowhere to be found among her photographs.
She looked at the time and realized she was already dangerously close to being late for her tutoring with this Lamont fellow. She dressed in record time, not even caring what she was putting on and began throwing books into the blue book bag that had been sitting next to her bed. She had no idea what she was tutoring this boy in. She looked in her planner again and scribbled down the name of the building she was supposed to meet him in on a scrap of paper. She began digging through drawers, until she found what she was looking for.
She fingered a map of the Duke campus, thanking God for her sensational organizational skills. Without them, she would not have found her way through this alternative world she was now stuck in.
She heard Lucas tapping of her door again. "Hales, are you all right in there? It sounds like you're tearing the room apart."
"Fine," she lied, opening the door to stand face to face with him.
"That's more like it," he said, grinning at his now put together best friend.
"Hate to run, but I'm going to be late." Haley swept past him and before she reached the door, heard his throat clear significantly behind her.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
She turned to see him dangling a set of keys in his fingers. She ran back and grabbed them from him, looking at her own i.d. in the process. Across the top, it said 'Duke University.' She stopped in her tracks for a moment as she stared at the name. She had been expecting it, but it was more upsetting than she had thought it would be.
It read, 'Haley James.'
"Haley, are you sure you're ok?" Lucas asked as she sat staring at her student i.d. that she'd seen hundreds of times.
"What? Yeah, I'm fine," she responded, recovering quickly. She continued her sprint to the parking lot and easily found her car by using the automatic unlock button on her car remote.
Luckily for her, she had visited Duke several times in her life and was able to find the campus without any trouble. Unfortunately, finding the appropriate building wasn't as easy.
When she finally pulled up to it, she saw by her clock that she was ten minutes late. She sprinted in with her heavy book bag (she had packed all the books in her room, just in case). The doors only allowed her in when she had scanned her i.d. and she breathed a sigh of relief as she looked around the building she had just entered. She wasn't going to have to find the correct room to go to because she had come into what looked to be the main study center. Several tutors were working with various students. All of the students appeared to be very large, athletic males.
Across the room, she spotted one boy sitting by himself. She made her way over to him and became more confident as he smiled when she approached him.
"Hey, Lamont," she said, taking the seat across from him.
"Haley." He began to take out his books and she discreetly took in their covers, seeing they were all pertaining to history. She began to sift through her packed book bag. "This has to be a first. You being late."
She laughed lightly. "What can I say? I'm human."
She studied Lamont for a moment. He was one of the biggest guys she had ever seen in person. He had heavyset, muscular arms and a deep, booming voice that had alarmed her at first. She could almost tell by just sharing a few words with him, though, that the bark was probably much worse than the bite.
Lamont met her eyes as she looked at him and a mischievous smile played at his lips. "So… aren't you going to ask?"
"What?" she asked, hoping she sounded more playful than totally clueless.
"Fine, I'll tell," he replied, opening up the book in front of him, "I made an eighty-four on that test we studied for last week."
"Lamont, that's great!" she responded, feeling a surge of pride go through her. She knew it may not have been her personally that had helped him study, but it had been her in some form.
"Yeah. I told everybody on the team that I have the best tutor in the whole university."
"Oh yeah?"
"Josh said he was going to try to get you next semester if you don't mind. I know you make a good amount of money for every person you do."
"Yeah," she agreed, when really she had no idea.
"Josh is a tailback. You know him?"
"No, sorry. Is that…basketball?" She ventured a guess.
He had a deep booming laugh and Haley giggled as she saw one of the tutors at the other table look up in alarm.
"No, Haley. That's football, like me."
Haley barely registered this as she had become distracted with what the tutor at the other table was wearing. It was one of those faux-basketball jerseys that she had seen many people (including Nathan) wear to support their favorite players. It was in Duke's blue and the number on the back was strikingly familiar. As if this wasn't enough to catch her attention, the name printed on the back was…
"Scott," she said, quietly to herself.
"Huh?" Lamont asked, following her eye line to the tutor's jersey.
"Scott," she repeated so he could hear her.
"Oh, yeah," Lamont replied, rolling his eyes. "Nathan's a big dog on campus."
"You know him?" she asked, quickly, turning to meet his eyes.
"I don't think there's anyone on campus that doesn't know him, is there? But, yeah, if you mean, do I know him, know him, I've talked to the guy a couple of times. He's a little conceited though. Maybe I'm just jealous." He shrugged. "I we wish got half the support the basketball team does. You watching tonight?"
"Watching what?"
"ESPN. They're playing Clemson at seven."
"Oh." Haley looked down at the books in front of her, hoping something could make this all make sense.
"Haley?"
"What?" she asked, shooting her head up quickly.
"Uh-don't you think we should hit the books?"
----
"Haley, what is it you want to watch so badly?" Lucas asked as he watched Haley flip feverishly through the channels.
"Basketball," Haley replied as she finally saw the words 'Duke vs. Clemson' flash on the bottom of the screen.
"Oh, Hales, anything but this." Lucas sighed dramatically from his spot on the couch, where several books were laying next to him. Haley had chosen to sit on the floor with the dinner Lucas had cooked them in front of her.
Haley ignored him and turned the volume up to hear what the announcers were saying. "…and a kid who could really be a difference maker in this game is that guy right there- number twenty-three, Nathan Scott." A close-up of Nathan warming-up flashed on the screen as the announcers continued to talk. "He's really been amazing in his first few games and I think there's a good chance he could light up the scoreboards here in Littlejohn tonight." Lucas grumbled under his breath behind Haley but she didn't spare a thought to it.
"And the fans obviously love him," the other announcer added jokingly as the Clemson fans booed when Nathan's number was called.
"Well, we had a chance to speak to him before the game."
A close-up of Nathan sitting in front of a black background in his Duke basketball t-shirt popped up on the screen. Haley moved unconsciously closer. He wore his hair long, but not nearly as unkempt as it had been when she had last seen him. She looked into his blue eyes and felt a pain tear at her hear, remembering how cold they had looked the last time she had seen them. His lips began to move, but just then, Lucas decided to talk over the tv.
"Haley, I told you we could watch Duke basketball if, and only if, I never had to listen to this idiot talk."
"Lucas, shut up!" Haley replied, scooting still closer to the tv. She wanted desperately to hear the end of Nathan's interview.
"Yeah," he was saying, "even when the Ravens struggled, I didn't let it affect my game and I won't let it now."
"The Ravens never struggled," Haley said, turning back to look at Lucas as Nathan's face left the screen.
"Are you kidding me? A losing season and then third place in the region? That's struggling. If he wasn't so worried about himself the whole time, the team may have benefitted."
"Don't you think he got better?" Haley asked, trying to find out more without Lucas catching on.
"Not at all. If anything, he got worse. Personally, I'm glad I never left the Rivercourt."
"You would've been good," Haley told him, once again, attempting to get information.
"Yeah, well I guess we'll never know thanks to bro," he said, nodding at the screen, where Nathan was shooting free throws.
"How is it his fault?"
"C'mon, Hales. You remember that stupid one-on-one game." His voice got suddenly deeper and Haley realized he was mocking Nathan. "'Stay away from my team and stay away from my girl.'"
"He won the one-on-one game," Haley said quietly to herself.
"Huh?" Lucas asked.
"Nothing." She smiled. "You know what's funny? I think in all these years of going to the same high school and then the same college as Nathan, I've never even spoken to him," Haley said, testing out a new theory.
"I've made sure of that," Lucas affirmed. "You're better off anyway, never having met him. We all are."
Haley flopped back on the floor, letting her words from just the night before overtake her. I think I'd preferred just to have never met you, she thought to herself. It was a stupid thing to say.
She already felt like she might cry when she heard something that seemed to make everything worse.
"So, Nate, while you're here on camera, anybody you want to shout out to?"
She heard Nathan's cute, cocky laugh and his reply made her clutch at her stomach.
"Man, just my girl. Peyton, baby, I love you."
A/N: Well, I made good on my promise. This is a full eight pages in Microsoft Word! I know, no Naley interaction, but my main reason for the length was to get our favorite couple acquainted (or at least meet) in the next chapter. Anyway, this is obviously the set-up for the rest of the story, so I hope you liked it (even though it's a little sci-fi)!
