And We Collide (Like Stars, My Love)

by lefreakcestchic

"What's that saying again? You can take the girl out of Rosewood but if you take Rosewood out of the girl, all you'll be left with is an empty shell." Spencer, Toby, and their way back to themselves and each other in five chapters. Post-6B.

2. Chapter 2

And we're (finally) back! I'm sorry for the unexpected delay. Thank you so much for all y'all's patience with me, your lovely reviews, favorites and follows and just thank you in general, too, if you did none of these things and simply decided to give this story a try. I appreciate all y'all. To answer a guest reviewer who asked whether I'd consider writing Spoby post-finale: I'd be lying if I said that I haven't thought about it but I don't know for certain yet.

The second chapter is less angsty than the first, just as long though (I know), deals with a few necessary conversations and might have some fluffy…ish moments here and there if you squint hard enough. I mean, I personally thought it was fluffy and then I was informed that it's actually kinda sad because I apparently never grew out of my middle school emo phase. So, take that as a warning, I suppose? I'm sorry for making Spencer smoke like the lead in a French art film, by the way – y'all know the deal, smoking is bad, blah blah, I just thought it was fitting for her character. This chapter's title was stolen from The XX's "Heart Skipped A Beat."

Special thanks to Elena for letting me bounce ideas off her and force her to read through my unedited mess and special thanks to Laura for kicking my ass when it needed some kicking (and when it didn't).

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II.
The more I see, I understand
But sometimes, I still need you

It goes like this: It's Friday night, three weeks after Spencer's text message, and the few lonely trees hugging Main Street on either side are in deep mourning. They keep swooning and leaning towards the ground, their sadness so unbearable, so heavy that it slowly beckons and pulls them back to the brown damp dirt from which they have grown. Mother Nature is in a state of total bereavement and the group inside the cozy restaurant is rudely intruding upon a tragic grieving ceremony that isn't theirs with their constant chatter, their hearty laughter and the upbeat music playing on the jukebox in the corner. This storm, of course, wasn't unexpected. The weather station had issued yet another warning earlier that day but none of the locals currently sitting at Toby's table seem to be overly fazed. An uneasy feeling spreading in his stomach, Toby thinks that they should be though. This storm is quite possibly one of the most terrifying things he has ever witnessed. He lifts his head to catch a peek of the window again but there isn't a whole lot to make out or even see besides the thick fog, rainwater, the dancing shadows of the trees and a dark, almost angry patch of gray and black. A vivid, furious flash of lightning suddenly bolts across the sky then, as silent and deadly as a grave, briefly illuminating the night before crashing thunder shatters the fleeting caricature of peace once more. The female Beagle hiding under the table, faithfully perched by her owner's feet, gives a very fearful whine.

A couple of moments later, the door creaks open, causing the sounds of the storm to viciously explode through the little restaurant and completely drown out the jingle of the bell over the wooden door. The newcomer to their impromptu dinner party is Michael from the Planning Board; a rather lanky, kind-hearted man in his late 20s. He is 'from away' too, just like Toby and Yvonne. South Jersey, if memory serves him right. Why in the world a Jersey native would leave his home and move to one of the most boring places on earth, Toby has no idea, but to be fair, he doesn't remember why he had left Pennsylvania for this either.

"Fuck," Michael bellows, closing the door behind him. He is as soaked as Toby thinks the streets must be. "It's fucking Judgment Day outside."

The rest of the group breaks into entertained laughter.

"Man, the hell have you been? You're over an hour late," Yvonne's cousin Cameron says from beside Toby. "You literally live down the street. We all thought you weren't coming."

"Oh, I came, all right," Michael replies, eyebrows raised suggestively, as he leisurely makes his way towards his friends. He slaps Cameron's shoulder once in greeting, sitting down on the chair next to him and Toby. "Sorry, man, you know how it is – when the girlfriend's app says that it's time for some sweet, sweet baby-making, then it's time for some sweet, sweet baby-making."

Yvonne wrinkles her nose. "You're seriously gross, Mike."

Unbothered, Michael merely shrugs against the cackles of amusement and grunts of disgust. He nods at the waitress who comes and goes with a glass of wine and says, "Ah, that's what you're saying now. But trust me, Phillips, give it another four or five months and you two lovebirds…" He points at Toby with his wine glass. "…will be asking me which app Stace has been using."

Nobody seems to notice that Yvonne's smile falters somewhat as she gazes at Toby from across the table. Toby holds her browns and attempts a weak half-smile which she apparently decides doesn't warrant an answer. He can mostly accept that though; he has to. It's the first time tonight that she is even acknowledging him, the first time tonight that she is seemingly giving up on ignoring both Toby and his entire existence and that, at least, is more than he was expecting to receive. Despite the eye contact she is hesitantly offering him now, he can tell that she is still mad at him. They had fought before coming here, about something unbelievably stupid. Maybe it was her spilling her loose powder all over the fresh laundry or perhaps it was the dirty socks he had forgotten in the living room. He doesn't remember. Although, if he has to be honest, he somehow doubts it would make a big difference even if he could recall who made the first snide remark that turned into two hours of total passive-aggressiveness. He strongly suspects that the general air of unhappiness that is following him on each step is the true and only cause for all of their numerous fights lately. It has started to feel as though it is slowly poisoning every inch of their once so beautiful home and he has no idea how to make it stop. Because his misery is irrelevant, isn't it; in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much. He had made peace with it. But he had never meant for it to affect her. He doesn't want her to be unhappy.

And now… now this. Babies. He all but snorts at the utter irony – in fact, he barely manages to stop himself halfway through and has the feeling that Yvonne is thinking the same thing. They haven't had sex in… has it already been a month? Has it been over a month? Once again, Toby isn't entirely sure though he is entirely aware that this isn't a good thing for a recently engaged couple that is planning on getting married in February.

Before his inner eye, all he sees, all he can see is: Hey. Congratulations! I finally got the invitation the other day. I don't think I'll be able to make it though. Do you guys have an Amazon wishlist or something?

Hey. Congratulations! I finally got the invitation the other day.

Hey. Congratulations!

Hey-

Nevertheless, Toby clears his throat to shake off the memory and says, "Heh. Well, we wanna get married-"

"Yeah," Yvonne interrupts him. Her tone is strangely mechanical. He frowns at her but quickly falls silent. "Marriage first. Kids later. We're kinda… traditional when it comes to those things."

Michael nods, understanding. "What's Toby doing again? I always forget, man, I'm sorry."

"I-"

Yvonne cuts him off sharply. "He's majoring in Architectural Studies."

"Yeah and I, uh, work for Bruce Warren," Toby says.

"Part-time," Yvonne informs.

"Part-time."

The awkward tension between the couple is more than palpable, even to those, it appears, who weren't part of the conversation on this side of the table. Cameron exchanges a meaningful look with his wife Francis who is seated next to Yvonne.

Michael laughs to bridge the silence. "Good old Brucie," he says. "How's he doing?"

"Uh, good, I think," Toby responds as he tosses another careful glimpse in Yvonne's direction who is, sure enough, still glaring daggers his way. He gulps – audibly. "He's good. I'm really, you know, grateful for the opportunity to work with him. He's good at what he does."

Cameron chuckles. "It's all right, Toby. I'm his friend and even I know that he's a dick."

"Yeah, it's just us here," Francis chimes in. "We all know how he is. You can be honest."

The cheerful waitress comes over to clear the empty appetizer plates off the table, then begins serving the entrées. While Toby had gone with something vegetarian – actually, he had picked the only vegetarian option on the menu – the rest of the group did not. Watching them all inspect their respective plates with gusto now, Toby fights the urge to scrunch up his nose. He doesn't think he has ever been this sick and tired of fish before. Smoked salmon bagels for breakfast nearly every single morning, lobster cream soup for lunch when he isn't lucky enough to be on campus on the mainland, then pan seared halibut for dinner on at least three evenings a week because Yvonne is obsessed – it's like there isn't anything else to eat on this goddamn island.

Toby picks at his fettuccine. "Well, I mean, he definitely can be a little difficult sometimes…"

"A little?" Michael echoes in disbelief.

"Fine, you're right. Definitely more than a little," Toby admits and half-grins when Cameron and Michael emit the same barking laugh. "But he's… he can be nice when he wants to be."

"Yeah. Which is never," Francis adds.

Toby glances at her, amused, but too wise to outright agree with her comment. "He just doesn't handle criticism that well, you know? Somehow he always finds a way to shift the blame to-"

"If carpentry suddenly makes you so unhappy, Toby, maybe you should've stuck with being a cop then," Yvonne speaks up. "God knows we could use one. I don't feel safe anymore ever since that B&E on Boston Road."

Seemingly having noticed Toby's expression, Michael snickers and says, "Hey, nobody said a thing about being unhappy here, Phillips. Toby was just ranting about his boss. It's what we do to survive. Besides, I thought the cops already caught whoever was responsible for that?"

He throws Francis a look across the table and raises his eyebrows expectantly until she catches on. "Oh yeah. I heard the same thing. Wasn't it the Webster's son and his little friends?"

"I don't know," Yvonne answers around her latest bite of crab. "What I do know is that we don't even have a gun in our house."

Cameron, meanwhile, looks at her as if she has grown a second head. "You wanna keep a gun in your house in a practically all-white town? Are you crazy?"

"It's not crazy to me to feel kinda defenseless and unsafe in your own house when your fiancé is barely around."

At her casual statement Toby almost chokes on his pasta. Stuffing their fight from earlier into her bag and bringing it to dinner with them isn't Yvonne's style. He knows that they can both be awfully stubborn and impulsive; even kind of explosive, at times. This isn't something she would normally do, however, and what he does next is not something he would normally do either. It would be much wiser, he thinks, to keep quiet now. To keep quiet and let her pummel him with words. A fraction of him, the fraction that is soaked in guilt, feels like he deserves it anyway. What's some more of her anger when he is the one that had failed her, when he is the one who didn't try hard enough to keep his pain a secret?

But he isn't wise and for the first time in months, he stands up for himself again. He furrows his brow and questions, "What are you talking about? Where do I supposedly go? Every time I'm not at work or at school, I'm at home. With you."

"Yeah. Except when you go for a walk. At 9 pm. Alone."

"That's what's bothering you? You do know that I asked you to come with me, right? More than once. And you always said you were too tired or cold or that you just didn't feel like it."

"Did I? Did I really? Or did you always conveniently pick those nights where you knew I'd say no and wouldn't actually come with you?"

Everyone at their table – Cameron and Francis, Michael and the rest of the group on the other side – is suddenly terribly busy pretending that they can't hear a single word of their argument.

"Why the hell are you doing this right now?"

"I don't know, Toby. Why are you doing this?" she replies. She throws her fork on her plate as she heaves an exasperated sigh, then swiftly rises from the table, signaling Toby to follow her with one especially hard look. He doesn't want to. He may not be wise but he isn't completely stupid either; this isn't about his nightly walks on the docks or her loose powder on their laundry or dirty socks he forgot in the living room. And yet he, always the fool, follows her anyway; faithful, loyal, follows her into the abyss and the dark eye of the storm when she simply opens the door, ignoring his half-muttered remark of 'It's still raining' and steps outside.

It goes like this: A burst of lightning welcomes them, streaks across the lonely night sky, spilling its eerie glow across the streets and then an enormous clap of thunder hits that Toby feels deep inside his guts. They should have at least taken an umbrella with them, Toby thinks. His clothes are clinging to his shoulders already and Yvonne is relentlessly shivering from the cutting cold. More importantly, they should have waited to talk it out until they were home. The group inside the restaurant is trying their hardest not to peek and invade their privacy but he can sense Francis' gaze on him. He is reminded of the night of their engagement and the fight they had had right after, the angry thunderstorm outside his trailer, the manic pitter-patter of rain on the roof. Maybe that too had been a sign he chose to overlook; him and Yvonne, they had been born out of pain and disaster, hadn't they, and maybe they were always meant to head back. Maybe they were always meant to fall apart exactly like this, exactly like they had created themselves and each other – in Mother Nature's wrathful, ruthless embrace.

And scared to death in Mother Nature's wrathful, ruthless embrace as they are, he wonders why he hadn't seen it coming from a mile away. Why he had chosen to ignore the decay of everything they used to be for so, so long. He doesn't know why he knows that they are slowly, steadily reaching the end now; doesn't know how he knows that this is the final act, the grand big finale, and after that, there will be nothing left to do but take a bow and leave the stage. And this realization, no matter how much it aches, is not the scary part. He had made peace with it ages ago, hadn't he? Made peace with staying and swallowing his own misery just to make the amazing woman, the wonderful person, in front of him happy, despite knowing in his heart that it wouldn't be enough. Because sometimes, love just isn't enough. The scary part though, the part that nearly tears him in two, is the look in her eyes. She knows. She knows.

"What's going on?"

"Why were you looking at Spencer's Instagram yesterday?" A brief flash of lightning sheds its glow on Yvonne's features, revealing a smile. She is smiling; in spite of everything, she is still smiling, and no, it's not a happy smile by any means. Instead she is smiling at Toby like she is finally seeing him for the first time, like she is seeing him for who and what he truly is inside. "I didn't mean to see it, okay? You forgot to clear your browsing history and when I, when I tried to go on the Ikea website to find this lamp I saw at Deb's, her Instagram was the first thing that popped up in the suggestions."

He is silent for a moment as he simply takes in her unsettlingly calm voice and demeanor. "Is that why you picked a fight with me this morning? Why didn't you just… ask?"

"It's my fault, right?" she replies with a tiny, tiny frown and ignores his questions. "We're five hundred miles from Rosewood and god knows how many from Chicago but I'm the one who insisted on inviting her and put her right back into your head."

"Look, she texted me a couple of weeks ago," he explains. "And she said she couldn't come to the wedding and I just… I don't know. I just wanted to see how she's doing so I went on her Instagram profile. That's really all there is to it and the only time it happened."

She snorts. "What is it with Spencer always bringing out the worst parts of you, Toby?"

"What is that even supposed to mean?"

"Why didn't you tell me she texted you?" she asks and he wishes she would let go of her anger like she is quite obviously meaning to, let it break out of her, because her tranquility in the face of the storm, in the face of the topic of hand, in the face of him is disturbing. "Why didn't you tell me that you wanted to see how she's doing and went on her Instagram?"

"Why—because I didn't think it was a big deal?" he answers. "She said she couldn't come and congratulated us, I replied and that's literally it. It was just a text, okay? We aren't, I don't know, secretly talking or whatever you're accusing me of. We haven't seen each other in over a year."

"Why do you feel the need to lie about the stupidest things when it comes to her?" she shoots back. "Why would you keep an innocent text from me if it didn't mean anything to you?"

"Why are you blowing this out of proportion?"

"Yeah, I'm not blowing this out of proportion and I'm not gonna let you weasel your way out of this again," she spits. "Don't act like you don't know that this isn't about some stupid text or your stalking your ex on Instagram, it's – it's your walks at night and you telling me you have class when you don't just so you can spend more time on campus. It's you pretending to be tired so you don't have to fuck me. You're unhappy? Fine. Talk to me instead of being a passive-aggressive dick. What did I do wrong? "

He looks at her, a bottomless pit opening in his stomach. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"There has to be something because I look at you and I… I see a stranger. I have no idea who you are anymore. I have no idea what's going on inside your head and you refuse to let me in no matter how much I try," she says, knitting her dark brows. Game's over, he thinks, panicking, the mask is off, she's seeing right through you. "I thought we wanted this. I thought we both wanted this life together and now you're-"

"We didn't."

She scoffs. "No, Toby. You don't get to do this-"

"But we didn't," he interrupts her as softly as he can. "When we were talking about leaving, I wanted to go to Camden. Do you remember that? I wanted Augusta. Rockland. Anywhere but this fucking island. I didn't wanna live in a town that's smaller than Rosewood on a bad day."

She glowers at him. "You should've said something then."

"I did. Maybe I wasn't persistent enough, maybe I gave in too easily, but I did and you got mad at me every single time 'cuz you keep making decisions without asking me first," Toby says, desperate, "and I… I learned to accept that. I'm fine. But we never chose this life, okay? You did. That was all you. And I went along with it. The only choice that I made on my own was going back to school and you still resent me for giving up my badge to this day."

"So let me get this straight, what you're saying is that you settled, right?"

"It's called compromising."

"That's coward's language for settling and you know it," Yvonne responds in a biting tone, her brown eyes piercing through him. "You settled for this island. You settled for this town. You're settling for a wedding ceremony you wanted to go differently."

Unsurprisingly, his first instinct is to flee.

Surprisingly, he doesn't listen.

"How can you seriously stand there and say that with a straight face?"

"Stop deflecting," she hisses as lightning cracks behind them. "Just… stop lying to me. Please. I'm so tired, Toby. I'm so tired of excuses and you agreeing with everything I say just 'cuz you think that's what I need to hear. Please, just once, talk to me."

"This," he says, pointing between them slowly. "This is what I was trying to avoid. I didn't want us to fight. So I… yeah, I compromised. I accepted. I hate this island. I really, really hate this island. But it's not a big deal, okay? You're happy here. It's what you want and I can live with that. I can adapt."

"It's what I want and you can settle." She is smiling again and it looks like a grimace; as though she is in actual, physical pain that is pulsing through her with every word she says and he feels his heart sink, reaches for his arm in comfort but his hand meets with nothing but cold air when she takes a calculated step back. She adds, thoughtfully, "Just like you settled for a woman who doesn't know how to make you happy anymore because the one you actually wanted got away."

He gapes at her and remains utterly silent, not knowing if she is right, if she is telling the truth like it is, if she is overinterpreting a stupid text about Amazon wishlists and wedding invitations because he doesn't know who he is, what he wants, what he desires. And lying, lying feels so pointless now – lying and hiding and running feels pointless now that they are so very exposed in the eye of the storm, in the complete dark where he would go to tuck away his secrets.

"Do you still love her?"

The storm is reaching one last big crescendo, just like they are, and the rain is flying in from all directions, lightning dancing in the night sky, trees swaying and all but bending their spines to the will of the merciless wind.

Toby averts his eyes for a second, stares at the ground, stares back at her. "I don't know."

And Yvonne, sweet Yvonne, doesn't react, doesn't flinch, like she had expected that kind of reply. She mulls it over and says, voice calm and steady, "Do you still love me?"

But here's the tricky thing: he can't. He can't possibly answer that question, can he, he can't lie to her again and again, over and over, can't force them both to live in bleak misery for all eternity – 'till death do us part – can't tell her the truth either, break her heart, ruin her in more ways than he already has, ruin her like Johnathan had completely ruined, broken, destroyed her.

So Toby says – he says nothing. He says nothing and his silence is enough.

From the threatening clouds above their heads, lightning flares and thunder explodes through the dark and the wind is howling but all Toby hears, all he really hears, is the sound of Yvonne's palm connecting with his cheek.

It goes like this: they come apart in the storm – do you still love her? – in the abyss they had tried to ignore for so long and never succeeded – do you still love her? – in the numb fingers of the past – do you still love her? – in the bitter rain washing off the leftovers of lighter, happier times. The end, their end, it's not neat or tied with a bow but messy and abrupt, like a cheerful song cutting off prematurely when there was so much more to hear.

It goes like this: she abandons him by the restaurant, still so very calm, still so very quiet, makes it abundantly clear that she won't hesitate to call the cops on him if he decides to follow her to their house and Toby doesn't have anywhere to go now, does he? He doesn't have a home and maybe, he thinks as he watches her slam the car door shut, maybe he never truly did; maybe he was always just a visitor, always a guest that was tolerated in her kingdom as long as he followed the unspoken rules. And now he had broken them – broken her.

It goes like this: the next day, Yvonne says she doesn't believe in handing out second chances like candy – she unceremoniously shoves the first bag onto the front porch and it feels as though the entire neighborhood is watching them – Yvonne pushes him out of the way, pushes his sorry excuses and explanations out of the way and says she doesn't think there is anything left to fix now – she carries the second bag onto the front porch and Francis glowers at Toby from behind her sister-in-law – Yvonne catches Toby's pained gaze in her determined one and says that she understands being confused, understands being scared, understands cold feet but she says she doesn't understand how he could hesitate yet again when she already forgave him the first time he had – she throws the third bag onto the front porch and ignores his pleas, ignores his attempts to talk it out – Yvonne raises her voice for the onlookers, her friends, and says that she should have done this over a year ago when he had proposed and made up lies about her place in his life even though she always had the feeling that it wasn't true – she proceeds to throw the final bag onto the front porch and walks right past him, back into the house – Yvonne says that she has never hated anyone in her life but she really hopes that he and Spencer end up happy in a ditch somewhere where nobody can find them until they starve to death.

It goes like this: the following week is a blur. He doesn't drink – but he drinks a lot. He doesn't plead – but he pleads a lot. He doesn't try – but he tries a lot; tries to reason, tries to fix, tries to rewind and take back the words he had said, the words he had swallowed, the words he had felt.

And he is met with silence, rejection, fails over and over until one evening where Bruce Warren stops his truck in front of the cottage, gets out with a sigh and suddenly grabs Toby by the back of his neck like a cat would pick up her litter. "You're making a goddamn fool out of yourself, Tobias," he says in a hiss as he shakes his head and pushes Toby towards the car. "Get in."

It goes like this: Toby sleeps – sleeps for a long time, for what feels like days, months, and wakes up with a hangover from hell on Bruce Warren's sofa.

"I got no idea what you did 'cuz I don't care enough to follow gossip," Mr. Warren grumbles and hands the younger man a cup of coffee. "But even I can tell that you fucked up."

"I know," Toby responds quietly, takes a sip from his coffee.

"Some people are made for this shitty town and some aren't," Mr. Warren continues and hands the younger man a plate with a ham sandwich. "And you have always been in the latter category. I could already tell when I first met you."

"I know," Toby responds quietly, bites into his sandwich.

"Do you think you can fix this?"

Toby looks up at him with his mouth full but keeps silent.

"Let me do that again," Mr. Warren sighs. "Do you wanna fix this?"

And again, Toby keeps silent.

"Well, you right, it's none of my business. You can stay here long as you keep showing up at work." Rising from the arm rest of the sofa, Mr. Warren stretches his limbs and stares out of the window. "But in my humble opinion, I'd suggest getting out of here. This town's gonna end up driving you crazy if you hate it that much. I'm speaking from experience."

"I…" Toby swallows the food in his mouth. "I don't have anywhere to go."

Mr. Warren chuckles. "Know what my wife did when she left?" he asks and Toby shuffles his feet, averts his eyes, feeling deeply uncomfortable. "She got a goddamn map and picked the first town she thought had a pretty name 'cuz she said anywhere's better than this island. She's in Bumfuck, Iowa now, last time I heard. Do you wanna go to Bumfuck, Iowa?"

"No."

"No," Mr. Warren repeats and nods wisely. "Take the ferry. Go to the mainland. Find yourself a job. See where you end up going. Maybe it'll be Portland or Augusta or maybe you'll listen to Georgie, buy a map and find a city with a pretty name, huh?"

It goes like this: gossip travels fast in towns where people have to find something to keep themselves entertained with and Toby has a hard time getting off the island without curious eyes following his each and every step. Part of him is sort of grateful for the unwanted attention though because it keeps him busy and distracted; he still doesn't know how he feels, how he is supposed to feel; still doesn't know what to think, what he is supposed to think; still doesn't know what to say, what he is supposed to say. So he writes Yvonne a letter that he knows she won't read, black ink spilling one apology over the other that he knows she won't care about, slides it under the front door whose locks he knows she has already changed, and then he, and then he…

It goes like this: he runs away. He flees. Like every fucking time in his life. He flees.

It goes like this: he watches the island grow smaller and smaller, watches where he knows their – her – cottage is, bends over the railing of the ferryboat and throws up into the water. Out of relief, out of sadness, out of second doubts. He has no idea. He has absolutely no fucking idea.

It goes like this: he thinks of Mr. Warren and his ex-wife Georgie, later, when he is on campus because he still hasn't figured out what to do – how to feel, what his life even means now that he has wrecked Yvonne's – and in a brief moment of impulsiveness that he will certainly call stupidity about a month later, he googles a list of cities by population in New England and reads through the results with furrowed eyebrows and yet another ugly pit opening up in his stomach.

It goes like this: he had left the neighborhood and it wasn't enough, and then he had left town and it wasn't enough, and then he had left the island and it wasn't enough. So he leaves – leaves Maine in a crowded bus with all of his belongings shoved into four lousy bags, with all of his worries and uncertainties shoved into his heart. He leaves Maine. And he doesn't come back.

Almost an entire year later – an entire year of rapidly cycling through fatigue, restlessness and the permanent feeling like he is lost and wrong – Toby is in Boston, plagued by guilt. He had left Maine, left Yvonne, and apparently managed to pick the one city in the goddamn world that would lead him back to the other woman he had also tried to run from.

And it's not like he doesn't care because he definitely does (still – even though he shouldn't) and it's not like he isn't completely overwhelmed by the scent of nostalgia assaulting his nostrils or by the memories of a way different time dancing in excited pirouettes in the rooms of his conscious because he definitely is (still – even though he shouldn't) but after the initial surprise at seeing Spencer's face again and hearing her voice dies down somewhat, it's replaced by fear.

Fear at knowing that she is right here now, only an hour away, making it next to impossible for Toby to hide, repress and attempt to forget and move on this time, and after that fear fades as well, fades into careless gray, all that is left in his hold is a gripping sense of confusion.

Because he had lied to her and he doesn't know why. It would have taken him thirty seconds, maybe a minute or two, to stop her nervous ramblings and correct her assumptions – yeah, see, funny story, actually, and I thought you already knew, but the wedding never happened. Yes, I absolutely am a despicable person for breaking Yvonne's heart about four months before we were supposed to commit for life, why are you asking? – and he just… hadn't managed to get any of these words past his lips, hadn't felt brave enough to confess his failure at life and love, hadn't owned up and admitted to his sins. Not with her eyes glued to him, slightly widened, sincere and innocently curious and so much more breathtaking than all those nights he had dreamed her in the past year. So he had decided to lie to her face instead and he doesn't comprehend why. Now, he is perfectly aware that it's not exactly a talk he would have been able to rush through in front of an overpriced coffee shop – I think she fell in love with me because of the person she wanted to see but she didn't notice that I stopped being that man the second we left Rosewood until it was too late. And I think I fell in love with her because I somehow talked myself into believing that we could, maybe one day, feel close enough to what you and I had years ago… anyway, do you want another cup of coffee? – but the fact that he hadn't given her a line of truth feels like a slap to their – whose? Spencer and his? Yvonne and his? What is the difference anyway? – memory. He had lied to her and he still doesn't get why.

Toby doesn't dream about her again and he doesn't have to. Ghosts aren't an issue now that she is real, now that she is here. She had always been especially talented at finding the secret hiding spots within his heart and carefully, skillfully, luring him out of there like a trapped animal – he inevitably thinks of Yvonne and flinches – and it appears that she hasn't entirely lost that ability after all. A week and some after their awkward encounter in the streets of Boston – Bahstin, she laughs inside his head and he pushes both of them, Yvonne and Spencer, out of his mind – his phone buzzes with a call on his makeshift nightstand beside his bed. If he has to be honest, he is only half-surprised at the familiar number flashing on his screen when he walks to pick up his phone. They haven't had a real conversation in over two years, probably longer, and maybe he doesn't know her as well as he once did put part of him had expected – dreaded even – her to figure it out and call. He just hadn't thought it would take her this long.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you lie to me?" Spencer demands to know at once, skipping the short greeting, the polite small talk from the week before and skipping the friendliness too. Despite the harshness of her words, she doesn't seem angry with him or anything and yet her tone is stuck in a place he used to call Spencer's Interrogation Mode half a lifetime ago. It's impersonal, almost, like they are mere strangers now – and maybe that's all they are.

Toby doesn't know how or what to feel so instead he states, rather dryly too, "It's 7:30 in the morning."

"Yeah. On a weekday. I figured you'd be awake," Spencer replies. Judging by the sounds in the background of the call, she is in her car, most likely on her way to work. The car radio is playing some relaxing tunes but she is far from relaxed because she repeats, a bit more firmly, as though she doesn't have any intentions of letting this go unanswered, "So why did you lie to me?"

That's what I'm trying to figure out, Toby thinks.

"I know we're not together anymore," she then continues, seemingly mistaking his momentary silence for defensiveness instead of the confusion it truly is. "I know we're not even friends and you don't owe me an explanation and I probably need to learn to mind my own business. But all that's been bothering me since last week is that you didn't feel the need to let me know that you never got married and I… why did you lie, Toby? Why the hell was that necessary?"

With an internal sigh, he plops down in his bed. "I don't know," he finally admits, his fingers toying with the soft fabric of his comforter as he struggles to come up with an excuse that will give them both a piece of calm. "It's a breakup. It's not something I felt comfortable discussing out in the open street between a cup of coffee and a cigarette."

"I know and I get that. I do. Talking breakups is never easy. But thing is, I didn't expect that from you, okay? At all. A small sentence would've been more than enough," she counters. "One little sentence and I would've dropped it. Immediately. You're acting like I, like I – I don't know, like I would've started psychoanalyzing you or Yvonne or your entire relationship."

He blinks. "You're kidding, right? You absolutely would have tried to psychoanalyze me and-"

"Fuck you."

His eyebrows shoot up. "Excuse me?"

"Oh my god. Oh my god. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean you. I meant the complete moron in his Nissan in front of me." She gives a chuckle at herself and in his head, her voice from two years ago says, I curse a lot, it's very therapeutic, and he exhales another sigh and quickly whisks the memory away. "Okay, look, you're right. I probably would've started asking a million questions you aren't ready for but… you were supposed to get married. You were supposed to get married and have beautiful babies and be happy. With Yvonne. I really, really wanted that for you."

This is Spencer: she always wants and she always plans and he doubts that she is doing this out of malice or the desire to seize control over what cannot possibly be controlled but time begins ticking backwards anyway, not giving a single shit. His heart is a weird creature, jumping back and forth and then back and even further back, because one moment he is here, sitting on his bed, the next he is in her dorm room, their insecurities like a fortress between them. One moment he is in Rosewood and they are fighting – which time? Every single one – and the next she is leaning against his truck and accusing him of running away – from Yvonne or from her? Doesn't matter; it's the same thing – and it's funny, how he can exist in two, three, four places at once without her noticing anything at all; exist in the broken parts of what used to be and then dissolved while she has absolutely no fucking idea.

Toby says, unsure which version of her he is really addressing and unsure which version of him he is talking for, "Well, uh, I'm sorry I disappointed you?"

Spencer groans, annoyed. "That is so not what this is about," she responds. "I'm not trying to be a control freak and I'm not trying to be irritating. Or a, a crazy obsessed ex-girlfriend who doesn't understand what boundaries are. All I'm saying is that I wanted you to be happy and-"

"But I am happy, Spencer," he interrupts her quietly. This is what he was trying to prevent. They are mingling in each other's lives again and slipping back into the comfort of the old where they can speak freely, yes, but just as freely let what was unresolved taint the present. "I never claimed it was… perfect but I was happy back then and I'm happy now. I didn't plan on coming to Boston. I didn't plan on being in school at twenty-six. And I sure as hell didn't plan on our relationship ending when I proposed to Yvonne. I don't know what you want me to say here. I'm sorry you had different plans for my life but it is what it is."

But her only answer to that is silence. He can nearly see her purse her lips like she does – did? does? did? – when she is mad at him.

"I thought you already knew," he adds when she remains unresponsive. "I swear I didn't lie on purpose. I didn't even mean to lie. I just… I thought you already knew and then you started talking about the wedding all of the sudden and I… and I thought it'd be smarter to let you think it really happened than, you know, talking about this past year in the middle of the street."

"Yeah, well," she begins wryly, taking a languid sip from her coffee. "I didn't. Nobody exactly bothered with letting me know. I'm sure Emily has a valid excuse for forgetting though."

Feeling more than baffled, Toby furrows his eyebrows. Granted, he doesn't see Emily as often as they would like, what with him in Boston and the brunette living in New York but they still talk. Just a couple of weeks ago, they had talked on FaceTime and yet he doesn't recall her saying anything about a shift in her and Spencer's friendship. He doesn't have an explanation for the little driblets of venom – and, he thinks, obvious hurt that she is trying to conceal as best as she can – in Spencer's voice.

"What happened between you guys?"

"Who? Emily and me? Take a wild fucking guess," she replies in the same dry tone from before and once again, Toby feels a violent pull somewhere in his guts and he is transported back to a time past, back to Rosewood, back to hell, where he watches Hanna and Caleb hold hands on the sidewalk across the precinct. He feels his stomach drop, then boil with anger, but just like he had done that night, he shakes it off, shakes his head, swallows it down, down, down. "It doesn't matter anyway. Did you really think that your little lie wouldn't come up eventually?"

"I, um, I didn't think we'd… I didn't think we'd see each other again after last week."

She laughs. It's not genuine. "I forgot how brutally honest you can be."

"Please don't."

"Don't what?"

"You don't get to be mad at me right now, Spence." Spence. He squeezes his eyes shut, sort of wishing he hadn't said that. It seemingly isn't lost on her either; her reply consists of a half-amused snort that is drenched in so much sarcasm that Toby winces. He decides to ignore it and says, "We haven't talked in two years. I'm sorry I lied, okay? I'm sorry I wasn't ready to… we haven't talked in two years."

"Yeah. Already got it the first time. You don't have to say it twice in one sentence."

"I just…"

"You just… what, Toby? Need me to understand that we aren't friends anymore?" she suggests as he trails off helplessly and watches the rest of the sentence slip from his fingers, float in the air. She sounds almost but not quite nonchalant; almost but not quite unbothered. "That we are basically nothing except exes? No, wait, I suppose Yvonne's the ex now. Let me rephrase: you need me to understand that we're nothing but old high school sweethearts now, right?"

He knows what she is doing. She feels hurt by his choice of words, maybe by everything that he has managed to utter aloud. By him setting boundaries she wasn't expecting to find, by him keeping his physical and, more importantly, emotional distance. And now she is on the defensive… on the offensive. It's not unfamiliar: he has met this side of her before. At times in brief sparks behind her eyes when they fought in loud, trembling voices; sometimes in those moments with her family and especially her father that Toby had unwillingly or purposely walked into; sometimes on days where she and Emily were yelling at each other about Alison again. But Toby had never really been on the receiving end of her tornado-like tendencies. Well, until now, it seems. Times do change.

"That's not what I meant. I…" He sighs, rubbing his forehead. "Can we please not fight? We've done a lot of that when… I really don't wanna fight right now."

She exhales, softens. "I don't wanna fight either," she says gently. "It's… I was hurt when you didn't tell me. I know it's irrational but I was really, really hurt when you lied to me, Toby. But what I said is the truth, right? We are nothing." She laughs and he becomes painfully aware of the missing fragments of his heart because her pretty voice is echoing and echoing through the emptiness. He then thinks of Yvonne, thinks of what he had done to her by clinging to something that is gone, by loving and holding onto a memory he had no business getting lost in. He tells his heart to quiet down. "We really are nothing. We're not friends. We aren't anything. And I thought I was fine but I guess, even years later, it's still hard to accept that I'm not the person you talk to about your life anymore."

Toby doesn't know what she wants him to say. He had never been able to name the pestiferous feelings she has put into words but it's not new. He has no idea what he could offer to fix it though, to fix them, not with Yvonne on his mind and the guilt rising in his throat like bile.

"Allow me to make it worse," Spencer says after a few long beats of silence. He can hear her open her car door, presumably exit, and close it again. "Do you wanna have dinner with me?"

Toby, who had been on his way to the kitchen to grab his lunch from the fridge and shove it into his bag, suddenly halts in his steps. "Huh?"

"Dinner, drinks, coffee. Whatever makes it less awkward," she responds in a tone he has a tough time reading. "We've already established that we aren't friends and you also let me know that you were planning on avoiding me forever after last week. But I'm still stubborn and I want us to be friends. I think dinner's a good start for that."

"You want us to have dinner?"

"Yeah? Why are you so surprised? Is it only acceptable if you're the one asking me out?"

"What?"

She sighs. "You promised me dinner two years ago, remember?"

That was before you started dating my friend and I proposed to Yvonne when I really shouldn't have and we all got caught up in some weird, off-beat, five-way tango, he thinks then clears his throat, trying to remind himself that the past is the past and they are not. Not anymore.

Toby hesitates, slipping into his shoes. "Do you really think that's a good idea?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Spencer replies. "It's only dinner."

"I don't know, Spencer. It just sounds like it has the potential to become really complicated."

She says, and of course he can't see her face but he is almost certain that it comes with one of those crooked half-smiles that he used to adore, "Well… we'll deal with that when it happens."

And Toby knows without knowing that he has already lost the battle.

So on the following Sunday, he watches Spencer pour a ridiculous amount of sugar into her mug. They had decided on a small coffee shop in Boston; coffee sounded way less awkward than drinks – alcohol and nostalgia is never a good combination anyway – and way more casual than dinner. Satisfied, Spencer returns the sugar dispenser to the table and begins stirring her coffee – clockwise, then counterclockwise – and takes a small sip. Wrinkling her nose, she immediately shudders in disapproval and reaches for the sugar again.

"No, it was definitely, uh, something," she continues her story as she casually shakes the object in her grasp. "I haven't gotten any sleep in over thirty-six hours because I had no idea that labor would actually take that long – I know, stupid, right? – and, you know, I had no idea that Ezra would actually pass out and leave me alone with Aria and her superhuman strength because that is kind of a bad movie cliché but it was… yeah, it was something."

On his highly entertained look, and with her spoon still sticking out of her mouth, she raises her eyebrows at him. "What?"

"Nothing," he responds. "I was just wondering if you take your coffee with sugar or if you take your sugar with coffee."

She shoots him a mock glare. "First of all: smoker. Second of all: dark-roasted coffee tastes like shit. It's way too bitter. It tastes burnt. I'm never letting you order for me again."

He shrugs. "You used to like dark roasts."

"I did. And then I grew up and found out that dark doesn't equal more caffeine," Spencer replies and shrugs as well. "Anyway, to make a really long story short, I spent my weekend letting Aria basically break all of my fingers. Oh – and watching Ezra name their baby after Wilde."

"Wilde? Oscar Wilde?"

"Yeah. Oscar Fitz. It's kind of an adorable name. Could've been much worse, I suppose," she says, taking another sip from her sugar-and-coffee cocktail. "Aria really, really likes Poe."

Toby laughs at the expression on her face. "Hm. Edgar Allan Fitz. You gotta admit, it kinda has a certain ring to it," he retorts. "Wasn't Poe born in Bahstin too?"

"Bahstin is right," she confirms with a slight smirk. Then she proceeds to lick some sugar off her thumb – he quickly looks away – and reaches for her bag on the floor. "Hang on, I took a few pictures before the nurse told me to leave. I mean, if you want to…?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure. Why not."

It's almost casual and… and normal, the air between them, the conversations they make about topics that don't really matter. TV shows, movies, stories from work and school, the last book that they have read, their favorite restaurants and bars in and around the Boston area, and Toby can't help but wonder if it's glaringly obvious to her too that they are merely dancing around what they actually – and desperately – want to say out loud. Because here's the thing: no matter how much she insists otherwise now, they have never been friends. Friendly, yes. Best friends and lovers, sure. But never just friends. They hadn't been friends before they spent the entire night at some rundown motel and she looked so fucking gorgeous the next morning that Toby finally felt courageous enough to make the first step. And they certainly had never managed to become friends after their disastrous breakup either when the unbearable emotional distance between them suddenly turned into a much greater physical one. It was the miles and miles separating Rosewood from D.C. – and Toby from Spencer and Spencer from Toby – that had helped them believe that this new friend label they were clinging to wasn't just a complete and utter farce. Meanwhile, though, that's all it had been: a meaningless word they stuck to in name and theory only. A well-constructed lie they had to tell each other and then themselves to have false confidence in the fact that they would eventually move on and reach a point where all that was left unsaid and undealt with would melt and grant them a second chance at mending things.

Toby risks a glance in Spencer's direction just as she takes another sip from her coffee and asks himself what else he might have missed out on in those five years they were apart, what else he never got to see, what else is different about her now – does she still have the habit of nervously chewing her pen when she thinks nobody is looking? Does she still fall asleep on her stomach and wake up on her left side? Does she still consume every detailed movie review she can get her hands on because she prefers being spoiled over going in totally unprepared? Toby doesn't know but he doesn't know whether he wants to know either. He had answered her call last week, had agreed to meet for a casual coffee date to catch up and play pretend, had come here despite his guilt and Yvonne glowering at him from afar – and none of that, he thinks as he feels her gaze on him and he has to hastily fake an overzealous interest in a picture of Aria and Oscar, had been a good idea. It's casual and normal, yes, and it's confusing and it's complicated and he is feeling too many emotions at once.

First: the wondrous familiarity in all the unexpected places. It's the tiny and almost trivial things that shake Toby to the core. Her smiles for one, her throaty laughter that hasn't changed in the slightest. The way she talks, articulates herself, throws bits of interesting facts on childbirth and coffee and healthcare at him and succeeds in banishing the awkward quiet that refuses to leave them alone for more than a handful of minutes. Her voice – her voice speaking his name softly, lips barely touching, like it's the most delicate thing she has ever held in her mouth and she is afraid of breaking it in two if she isn't careful enough. That selfless sort of joy surging through his body when she tells him about the life she is building for herself in Worcester and the glimmer of sincere pride in her browns when he talks about his classes and work.

Second: the blazing unfamiliarity in all the expected places. He knows her smiles still, knows he could draw all of them blindfolded and by heart if someone asked him to, but her face looks different now. Not to the point of being utterly unrecognizable but it's a little older here, a little more grown-up there, a little more… mature. The innocence and roundness of childhood left behind and replaced by years of growth, pain and happiness they had once sworn to spend side by side though, of course, life rarely listens to requests. He figures that his face must look about the same, the lights above their heads certainly not doing him any favors and probably making him seem ghostly pale in comparison. Or maybe they are making the dark circles of exhaustion he knows are forever adorning his eyes look worse than they are. Fact is, it's the strangest feeling in the world, sitting next to a person whose cheeks he would once trace under the covers and having to accept all the changes that were brought upon them both.

Third: the semblance of nostalgia or something he mistakes for it. He feels as though there are versions of their past perched on the empty table next to them. Versions of their past that only exist in memories now and don't remotely resemble the people they are today. He is sure that she can feel it too. She avoids bringing up his lie, Yvonne's name or the countless and confusing questions that are probably plaguing her mind and that he knows he will have to give her answers to eventually. It's likely an attempt to respect the boundaries he had set – we're not an us anymore, you don't get to weigh in on my life – he supposes, a well-meant gesture on her end. He appreciates it. Ignoring the failure of his last relationship isn't a hard nor challenging task but turning blind to the memories swirling around the room doesn't come as easy. He had thought that he was fine with moving on despite the missing chapter of their book. And maybe he truly was – for a while. Maybe he really had moved on and learned to live without her just like she had moved on and learned to live without him. But with the memories rushing back one by one – do you still love her? Yvonne asks in his head, over and over and over and over – and taking down walls they had risen to keep the past out, he is starting to lose confidence.

Fourth: the sweet yearning or something he mistakes for it. Part of him is all but paralyzed with fear at the casualness, the nonchalance, the normalcy. Dead scared of how easy it was to slip and end up back here. This isn't the way it was supposed to go, right? It's like she had said. They aren't friends. Strangers, enemies, partners in crime and then lovers and exes – so many words for two lost kids but friends? They aren't friends. They can't be friends for the very same reasons they couldn't be friends two years ago because a friendship would imply that they grew up, overcame the past, the hurdles and the heartbreak. A friendship would imply that the feelings that used to chase him in his dreams and nightmares have disappeared. Is that what happened here? Is that the truth and nothing but the truth?

Do you still love her? Yvonne's voice questions sharply.

And Toby doesn't – he doesn't know.

He heaves out a sigh.

Spencer clears her throat and does the same.

And yet, and yet, and yet… and yet part of him settles, calms at the uncomfortable closeness, at her legs inches away from his under the table. Part of him wants to feel brave and be irrational, impulsive and reckless – wants to extend his hand and grasp hers in… in something, hell, maybe friendship. Part of him is twitching with longing, is lovesick for her or perhaps homesick and another part of him quietly points out that that's the same thing. Part of him wants to catch the past in his embrace, grab the old versions of them that are close-by with words on their lips that neither of them would ever dare whisper now. Part of him wants to rewind, go back and change.

Do you still love her? Yvonne says.

He sighs again and proceeds to take a sip from his coffee.

"So," Spencer speaks up as she inspects her brownie. "I told you all about my weekend and the exciting adventures I had in the maternity ward. How was your weekend, Mr. Architect?"

"Yeah, mine wasn't as exciting," he retorts. "I was at work. Handed in a couple of assignments I had to do. Watched Netflix. Nothing interesting, really."

"No college parties then?"

Completely baffled, he simply stares at her until she tilts up her chin to meet his eyes. He gives her a frown and asks, "What? Since when do I go to parties?"

This time, it's her turn to shrug. "I don't know. There's a lot of stuff that I don't know about you anymore," she says and maybe he is imagining things but her voice is holding a slight pinch of sarcasm as though she too is overwhelmed by all the changes, twists and turns, by everything that managed to remain the same when everything else did not. She tries to recover, sits up straighter in her chair and adds a playful, teasing tone but it doesn't work. He pretends not to notice. "I mean, you say you like being a cop and then you suddenly quit the force and go back to school. You say you like Rosewood and small towns and now you're living in Boston."

A pause follows, a moment of silence, as if it's reserved for the observation she can't yet bring herself to poke him with: you propose to Yvonne and you two decide that you're gonna move to Maine and now you're telling me it didn't work out.

She clears her throat again, swallowing the words she didn't or perhaps couldn't say, seemingly aware that what she did throw out there was a little inappropriate for their current situation too and opts for changing the topic. "And apparently you're a defender of dark roasts."

"They're not as bad as you make them out to be."

"Maybe you like parties now. Maybe New Toby is into dark roasts and partying all night."

"New Toby," he repeats in the same tone and he can't help it; he gives a chuckle. Spencer looks pleased with herself for making him laugh and despite the harsh Boston winter, his heart feels warm. "I'm not. That hasn't changed. Most of the people at school are literal teenagers. Kids. I'm kind of the old guy around there. Old guys don't get invited to college parties unless someone needs booze."

"Oh, come on," she replies, shoe bumping against his. "Twenty-six is not old."

"No, I know. But to a bunch of baby-faced eighteen-year-olds it kinda is," he says, mimicking her actions when she simply bumps her foot against his once more. "And I can't exactly blame them either, you know? Sometimes I really feel like I've already lived through… four of five completely different lives and I'm still not where I thought I would be."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she responds, leaning back against her chair. "I talked about that with Aria a while ago, actually. This isn't how I pictured my life at eighteen either. Kinda funny how things never work out the way you want them to."

Her words – simple, casual and spoken without much thought – are heavy. Much heavier than she had most likely intended them to and she only seems to grasp the full weight, the underlying implications half a beat later when she falls quiet and cautiously peeks up at Toby from under her dark lashes like she is watching for his reaction. Brown meets blue and blue meets brown and then it's an unspoken like us that forcibly creeps between them and pushes them farther apart. When he stays still, however, only nodding his agreement, she breaks off their eye contact and he gapes into his lap. The fact that she could have easily been referencing him and Yvonne, unfortunately, dawns on him too late – much too late and no, he definitely isn't proud of that.

And he has to admit then that it was a good and apparently intentional segue on her end because when he looks up, he finds her staring at him, a barely-there frown on her features as she regards Toby intently. She wonders, voice soft like silk, "Why did you and Yvonne break up?"

He knows he shouldn't be surprised – it was only a matter of time before she would try to bring it up; she is Spencer Hastings, after all – but he still kind of is. "I – is this why you wanted to have coffee together?"

"It's… it's one of the reasons I wanted to have coffee, yes. But not the only reason," she confesses, crossing her arms. "I know you don't owe me shit but-"

"But what? Why do you need to know so badly?" He crosses his arms too. "What's it gonna change?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I don't know yet," she answers. "It just doesn't make any sense to me. You were supposed to get married. Yvonne was supposed to give you everything that… I wanted that for you. And I did my part, okay? You wanted me to stay away from you and I did-"

"I never said that."

"You did. Maybe you didn't use those exact words but when I came to Rosewood, you made it very clear that you wanted me back in D.C. as soon as possible." She snorts. "You didn't even let me know that you and Yvonne were moving. I'm curious, what else was I supposed to gather from that if not 'I want you to stay away from me and never contact me again'?"

"We were both in a relationship at that time," he reminds her.

"Yeah, you were getting engaged, I was getting cheated on." She shrugs nonchalantly and clicks her tongue. "Two very similar things, I agree."

"Point is," he continues. "Do you really think it would've been appropriate for me to give you a call and tell you that we were moving so that you and I could say goodbye to each other?"

Laughing humorlessly, Spencer uncrosses her arms and buries her face in her hands in frustration before running her fingers through her hair. "I don't really care what would've been appropriate," she counters. "All I know is that I feel like I've spent basically half of my life watching you walk away from me without saying goodbye. Like I have some kind of terrible disease. Like loving me was such an enormous burden for you. And you know what helped me survive these past years without getting immensely pissed at you for giving her everything that you refused to give me? The fact that you were happy. That you finally found someone worth sticking around for. Even if that someone wasn't me. And now I find out that went nowhere."

"You know damn well that my taking off had never anything to do with you and everything to do with…" He cuts himself off, sighs, stares into his empty coffee mug. "Everything to do with Jenna and my mom's death and my dad and everything in-between and after."

"And yet you fucking followed Yvonne to an island and you couldn't even follow me to D.C."

He scratches at his neck. "You didn't want me in D.C."

"Oh, is that what we're doing now? Are you gonna project your insecurities on me again?" she questions, raising her eyebrows. "Tell me how I supposedly felt about you being a cop? Accuse me of thinking of you as beneath me? I don't like cops, Toby. I never made a secret out of that. But I didn't want more for myself, okay? I wanted more for you. I always wanted more for you. You deserved way better than being a cop in a town that abused you and mistreated you and-"

"Yes, and it was my choice, Spencer," he interrupts her. "I wanted to be a cop because I thought it was enough for me. It took me a while to realize that I was wrong but back then it was what I wanted to do with my life. And I never understood why you didn't get that."

"I don't know. Because I thought the sun was shining out of your ass?" she suggests with a grin that isn't really a grin. "Because I thought you deserved better than Rosewood and a stupid job you only took because of me? Because in the back of my mind, I was always so sure that you deserved better than a girl like… a girl like me? And I was right about that, wasn't I?"

His eyes drop into his lap once more, unable to handle the pain in his chest, and he knows – he knows he shouldn't, knows he ought to keep quiet now or he will make it worse but he says, quietly and hesitantly, "You know I loved you more than anything I've ever loved, right?"

She keeps silent for a beat and he glances up just in time to see her wipe away a single stubborn tear that has managed to escape. She snorts again like his confession comes a little too late and he thinks that it probably does. "I didn't. And it doesn't matter now. I mean, what was the highlight of our relationship anyway? When I cheated on you or when you broke my heart in my parents' kitchen?"

"It wasn't always bad," Toby mutters.

Spencer sighs. "No, it wasn't," she agrees, sending him a sad and tiny smile and just as casually sending the panicky birds inside his chest fluttering up his throat. "But you still left."

"Yeah. And you left months before I finally did."

"What does that mean?"

"It means exactly what I said," he responds softly. "I'm not… I swear I'm not trying to shift the blame on you or anything. I know fucked up plenty and made a lot of stupid mistakes that could've easily been avoided but you just… you started shutting me out. Completely. We used to talk daily right after you moved to D.C. and then the last couple of months before we broke up, I was lucky if you actually remembered to text me once a week. And all we ever did when I came over was… well…"

"Fuck. I know," she adds when he trails off. "Look, I wasn't… I wasn't doing well. The whole thing with Charlotte was still very much a part of me. I felt kinda lost. It wasn't you."

"I know," he says and nods. "I mean, I know that now and I'm sorry that it took me so long to realize that you were hurting. Back then I… I couldn't see that at all and I assumed that you got tired of me. I was convinced that you wanted more than your stupid cop boyfriend and you had no idea how to break up with me. I guess the, uh, false alarm happened at the right time 'cuz it gave me an explanation for something I didn't understand. Well, that and my own insecurities."

"So that's what happened?" Spencer laughs and it both sounds and looks more genuine now, like she is seriously entertained by the whole stupidity of the situation. "I was suffering from Charlotte-related PTSD and didn't know. You thought I was being weird and distant 'cuz I didn't wanna be with you anymore. And meanwhile I thought you were being weird and distant 'cuz you finally came to the realization that you deserved better than me?"

He grimaces. "I guess."

"Wow. Classic us," she remarks. "We really sucked at talking things out. Or talking, period."

"I guess but…" Trailing off, he first leans away slightly, creates some more room between them in preparation for what he is about to say. It feels as though he is carelessly putting his heart on a silver platter, puking it up and throwing it on the wooden table, right in front of her, and he is afraid of what she will see, of what she might do, of what she might think. He says, "But loving you never felt like a burden to me. Sometimes I feel like loving you is the only right – the only good thing I've done. Because it was the first time I truly felt free."

Spencer quiets, gazes at him, and the other versions of them, the versions of their past that are seated at the table to their right are looking at him too and Toby, he can't – he can't see straight, can't think straight, can't focus on anything but her browns on him, glued to his every word, can't feel anything but her nails digging and digging and digging into his poor broken heart on the table between them.

"You know what's funny?" she asks after a couple of beats, her fingers slipping deep into the useless thing on the table. "Caleb cheated on me."

"That's not funny."

She chuckles – hands squeezing, ripping, pushing – and rolls her eyes. "Caleb cheated on me and that hurt. It really, really hurt. But nothing and no one has ever hurt me like you did when you left my dorm room that day."

"I'm sorry."

"I know. Me too." She sniffles – hands poking, cutting, pulling apart – and gently wipes under her dry eyes. "But that wasn't even the funny part. No one has ever wrecked me like you did, Toby. But no one has ever managed to make me as happy either. And we've been broken up for five years. Isn't that kinda fucked up?"

Do you still love her? Yvonne's voice speaks loudly in his memory.

"Do you… do you think we could've made it?" he wonders even though he knows full well he shouldn't. "Do you think, you know, if I'd been more understanding and you hadn't isolated yourself completely and we actually talked it out, do you think we could've made it?"

"I have no idea," she answers, the tiniest of smiles curling her lips. "I always tell myself that it wouldn't have made a difference. Makes it easier to accept. But who knows, maybe we would have. Maybe there's a parallel universe somewhere where we survived and we're… I don't know, married now? Engaged? Or maybe just living together… on the Bahamas."

Toby grins, confused. "The Bahamas?"

"Why not? It's definitely warmer than Boston." She shrugs, then grows somber again. "But our reality is this one and the reality is that we didn't make it. And it doesn't matter if I wish it were different because it's not."

"It is what it is, right?"

"Yeah… it is what it is." She half-smirks as she squashes the remaining crumbs of her brownie with her fork and squashes the remaining crumbs of his heart too. "But this reality isn't awful either. We might suck at talking when we should but we're good at defying odds. Did you know that the odds of us randomly bumping into each other again were basically zero?"

"Really?"

"Really," Spencer echoes. Then she puts her fork aside, crosses her arms on the table and leans in a bit closer. "Look, this whole thing here, it isn't how I imagined out coffee date to go, to be honest, but I meant what I said on the phone. I do wanna be friends. I know it didn't work out the first time but… I want us to try. Maybe we can defy odds again. Unless you still want me to stay away then-"

"No, it's…" Toby interrupts her and it's as though all his stupid instincts are working on their own, working against him, as they swiftly come back to life under her sudden proximity because there he is all of the sudden, one hand on top of hers, her soft skin brushing against his palm. She doesn't recoil, just glances down for a split second before her eyes come back up to meet his. "I don't want you to stay away. But I still mean what I said on the phone too. This friendship thing just sounds like it has the potential to become really, really complicated."

Do you still love her? Yvonne speaks up inside his head again.

"Well, there's no harm in trying," Spencer says and pulls up her shoulders.

Do you still love her?

"I guess there isn't," Toby answers. "I just…"

Do you still love her?

Spencer gives him a look. "You just what?"

Do you still love her?

Toby decides to shake the thought out of his head, feigns a smile she luckily doesn't catch and then adds, "I just don't know if I can be friends with someone who puts that much sugar into their coffee. That's disgusting. No offense."

Do you still love her?

"Uh, some taken?" Spencer shoots back, shoving his hand off playfully. "You drink your coffee with milk. Not cream. Just milk. Are you really in a position to judge me?"

Do you still love her?

He raises his brows. "What are you talking about? You do the same thing?"

Do you still love her?

"Crap. I didn't think you'd remember that."

Do you still love her?

Spencer laughs loudly, half-embarrassed at having been caught in a stupid little lie and half-amused too. She throws her head back into her neck and it's one of those throaty laughs that rumble like thunder on a summers night, that vibrate through him like music.

Toby watches her then, watches her laugh, snort and giggle with a smile that starts fading away the longer he stares at her, and the sun rises in his stomach, fills him with warmth, safety, relief.

He watches her then, blinded by her light, forced to look away in awe, in shame, in both.

He watches her then and for the first time in weeks, months, years, all his ghosts and demons fall quiet.

---

It's one of those days.

And not just for her, apparently.

"… and the worst part about being a parent is that you think it's gonna be easy, you know? It's like, he's just a baby. How much mess could a baby make? You think you're gonna rock a cute, messy bun every day and wear oversized sweatshirts and leggings like all the cool moms on Instagram without even remembering the existence of baby puke," Aria mutters while Spencer gazes down at her phone, only half-listening. The corner of her mouth automatically twitches into a crooked smile as she takes in the name that has just flashed up with a new notification.

"Yeah," Spencer says, thumb sliding across the screen to open the message which immediately greets her with Toby's text. Panphlers, he has written. Just panphlers and nothing else.

She furrows her eyebrows in confusion and scrolls up to check what she had sent him some ten or twenty minutes prior. Yeah, I spent the better hal fof the day yelling at graphic design interns for screwing up our oirder – they said they'd fix it but now I have about 600 panphlers about *STICKLE* cell disease sitting in my office so that's fun. And then when I left boton I ended up getting a fucknin speeding ticket. For the second time this month, BTW.

Spencer rolls her eyes, smiles, and types: Really? Out of all the numerous embarrassing typos I made, you chose to go with 'panphlers'? Personally, I would've picked 'boton' or 'fucknin.'

"And then you come home from the hospital and two months later, it's like, wow, sorry, what is your return policy again?" Aria continues. In the background, Spencer can hear what she presumes is the dishwasher and she pictures her friend leaning against the kitchen counter and rubbing her exhausted eyes wearily. "Would it be okay if I let him stay here until he learns how to talk and I actually understand what's bothering him so that I don't have to start crying almost every time he does?"

Spencer places her phone on her thighs, eyeing it expectantly, and leans over to the passenger seat to grab the rest of her belongings. "Please don't take this the wrong way," she says, stuffing her wallet, half-empty pack of cigarettes and manila folders into her bag, "but I was under the impression that raising a baby is something couples do, you know, together? Where's Ezra?"

Aria pffts, annoyed. "He is…" she begins, trailing off with a sigh. "He's a good dad. He really is. It's just – and I know this is unfair – but he gets all the fun and rewarding and beautiful parts of being a parent while I got a perineal tear, nipples that hurt like a bitch and hormones. He makes Oscar smile and can calm him down within minutes and whenever I leave the house for a bit, Oscar sleeps through it and lets Ezra work. Meanwhile, when Mommy wants a moment of peace, Oscar decides that she's not getting one. I'm just kinda sick of Ezra right now."

Wrapping her scarf around her neck carefully so as to not take off her headphones by accident, the other woman snorts. "You're sick of Ezra? I never thought I'd hear you say that."

"I never thought I'd say that either," Aria responds gloomily, heaving another sigh. "Everyone's a big fat liar. Having a baby is not fun. I love Oscar but, you know, if I could go back in time, I don't think I'd willingly get pregnant again."

Spencer throws her gloves into her bag and proceeds to down the rest of the coffee in her red Thermos bottle – which turns out to be an especially bad decision because it's not from earlier that morning like she had thoughtlessly assumed but from a few days ago. Murphy's fucking law, huh? She pulls a disgusted face, somehow keeping her urge to violently retch at bay, and glances down at her phone. Toby has texted her back. It reads: Maybe but getting panphlers out of pamphlets is hilarious. Were you texting and driving? That's kinda dangerous, y'know.

She smirks against her will and replies: Yeah, *you* would know. Nope, I was at a red light, actually. Doesn't count as texting and driving. How's your day going, Mr. Future Architect?

"Wow. That sounded horrible, didn't it?" Aria asks.

Shaking her head to get her mind off Toby and back into the conversation, Spencer locks her phone and puts it into the pocket of her coat before finally exiting the car and starting to head towards her apartment building. "Uh, maybe a little?" she admits with a shrug. "I'm not judging you though. You're raising a baby. You're superhero in my book. Seriously, complain away."

Aria appears to contemplate that for a moment and says, "Nah. I'm done for today. All I wanna do right now is drink my tea and enjoy what little time I got left until the dragon rises again."

The other brunette hums, amused, gets her mail and walks upstairs to her apartment. "How can someone be so damn cute and yet so damn evil at the same time?"

"I keep asking myself the same thing nearly every day," Aria deadpans, blowing short blasts of air into her tea and then taking a loud sip. "Did you talk to your mom, by the way?"

"About what? Christmas?" Spencer questions as she closes the door. "Yeah, I did. She wasn't too happy about it."

"Well, hopefully she'll come around and understand that you're not coming to her party because you can't leave me alone with Ezra's pretentious writer friends and my mother-in-law from hell who might or might not be the Antichrist."

"Wait, the Fitzgeralds are coming?"

"Uh-huh," Aria makes, sounding less than thrilled. "My family too. Mike is apparently bringing his girlfriend who is… I stalked her on Instagram and she seems better than Mona but…"

Spencer looks at her phone again. Toby (2) New iMessage. "But everyone's better than Mona?"

"You said it, not me," Aria remarks. "By the way, feel free to bring a plus one as well."

"Yeah, no, I don't have a plus one," Spencer retorts distractedly as she opens the new messages. In their ongoing conversation, Toby has written: Boring. Just studying for my finals next week. The second text is a moving picture of a baby giraffe struggling to stand on its legs and then gracefully landing on its behind. Spencer can't help it; she gives a little laugh.

"What?"

She blinks. "What do you mean what?"

"What are you laughing at?" Aria asks.

Spencer can feel her eyes widen as though her friend has caught her doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing and that thought alone is ridiculous, right? It's just a text; a perfectly innocent text and a more than innocent gif of a fucking baby giraffe. There isn't anything to hide. And yet her first – and only – instinct is to respond with a blatant lie. "Oh. No, it's nothing. I just got a text from, uh, a coworker. Sorry."

There is a definite smirk in Aria's tone when she lets that sit for a couple of beats and then wonders, "Hmmm… a coworker or a coworker?"

"You're not making any sense, Mommy."

"I absolutely am. See, a coworker is someone you work with," Aria explains, "while a coworker is someone you work with and wanna invite into your sheets."

"Yeah, right, because, as we all know, sleeping with my coworkers in the past has always turned out really great for me." Plopping down on the sofa and ignoring her phone for now, Spencer stretches and puts her legs on the coffee table. "Let it go, Midget. It's a friend. Am I not allowed to have friends anymore? I told you I'm not dating."

"You just giggled."

"He sent me a funny gif. I laughed. What's the big deal?"

"You giggled."

Spencer groans loudly, rolling her eyes. "You're way too tiny to be this annoying."

"I'm sorry but I don't have a sex life right now or even a personal one and I love living through you, your awful dating choices and sexcapades," Aria responds, followed by an audible shrug.

Spencer, meanwhile, purses her lips in annoyance. "Sexcapades? Really? That's all you could come up with? As an author? How did you make it into the New York Times again?"

"I need this for the sake of my sanity, okay? My life right now is basically nothing but breast pumps and dirty diapers," Aria says. "You should ask your alleged 'friend' to be your plus one."

"Could you please stop trying to constantly pimp me out?"

"I'm not 'pimping you out'."

"Uh, you hit on a guy for me, like, three weeks ago?" Spencer reminds her as she massages the bridge of her nose. "And just so you know, it was humiliating."

"Yeah and I still don't get what your problem is. He was good-looking," Aria replies as Spencer bites her cheek in order not to say something insensitive and downright mean. "Anyway, I gotta go now. Oscar's up. We're not done here though, Hastings. I'll call you back later and we'll talk, okay?"

"No, we're so done here, Fitz," Spencer replies slowly. "There is nothing to talk about."

And there isn't, is there? She is doing okay. For the first time in a while, she is doing okay. Not perfect by any means, no, and her life is still messy in a lot of ways – she smokes too much and doesn't call her parents as often as she should; she usually ignores Melissa's texts for days until she can finally bring herself to respond and buys books she doesn't look at because she would rather reread the same few novels for the umpteenth time; sometimes, she orders food just because she wants to take a picture for Instagram and sometimes, she wistfully stares at the lonely bottle of whiskey she is hiding in her cupboard although she doesn't exactly know who she is hiding it from – but it's hers. It's her incredibly messy life and she is okay now; she is growing and healing from self-inflicted wounds and her continuous stream of consciousness has stopped flowing into rivers of denial and that, she concludes with a small nod, must be a sign of successful recovery. Because recovery is this: exorcising Charlotte from her veins and thoughts, cutting the rope the other woman had firmly placed around Spencer's neck, burning down Rosewood's negative imprinted into her memory, banning Hanna from ever awakening a sense of bitterness inside her again, turning bargaining into depression into acceptance into comfort into happiness, and mending broken relationships and hearts, and…

…and yeah, who the hell is she kidding, anyway. Spencer gazes at Toby's name on her display again as she tosses her headphones onto the coffee table. She is doing fine but, honestly, she doesn't know if rebuilding a friendship with her ex-boyfriend truly is a necessary step in the unofficial handbook of recovery, especially because said ex-boyfriend is still such an integral part of the life – and person – she is more than ready to leave behind. But what she does know now is that there are two things that haven't changed a bit since they were only kids. Two things that have stayed exactly the same, no matter everything else that did not. Two things that, once her eyes finally open and she sees and realizes, jerk her back to a different time. A time before the world had cut her skin and he tended to her scratches and wounds, took out a paintbrush, painted a thousand suns and smiles on her mouth and left laugh lines across her cheeks. A time before Rosewood had bared its teeth and swallowed him whole, engulfing him in darkness, and then spat him back out like rotten pieces of meat and she halted, picking him up in her palms, filling his heart with so much love that it destroyed him completely.

One. His voice still slips into a gentle mumble, like warm honey with milk, when he speaks to her. A few driblets of the same bright grins she can easily reconstruct inside her head but hasn't been able to locate on his features so far. A spoonful of timidity, a stark contrast to his explosive impulsiveness she knows too well. A dose if incredibly quiet softness that reminds her of the way he would touch her face beneath the covers, fingertips, thumbs, sparkling eyes and all.

Two. She has no idea if it's love. Whether it qualifies as love. Any kind of love, really. They are older now and there are one too many years between the people they used to be – shedding the same hot tears and stifling their despair in kisses; sharing the same joyful giggles and then going on to celebrate their happiness with love – and the people time has molded them into – he has her number saved on his phone again and she never once deleted his off hers but truth be told, and the truth isn't pretty, they don't actually talk that much. Occasional small talk like today, a couple of mundane texts about everything and then nothing, so many slow-dances around topics that could make stuff between them unnecessarily complicated like he had feared. She has no idea if it's love or affection or respect or – more likely – nostalgia. But what she does know and what has remained unchanged is her heart calling out for him. Still.

And it's – it's really fucking stupid, that's what it is, she thinks, rolling her eyes and lighting a well-deserved cigarette as she googles cute animal gifs to reply and cheer him up with while he is studying for finals. This wasn't how their friendship thing was supposed to go. The only thing that was supposed to happen was her receiving answers to questions that would once keep her up at night and closure that she had long ago learned to live without and not – not you know I loved you more than anything I've ever loved, right? and do you think we could've made it? and sometimes I feel like loving you is the only good thing I've done. Regardless, and stubborn as hell, she twists her lips to the side in indecision and proceeds to send him a picture of a puppy falling asleep on a stack of heavy looking books. Is that what you look like right now? she types.

It will pass, she decides and blows out the smoke from her cigarette. Everything passes, nothing is permanent. It's been five years and what was that popular myth again? Something about cells in the human body regenerating every seven years. She knows that it's a misconception, total bullshit that someone made up, probably for literary purposes. But there is no harm in believing in it, right? No harm at all in clinging to the belief that in two years, her heart will have forgotten what loving Toby felt like. Two lousy years and her body won't even know what it's like to be touched by him in places where Tinder dates go to die. Humming and holding her cigarette between her fingers, she stares down at their conversation again, mesmerized by the speech bubble, the three little dots that go on and on, like he is innocently typing away on his phone way too slow or writing her a goddamn short novel. Either way, it makes her nervous; she starts playing with her necklace, irritated, until his message finally pops up: I wish.

Then: Have you eaten yet?

"Oh, come on. Are you kidding?" she mumbles. "That is so not what you were writing."

A sudden, small and nearly anxious knock at her apartment door is what then manages to yank Spencer out of her thoughts and forcefully shoves her back into this reality. For a second, she is all but convinced that it has to be Toby and that's why it took him so long to respond but of course, it's one of those days and Murphy's law is still kicking her ass. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, right? And it does.

It absolutely does.

Spencer furrows her eyebrows, standing still and quiet and tall, until she hisses the first thing that comes to her mind, "Did Aria give you my address?"

Raising her head somewhat to gaze up at her frie… to gaze up at Spencer with those incredibly sad blue eyes of hers, Hanna's lips curl into a tiny half-grin that is part bittersweet nostalgia and part bittersweet relief too as though she had been scared that the other woman would slam the door shut upon seeing the blonde again. Spencer sort of wishes she would have done just that.

"Aria? No, she doesn't even know I'm here," Hanna answers, gripping her bag so firmly that her knuckles turn white. Spencer pretends not to notice the tension radiating off her. "I figured out where you work from your Instagram and Snapchat and – okay, I know this is gonna sound creepy but I kinda, um, waited outside the graphic design thing and then followed you home when you left? You drive like a total spaz, by the way. I almost lost you, like, twice. No wonder you got a ticket."

Speechless for once, Spencer simply gapes at the woman before her, mouth hanging wide open with a frown, and then she asks, "I'm sorry but have you been hanging out with Mona again?"

"Actually, I have," Hanna says. "Can I please come in?"

Spencer heaves out a sigh, then steps aside to let her in with a wave. "Yeah… I guess…"

It's hell. Having Hanna come to the one place she had spent weeks crafting, the one place she had built far away from her like a nest, the one place she had declared sacred and free from any memento of their friendship that the blonde had single handedly destroyed, it's hell. She hates it. She hates that Hanna is casually sitting down on her sofa now and still looking around with obvious curiosity, taking in Spencer's modest but homey living room and all those hand-picked decorations she had ordered online or fallen in love with at the vintage markets Aria takes her to on the weekends. She hates that Hanna is wearing her boots on her rug that cost her mother half a fortune and she hates that Hanna doesn't know that Spencer would have preferred if she asked to keep her shoes on before recklessly waltzing in. She hates that she didn't get rid of that one stupid photograph showing the girls and her, fourteen at best, at a slumber party, childishly happy and untouched by life for the most part, and she hates that it's in plain view so that Hanna can see and probably draw conclusions that are blatantly untrue. She hates that she recognizes Hanna's perfume and she hates that she still remembers Hanna's 17th birthday, the day Spencer had bought it for her and Hanna decided it would be her new signature scent. And she hates that the blonde is oblivious to all of it.

"And to what do I owe this honor?"

"Huh?"

Spencer sighs. "Why are you here, Hanna?"

"I was in the neighborhood?" Hanna suggests, pulling up her shoulders sheepishly.

"You literally just said that you were stalking me," Spencer replies. "And you live in Rochester."

"Can you sit down, please? It's making me nervous," Hanna says and pats the empty spot next to her and yeah, Spencer really hates that too. "I just… I came here to talk."

Spencer doesn't move an inch. "So talk then."

"This would be easier if you sat down, y'know."

"I'm fine, thank you."

But instead of speaking up, Hanna finally spots the framed photograph of a time before Caleb and Charlotte in the shelf next to Spencer's TV. Her eye immediately grow soft then, no doubt to prepare for some long, boring speech about how innocent they were and how they all swore to be best friends forever and how that had gone nowhere, hadn't it; how she misses those times and isn't it really and awfully sad how it didn't work out, especially because Aria just gave birth and we all wanted to be there for each other's kid when we were young?

"I don't know why you're here, Hanna," Spencer begins before the blonde can say something she isn't the least interested in hearing, "but I just came home from work, I'm hungry, I wanna take a bath and watch a few Black Mirror episodes before I go to sleep and I don't have time-"

"Caleb proposed to me."

There enters an endless moment of silence, then two, and then Spencer starts laughing with her tongue pushed against the inside of her cheek. "Seriously? That's why you came all the way here? To rub that in my face? Congratulations. I don't give a shit."

"No, I…" Hanna blows an annoyed raspberry. "I said no, okay?"

Spencer raises an eyebrow, surprised, but says, "Again: I don't care. I hope whatever you choose to do makes you happy but I really don't care about anything that has to do with you or Caleb."

And there it is, the infamous Hanna Marin anger, because the blonde merely glowers at Spencer, crosses her arms over her chest as well and then spits with so much snappiness that the brunette all but flinches on instinct, "Could you, like, actually let me finish what I'm trying to say before you go all… before you go all Spencer on me?"

"Excuse you?"

Hanna exhales. "Do you have anything to drink?" she asks. "Like, alcohol? Something strong?"

Scowling, Spencer walks to the kitchen and comes back with the whiskey bottle that has been living inside her cupboard. "I don't drink anymore," she makes sure to comment, puts it on the coffee table in front of Hanna and returns to her previous spot by the door.

Hanna eyes the whiskey warily. "It's open though."

Now exasperated as hell, Spencer throws her hands up. "I swear to god-"

"All right, all right. Geez." The blonde takes a small gulp from the bottle – while giving a just as small grimace – glances in Spencer's direction hesitantly as if she is contemplating whether it would be smart to offer her a sip as well, then apparently decides against it and says, more to herself and the wall across from her than to the brunette, "Don't you wanna ask why I said no?"

So that's what they're doing, Spencer realizes. It's a game, a shitty play, and their conversation so far isn't at all going like Hanna had planned it would. She shoves aside her pride, her – she likes to think – rightful anger, disappointment and hurt; squares her shoulders, bites her tongue and stares. "I guess. Why did you say no?"

"Because of you."

"Because of-" Spencer cuts herself off, pinches the bridge of her nose. "Okay. Fine. Because of me. I apologize. What did allegedly I do? We haven't really talked since we left Rosewood."

"That's not what I meant. It's – doesn't it make you, like, really sad? That we're like this now? I mean, Aria just had a freaking baby." Spencer rolls her eyes. Of course. "And we had to make sure that we wouldn't go see her at the same time 'cuz there's, like, so much unresolved crap between us now that we can't even stand to be in the same room together. Doesn't that fucking suck? Isn't that really…"

"Sad?" Spencer offers wryly.

"Yeah, exactly," Hanna agrees, either completely missing the other woman's sarcastic tone or intentionally ignoring it, she doesn't know. "And then when Caleb proposed to me last week, I couldn't stop thinking about us. About you. I remembered when we were kids like on that stupid picture and how we'd talk for hours about our weddings and I thought, Spencer's never gonna come to my wedding. She'll never be my bridesmaid. She'll never be my kids' godmother."

"You're talking about me like I'm dead."

"Well, you might as well be. In my life, at least," Hanna says. "But I guess that's kinda my fault too so I'm, like, more than ready to take responsibility for that."

Are you really? Spencer wants to ask – she can practically feel the words creeping up her throat one by one. Because so far, I've heard a bunch of 'woe is me!'s and not a single genuine apology.

She quickly bites the inside of her cheek – hard – in order to keep it down before it can spill over and ruin Hanna's script and instead says, "I don't know where you're going with this. Did you come here because you wanted my blessing? 'Cuz you can have it. I don't care."

"I didn't come for your blessing." Hanna pffts. "I came for your forgiveness."

Spencer can feel her eyebrows curve in disbelief and pull at her eyes as she lets that sink in for a second. "My forgiveness?"

"Yeah?" Hanna counters. "What's with the face? I mean, we've both done stuff-"

"This isn't kindergarten, Hanna," Spencer interrupts her, shaking her head. "You don't have to share everything, including the blame, with me. This is on you. Literally just on you."

"Okay, I know that you're pissed at me and that's fine and we don't have to, like, compare stuff to see who's worse but… you dated my ex-boyfriend." The blonde shrugs. "Like, I know what I did looks really, really bad right next to yours but you dated my ex-boyfriend."

Oh, that's rich.

"I did." Truthfully, she is sort of taken aback by it all; by her own calm, by the icy steadiness of her voice. So she goes to grab her Lucky Strikes off the coffee table, lights yet another one and inhales the smoke like much needed oxygen to fuel the fire inside her. "I did. And you know what else I did? I asked before I let anything happen and you told me to go for it. Do you remember that too or do you only remember corny stories when they personally benefit you?"

Blue eyes follow her every movement as Spencer walks up and down the living room; blue eyes narrowed in equal parts fury, confusion, distress. "What was I supposed to say? I was freaking engaged. I tried to be mature about it. You should've known that it was bothering me."

"Well, you should've used your mouth to talk to me," Spencer shoots back with a snort. "I can't read minds, okay? I'm sorry for assuming that you were fine with it because you said that you were fine with. Normal people don't pull some weird I-mean-no-when-I-say-yes crap."

"We were friends. You should've known that I was hurting," Hanna replies. "Are you seriously trying to tell me that you would've been fine if our roles were reversed and I'd dated Toby?"

"Honestly? No, I probably wouldn't have." Shaking her head again, Spencer halts in her steps and stares at the other woman. The other woman who might as well be a stranger. "But you know what? I would've sucked it up and tried to be happy for you anyway. And I wasn't even expecting that from you, Hanna – you could've said something, anything, and I would've ended it straight away. But you didn't. And now that's suddenly my fault?"

"You're being so fucking unfair to me right now. The only reason I didn't say anything is 'cuz I was trying to be happy for you, okay? It didn't work but I tried," Hanna shouts, jumping to her feet and frantically clutching her handbag like some sort of weapon. "I'm sorry I slipped up and kissed him when I thought I was, like, gonna die any minute."

"One kiss is not the point. I could've easily survived one stupid kiss. Going behind my back for weeks on the other hand-"

"What are you implying? We didn't even do anything after that!"

Spencer turns abruptly, giving her a look. "You seriously don't get it, do you? You went behind my back for weeks. You met up and had your emotional talks for weeks. You purposely kept it from me for weeks. And when I finally pieced it together, you basically told me that I should've seen it coming from a mile away 'cuz you never really stopped loving him or some bullshit."

"But that was the truth," Hanna throws into her face, her hard gaze softening all of the sudden as if she is now pleading for the brunette to have mercy. "I'm sorry that you were, like, collateral damage in this but I never stopped loving him. Not even for a day. And I'm sorry that you don't understand what it feels like to watch someone you're in love with be happy with someone that isn't you but I'm not gonna apologize for my feelings."

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Spencer briefly lets her widened browns wander to her phone lying on the coffee table still, regains composure fast and meets Hanna's eyes once more, chin held high. "I never expected you to apologize for your feelings."

"Just for my actions, right?" Hanna questions, frowning. "But I don't regret what I did. I really tried to and I really tried to make myself feel bad about it but I just… I just don't? I don't know what you want me to say here."

"And I still don't know why you came here," Spencer says. "You want my forgiveness – for what, exactly? You don't even think you did anything wrong."

But Hanna doesn't reply. She heaves out a breath, looking nearly pained, spins around to slowly walk towards the shelf where she begins inspecting the photograph from up close. She picks up the frame, stares down at five girls that don't exist anymore. Watching the back of the blonde's head, Spencer feels uneasy, now confirmed in her initial suspicion; this visit was never about her, was it?

"I miss you," Hanna then admits, her voice barely above a whisper, eyes stuck to the picture in her hands. "I miss talking to you. I miss calling you. I miss hanging out with you. I miss seeing you. I miss how things used to be. Is that so wrong?"

Spencer first put out her cigarette, then puts out the fire inside her. "You can't miss me. You don't know me. Not like that."

"So please give me a chance to get to know you again," Hanna begs Picture Spencer or perhaps Picture Hanna or maybe both and the other three as well. "I don't – I don't feel comfortable accepting Caleb's proposal after everything that happened between you and me. I can't just say yes to him and be, like, perfectly fine with you not being there for my wedding. I can't… I don't wanna have to choose between you and him. Please don't make me."

And Spencer, she wishes she could say that she is surprised by her words but she isn't, not even in the slightest, because that's what this whole thing was about, right from the very beginning; the five-hour road trip from New York State to Massachusetts, the carefully laid out screenplay and the necessary dramatics with the whiskey bottle and the photograph to awaken guilt and a sense of longing for times they had both chosen to knock down. All of this, Spencer thinks with a frown creasing her forehead and she doesn't know why it makes her so utterly, horribly upset on the inside, it was never meant to be about her or a non-apology she won't ever get. This was always meant to be about Hanna – about her feelings, about her urgent desire to move on and be happy with Caleb without her subconscious reminding her of her old friend, about how she desperately wants, no, needs to be forgiven.

That is all that Spencer is right now: a mere stepping stone in Hanna's road to joy, reduced to a side character. She silently asks herself whether Hanna has always been like this, unable and unwilling to fully grasp Spencer's inner world, unable and unwilling to fully grasp the gravity of her actions. Then she pauses for a beat and silently asks herself whether she really wants to know the answer.

"Okay," Spencer says.

"Okay what?"

"I forgive you. Whatever," she clarifies nonchalantly as she wipes the cigarette ash stains from her dark pants. "You can have my forgiveness if it's so important to you. Go home. Accept this proposal and then, I don't know, invite me to the wedding when it happens. I'll be there."

A smile tugs at the corner of Hanna's mouth. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. Water under the bridge," Spencer says, returning the blonde's smile and waving her hand. "It's been, what, two years now? I'm kinda scared I'm eventually gonna turn into Melissa if I keep holding onto my grudges the way I've been doing lately."

"And you're, like, absolutely sure?"

"Hanna," Spencer groans. "Please just take it or I'll change my mind and you can come asking for my forgiveness again next week because I didn't forgive you for not taking my forgiveness."

"Okay, I literally couldn't follow anything you just said but-" Promptly rushing over to the other woman, Hanna throws her arms around her neck without warning, squeezes tight, and Spencer's eyelids flutter shut and she draws in a shuddering, faltering gasp, breathes her in, breathes in the people she wishes they still were but knows they aren't, exhales against the blonde's shoulder, against her comfort, against her happiness. Hanna doesn't let go of her, holds her in her arms and whispers, "Thank you. So much."

And Spencer – Spencer thinks: now that's what I call dramatic irony.

---

Toby doesn't like Christmas parties.

Christmas as a whole had entirely lost its meaning with his mom's passing and his dad's reckless decision to move Tammy and Jenna into their home. Each year after his mom's death had then merely functioned as another silent but glaring reminder of who his heart was so urgently and desperately yearning for, of who his father had so easily replaced. In some ways, Toby muses, Jenna and her mother are scarily alike; they both simple take whatever they feel entitled to. Jenna had entered their lives and taken Toby, treated him like her own personal doll, her most prized possession that she could use and abuse whenever she felt like it, and Tammy had one day casually taken over the seat at the end of the Cavanaugh table that belonged to Toby's mom. It had remained empty until that point – out of respect to her memory, out of habit, out of mere functionality or maybe out of the selfish desire on Tammy's part to erase and destroy any residual trace of Marion Cavanaugh's existence. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. Whatever her inner motivation truly was, the chair had stayed empty until that Christmas morning where Tammy sat down and smiled at her little fucked-up family as though she was just waiting for someone to speak up and question what the hell she was doing. And in many ways, Toby now adds with a grimace, he is a lot like his father too because they had both kept their mouths shut like the cowards they are, neither of them daring to tell Tammy to go back to her usual seat and leave his mom's alone. Of course, it was power play, an act of cruel symbolism that Toby knew very well from her daughter and that had quickly been followed by action. When Toby returned from juvie, he was only half-surprised but completely heartbroken nevertheless to find that she had gotten rid of most of his mom's belongings, stuffing them into the attic or banishing them to the basement where she wouldn't have to see them anymore. The worst part – the part that stung the most when it really shouldn't have because his dad is his dad and nothing about his reaction should have come as a shock – was his father being fine with it. He had called it necessary and moving on, oblivious to the message Tammy was trying to send to Toby: your mother is dead and this is my home now. You better be grateful that I'm still tolerating you.

Christmases before had been hard but Christmases after that were pure hell.

Celebrating with Yvonne and her family, on the other hand, had been different than anything he was used to from his dad and Tammy; intimate, warm and friendly. She has a big family that she is close to and that had always welcomed Toby with open arms. But even at the happiest point of their relationship, even before old feelings drove from D.C. to Rosewood and even before doubts begun crowding his head, Toby would often sit among smiling faces – among smoking uncles and tipsy aunts, among Yvonne's brother talking economics and her sisters sitting in the corner and making fun of him, among dancing cousins taking pictures of giggling baby nephews and nieces, among her grandparents debating politics, among her mother gently forcing Toby to finish his plate and her father telling jokes before bursting into laughter – and feel incredibly lonely. Like an outsider lucky enough to be allowed to gaze in. It hadn't been their fault, of course, and he had never managed to get over himself and tell Yvonne how uncomfortable it made him out of fear of hurting her (was there ever anything he did feel brave enough to tell her?) but crowded parties just aren't his favorite place to be and Christmas stopped being fun the minute his mom died and he was left in a cold and empty home with his cold and empty father.

Toby doesn't like crowded parties, he doesn't like Christmas and he really doesn't like crowded Christmas parties and yes, he is aware how absurd and contradictory that sounds, given the fact that he is currently sat in Ezra and Aria's living room on the evening of December 20th. To be completely truthful, he has no idea what he is doing here either. He knows how he ended up in this house. After receiving Aria's invitation on Facebook, Emily had packed her things, gotten onto the bus in New York and then called Toby somewhere between Hamden and Hartford. Her precise words were: "My mom's mad at me 'cuz I was supposed to be on my way to Rosewood already but Aria seemed miserable on the phone. She said she doesn't wanna be left alone with Ezra's family and his annoying writer friends… who she described as 'overly pretentious' and… you know how it is. When one of us needs the others, we all come running."

Toby hadn't understood his role until Emily sighed and added, "I'm gonna ask you for a favor now and you have every right to say no but we're friends and it's Christmas and I kinda need a… plus one? I just know that evening's gonna be really awkward and I can't do it on my own."

Predictably, he was reminded of his conversation with Spencer from two months ago where she had implied underlying hostilities between friends that Toby was always convinced would stay friends for decades to come; where she had hinted towards big fat elephants in the shape of Hanna and Caleb standing in every word, breath and room the four of them dared to share. He initially didn't want to go at all. Saying no to Emily isn't something that comes easy to him but he had planned on making an exception this time. For one, he isn't friends with Ezra or Aria. It's not his really place to come to their Christmas party uninvited, is it? And secondly, while Christmas isn't exactly his favorite holiday for most people, it's special – a day to celebrate with friends and family and Toby is neither friends nor is he family although he has the feeling that Emily would (quite loudly) disagree with him on the last part.

So he knows how he ended up here; Aria's misery had triggered Emily's misery and Emily's misery in turn had triggered Toby's urge to help. What he doesn't know is why he ended up agreeing. He doesn't even remember how she had managed to convince him – she is kind of like Spencer in that regard, at least sometimes; delightfully sneaky and really good at putting on her pleading eyes – but point is, he is here now, attending Aria's Christmas party and yeah, Emily's worries were absolutely and one hundred percent justified.

It's twenty minutes in and Aria and her mom already look as though they are furiously plotting Mrs. Fitzgerald's murder together, at least judging by the identical expression of disgust on their faces. Mr. Montgomery has excused himself a while ago to call Aria's brother who is, from what Toby understands, stuck at some airport due to a storm going on though Toby also suspects that the phone call is long over and he is just trying to buy himself more time to avoid Ezra's family. On the armchair to Toby's right, one of Ezra's writer friends – his name is either Nathan or Ethan, Toby can't remember and is too embarrassed to ask again – is tapping his foot to Little Drummer Boy but his timing and rhythm are all wrong and it's sort of driving Toby crazy. Directly to his left, Em is holding Oscar in her arms and pretending to bite his cheeks all while going, "I'm gonna eat your chubby cheeks, yes I am, I'm gonna eat you up" over and over in a voice he has never heard her use before. Ezra's younger brother had left with a literal bang two minutes after Emily and Toby's arrival – telling his mother to fuck off and slamming the backdoor shut behind him – and the older Fitz is now aimlessly wandering about with a cheese platter, trying to entertain the few guests that are already here and occasionally peeking out of the windows in a fruitless attempt to locate his sibling. In short: it really is awkward as hell. On the plus side, though, this makes him appreciate Christmases at home just a tiny bit more.

Dean Martin is about to finish singing Let It Snow on the stereo when the doorbell rings a couple of minutes later. Aria uses that opportunity to escape her mother-in-law and gracefully abandons her by the grand piano without a word. The older woman, who had been in the middle of yet another tedious and endless rant about Aria's dress, glares after her, obviously displeased. Toby feels awful for Aria. Tammy at least has the decency to ignore Toby's existence whenever he is nearby instead of hitting him with words. Aria rushes to the front door that Toby can't see from his spot on the sofa. "Is that Wes? Is he back?"

"Uh, no. It's just Spencer," Toby hears Ezra tell her and at that, Emily and Toby simultaneously turn their heads to catch a glimpse of the door.

"Huh. She knows we're here, right?" Emily asks in a low half-mumble, gently offering Oscar his giraffe pacifier plushie when he begins fussing against her shoulder.

"Wow. Just Spencer can really feel the Christmas spirit," Spencer remarks in an especially wry tone that unwillingly forces a smile out of Toby. "No – don't put that away. I'm gonna need it."

"Yeah. She does. I texted her and asked if she was okay with me coming here with you," Toby answers Emily quietly, turning his head back to his friend and away from the entrance. "And she said she didn't mind. How long are you guys planning on keeping this up anyway?"

Emily raises her eyebrows at him. "Keeping what up?"

Behind them, Aria hums in disapproval. "What she means is that she's gonna need her coat later when she's smoking on our back porch again," she explains. "By the way, I bought an ashtray last weekend. Now you can finally stop using our coffee mugs to put out your cigarettes."

"Well, honestly, it was either that or putting them out in your flowers," Spencer retorts with an audible shrug, her heels click-clacking on the floor as she moves further into the house. "I just assumed that turning your 'ask me about my book' mug into a temporary ashtray was sort of the better option, considering you don't want people to ask you about your book anyway."

"Mhm. And you know what's an even better option?" Aria asks. "Not smoking at all."

"She's right," Ezra agrees. "These things can kill you, you know."

"Damn, you've figured out my evil plan," Spencer replies. Then, after a beat or two of painfully awkward silence, she adds, "It was a joke, you guys. You can laugh now."

"I was under the impression that jokes are funny," Aria says before there's more click-clacking from the entryway and their voices quiet down as they disappear in the kitchen.

Emily clears her throat and repeats, while carefully stroking Oscar's hair, "Keeping what up, Tobes?"

Toby blinks. "Uh, not talking to each other?" he answers. "Ignoring each other?"

She rolls her eyes, unimpressed, rest her cheek against the top of Oscar's head. "I don't know where you got that from but we're not ignoring each other," she says. "It's just… complicated."

"Uncomplicate it then," Toby suggests, lowering his voice some more when he notices Nathan-or-Ethan leaning in interestedly from the side. "Or what exactly was your plan for tonight?"

"Yeah, it's not as simple as it sounds," Emily says and shakes her head, almost but not quite an irritated hiss. Yet. It appears as if she had been waiting for someone to finally bring this up to her though because the sour expression on her usually calm and collected features becomes increasingly angrier by the second. "I tried reaching out after we left Rosewood, okay? I texted her. I called her. I tried Facebook, Skype, Instagram, Snapchat. And she… she never answered. But, of course, we're talking about Spencer here and she probably made it look like I'm the one that's wrong because she's physically incapable of taking responsibility for anything she does."

"Okay, I understand being mad but that was really unnecessary-"

She cuts him off with an exasperated sigh. "I probably shouldn't be surprised that you still jump to her defense even though you have absolutely no idea what's going on and yet…" They turn their heads when the doorbell rings once more but this time, it's just a bunch of people neither of them recognize so she continues, "I'm not mad. Because I've left that stage years ago and I'm beyond mad now. I'm mad that I was forced into this stupid position in the first place. I feel like… I feel like the kid of two parents going through a divorce and both of them are constantly trying to make me pick a side. I'm sick of it."

Exhaling a tired sigh as well, Toby draws his hand over his stubbly jaw. "Well, Spencer seems to think that you've, uh, picked Hanna's 'side' in this."

"Do you really think I haven't noticed? And here's where it gets funny: Hanna is convinced that I've picked Spencer's 'side' just because I don't agree with how she handled everything back then," Emily states. "Meanwhile Aria's the one picking sides and Aria's also the one picking fights… seriously, she's like one of those dogs that are way too angry for their size… it's nuts. She managed to make Hanna feel so guilty with her constant nagging that she finally drove up here to talk to Spencer last week."

"And? How did that work out?"

"No idea. I'm only allowed to have conversations with Hanna when we talk about things that don't involve Spencer." She leans over to grab an iced pumpkin cookie from the decorated plate on the coffee table, splits it in two and hands Toby the other half. "But since Aria invited Hanna and Caleb, and Hanna told me this morning that they're coming, I'm guessing they didn't strangle each other after all."

Toby glances at her and raises his eyebrow. On his look, Emily blushes and begins wiping the cookie crumbs off Oscar's head as softly as she can and says, "I didn't mean to do that."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then why are you staring me?"

"Well, if Spencer and Hanna can make up-"

"No," Emily interrupts him sharply. "I've been in the middle of this 'fight' for two years. I had to listen to Hanna's non-stop ranting for two freaking years, okay, where she somehow found six thousand different words for cheating without actually having to say cheating. And I had to deal with total rejection after each birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's text to Spencer. I don't care if they made up. They should. Because, honestly, they deserve each other."

"Has anyone ever told you that you can be really stubborn?"

Adjusting Oscar in her grasp, she shoots Toby a hard look. "I know all of this is way different than what Spence-"

Toby shrugs. "She didn't tell me much."

"Well, whatever it is that she told you, it probably sounded totally different than what I'm telling you right now and that's because there's always more than one side to a story. And in this whole bull…" She trails off, glancing down at baby Oscar, then says, "and in this whole situation that Hanna and Spencer forced me and Aria into, there's, like, three hundred different versions and unlike Aria, I don't feel comfortable pretending that Spencer's version is the only right one."

"Seriously, Em?"

"There he goes again. I'm not excusing what Hanna did, okay? It was horrible. All I'm saying is that they both could've thought about the consequences of their actions. Before Spencer got with Caleb – ugh, sorry." She puts her warm hand on his arm and he swallows his scowl, shrugs his shoulders in an attempt to fake nonchalance and apparently succeeds; Emily withdraws her hand a beat later. "She really should've thought about what it would do to all of us and Hanna should've… god, she should've used her brains for once in her life. But what's done is done and we'll never get back to how things used to be, even if Hanna and Spencer miraculously decide to make up and be friends again."

"So why come here?" Toby wonders, scratching at his chin. "If you're not planning on talking things out and making up? Why even accept Aria's invitation if you're friendly but not friends?"

She immediately snorts as though he just told an inside joke that he wasn't let it on and smiles a little sad smile that makes his heart contract to the point of pain. "Yeah, nostalgia is funny. It always makes the past look better than it really was, I guess," she answers quietly and for the first time in years, he can vividly see the traces of her father's death, of Maya, of Charlotte and of every single aching memory on her tired, tired face. "Besides, I literally owe my life to these girls. Least I can do is play along when Hanna and Aria think we're all gonna get a happy ending eventually. Once Christmas is over, I'll be back in New York anyway and then Hanna's gonna call me on FaceTime every other week to talk about some new HBO show she's watching, and Aria's gonna text me pictures of Oscar, and Spencer's gonna keep ignoring me and everything will be back to our new normal. Maybe we'll have lunch sometime where Aria gets snappy for no reason or maybe Hanna will send me screenshots of Spencer's Instagram feed at three in the morning because she's convinced that Spencer's throwing shade at her. Or maybe Spencer will accidentally look at my Snapchat story. I don't know. Point is, I can do this whole… thing for one evening. I'm not interested in doing this for the rest of our lives. It's over. It's done."

He sighs and reaches for her free hand, the one that isn't steadying Oscar against her chest, and takes it into his, squeezes it firmly. "I'm really, really sorry, Em," he says and he is – he wishes there was a way to fix everything that is seemingly irreparable now. He also wishes he knew how Caleb can peacefully sleep at night without an ounce of guilt keeping him up. "For what happened to you. What you guys had was… amazing. I really thought you'd be friends forever."

"So did I. But maybe we're better off without each other anyway. Maybe it's the only healthy way of finally letting go of Rosewood for good," she replies and then rolls her eyes at herself right after. She gives a slight laugh and adds, "Sorry. That was totally my therapist talking."

He smiles. "What happened to your 'I'm never going back to therapy' talk three weeks ago?"

"What happened to that is that I thought about it some more after we hung up and I realized that you were right after all," she says, ramming her elbow into his ribs playfully when he responds with a smug grin. "But do you now understand where I'm coming from and why I didn't wanna do this by myself? It's not just Spencer that's gonna make tonight awkward as hell. It's Aria and it's Hanna and Caleb and it's-" She frowns at something or someone behind his shoulder and asks, sounding completely puzzled too, "Ali?"

Furrowing his brow, Toby turns his head as well and sure enough, there is Alison DiLaurentis. Out of everyone Toby has run into so far, she has definitely changed the most since the last time he saw her. Her hair is shorter, a darker shade of blonde, and she looks virtually uncomfortable as she makes conversation with Aria. He turns his head back to Emily.

Emily, just as he had predicted or perhaps expected, then announces, "I-I'll be right back in a second, okay? I'm just gonna say hello."

He hums, tilts his head. "What was that what you said about nostalgia five minutes ago?"

She unceremoniously dumps Oscar into his lap. "Bricks and glass houses, Toby."

With that – and a humorless smirk that he can't help but reciprocate because, sadly, she does have a point there – Emily vanishes to say hello and he is left with Oscar and also left wondering why in the world none of the grandparents are rushing over to take the baby from Toby, a mere stranger to the little boy. He adjusts him in his hold and regards Oscar softly who is staring up at him, hazel eye widened in surprise, bottom lip close to trembling in fear.

"Shh," Toby coos, stroking his cheeks to distract him. They really are incredibly chubby and terribly adorable from up close. Emily's inexplicable urge to bite them over and over suddenly doesn't seem as silly anymore. "No crying, okay? I know we don't know each other yet because we haven't been formally introduced but…" He slowly shakes the little boy's fist. "Hi. I'm Toby. It's nice to meet you, Oscar. You have very beautiful-"

"Okay, that's cute."

Feeling an embarrassing blush crawl up his neck, Toby lifts his head just as Spencer joins him on the sofa with a big grin, plopping down on Emily's previous seat. "Hi. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," he responds and smiles. The stench of alcohol and nicotine coming off her is overwhelming. He glances at Aria by the fireplace whose cheeks are suspiciously rosy too and figures they must have spent the past half an hour drinking in the kitchen. He decides not to question it. "So, uh… how much did you hear?"

"Mm, let's see," she replies, resting her elbow on the back of the sofa behind them and leaning her head against her hand. It's – it's a bold, kind of aggressive pose and if he didn't know any better, it would nearly seem purposely flirty. He averts his eyes. It's probably nothing more than the alcohol, he explains away. Holiday season putting people in the mood. It doesn't have to mean anything if they don't want to. Right? Right. "Just the part where you formally introduced yourself to a two-month-old who doesn't even understand his own existence, let alone yours."

"Hey. Don't be mean to my new friend. He understands a lot more than you're giving him credit for. He's a smart little boy. Isn't that right, buddy? Aren't you a smart little boy?" Toby asks and as if determined to prove his aunt wrong, Oscar gurgles, waving his arms in excitement, looks away from the brunette and directs his attention back to Toby. That, in turn, causes the beaming smile on Spencer's soft features to grow. "The introduction was kinda necessary. I mean, how would you feel if someone you barely knew suddenly had their arms around you?"

"Well, I'd probably say that my Tinder date was going exactly as planned," Spencer shoots back with ease and then her hand immediately comes up to cover her eyes in shame. "Wow. What a wildly inappropriate thing to tell your ex-boyfriend. Sorry. I'm a little… Aria forced me to do shots with her in the kitchen. She said it was either shots or helping her bury Mrs. Fitzgerald's body in her vegetable patch and I've kinda had enough of burying bodies."

Toby forces himself to a smirk. "Tequila?"

"Schnapps."

"Ah, so you've finally gotten over your schnapps trauma."

She waves her hand dismissively. "I wouldn't call it trauma. It wasn't that bad."

"Uh, are we both remembering the same night?" Fixing Oscar's hair absentmindedly, he laughs at her look of mock irritation. "'cuz, you know, I remember you throwing up in my truck. And I also remember you not even letting me say schnapps after that 'cuz just thinking about it made you gag."

She rolls her eyes at him. "What kinda cop gets drunk with a college freshman anyway?"

"That college freshman was very persuasive," Toby protests. "And I wasn't that drunk."

"That's funny 'cuz, you know, I remember you being pretty fucking drunk, Officer," Spencer mimics. She stares over his shoulder, at something he can't see, and laughs to herself. "I can't believe my roommate actually threw us out that night. And I can't believe we actually listened."

"To be fair to Alyssa-"

"Amber."

"It was Alyssa," he corrects her. Shaking his head when she opens her mouth to insist that he is wrong, he adds, "You barely talked to her before she dropped out. How would you even know?"

She raises her eyebrows. "And why exactly were you talking to her?"

"She was your roommate and I was around a lot? It seemed like the polite thing to do," Toby retorts. "And, like I said, to be fair to Alyssa, we were kinda loud that night and she was trying to catch up on her reading. No wonder she told us to leave. I would've done the same thing."

"Oh, yeah, wait. I remember now," Spencer exclaims and snickers. He smiles. "We were playing a card game, right? Rummy or Go Fish or something? And we got kinda aggressive about it."

"Yeah, something like that. Might've been Uno but honestly, I don't remember for sure."

"That was a really fun night," she says as one swift, manicured hand runs through her bangs in an effort to straighten the wavy ends. She scrunches up her nose. "Well… except for the part where I puked in the bed of the truck and you ended up having to take care of me."

He chuckles, somewhat nervously, and quickly changes the topic because while he forgot what kind of game they were playing that night, he definitely does remember what they had been in the middle of doing before she got sick and that is – as she had so accurately put earlier – wildly inappropriate to bring up or even recall, right? Right. "So, uh, you going home for Christmas?"

Spencer too seems grateful at the cancelled trip down memory lane and says, "Yeah. I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. I was actually supposed to be home, like… yesterday already. My mom wanted me to help with her Christmas party and knowing her, she's definitely pissed at me now because I left her alone with Melissa but Aria called and said she needed me so… I came here."

"So you came here," he echoes, nodding and thinking back to the eerily similar talk with Emily.

"Yeah and so did you," she responds. "Sorry about your date cheating on you, by the way."

He half-grins, follows her gaze to Emily and Alison across the room who appear to be deep in conversation about something terribly important. Looking at Spencer once more, then, he is (more than) a little taken aback by how close she seems to have gotten but before he can dwell on that for too long, figure out the meaning to it and figure out if there even is a meaning to it, she strokes over Oscar's back. Toby rolls his eyes at himself. Great job overinterpreting every little thing she does.

"You wanna hold him?"

"Uh, thanks but… no thanks," she retorts right away. "I'm gonna wait a few more months until he's a little older and I'm not deadly afraid of accidentally murdering him anymore."

Toby cackles. "What?"

"Newborns are kinda fragile and let's not kid ourselves here – pun absolutely intended – we both know that I'm not mom material," she reasons. "Don't tell Aria I said that but I've only held him, like, maybe once or twice in two months. She thinks I'm constantly doing it."

Toby doesn't mean to because it's clearly bothering her on some level but he is roaring with laughter now. Nathan-or-Ethan throws them an annoyed look as Spencer gapes at Toby and then joins in just as loudly. "Stop laughing at me. I've managed to drop their cat, okay? I don't wanna drop their baby too."

"There's a cat?"

"Oh my god."

"What?"

"You," she says, shaking her head at him. Her tone is reproaching and yet there is a smile hiding in the corners of her mouth that makes him feel… that just makes him feel. "Only you would get along perfectly with a baby you've just met and immediately start drooling at the thought of petting a cat. Forget it, Toby. I haven't seen him all night. He's hiding... and evil."

"He's evil," Toby repeats, eyebrows raised. "What's his name?"

"His name is Pudding."

"Ah, thought so. You're wrong. Cats named Pudding can't be evil even if they wanted to," he replies matter-of-factly. Then he looks at her as their laughs wither away, her eyes more serious now, almost sober, and he adds, "And that thing you said… about not being 'mom material'?"

She sighs. "Can we please drop it and pretend I never said that?"

"Uh, no, we can't. I don't want you to feel that way about yourself," he says quietly. "Look, I don't know if you even want children and I have no idea if you'll ever have children but what I do know is that, if you do, those kids will be the happiest kids on earth and all because they'll have a mom like you."

She looks at him, looks at Oscar, looks back at him again, like she can't quite decide on what she is supposed to say next, on what she is supposed to do. Until she settles, blinks away the wave of emotions in her eyes that he deliberately ignores for now because he doesn't know if he is even allowed to see, and mumbles, "Well… only if you, the baby whisperer, are around when they're newborns 'cuz somebody's gotta hold them."

He breaks off their eye contact before he can get lost in her browns and throw every promise of innocent friendship overboard. "You won't need me for that when their dad is around. I'm just gonna be the babysitter-at-parties-after-Emily-mysteriously-disappears guy."

She removes her elbow from the back of the sofa, smoothly transitions from bold flirty pose to practically uncomfortable as she crosses her arms. "Yeah," she sighs and then proceeds to cross her long legs too, shooting a smile at the side of Toby's face. He pretends to be too busy playing with Oscar's hair to notice. "You know what's funny? I don't wanna believe you but… I always, uh, I always admired that about you. A lot. It's almost like you're not capable of lying. Even when you say something ridiculous, something I'm convinced has to be total bullshit, like what you said just now, I always end up believing you anyway. Honestly, you could tell me the sky was green and I'd eat it up because you said it."

"Mmm… funny you'd mention that. The sky actually is green," he deadpans.

"And I one-hundred percent believe you. See? That's trust."

They laugh a little, timid and unsure – a whole lot of unresolved issues from the past they refuse to name, a whole lot of tension from the present they refuse to see and a whole of uncertainty regarding their future they refuse to address in each take of breath, in each stolen look – but the moment is spoiled, rotten, thrown in the trash when the crowd by the mudroom breaks into an overly excited chatter. He has no idea why Spencer's face falls at once, her gaze hardening in a way he is all too familiar with but hasn't seen in years. The rushed exchange of congratulations has to be related to Oscar lying against his chest, right? Some more guests must have arrived who haven't had the chance to talk to the Ezra and Aria yet.

And then – and then he turns to check over his shoulder because Spencer's somber expression doesn't fade and The Ronette's Sleigh Ride is playing on the stereo now as Alison holds Hanna's left hand in hers, inspecting the huge rock on her engagement ring with interest, and right behind them, Emily draws Caleb into a hug, the biggest of grins plastered all over her face, and Aria at least looks half-conflicted but her eyes are kind of sparkling with joy, and Hanna is obviously basking in the attention she is receiving, not just from her friends but other random guests too and Aria's parents who come over to congratulate the couple, wish them the best, and…

Merry fucking Christmas, Toby thinks.

"Well, that's my cue to go to the bathroom," Spencer mutters.

And maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't have but it's one of these moments where his instincts work faster than his brains, where his need to wipe that frown off her face is louder than their mutual desire to keep things as uncomplicated as possible, because suddenly he is holding her hands in his and he asks, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm fine. Promise," she answers with a smile that doesn't fool him at all. "It's just – if I stay here, Aria's gonna come over and ask me if I'm okay with that annoying face she does and then Emily's gonna come over and ask if I'm okay so she can run back to Hanna and make her feel better about herself and then Ali's gonna come over and… you know, it'd just be really awkward for everyone involved if I stayed. Mostly really awkward for me though. And I'm trying to avoid Christmas-related drama until I have to spend Christmas with my family."

"So… what now?" he replies. "You're gonna hide all night?"

"I don't hide, Toby," she says. "It's not my thing."

Here's what actually happens though: he doesn't know whether she is indeed taking refuge in the upstairs bathroom or not but what he does know is that she stays gone and far, far away from the party in the living room and the people who seem to have successfully forgotten about her. Although hiding might not be her thing, avoiding topics and past memories she would rather not come face to face with apparently is. He sort of wishes he would have followed her example because sitting here now, almost an hour later at the bottom of the stairs with his idle fingers combing through Pudding's fur, all he wants is to disappear. Emily comes over here and there to talk about nothing in particular, share another cookie with him or complain about Aria's Christmas playlist but her company does nothing to ease his mind, really, and it definitely does nothing to whisk away his fury at Hanna and Caleb. If he has to be honest, he is somewhat angry at Emily too though not to the same extent; her words from before, her long-winded explanation as to why things are the way they are and as to why they have to stay the way they are, look incredibly insincere now. Like mere smoke screen. Like she had picked a side in this unspoken argument years ago and only half-heartedly constructed a good enough reason to justify her choice to herself because she is right beside Hanna, slurping her eggnog and giggling as the blonde sings along to Jingle Bell Rock loudly. All of this reminds him too much of Tammy on that Christmas morning and her whole shtick with his mom's chair and he figures that he still is the same fucking coward he has always been because he stays put instead of confronting the newly engaged couple like he probably should. Actually, he thinks, scratch that. Like he definitely should.

It's almost ridiculous how contagious Spencer's sadness is. Toby shouldn't even care that much about seeing Hanna and Caleb again, shouldn't give a single shit about their engagement and their happiness, should he; it's not his place, it's not his right and it's none of his business. And yet it's the same kind of unhealthy co-dependence they would oftentimes slip into half a million nights ago that is now awakening inside him; the same kind of foliè a deux where he unwillingly feels on behalf of her. He doesn't comprehend why much less how they are still so intertwined and intimately connected to the point where every single atom in his body successfully mimics hers in whatever she does. He doesn't know her anymore. Not like he used to. But there it is anyway, his heart – his poor, poor heart – roaring in recognition, desperately trying to beat along to the rhythm of hers, demanding justice and vengeance and an end to this absolute shit show.

Pudding purrs and bumps his head against the inside of Toby's hand, inevitably forcing the man out of his thoughts. Toby briefly glances down at the stubborn Maine Coon and smiles before he continues petting him and looks back at the living room again. He can easily watch most of the gathering from his comfortable spot at the bottom of the stairs. The newly engaged couple is sat on the sofa (Hanna is holding Oscar like she would hold a puppy and coos, "God, I'd look so adorable as a mom." Caleb then proceeds to choke on his drink which, in turn, only earns him a really furious scowl from his fiancée); Mrs. Fitzgerald has managed to catch a very unsuspecting Emily in her web ("Oh, thank you so much, sweetheart. Eleanor, was it? And you said you were one of my dear daughter-in-law's friends from Rosewood?" she asks in a sugar-sweet voice and Emily says, more patient than she looks, "It's Emily, Mrs. Fitzgerald. We met at the wedding, remember? You thought I was a waitress."); some of Ezra's writer friends are standing in a little circle by the TV while Nathan-or-Ethan reads out a passage from his newest book ("…her rosy nipples were like swollen pink erasers against the sheer fabric of her white nightgown…"); Mrs. Montgomery is occupied with removing the empty salad bowls from the open buffet while Alison decorates the table with several red and green colored napkins and Ezra fills three glasses with sparkling wine ("That is a good choice. I remember reading Jane Eyre with my students and most of them really enjoyed it," Mrs. Montgomery comments. "I don't know about that. Personally, I was just never a big fan of the Brontë sisters. Still putting Jane Eyre on the curriculum seems almost… redundant now, doesn't it, when there's so many other great writers that essentially wrote about the same thing," Ezra chimes in, handing the women their respective glasses. "You mean other great male writers, Ezra? Jane Eyre was one of the first and probably one of the most popular novels that wrote about the position of women in modern society. Male writers just don't get that," Alison remarks and Mrs. Montgomery gives a chuckle) and Mr. Montgomery is on the phone again, furrowing his eyebrows as he bites into a brownie that is meant to look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with tiny pretzels for antlers ("Mike, cut it out. I have a functioning phone. I looked it up. There is no snowstorm in Newark and your supposed flight was never cancelled either. Where are you?").

His fingers still scratching under Pudding's chin, Toby then catches Aria's eyes from across the room when she walks to pick up Oscar who is crying hysterically, most likely overwhelmed by Hanna's selfie marathon she has been forcing him through. Aria begins rocking him and purses her lips somewhat in order to conceal a visibly amused smile. She raises her brows too, subtly tilting her head in Hanna and Caleb's direction who look less happy now and more utterly and completely frustrated with each other. Hanna huffs in annoyance at something he says and gets up to rush to Emily, leaving her fiancé behind. Aria too proceeds to move away from the sofa as she rubs Oscar's back and shoots Toby another meaningful and highly entertained look – did you see that? Toby smirks and shrugs – too bad, huh? She returns his smirk gleefully and brings fore and middle fingers to her mouth in some sort of reverse peace sign and Toby frowns until he finally understands what she is trying to say – smoking.

Smoking?

Huh.

What? he mouths, confused.

Rolling her eyes in an exaggerated manner and giving up on her pantomime routine of the night, Aria adjusts Oscar in her arms and briskly makes her way towards him. "Seriously, how much did you have to drink?" she asks in an irritated half-whisper.

Toby glances at the half-empty glass to his right. "Uh…"

"Never mind," Aria sighs. "I was talking about Spencer. She's smoking on the back porch."

"Oh?"

Again, Aria raises her eyebrows at him but this time, it's expectant, like she is wondering what the hell he is still doing at the bottom of the stairs even though she gave him clear instructions.

"Oh," he repeats and gets to his feet. Pudding isn't pleased – he comments Toby's attempt to leave him with a disgruntled meow. "Yeah, I'll go see how… I'll just go."

"And I will take that, thank you," Aria retorts, grabbing the half-empty wine glass before Toby can reach for it and finish it like he had intended to. "There's plenty of food. Eat something and make sure Spencer eats too because I'm not dealing with you two being drunk at my party."

"I'm not drunk," Toby protests. And he's not, he's completely so—all right, he's tipsy. A little.

"Yeah, whatever." She kisses the top of Oscar's head. "Go through the kitchen and close the door behind you. It's fucking freezing outside."

He watches her walk upstairs and sneak in a sip or two or three from his wine until he can't see her any longer, puts on his coat and moves back to the living room where he grabs a plate from the buffet. Emily, who is leaning against the closest wall and eating casserole, sends him a soft smile when she spots him; Hanna glances up and does the same although hers looks more like a grimace than anything. Toby merely nods. They continue their conversation uninterrupted as Toby shovels food onto the plate in his hand ("… uh, definitely not. I was already pissed at him when we came here 'cuz we had this, like, majorly stupid fight 'cuz he's too fucking stubborn to ask for directions. Like, ever," Hanna says and downs the contents of her glass in one solid but kind of impressive gulp. "Did you guys drive here from Rochester or a badly written rom-com?" Emily asks dryly) and continue their conversation uninterrupted as he reaches behind Hanna to swiftly grab two glasses and the unguarded bottle of sparkling wine. He has to act fast though – he can feel Ezra's eyes glued to the back of his head as if Aria had told her husband to watch Toby's alcohol intake as closely as he can. Which is an overreaction, Toby thinks. He isn't drunk. Just a little tipsy and he and Spencer could definitely use a glass of wine, right?

Right.

He expertly hides the bottle inside his coat – Emily raises one suspicious eyebrow at both him and the bottle over Hanna's ramblings but doesn't say anything, lucky for him – and literally makes a run for the kitchen, ducking past another little group of writers who are once more too engrossed in reading aloud especially racy passages from their awful books to notice that Toby is essentially fleeing a crime scene with stolen goods.

He finds Spencer exactly where Aria had predicted she would be: cowering on the steps of the back porch, her scarf thrown around her shoulders and staring out into the dark. She doesn't look up or give any indication that she is aware of his presence when he joins her outside and closes the door behind him, muffling the sounds from the party. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree starts playing for the fourth or fifth time that night as part of the crowd breaks into cheerful laughter at what he presumes has to be Ezra's speech Emily had already warned him about on their way here. Oscar's cries echo across the backyard from an open window upstairs, followed by Aria's attempts at comforting him with a lullaby. Right behind them, in the kitchen, someone is loading plates into the dishwasher. But despite all the noises disrupting the night – the loud music, the frantic crying, the angry fighting from the next-door neighbors and a dog barking in the distance – it's almost breathtakingly serene. It's snowing again or perhaps it never stopped and Aria was right; it's fucking freezing too, the fresh air all but burning Toby's lungs.

He blinks against the cold. "I thought you weren't gonna hide."

"I'm not," Spencer answers. "I just needed some time alone."

"Oh," Toby says and frowns. "Right. I'm sorry. I'll leave-"

"No, that's okay. Stay," she interrupts him gently, lifting her gaze to look at him from under her lashes. "I can be alone with you."

Feeling kind of like an intruder regardless, he returns her soft smile with a hint of hesitance and proceeds to sit down beside her, placing the bottle of wine between them. She wraps her scarf around herself more and doesn't say anything, seemingly contemplative as she keeps staring at the snow. He clears his throat, mostly to regain her attention, and mutters, "Uh… Mom told me to bring you food… she said she wants us to eat something…"

Spencer knits her eyebrows, visibly lost and bemused for a moment, until her eyes fall on the plate of food he is balancing on his knees. She snorts. "Careful," she warns in a teasing voice and takes the fork from his grasp. He briefly wonders – even though he shouldn't – whether she is intentionally making sure that they don't touch. "My sarcasm's starting to rub off on you."

"Yeah… don't tell her I said it like that though," he replies and grimaces when she laughs. "Not gonna lie, I already feel kinda bad about being mean."

"Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. Aria will never know," she promises with an affirming nod. She extends her hand then, going for his… going for his jaw it nearly seems but that would be completely ridiculous, wouldn't it? And he, he instinctively stills in his movements, freezes up like a wild animal, afraid, his heart stuck in his throat as though unsure if it wants to stay or leave, but as quickly as Spencer had lifted her arm, she drops it just as quickly again, back into her lap with an audible thud that slices through the peaceful quiet of the snow-covered backyard.

She adds, tumbling all over her words, "Sorry. Force of habit. I just… you just got a little – I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to be weird."

"Oh. Heh." He reaches into the pocket of his coat to grab one of those red napkins he had stolen from the buffet and wipes around his mouth, pretends not to notice that she scoots away from him. He also pretends not to notice the sudden rush of utter relief overcoming him in a belated reaction to the physical distance she has created. "I shouldn't be allowed near mashed potatoes when I've been drinking."

Wrinkling her nose, she picks at the cranberry and turkey filling of the pie she has cut in half and then wordlessly pushes it over to his side of the plate. "Where were you? Earlier? I didn't see you when I came downstairs. I kinda assumed you just left without saying goodbye."

What she doesn't say: like you always do. But he can sense it and it feels like a slap. Perhaps a slap he rightfully deserves after everything that has happened but a slap nevertheless.

"Huh? Oh, no, I went outside to get some fresh air," Toby responds with a casual shrug when he has literally never felt so far from casual before. "We must've missed each other."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess we must have," she agrees quietly. Then she reaches for the wine, a heavy sigh slipping from her mouth as she inspects it, indecision blooming on her features. "They're all cowards."

"Who now?"

"Uh… all of them?" Spencer answers. "Emily was so scared to show up by herself, she actually had to call and ask you to come with her. Like you're her babysitter. And then there's Hanna who's still scared to face me when Aria's around – she came here with her engagement ring and made sure that I'd see it. And Ali… Ali came alone and she's been acting at least kind of normal so I'll give her that. I guess Em and Hanna are the only cowards here."

She takes a huge swig from the wine bottle, passes it back to him, pauses and adds, "And you know what? Fuck Caleb too. Seriously fuck him for coming here and hiding behind Hanna."

Humming, Toby puts the plate on the cold steps next to them and takes a sip as well in order not to reply with, 'Yeah, I'll definitely drink to that' or 'I can punch that smirk off his face if you want me to' or something equally irrational, alcohol-motivated and inconsiderate like that.

"She held me hostage in my apartment last week. Hanna, I mean."

"So I've heard."

"Of course you have."

He glances at her, ignoring the biting tone and the pursed lips too. "How did that end?"

She rolls her eyes, blowing an unimpressed raspberry. "What do you think?" she questions and wraps her arms around her legs. "She told me that Caleb proposed and claimed she just didn't feel comfortable saying yes because she feels so bad about what happened between us and since I have the tendency to let people I care about turn me into a total fucking doormat…"

He takes another sip from the bottle when she falls silent.

She sighs, resting her cheek against her knees, watching him watch her. "You know those people who only apologize 'cuz your hurt feelings make them feel bad, not 'cuz they feel bad about hurting you in the first place?"

He thinks of his dad and pulls a face. Slowly, he nods.

"Yeah. That's pretty much the only reason Hanna came over. I had this feeling… I knew from the second she showed up at my door and then we talked and…" She shrugs. "Am I stupid for still believing that her heart's in the right place?"

"It's not stupid, Spencer. It's…" He scratches his chin. "It's just very human."

"Believing in something that I already know to be untrue is human." She hums, appearing to be mulling it over, as she digs out her cigarettes from the depth of her coat pocket. "Haven't heard that one yet. That's a really subtle way of letting me know that I'm fucking stupid."

"No, I promise, you're not," he assures her softly. "Look, you wanna believe that she's still the person she was years ago and you wanna believe you're still the person you once were and it's always easier to give into the illusion than facing reality as it is and admitting that everything's different now, including you. That's normal. She probably feels the same way, you know."

"Hm. You sound like you're speaking from experience," she remarks, cigarette dangling from her lips. "Care to share with the class or haven't we reached that level of friendship yet?"

"It's – it's nothing."

"It's Yvonne, right?" On his eyebrows, she adds, while fiddling with her lighter, "Don't look at me like that. You brought it up, Toby. I wasn't even planning on asking you again."

And maybe it's the sparkling wine and everything else he has gotten his hands on so far, maybe it's Christmas and the intimate, relaxed setting, maybe it's holding onto this story for over an entire year like a secret he isn't supposed to tell but Toby crumbles and so do the walls around him.

"Yeah. It's Yvonne but it's…" He interrupts himself with silence, struggling with his words. In a small but quite meaningful gesture of encouragement or perhaps comfort, she offers him her cigarette and Toby doesn't smoke so naturally, he takes it and inhales a deep drag before handing it back. "It's not the same thing. She deserves to be with someone who loves – who really, really loves her and I… eventually, I realized that someone wasn't me. I already let it go on for far too long when I should've ended it the minute we moved and I started having doubts. But I was… stupid or human or whatever you wanna call it and I didn't and I let her believe that I was still the same person she fell in love with. And then I broke her heart four months before the wedding. That's what happened. That's what you wanted to know."

Three weeks after you texted me, he wants to say but he bites his lower lip and keeps quiet.

"But you loved her," she states.

"I did," he says truthfully. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her lower her head to inspect her shoelaces and he crosses his arms and does the same thing. "I loved her so much. And then one day I just… didn't anymore. Not enough to keep pretending that everything was like it used to be. Not enough to act like I was ready to get married and live a lie for the next… for the rest of my life."

She flicks her cigarette casually, sending the burnt ash fluttering to the ground. "God Toby… why did you even stay with her for so long if you were having doubts?"

"I wanted her to be happy," he responds, sort of confused because he doesn't understand why that isn't obvious to her. "I still cared about her, Spencer. Just because I fell out of love doesn't mean I stopped loving her entirely. And I, I don't know, I was convinced it'd get better. I thought I needed some more time to get used to it. To the island, the house, being back in school, not being a cop anymore…"

"But it didn't get better," she says quietly.

"But it didn't get better," he echoes. "She's… she's amazing. And she deserves more than being with someone like me and only having parts of them."

"And then what?" she asks. "You ran?"

Toby grimaces. "And then I ran," he admits and ignores her eye-roll. "She hates me now – and I don't blame her for that, she's got every right to hate me – but if I'd stayed, I think she would've ended up feeding me to the lobsters. Which I, come to think about it, probably deserve for doing what I did."

"Well, I don't know about that. Maybe you do. Breaking up with someone four months before the wedding is kinda… you know."

"Believe me, I do know."

"What's that Mourning Bride quote again?" she wonders, glancing off to the right. "Heaven has no rage like a love to hatred turned...?"

"Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned, yeah."

Spencer lifts her head to look at him then, look into his eyes deeply, her gaze suddenly becoming a dark shade of sadness. "But you absolutely did the right thing, Toby," she tells him in a tiny voice he nearly misses. "I just wish you would've done it sooner. Not just because of Yvonne but because of you. Her happiness wasn't more important than yours. You shouldn't have had to stay miserable for so long."

He shrugs. "My happiness wasn't more important than hers either."

"Maybe." Cautious and gauging his reaction, she extends her hand again. This time, her soothing touch caresses over his back. This time, he lets her. "But you really need to learn how to stop living for other people."

"Didn't you just say that you only forgave Hanna to make her happy?"

Her dry non-smile first morphs into a little snort and then her little snort transforms into a not-so-little chuckle. "I already know that I'm a massive hypocrite who doesn't take her own advice, Toby, you don't have to keep reminding me."

"Uh, I never said anything about that. You came to that conclusion on your own. I was just, you know, innocently checking if I got the whole story right."

Making a sound in the back of her throat that is half-amusement, half-annoyance, Spencer leans across his legs and skillfully steals the bottle from beside Toby. "Well, here's looking at you, kid," she announces, first raising it to him, then raising it to her mouth.

"All right, Bogart," Toby speaks up, trying and failing to stifle his childish laughter as his hands wrap around the bottle – and, inevitably, around her hands too. "We don't want a repeat of your schnapps trauma. Slow down."

She mewls in protest. "You are already drunk and you're still hogging the wine."

"The wine that I stole."

"And now I'm stealing it from you," she proclaims as she forcefully whips the bottle out of his grasp and hugs it to her chest.

"Fine," he mutters, giving up for now. "But if you get sick again-"

"If I get sick again, I will make sure to throw up on your shoes, just for that comment, yeah," she finishes, her crooked smile sending his heart into a somersault that he is sure it will never fully recover from. She rests her head against his shoulder then; heavily, as though she is craving a break; confidently, as though she is craving him. "God. We're two peas in a pod, aren't we?"

"I guess," he mumbles, feeling dizzy from the alcohol in his blood or in her breath, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "I mean, we both might have a huge inferiority complex…"

"Yeah. And don't forget the martyr complex." They heave a sigh at the same time. "Or the fact that we both keep running from stuff we shouldn't be running from. Literally and figuratively."

"We probably should work on that."

"Which one?"

"All of them?" He runs his hand through his hair to shake off the snow. "This can't be healthy."

She quiets. Then: "Can we pretend that today doesn't count and start tomorrow instead?"

Drawing his head back, frown creasing his eyebrows, he glances down at her and isn't surprised to find her staring up at him, wide-eyed and alert. "Where do you wanna go?"

Spencer sits up, subsequently pushing him back into ice-cold chilliness, back into freezing in the snow or in the mere absence of her, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "Anywhere."

"Uh," he begins and laughs when she chugs the rest of the wine. "I really don't think we should be driving right now."

"Fair enough," she says, nods, laughs along with him. "There's a Pizza Hut down the street and a Dunkin' Donuts but that's probably closed already. It's… maybe ten minutes from here?"

"You really wanna go to Pizza Hut when Aria made all this delicious food?"

"Yeah, no, she literally made nothing," Spencer replies dryly. "It was just her mom and Ezra."

Toby quirks an eyebrow at her. "And that makes it acceptable?"

"A little?" Raising from the steps, she reaches for his hand to help him stand up. "Unless the reason you don't wanna come with me is 'cuz you don't wanna ditch your date."

"Honestly, I think my 'date' ditched me," he deadpans, managing to get up on his own but still grabbing her hand, to steady himself or to have an excuse to feel her touch again, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "Either for Alison or Hanna, haven't figured out that part yet."

"We have so much in common." She hums in agreement against his nervous – drunk – chuckle, opens the backdoor and peeks inside the kitchen for a few long beats before abruptly closing it again. He all but runs into her and takes a tiny step back when she spins around. She is slurring; he doesn't know how he hasn't noticed it until now but she is definitely slurring. "Okay, here's the plan: you go steal another bottle of wine from the buffet without getting caught and I'll try to find the schnapps from earlier… and maybe a pack of smokes in the mudroom."

"Okay." Toby nods, feeling dread expand in his stomach because he doesn't want to get caught by Aria's parents and endure Mrs. Montgomery's look of disappointment or because he doesn't want to let go of Spencer's hand, he can't tell and he doesn't want to. "Why are we about to run away and get drunk at a Pizza Hut again?"

Spencer twists her lips to the side. "That's a really good question that I… don't exactly have an answer to right now," she says, mimicking his nod, sounding almost sober. "I'll try to come up with something while we're doing this Bonnie and Clyde number."

"Bonnie and Clyde," he repeats, snorting, giggling, snickering, but she is paying him no mind as she opens the door, firmly drags him back into the house with her and it's – it's stupid, their sneaking about the house like teenagers they were almost never allowed to be, her rummaging through the kitchen with a certain expertise, him carefully inspecting the buffet from afar with what he knows is a more than guilty-looking expression, because nobody… is even wondering about them, it appears, because they all seem to be involved in their own drama. He spots Aria beside Ezra, one arm slung around his waist, standing in a circle with his author friends and she is staring off into the distance, like she would rather be somewhere else; he sees Emily then as she politely separates herself from a very heated discussion between Alison, Caleb and Hanna by crouching down on the floor to pet Pudding's head affectionately; his wandering eyes find Mrs. Fitzgerald and her younger son in the corner where they are engaging in a glaring contest and Toby thinks, if looks could kill, they would both be dead by now; Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery are sitting on the sofa and the latter is burying her face in her hands and he wonders if it has anything to do with Mike and – Spencer's hand on his arm promptly cuts off his thought process and he winces in surprise.

"You ready?"

No, he is not and yes, she knows; she shoots him a look – that sounds wrong, he thinks – she shoots him the look, the one that some primal part of him recognizes, the one that he used to love or maybe still does, he can't tell and he doesn't want to, but it gives him the final push that he had needed, a sudden rush of courage and bravery – like on that morning he had kissed her for the very first time, he thinks, and god, maybe he wishes he could kiss her again and maybe it's just the stupid alcohol talking for him, he can't tell and he really, really wants to and…

… and he makes his way over to the open buffet, all pretenses of secrecy forgotten, takes the bottle of sparkling wine, takes her hand into his too and he runs, and Aria's Christmas playlist is still playing and people are chatting – some excitedly, others furiously – but he doesn't hear anything because all he hears, all he can hear, is her laughter as they run, run again, run together.

(To a fucking Pizza Hut of all places but it's the – it's the thought that counts, right?

Right.)