Wow guys, thanks for the reviews/favs/follows. Really makes me excited for writing the rest of it.

Cici, Sazar and MindFullofStories - yeah, the name is cringeworthy isn't it? It looks so so wrong. Paige Awkward? Never thought of that, but very apt!

Cici and Del - Emily is scared of Paige for good reason and i'm hoping this chapter will explain a lot of it.

Everyone else - please bear with Paige and the story. I know she is coming across as a not very nice person at the moment and if you'll remember that is how we first met her in season 1 but look at where she is now - she's Batman! So in this, I promise that she gets better.

And finally - special thanks to anotheranonymousartist for encouraging me and proofing this.

Enjoy...

The following day I go back to the pool early in the morning and hope that Paige does not decide to turn up again. I am on high alert the entire time, though, and when I get to the end of my normal 45 minute swim a very stupid part of me decides to spend an extra fifteen minutes there just in case. It's so crazy of me to hope she's not there and then try to make it happen anyway but I never said that I was a rational human being.

When it starts to get late, I force myself to get out of the pool and go through my usual hour long shower/hair drying routine. Paige doesn't turn up in the end and I leave, wondering whether she has actively decided to go in the evenings because she knows I will go in the mornings. After the pool I go home and have Sunday lunch with my parents. My Mom has cooked a special meal as it's my first Sunday back home and part of me feels like a massive failure for being 30 and living at home. I am aware that I haven't lived at home since I was 18 and that this is only temporary but I still wish things hadn't ended up this way. I think about all the stupid choices I've made in my life to end up here, all the sacrifices I made to be with my most recent ex to the detriment of my career that meant I was left with nothing when it fell apart. I start thinking about what I'm going to do next until my Dad notices and, as usual, jumps in to rescue me.

"Honey, don't beat yourself up," he says to me in that way he has, like he knows exactly what I'm thinking. I fake smile at him and my Mom looks awkward because, no doubt, they've talked about my recent funk and haven't agreed on a way to go about fixing me yet. "I was thinking we could go through all your old stuff in the garage today, Em. It's been sitting there for years and I've been meaning to clear it out."

My Dad knows that the best way to sort me out is to make me physically active so clearing out the garage is a perfect distraction. I nod enthusiastically and we eat dessert which, as usual, is excellent. After, we change into sweatpants and baggy t-shirts and begin lugging boxes around and peering into them, hoping no family of mice have moved in. We sort through old trophies, old year books, notebooks, novels, a box full of goggles I had apparently decided at some point to make a collection out of (teenagers do the weirdest things). We find my old pairs of Converse All Stars and I squeal happily at them, like they're old friends, but my Dad insists that I really do not need a box of battered shoes and I reluctantly throw them out.

We're making good progress when he comes across a box full of smaller, prettier boxes and I realise it's my box of letters. I have kept pretty much every hand-written letter I have ever received and filed them away into sub-categories for safe-keeping. There's a Spencer, Aria and Hanna box – this one will be full of ease and silliness and good memories. There's an Ali box – this one has plenty of silliness and ease in content too, but is sad to read anyway because they abruptly end when we're 14. There's a boring one full of letters from family, and a box labelled Maya St Germain. And then there's a Paige McCullers one, and when I see it I know that as soon as I am alone I will be reading those letters because I am a sucker for punishment. I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to sort as quickly as possible because I really want to read those letters in private – not just the ones from Paige but especially the ones from my three best friends because they are sure to cheer me up. I throw out a lot of stuff and feel pretty good about it by the time we're done, make my excuses and head up to my bedroom to tuck myself into my window seat with a blanket.

I read Spencer's first, because they are hilarious without meaning to be. Then I read Aria's which are sometimes kind of boring and at around the 18 years-old mark become essentially a love story named Ezra Fitz. Hanna's are hilarious too but they at least are supposed to be, and they're often written with the express intention of cheering me up so I read them with delight. I decide to skip Ali and Maya's because I really don't want to confuse myself even further but with the recent developments I really cannot resist reading Paige's.

The first is from when we are 13 and it's quite short and to the point. She wrote it not long after we became friends because I asked her to write me a letter to read on the plane I was taking to go visit my dad. I had asked all of my friends to write me something to read as I tended to get nervous when going to see him, always thinking the worst of what I would find when I got there. I found that the letters were a really good way of distracting myself. This is Paige's effort.

Hey Emily, don't really know what to say in this letter for ya. I know you said you wanted something funny to make you laugh so here goes:

Why are pirates called pirates?

Because they arrrrr!

Okay, that was totally lame I know but I dunno what else to say. I hope you have a great trip anyways and enjoy seeing your dad. Paige xx

I smile at the memory of reading it for the first time on the plane. It did actually make me laugh, largely because of how bad the joke was and because I could imagine Paige struggling to write it before putting that in to make sure that she at least had something to say.

I read through a few other letters, some that were meant to be read on the plane, others that were spontaneous and I can see our friendship growing. By the time we're sixteen she's rambling on at me in her letters for pages about absolutely nothing at all, occasionally dropping in sentences that confused me at the time and still confuse me now.

Because don't you think it's so weird that we have such a strong connection and at first we didn't even like each other at all? Sometimes I think about why I didn't like you and it's so weird because, really, what's not to like?

I remember vividly now our first meeting and I cannot help but smile about it even though it was horrible. It was so silly; we became enemies at first blush. It was a normal Monday morning in the middle of the Fall semester and in walked Paige with her severe bangs and her head low and introduced herself to our teacher at the front of the classroom. She was placed at the desk behind me and, being the lovely creature that I was at the time, I turned around at the first opportunity to introduce myself. For some reason that I never found out, she took an instant dislike to me and was incredibly rude, making that awful face that teenage girls make when they don't like something. I was so taken aback that I was speechless and blushed furiously red and forgot to defend myself or try to charm her in any way. After that, she continued to be rude to me and I gave as good as I got – I never talked about why with my friends but for the next year insisted to anyone who asked that I thought that Paige McCullers girl was really mean.

The next sentence that stands out to me is in the letter directly after the last, which I notice is a reply to one I sent.

Actually, on that subject Em, I was thinking about when it was exactly that we became friends. I know it was when we both joined the swim team but what do you think did it? I remember seeing you in the pool and being so impressed by you that I completely forgot we were supposed to be enemies.

I stare at that last line and wonder again what it was about me - other than my times - that she was so impressed by. I remember looking at that line aged 16 and wondering if she was impressed by me in the same way I was impressed by her. At the time I hoped against hope that she was and that maybe she was trying to hint at me but now, well, I guess it was wishful thinking.

I read through the rest of our glory days and each letter has an odd sentence or two that taken out of context could be romantic. By seventeen she is positively gushing about how much she adores me, about how glad she is that we are the best of friends, about how she feels like she can tell me anything. I know now that she actually did tell me everything – there was no big secret crush that she wouldn't admit. And then I get to us aged 18 and the letter that I have been dreading but the one I know I cannot resist is next and I see the smudged ink and the frayed edges and I can pretty much recite it from memory but I read it anyway.

Emily,

I really don't know what to say. I don't know how I can see you in the same way ever again. It's just so wrong, it's always been something I felt was wrong and I feel like that Maya girl is just taking advantage of you. On the one hand I am so worried about you because I really care about you and I want you to be safe but on the other I cannot sit by and watch you do something that I know deep down is wrong.

Emily, please consider what this means for your life. Please think about the hard decisions you are gonna have to make if you continue down this road. You won't be able to lead a normal life (isn't that what you want?) and what will your family think? Have you thought about that? Have you thought about God, either, because He thinks it's wrong too. I was thinking about this earlier and I think if you wanted to try to change my father could help you, he knows some people who have had the same problem and have managed to turn it around and be normal again. I really want to help you and get back the Emily I know.

But I've also got to tell you that if you don't want to change or if you really feel like this is you then I cannot continue to be your friend. My Father wouldn't allow it for starters and I can't disobey him. And although in a way this will make me incredibly sad because (here there is a line or two of scribbled out writing that is almost impossible to read until...) you are my best friend and I don't want to lose you, there is no other option for me.

So I guess this is goodbye for now and I hope you will make the right decision. Please know how hard this is for me.

All the best,

Paige McCullers

I look at the section that has been scribbled out so well that I can barely read it. I spent an awful lot of time in the past trying to decipher it and I'm pretty sure I know what each word is. It says:

you are the only person who has ever known the real me and the only one who has ever seen past the wall I put up for everyone else

I think about that section and still wonder who exactly the real Paige McCullers was and what the hell she meant by it. Now that I know she's truly straight I can put aside any thoughts that it's because she was secretly a big homo and as soon as I think that I feel myself getting angry and sad. Paige was just a bigot all along and I was a fool for reading into things again and again.

I think back to how I reacted at the time. I was pretty angry then too and horrified that I had chosen Paige as the first person to tell my secret to. The weird thing for me was that several years before we had had a conversation about homosexuality and both decided it wasn't something we would judge other people over. I seriously thought she would be fine about it – actually, I thought she might turn around and say "me too" – so receiving that letter came as a huge shock. And then I don't understand how, if you truly are scared for someone's safety, you would cut ties with them completely – surely if you were genuine about what you were saying you would try to stick around to make sure they were okay?

I sat on it for two days before Spencer realised something was up and forced it out of me. I told her the whole thing – my first kiss with Maya, my true feelings for Paige, the fact that I'd known I liked girls for pretty much ever, my slight crush on Ali and then I broke down and choked out everything that Paige had said. Spencer reacted in classic Hastings fashion and offered to destroy Paige for me if I wanted, reassuring me at the same time that she at least didn't think I was wrong to my core. I was so grateful to her in that moment that I knew we'd be friends forever and ever since she has been the one I turn to when it comes to Paige. I came out to Aria and Hanna the same day and received the sort of response I'd expected from Paige – they both essentially said that I was Emily their friend regardless of who I was dating and that they were glad I was comfortable enough to be honest with them.

It's evening by the time I finish thinking all this through and my Mom calls up to me to remind me that we are going to the movies in half an hour. I try to shake off my lingering resentment over Paige and decide that the old way is probably the best way. I call Spencer and arrange to see her for lunch tomorrow, knowing that she at least will be able to see all of this objectively.