--Authors Note--

Well, this is my second go at this chapter. I hope its better then the first one and trust me when I say: IT SUCKED. So, yeah, fingers crossed.

-Steph

Disclaimer: Everything recognizable belongs to Lauren Brooke.

West Point

Chapter Three

As it turns out, mom was right. About the West Point people I mean. I seriously think that it should, like, not be allowed to use heavy artillery in the mornings. I mean, come ON, who does that? Shooting off canons and firing off guns at what? Eight in the morning? Oh, so fun. Some of us are actually trying to sleep.

I had just about managed to free my mind from its many unwanted thoughts when the racket started up. Now I had just one more reason to despise West Point and all of its 'cadets'. I hate them all, we have enough people in the military, they should just go and—

"Amy?" Kat's voice called through my door, startling me out of my thoughts. She banged on the door.

I groaned. "What?" I threw the covers up and over my face.

Thankfully, Kat did not try to open the door, not that anything would have stopped her, she just didn't. "I just came in to get my books, I was at Mel's place last night," Kat called cheerfully, a smile present in her voice. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"Whatever," I mumbled into my pillows.

"Bye!" Kat chirped. "We'll talk later!" she added before I heard the main door close behind her.

I rolled over onto my stomach and screamed into my pillow. The sound came out muffled and strained.

This was just wonderful, so if Kat knew then who else knew? Wow. My first week at college and I was well on my way to being labeled 'slut'. Well this really was just fan-fucking-tastic. And, of course, my stupid, stupid, stupid (STUPID!) brain seems to enjoy nothing more then berating me for… last night.

My mind finally drifted off onto some paper I was supposed to turn in at a class that day when an extra large bang and crash sounded outside.

Stupid canons or whatever weapons they use. Do they even use canons anymore? How nineteenth century of them. See? West Point guys really aren't that great. Best military academy my ass, they aren't even up to date on their weapons of war.

I finally find one thing to hold over his head when my brain (stupid brain) comes up with another piece of brilliant logic: they are either using canons to A) keep the culture, B) as a wake up call or C) because people actually still do use canons. How should I know? I'm majoring in Veterinarian care, not Weapons-People-Use-In-War.

Just when I start thinking about something else, something just has to happen that leads me to think about that and him again.

Whoop-dee freaking do.

I could already tell that this was going to be a good day. As if my cheery and pleasant mood wasn't already enough to establish that conclusion.

My alarm clock went off again and I decided that it probably was time to get out of bed. I sat up and looked around my room. I got out of bed and quickly put on a pair of boxers (mine of course, just the kind to sleep in) and a t-shirt.

Deciding that a shower (a nice shot shower) was probably my best bet at the moment, I grabbed a towel and my bathroom bag off of my dresser and started towards the door… until I tripped on something.

I looked down.

My jeans.

Wonderful.

Any more reminders my dear ol' room would like to throw at me?

I kicked the offending denim garment viciously to the side and stalked into the bathroom. I turned the water on hot and some enough the bathroom was foggy was hot, thick steam. I stripped of my clothes and jumped in, not literally. I didn't jump, knowing me I'd slip and break my nose, if not something else.

I felt marginally better after my shower. I brushed my teeth and blow dried my hair and did all of my other bathroom stuff. I got dressed in my favorite, most comfortable pair of worn in jeans that somehow had gotten a whole in the left knee. I coupled that with the soft, gray cashmere sweater that my sister, Lou, had gotten me for my last birthday, the bottom of my black t-shirt just peaked out under the bottom hem of the sweater. I laced up my favorite Converses, pulled my hair into a loose ponytail that draped over my shoulder, collected my bag and my books and I was ready for the day.

&

"So, tell us everything!" Mel demanded as she and Julie and Stevie joined Kat and I in the library later that afternoon. All of the day's classes were done and I had hoped that I could escape the grilling that I now knew was unavoidable. Kat, it turns out, was already in the library working on a paper and had joined me when I came. Mel, Stevie and Julie were only minutes away.

"I'm working now," I tried to excuse myself from the conversation. I bent down lower over my notebook and scribbles away furiously, hoping that they would get the hint and leave.

I could just tell Mel rolled her eyes. "Come on, Amy, tell us everything."

I sighed, my natural instinct was to fight them some more but I was smart enough to know that no matter how much fighting and complaining that I may have done, I was not getting out of that conversation. I set my pencil down and rubbed a hand across my eyes. "Do I even want to know how you know anything happened at all?"

"Well," Julie began, a big smile on her face, "you weren't at the party anymore and anyway, Kat saw you leaving." I glanced at Kat and she nodded in confirmation. "Ty never even showed up, and he had already said that he was definitely going to be there. It really wasn't that difficult to put two and two tighter."

"Or Amy and Ty together," Stevie joked.

"Funny," I said sarcastically.

"We weren't even absolutely sure anything had happened between you two but you have already more or less admitted to it so…" Wonderful. So, in reality, I had just dug my own grave deeper. I could have called upon smart and sensible Amy to be present just this one time and have thought things through and asked them what they knew first but, no. I had to go right on ahead and tell them exactly what they had wanted to know.

"What's the big deal?" I snapped in a snappier voice then had been attended. "There isn't anything to tell." I went back to working on my paper.

"Jeez, PMS much?" I glared at Mel. Mel through her hands up in defeat. "I was just joking, Amy," she said sincerely.

I remained silent and all that could be heard at our table was the furious scratching of my pen in my notebook. I turned a page in the book I was using as a reference, almost ripping the page right out of the binding. I took a deep breath to calm down.

I could still feel all of their eyes on me, waiting expectantly for me to dish out some juicy gossip. Fat chance of that happening anytime soon.

"So," Mel started, I should have known from that very first word that the rest of her thought would be, shall I say questionable, "was he big?"

I dropped my pen and yelped. "What?" several heads turned in our direction. I clapped a hand over my mouth. Forgot I was in a library for a second there.

The prim and tight lipped librarian shuffled over to us, her plain, old lady, tan shoes shuffling on the carpet and floral print dress swishing. "Do I have to remind you, young ladies, that you are in a library and there are people here who are wishing to work in the peace in quiet?"

"Sorry," I mumbled. Thankfully, the old librarian didn't say anything and just off to terrorize some other innocent group of students.

I turned back to my friends and glared at Mel. "What did you say?"

"Just getting your attention," Mel grinned. "But, really. Was he?"

I just stared at her in disbelief. "I refuse to answer that question."

"You did sleep with him though, right?" Stevie asked.

I sighed. "Yes," I said just to appease them. Maybe if they got a little bit out of me then they would just leave me alone.

No such luck though. "Was it good?" Mel wanted to know this time. "Because when I did it with him it was so good," she got a day dreamy look on her face and I half expected her to start drooling. Mel seemed to snap out of her trance like state and shook her head. "But, anyways, was it?" she demanded eagerly.

I blinked twice and then looked back down at my notebook. I flipped through a few pages in the reference book.

"Were you drunk?" Gee, thanks for the benefit of the doubt there, Mel.

"She only had one drink," Kat answered for me. "At least she only had one while I was with her, I don't know about later."

"I only had one drink," I sighed. Before any of them could say anything else I looked up. "Could we please not talk about this right now? It really isn't a big deal and I would just rather forget that it ever happened." I picked my pencil back up and looked down at my notebook again. I stopped and looked back up when I caught the shocked looks on all of their faces. "What?" I asked dumbly.

"Not a big deal?" Julie echoed incredulously. "Do you know how many girls would have killed to be in your position last night? Excuse the irony of that statement," Julie waved her hand as if that would excuse the extreme embarrassment I felt just then.

"You guys make it sound like one night with him is like a trip to… Paris," I settled on a city that I would have loved to go to someday.

Mel snorted. "Girl, Paris is so over rated. Trust me, I've been there. One night with Ty Baldwin is better then any museum or tropical paradise in the world. It could only be better if you had Ty Baldwin at one of those tropical paradises."

"You should feel proud of what you did," Stevie said with a firm nod of her head.

"Oh, great," I started. "So now when I go home for Thanksgiving I'll have a great story to tell my mom. Gee mom, college is great. All of my classes and professors are good, I like my roommate and I made a bunch of friends and… oh, and yeah, I met a guy and half and hour later I was in bed with him!" I finished my rant sarcastically. "Oh, yeah, that will go over well."

"You don't have to tell your mom everything you did," Kat said.

I stared at her. "Did you actually think I would say that to her? She'd probably die on the spot."

"So I take it he wasn't there in the morning, right?" Mel had the gal to ask that question next.

I felt a lurch of something, and I couldn't, for the life of me, ever tell you exactly what that feeling was, in my stomach. I gulped before responding with a very simply, yet classy, "No."

"Oh," Mel sounded only marginally disappointed but not at all surprised. "Well, that's expected, right? I already told you that," she reasoned.

"Yeah, and that makes me fell so much better."

"You do know that all the West Point students have to be up at, like, six thirty, right?" Mel supplied me with some new information.

"So?" I wasn't catching on. Sometimes I can be slow like that.

"So," Mel continued, "you wouldn't have been awake when he had to leave and he probably just didn't want to wake you. Even though Dean Baldwin is his father, he would never hear the end of it if he, Ty Baldwin, Cadet Commander or whatever, military protégée, was late to training."

"Whatever," I shrugged it off like it was no big deal even though I felt that same feeling in my stomach as she made excuses for him. "It doesn't even matter; it's over and done with. I'll probably never even see him again anyway so what's it matter?" of course, it mattered a lot but I wasn't about to admit that to any of them.

Stevie laughed softly so that she didn't attract the librarians attention again, the librarian was already watching us closely, just waiting for us to do something so that she could kick us out of her precious library.

"You can't avoid him. He's only five miles away and we share the town in between anyway," Stevie said.

"Yeah, and you guys already told me that they don't get a lot of free time at West Point," I shot back quickly, hoping that one of them ad actually mentioned something about what I had just said.

"But they still do get some free time," Mel said. "You'll run into him eventually."

I shrugged; I tried my hardest to keep up with pretending that it didn't matter at all to me. If only it was working internally as well. "Not necessarily. He's a senior, right?" I received nods from all people present at my table. "Well then this is his last year here and then he will be gone," I leant back in my chair, confident with my new plan of action. All I had to do was avoid the town as much as possible. It actually was a fairly logical plan, if you didn't consider everything else.

"For a year?" Mel's voice raised the slightest bit in disbelief. She lowered it immediately when the librarian made a movement towards us. "You can't so that. That's, like, the only place off campus that we can actually go to." And thank you, Mel, for bringing up one of said points that ruin my whole plan.

"I'll still go, just avoid it at times that he will be there." I sounded like a baby, I really did.

"Good luck with that," Julie rolled her eyes.

"Hey," Kat spoke up for the first time in a while, "it's just like what you already said, Amy. It doesn't even matter anymore." I stared at my friend. Was one of them actually taking my side in all of this? Amazing. "Just don't think about him, if you see him then ignore him."

I almost hugged Kat. "And that," I said to Kat, "is why you are my best friend ever." Okay, so maybe she wasn't my best friend ever but they all got the gist of what I was trying to convey.

Mel glared at Kat. "You just had to say that, didn't you?"

"What?" Kat's forehead creased in confusion.

"Nothing," Mel shook her head glumly.

Okay, now I was confused. I let it drop though, it finally seemed as though we were getting off of the subject of me and a certain West Point boy doing a certain something.

Of course, I only thought that until Mel decided to poke more holes in my plan of avoiding Ty Baldwin. "He won't really be gone though, you know? His family has a house close by."

I sighed and dropped my head into my arms.

When did I get so stupid? I have never acted like I did the previous night before. I will always wonder what came over me, what absurd thing influenced me to do what I did. It was embarrassing just recollecting my actions from the night before. I wish I could say that I was drunk, but it had already been established that I clearly was not drunk. I had many an alibi on that matter already, or just Kat, but still. I could also say that I was under the influence of some illegal substance but that was even less Amy Fleming then sleeping with a guy that I had just met.

No, there really was no logical explanation for what I did.

I'm not lonely, depressed, a sex addict, a slut, a whore or anything that is at all related to any of the afore listed words.

But, even after all of my complaining and bitching and moaning on the topic, I wasn't really regretful of what I did. I was more upset that he had just left. It doesn't matter if he had classes or whatever he would be doing at such an ungodly hour of the morning. He could have at least left a note or something if he didn't want to wake me up.

But way to blow a shot at a girls confidence. To just be left like that! That's got to be one of the worst things that a guy could do to a girl.

I may have been able to convince myself, however poorly a job I did at it, that I hated Ty Baldwin's guts and anything that had to do with him but I could not rid myself of that stupid feeling in the pit of my stomach that I felt whenever I thought about him.

It must just be the aftereffects of doing… yeah, that.

&

That night, I found myself seated on the couch with Kat by my side. We had hurried back to our room just a little bit before nine o'clock and had nabbed bags of chips, some popcorn and a few sodas from our poorly stocked 'kitchen' and were all ready and set just as 24 started. Kat must be like my long lost sister or something, we both watch 24 like a religion.

The opening credits and theme song had just finished and the commercials had come on when my cell phone started ringing. I glanced over to where the noise was coming from. Right. I had just dropped my bag carelessly on the ground by door.

"Aren't you going to get that?" Kat asked me as 'Home on the Range' kept belting out of my phone with a volume that was surprising for such a little gadget.

"Um, no," I answered. I wasn't about to move. I pretended to be engrossed in a commercial. It was the Vonage one. The Vonage commercials are so funny. This was the one with guy talking and in the background there was the lobster and it got caught in the revolving doors.

My phone stopped ringing after a minute. A minute later, just as 24 was starting up again, the tune of 'Home on the Range' filtered out of my bag once again. I ignored it again and it eventually stopped ringing. A minute later, it started to ring again. I sighed but didn't get up to get it; my eyes were glued to the television and Jack Bauer as he preformed his latest stunt.

Kat finally snapped when my phone started to ring once more. She sighed and heaved herself off of the couch, setting her bag of chips and can of Sprite on the table in front of us. She jumped over to my bag and rummaged through its pockets until she found me phone. She flipped it open and in a voice filled with authority, she said, "Hello? We're watching 24 right now and 'Home on the Range' playing over and over is kind of ruining it. Please stop cal—" Kat suddenly stopped in the middle of her rant.

Dear, God. I could only hope that whoever was calling was calling the wrong number. Way for my roommate to meet my mom, right?

"Oh," Kat squeaked in a very small voice. "Sorry," she said hurriedly. I'm taking bets on my mother. "Oh, yeah, right, she's right here." Kat flounced back over to me and the couch and the food, a grin spreading across her face. "Here ya go!" she sang in a singsong voice. She tossed the cell phone to me and I just managed to catch it.

"Who is it?" I asked, not really thinking about the fact that whoever was on the other line could probably hear me.

"It's Lover Boy!" Kat said. She sat back down and flashed me another grin before turning her attention back to the TV. I glanced over, great. I missed the good part. When there is just suddenly fire and the chatter of guns you know something good just happened. "Well don't keep him waiting," Kat's voice reminded me that I still held my phone in my hands.

I picked it up and placed it to my ear. "Hello?" I asked tentatively, I hoped whoever it was, was gone now so that I could go back to watching my show.

"Hey, Amy?" A deep and clearly masculine voice spoke in my ear.

"Uh, yeah," I said, not paying attention and trying to place the voice. I knew I had heard it somewhere before.

"It's me, Ty."

I'm not very proud to recall my reaction to those three words. My mouth almost certainly fell open and my eyes bugged out. I probably look like a fish, just less attractive. I think I also may have made a weird and very embarrassing noise.

Ty's deep laugh rumbled through my phone and into my ear and I welcomed back that feeling in my stomach.

"Um, yeah? Hi." Oh, how I wish I could think of something intelligent to say. What I really would have liked to tell him was a nice, big, 'fuck off'. Needless to say, that didn't quite go as I had planned.

Kat glanced over at me briefly before turning back to the TV.

"Yeah, so anyway—" Ty began again.

"How did you get my number anyway?" I blurted out without thinking, obviously interrupting whatever he had been about to say.

"One of your friends gave it to me," he said.

"Which friend?' I asked suspiciously.

"Mel." I knew it. I'd have to talk to Mel about this later. Had I not already made it perfectly clear that I didn't want to have anything to do with Ty Baldwin, much less talk to him, ever again? Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

"Oh, right."

"Yeah, so anyway—" Ty began again and as was my custom, I interrupted him once again before he could get past those three opening words.

"Did you want something?" my mother would have a coronary is she could hear my rudeness now.

"Yeah, I—" he really must just love me for all of the interrupting that I've done.

"Well, could you hurry it up?" I asked rather brusquely. "I'm kind of in the middle of something."

If our positions had been somehow reversed, and if I had been on the receiving end of my words then I would have felt a bit uncomfortable. Ty, on the other hand, was not in the slightest. That confidence that was almost mockingly arrogant and cocky never once wavered. "If you would stop interrupting me then I could be done by now."

I amazing remained silent but so did Ty. This was so frustrating. It was like he had been sent straight from my own person hell to sleep with me, ditch me in the morning without a word and then annoy me to no end. "So? What are you waiting for? You're wasting my minutes."

Ty sighed into my ear. "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that I didn't get to say goodbye to you this morning, I had to get back to school for classes and—"

"Did you get Mel to tell me that to?" I snipped back.

"No, I—"

"Look, is there a point to this? Because I would honestly like nothing better then to never see you again." Way to be forceful and in control of the conversation, Amy. Let him no that I won't take any shit.

"I understand," like hell you do, "but, I was wondering if you would like to go to dinner with me on Friday night."

I was all set with another snide reply; it was all ready on my lips and just waiting to come out. I stopped it at the last minute though, thankfully. He couldn't have said what I though I just heard, right? There must be an interference on the line.

"Excuse me?"

"Would you like to go out to dinner with me on Friday night?" Ty repeated.

Now there was no doubt that I had heard right. Now I was just speechless. He had some real gal to be asking me out on a date.

"Hello?" I think I remained quiet too long. "Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"So? What do you say?" was it just me or was there just a little bit of hope in his voice?

My eyes narrowed. "Why should I say yes? After everything you've done wh—"

Whoa, now he interrupted me. "I thought you'd feel that way," he said.

"Really? What ever gave you that ide—"

"Let me make it up to you." I was silent. "I want to make it up to you. Let us have a fresh start, if you will."

"I should say no and call you a bastard," was what I said in return. I felt like hitting myself in the forehead, hard. Or, better yet, bang my head against the brick wall, hard. It sounded like I was, of all the things in the world, flirting with him.

"Humor me."

And that was all it took for me to cave. The funny feeling in my stomach returned and the next words out of my mouth were completely uncalled for. I was just humoring him. At least, that's what I would always say from that day on until the end of time. Or maybe he could do something like mind control or something. Because there was no way that I would ever have agreed to his proposal under a clear and sane state of being.

But, there it was anyway.

The one word that would seal my fate for the rest of my life.

The one word that would bind me forever.

"Fine."

a/n: so? Its okay, I think. Just to let you know, I don't know when I'll update again. I'm going to AZ tomorrow (Monday) and have decided not to take my laptop. I can always use my mom's laptop at our house or my step-dad's computer. I just don't feel like carrying Mr. Laptop through the airport. I'm gone for three weeks though and then come back for a week before I go to camp for a month. I come back from AZ on July 16th though. See all off you guys later! -Steph