Sorry I took so long to update, but I'm done with school for the year and I've been spending the past week trying to write this chapter, so here it is. I actually wanted to write more, but I also wanted to update the story because of everyone who reviewed! This chapter is going to be in two parts and I'm still in the process of writing the second part.

Also, I know in Chapter 1 I said they Peyton, Lucas and Sawyer were in Charlotte (which was stupid), but I decided that they were in New Zealand with his mom. Anyways, on with the story!

We're Still Here

Chapter Four

He hasn't seen her in weeks. It wasn't that he didn't want to, but he was busy apartment hunting the past week. He still texted her occasionally about whatever came to his mind. He wasn't sure if it was guilt or if he found that he really just missed her more than he thought he would (or should). But he was on his way to see her now and he didn't want to dwell on that right now. As he waited for Brooke to answer the door he tried to think of a reason for his visit. But he couldn't come up with one besides that he really just wanted to see her.

He was starting to feel silly just staring at the white door and he contemplated leaving. It probably would have been a good idea to call first, he thought. Spontaneity was never his thing after all. He decided he would ring the doorbell one more time and if there was no answer, he would give up for the day. "C'mon, Brooke," he muttered under his breath.

"Don't you just hate it when they don't answer?" He was startled by the voice behind him. He jumped a little from where he was at and then turned around, holding a hand to his chest.

"Jesus, Brooke!"

"Oops?" she laughed, but then she looked concerned. She removed her earphones from her ears and placed her hand on his chest where his hand used to be. "I'm sorry, I forgot about…" she trailed off, quite afraid of the term HCM. "How's your heart?"

He could feel his heart beat even faster and he hoped she couldn't feel it too. "I'm fine," he smiled, but a part of him suddenly missed her touch when she brought her hand back down. "What are you doing here?"

She tilted her head and looked at him as if he was crazy. "I live here…," she told him as if she was trying to explain something to a child.

"I mean why aren't you there," he pointed towards the door.

"You didn't expect me to be cooped up in there all the time, did you?" she laughed as she turned the lock on her door.

Of course not, he thought as she trailed behind her.

"So, to what do I owe this pleasure?"

"I just wanted to see—," he started to say but she cut him off before he could finish.

"I'm fine," she told him as she headed to the kitchen grabbing a bottle of water. She offered it to him, but when he shook his head no, she drank it instead.

"I wasn't checking up on you," he tried to tell her, but really, he kinda was. She gave him a knowing look, and he knew she figured him out.

"Well I'm fine."

He was snooping through her kitchen as if he belonged there. He opened her refrigerator and was appalled by its contents. "This doesn't look like a refrigerator of a girl who is fine." He pointed towards the three boxes of ice cream and the six-pack beer. She didn't say anything or maybe she was trying to ignore him, but she looked amused so he continued throughout her kitchen. He opened one of the cupboards, grabbed one of the many blue boxes and turned around the face her. "What is this junk doing here?"

"It's KD! It's good!" she tried to grab the box from him, but her efforts failed as he was a lot taller than she was.

"You need real mac and cheese, not this crap."

"Did you come here to judge my eating habits?" she placed her hand on her hip and glared at him.

"Nope," he threw the mac and cheese as she called it in the trash. "I actually came here to ask you if you wanted to help me look for a place." When she didn't look convinced that it would be such a good idea, he kept talking. "I've been looking for a week and I haven't even found one candidate. Maybe I need a woman's opinion. Plus, it'll be really fun, you get to look at pretty houses and apartments. And I can take you out for lunch to have real food!"

She eyed him before throwing her hands up in the air, "Fine, I'll go!"

He grinned at her before she made her way up the stairs to shower and change. "You're paying for lunch, and I get to decorate whatever house you buy!" he heard her yell from her bedroom. He merely chuckled and went back to snooping around in her kitchen, trying to find something to snack on.

. . . . .

They decided to eat first, well Brooke decided, he couldn't really do anything else but follow. They were walking on the board walk, looking for a place to eat. They've been silent for a while now, but it wasn't awkward, at least he didn't think so. They eventually found a small diner and went in. Upon sitting down, they were handed a menu.

"Remember when I used to order for you when we'd go out?" Brooke said laughing.

"Yeah, you'd order things you weren't sure were good, and if it was you'd eat half of it and order it next time."

"And if it wasn't good, you had to eat it," she grinned and scanned the menu.

A man with broad shoulders and a red flannel shirt with a blue backwards baseball cap came up to them and said, "Are you guys ready to order?" He didn't sound mean, but he definitely didn't sound nice, he sounded quite impatient.

"I'll just have a club sandwich with a side of fries," Brooke said folding her menu.

"I'll get a burger with extra fries," Lucas told him, handing him the menu as well.

"Is this weird?" Brooke asked. "Having lunch with me and all. I mean, I can't even remember the last time we did this." They must've been dating the last time they went out and it was just the two of them. After she had returned to Tree Hill, sure they were close, but they always had someone else with them. Like Angie, or Jamie; someone to break the silence and the awkwardness. It was just them this time and she wasn't sure if that was a good thing.

"I guess, it's a little weird," Lucas shrugged and leaned back on his chair. "But we've been friends before."

"Yeah," she tried to smile. "We'll always be friends." There was a pause, until the silence was filled once again. "How's Sawyer?" Brooke asked of his almost 2 year old daughter.

Lucas' eyes immediately lit up at the mention of his daughter. He grinned, just as a proud father would "She's amazing! Perfect and beautiful and just…amazing." He didn't know a lot of people in New Zealand so he bragged about his daughter to any willing ears.

Brooke laughed at Lucas, she could tell he could talk about Sawyer forever. The little girl obviously had him wrapper around her tiny fingers. "Slow down there, Scott, you might run out of adjectives."

Lucas smiled coyly at Brooke and said, "She's my life."

Brooke nodded with a smile, amazed at the love a father could have for his child. She couldn't help but remember Angie and remember how much she wanted a child. "Is she talking your ears off yet?"

Lucas laughed, but shook his head. "She has these moments, and you could tell she's really thinking about something. And then after awhile she would ask something. It's like curiosity gets the best of her and she wants to ask, but she has to think of it first."

"Oh my gosh, she's a broody baby!" Brooke exclaimed.

"My baby does not brood!" Lucas denied.

"She is so yours and Peyton's baby." The table got silent at the mention of his ex-wife. She wasn't really sure how things were between him and her best friend. She was thankful that their orders came in during that moment. She cleared her throat when the man left, she tried to cut the awkwardness that was beginning to settle between them. "Have you taught her how to say Brooke yet? Or cheerleader!"

"My daughter is not gonna be a cheerleader!" Lucas told Brooke with a playful glare.

Brooke waved him off, "That's like saying if you had a son, he won't be a basketball player. Besides what's wrong with being a cheerleader? I was a cheerleader and I didn't turn out half bad," Brooke tried to defend.

"You're amazing Brooke," he reached out for her hand that she was slowly withdrawing and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "If Sawyer turned out to be half as amazing as her godmother then I'd know I raised her well. But I know what the guys talk about in the locker room. I saw how they ogled the cheerleaders. I was one of them!"

"Oh god, did you ever tell them about what we did?" Brooke looked horrified.

"God, no," Lucas threw his head back as he laughed. "I don't think they were ready to hear about what we did."

Brooke laughed along with him, "C'mon, we weren't that bad."

"You took me to a jacuzzi that wasn't yours," he deadpanned and she had to stifle a laugh.

"Maybe we were that bad." She took a few more bites of her sandwich. "Okay, back to Sawyer."

Lucas couldn't help the smile on his face once again. "Maybe you could teach her how to say Aunt Brooke and Jimmy Choo yourself. She and Peyton are actually moving here next week."

Brooke looked stunned as was made obvious by the way her jaw dropped. "What? Why didn't you tell me this before?" She slapped his arm, albeit playfully, it still hurt a bit.

"I dunno, with the wedding and Jamie and you almost killing me on your doorstep, there never seemed to be a right time."

"There was always a right time!"

"I'm sorry. I just thought maybe it'd be better if you focused your time on…," he didn't know what to say, he wanted to say relationship and Julian, but those words seemed to be forbidden.

"Julian?" she tried to continue for him.

He nodded his head in confirmation, "I thought maybe that would help you. If I told you about Sawyer and Peyt, you might distract yourself from it somehow."

"I'm fine." That seemed to be her mantra. He wanted to protest and ask her about how she was doing, but he thought maybe it'd be better if she came to him when he was ready.

"Anyways, I couldn't be in Tree Hill and not have Sawyer and Peyton, y'know? New Zealand was good for awhile, but my mom, Andy and Lily came back because Tree Hill was home, and Peyton and I should never have thought otherwise."

Brooke nodded her head, "I understand why you guys left, you guys have a lot of bad memories here. There were accidents after accidents, drama after drama. I understand wanting to leave that and starting anew." She paused, and played with the fries on her plate with her fork. She would push the remainder of her fries on one side and then the other, then she looked up at him and he met her eyes. "Y'know, I wanted to leave Tree Hill too. For awhile, I thought maybe LA wouldn't be so bad or maybe I could go back to New York. But I just couldn't bring myself to leave this place. I knew I needed to face my problems and past, and not run away from them. Besides, the good memories in Tree Hill always out weight the bad. Always. When I was in New York, when it was silent and cold and lonely at night in my apartment, I'd always think of going back to Tree Hill, back to home. I'd remember Peyton, Haley, Jamie, Nathan and you." She said you in almost a whisper, it was so soft that he wasn't even sure if she'd said it, but she gave him a small smile and he was sure. She remembered him. So he smiled back and let her continue. "No matter how much I wanted to go back, I knew I couldn't; I was just starting my company and…I just couldn't. So I'd try to think of a bad memory in Tree Hill." She looked away from him again, he thinks because she's probably afraid that if she met his eyes, he'd know most of the bad memories included him. He was certain the bad memories included him, and he felt guilty and sorry and for a moment, he kinda wishes he could do it all over again. She'd gone back to mindlessly forking her food. "The bad memories kept me there, but only for awhile, well four years," she laughed, "Tree Hill was great when I came back, but then a lot of things happened and I just wanted to leave. But then I'd think of the good memories, and those memories always made me stay."

Her eyes lost some colour or sparkle, he noticed, as if she was relieving a memory. What memory, he wasn't sure. He and Peyton had a lot of bad histories in Tree Hill, but Brooke did too. And yet she stayed, being the fierce person that she was.

Tomorrow finds the best way out is through.

He wanted to ask Brooke about what bad memory she was thinking of. Her eyes continued to get darker, but he couldn't bring himself up to ask her about a bad memory. He didn't want to see her eyes lose colour, he wanted to bring back that shine in her eyes and that smile on her face. Maybe he'd ask about her bad memories next time, but not today.

"Tell me about a good memory in Tree Hill," he told her instead. He could tell that her mind was somewhere else because when he spoke, she seemed to have fallen out of her reverie. Her eyes focused on him once again and she shook her head as if it could clear her thoughts.

"A good memory…why?"

"Just…I want to know."

"Uhm, okay," she said uncertainly as she looked down and resumed playing with her food, even if there was hardly any on her plate. He really wished she would just eat those damned fries so she could stop distracting herself and finally look at him. And then she did, look at him that is. "Whenever I feel like packing up and uprooting somewhere else, I'd think of when Peyton and I were just kids during the summer. I'd drag her out of her room to go to the beach. Can you believe that? I had to drag her to the beach. We'd go to my dad's yacht even though we weren't allowed. The yacht was anchored, locked and everything, it would just sway with the waves, but it never really went anywhere, but we'd pretend we were somewhere else. One time we pretended we sailed all the way to England and we talked in funny accents while we sun bathed on the deck of the yacht. We pretended we were British, having tea. I stole my mom's make-up bag and we put on red lipstick, way too much eye shadow and too-pink lipstick with clip on earrings. Of course, I had to force those on her. We must've look ridiculous bathing on a yacht by the dock, but we were so carefree, you know? We didn't care what other people thought and our only problem was getting caught by my father."

He smiled a little at her, but he felt a bit guilty as she told him of Peyton and her from years ago because he realized that he ruined almost a lifetime worth of friendship. He had come between the two of them, but he never meant to. He was only supposed to be with and fall in love with the blonde artist. But then he met her; and he meant really met her. Like not just in hallways or in the gym cheering or in gossip.

Her voice interrupted his thoughts, "In that moment that I'm reliving those memories, I feel like I could be just as carefree as we were then. But then the moment is gone."

He felt even more guilty after that. But then she just smiled and told him they should get going if they want to find him a house.

He didn't like that smile. It was a fake, cover-up smile and he did not like it. He made a promise to himself that he was going to make her genuinely smile before the end of the day, and maybe everyday onwards.

I'm not extremely happy with this chapter since I didn't plan their conversation to be so long, but they kept conversing and being cute in my head that I just had to write it.

I feel like this chapter is kinda a filler, but more will happen in the upcoming chapters so please keep reading and reviewing, they pressure me to write a lot faster. :D