A/N: I still don't own Persuasion. However, I welcome any and all reviews. Thank you so much for all reviews.


I was tired; I'd had a long day. I had just started medical school a few weeks earlier and it was rough going. I just wanted to relax and watch a movie. Jenna and I had talked about inviting Kyle and his roommate s over for dinner and a movie. It was Friday night, which meant sweet freedom for all of us. And that meant Ben would be coming. My fiancé, Ben, I loved saying those words. We were going to get married and I'd be Gianna Maria Christianson, wife of Benjamin James Christianson. We'd finally announced our engagement to Ben's parents on Thursday night and they had not been excited to hear about it. But that didn't matter. We didn't need them. Once I finished medical school and Ben finished grad school, we would be unstoppable. We could both work our way through school; I'd been doing that for years already. We weren't people who needed a luxurious lifestyle; we were simple people.

"Hey, Gia," Jenna said walking into the apartment and throwing her purse at the couch; she missed as usual. "How is life?"

I smiled. "I'm getting married."

She laughed. "Not until next summer, but yeah, you're the first one of us to get married. That's so exciting."

"Blech," Katie Joseph said from kitchen where she was starting on dinner. "Some of us are nowhere near getting married. To get married, first you have to have a boyfriend."

"You'll have a boyfriend someday soon," Jenna told her. "I'm sure of it."

"You're an eternal optimist. You have Kyle."

"You had Luke."

"Who is a great guy but he is not The Guy. He's just a friend, a really good solid friend. You know what I mean?"

"Like Kyle to me?" I asked.

"Exactly like that, we're best friends and I want him to approve of the guy I marry some day but I don't want to marry him."

"That's how I feel about Kyle."

Jenna shook her head. "I want to marry Kyle."

"Well, that's your prerogative," I told her. "I want to marry Ben."

"You can have Ben. He's a great guy but I could never marry him," Jenna replied, curling up in a chair by the couch.

I laughed and then we heard someone knocking on our door. "I've got it," Katie said. A few minutes later, she stuck her head into the living room. "Gia, Ben's here."

I ran to the door to see my fiancé standing there in jeans and a tired Michigan t-shirt that desperately needed to be replaced. "Hey, sweetie, what's up?" I asked. "Do you want to come in?"

He shook his head. "I need to tell you something. I'm really sorry about this, Gianna. But after talking with my dad last night, I've realized that there's just too much against us. My parents aren't going to back down and that really scares me. So while I used to say I'd never be the asshole who did this, I'm going to have to ask you for your ring back. We can't be engaged anymore, Gia; we just can't. We can't be together. My parents are pushing against me and I can't handle it. It's never been this bad before. They told me-I can't do this, Gia. I can't. We can't get married; it's just not a good idea."

I stared at him. "Is this some sort of a joke?"

"No, Gia, I'm really sorry. I really can't marry you. It's just too much."

As tears crept into the corners of my eyes, I slowly twisted the ring off my left ring finger and glared at him. "Damn you, Ben Christianson. I love you. I want to marry you. We can conquer your family. But if you don't want to work hard, then you can fuck yourself to fucking hell. I hope you die. I hope you burn alive. I hope you…" And then my voice trailed off. I bit my lip and stared at him. "Go to hell, Ben Christianson. Take your ring and go fuck yourself to hell."

And with those parting words, I threw the ring at him and then slammed the door in his face. With that, I crumbled to the floor and started crying. I clung to Katie as I sobbed for what seemed like hours until Jenna told us to go to the bedroom while she called Kyle and David to cancel our dinner plans. Instead, they and Josh showed up wanting to know where Ben was so that they could kill him. Then Jenna made them leave and let me call my parents and Sophia. And then I cried more. I didn't want to move on. I didn't want another guy in my life. I just wanted Ben back.


I may not be the sort of girl who makes the first move but I'm also not the kind of girl who sits idly by and watches things whirl out of control. I like protecting other people and helping them. That's part of why I became a doctor. I have some secret desire to be Superman or something; or at least, that's what Sophia always said when we were kids and I was always fixing everyone's injuries. I've never been afraid of blood-except in people's eyes. And I'm not afraid of needles, except in my spine. I can put them in other people's spines if I have to do a spinal tap or an epidural. But you can keep them the hell away from me. I'd rather go through the pain of natural childbirth than have an epidural. I'm not a wimp; I'm just weird. I don't like being in pain or watching the people I love endure pain. I also don't like people who make other people endure pain. But I've never really gotten over Ben Christianson. Thusly, I find myself in a moral dilemma of sorts. I love him but I can't forgive him for breaking my heart. And I don't know why he broke my heart. It's all very complicated. Love really does stink.


Saturday morning, our plan was to leave at nine in the morning-on the nose. So we told Chris, Logan, and Nolan to be there at eight-thirty. Ben told Carissa to be there at eight. Lying works best with some people. And it wasn't even really lying; it was just stretching the truth to make sure that they were actually there on time. Some people have no concept of time and thusly would make awful doctors. I had finally talked to Kyle on Friday night and he was looking forward to our visit. "I'm hoping that you can spend some time with Josh. He's driving me crazy."

"I'll see what I can do. But I'm not sure what I can do or say."

"I know," he had replied. "But I still want you to try. You've known him since kindergarten."

I sighed and ran a tired hand through my hair. "And I've never understood him. This is the guy who became a recluse and antisocial after Allyson died. He used to be outgoing and the life of the party."

"And then my sister died. Trust me, Gia; I know all of it. He moved in with us and it was supposed to be for a few weeks, a month at most. And now he won't leave."

"Have you tried hinting to him?"

Kyle snorted. "We've both hinted that he might want to move forward with his life and he got mad at us for suggesting that he forget Ally. He gets defensive and angry whenever we tell him that he might want to find another place to live. He thinks that if he moves out of our house, he'll be betraying Ally and he can't bear the idea of hurting her or betraying her."

"As I recall, he was the one who wanted to order pizza and beer when Ben dumped me."

"That was him. I think he wanted to watch some baseball game or something."

I laughed. "At least I know where I stand with him."

Kyle laughed. "Oh, Gianna, Josh cares about you. You two are good friends."

"Oh yeah, I know. We just don't always see eye-to-eye on everything. Like, we disagree on how to handle a broken heart."

"Josh disagrees with most people he knows on that subject."

"This is true."

"Katie argues with him about it every time she sees him."

I laughed. "I've heard her do it. I love it."

"I don't think David appreciates it."

"He doesn't like it," I replied. "But he appreciates what she has to say. He knows that what he did was wrong. He just doesn't like being reminded of it constantly. And Katie doesn't remind him of it constantly."

"She's actually quite good about it. And David and Luke are friends."

"And Norah is completely out of the picture."

"She could die and I wouldn't even know."

He laughed. "David said that just yesterday."

And then I laughed a real laugh, a whole belly laugh like I hadn't laughed in ages and ages. I don't laugh as much as I should. And I really haven't been laughing much lately; Logan doesn't really inspire much laughter on my part. I miss drinking wine and watching old movies with Jenna and Katie and their husbands. There's nothing wrong with beer but I'm not much of a beer person and Logan loves his Miller Lite. I don't get that. When my friends drink beer, they look for something a little fancier, a little nicer with a little more taste. Life needs flavor.


Ben was waiting for me by my car with a blue duffel bag and his guitar at eight-forty-five on Saturday morning. "No one else is ready yet," he told me. "Chris overslept. Logan is hung-over. Carissa is doing her make-up and worrying about Jayden. And Nolan is making sure his parents know how to take care of Jayden. I'm sorry."

I shrugged and used my key to unlock the truck. "Throw your stuff in there. If they aren't here in twenty minutes, we'll just give them the map and directions and they can follow later. I can't be late."

He nodded and threw his bag in the trunk and then I put mine in next to it; then he put the guitar in the trunk. "So, you still have the same old Sentra?" he asked.

"Emma Perpetua still runs just fine," I replied with a smile. "She isn't perfect but she gets the job done."

"Does Logan know that you drive this car?"

"Does it matter?" I replied. "Kyle drove the same car from his sixteenth birthday until the day that car died almost ten years later. You fall in love with your first car and it's impossible to let it go."

He nodded. "That's especially true if you're the sort of person who names her cars."

I shrugged and leaned against my car-my faithful 1996 Nissan Sentra that I'd bought about ten years earlier. Jenna and I named it Emma Perpetua and I loved "her" dearly. "I name my cars, my cell phones, my computers, and my stethoscope. And Kyle names things too."

"And you renamed him."

I giggled. "It's not my fault that I went to high school with Kyle Elizabeth Merchant and then met Kyle James Harville in college."

"So you spent how many years calling him Kyle Elizabeth on accident?"

I shrugged again. "It's just not my fault."

He smiled. "I'm sure."

"No, it would just slip out. I always meant to call him Kyle James but Elizabeth would just sneak past my mental censors."

We were bantering easily. Is this really what talking to your ex-boyfriend is supposed to be like? It was so easy to talk to him. I didn't know it could be this easy to talk to him. I thought it would be awful, like having teeth drawn or something. But Katie and Luke are still friends after they broke up. He and David are even friends; heck, Luke was in David and Katie's wedding. Maybe there is some hope for Ben and me. Maybe we can be friends.

At nine o'clock, Nolan came outside to tell us that there was no way Chris, Logan, and Carissa could be ready to leave for Alpena on time. So I gave them the directions and remembered that Nolan's 2008 Lincoln Navigator had GPS and he had a cell phone. There was almost no way they could get lost. If Logan were driving, they'd get lost even with the GPS and all the cell phones in the world. But Nolan is a pretty reliable guy.


And this all meant that I had to spend three hours alone in a car with Ben. Jenna was guaranteed to be giving me crap the minute we got to Long Lake. She thought that Ben and I should let bygones be bygones and get back together. I disagreed and we had argued about it. Ben and I couldn't argue or disagree during the next three hours. We would both have to play nice. I didn't know what we could talk about. Maybe we would be able to talk about the same stuff we used to talk about years ago. But I didn't know. I was worried.

"So do you know if David and Katie are coming this weekend?" was Ben's first question once we were on the open road.

I shook my head. "I know Katie's parents are coming but I don't know about David, Katie, and Elinor."

"I haven't seen David in years," he said. "After college, I moved away and we lost track of each other."

"But you and Kyle stayed in contact."

He shrugged. "Kyle and David are very different people. I think David was hurt by the way I ended things with them."

"You just left when the lease ended?"

"Yeah, and that wasn't right. I should have warned them but I was a wuss back then. I just ran off to St. Louis without warning anyone. I sent them a check to cover my last couple months of rent after I left."

"Why did you go to St. Louis?"

"I got sick of my parents' bullshit. My mom's brother is a mechanic in the Houston area and my mom always mocks him and ignores him. And then during our senior year of college, my mom published a book called Below the Light about a wealthier single mom who marries a mechanic and they have this beautiful love story. It was this amazing story but it was a load of horseshit. Adelaide would never approve of that romance in real life; it just looked great in her book."

I nodded. "You just took off. No one ever knew what happened. Josh, David, and Kyle were just left in the lurch."

"And so were you. I messed a lot of things up that summer. I really should have done a lot of things differently."

This was not the conversation I had expected. I figured we'd discuss books and the weather and maybe music. I never thought he'd talk about our former relationship. "If you could do it all over, what would you change?"

"Everything," he replied. "I would have been honest with all of you. I would have handled it all differently."

"Would you still have asked me to marry you?"

He took a deep breath and I was sure that he was going to say no. "Yes, but after that I should have stood up to my parents. Instead, I broke up with you and ran off to St. Louis. Breaking up with you was my first mistake."

I couldn't breathe or think. Ben Christianson was sitting in my passenger seat admitting that ending our engagement had been his first mistake. This could not be happening to me. This was not something I had planned for my vacation. I took a few deep breaths, well more like rapid gulps of air and then looked Ben. He was looking at me as if he was expecting a response. So I took another gulp of air. I wanted to say "Are you kidding?" but instead "Oh fuck" was all that slipped out.

"Are you all right?" he asked slowly.

"Am I all right?" I repeated. "You just told me that breaking up with me was your first mistake. What am I supposed to say to that?"

"I don't know. I'm not asking you to take me back right now or anything like that. I know that I must have hurt you horribly. Kyle slammed my head into a wall when he found out what had happened."

I smiled. "I figured he would. He's a rather protective older brother."

"David broke my nose."

"He told me. He was rather proud of himself at the time."

"And then he told me to go to hell and rot there. He also told me he hoped I had a nice life since he had no intentions of ever seeing me or speaking to me again. And he's pretty much held to that. That's why I haven't heard much from David in the past six years. He's mad at me."

"I don't blame him," I said. Internally, I was smiling; I have some amazing friends.

"I don't blame him either," Ben replied. "I rather think I deserved it. I handled everything wrong. I should have told my parents to go to hell when they told me to break up with you."

"Why did you listen to them?"

"I was afraid of my dad. I'd planned on working for him as an editor until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. And then he told me that I had to break up with you or he would fire me. So I broke up with you. When I told James that, he said he was glad to see me finally learning to value business over people. That same day, I found out that I had been accepted into the grad school at Washington University. So I tucked my tail between my legs and ran away from everyone. I told my dad to take his job and go to hell. I told him that I was done with his game and I wasn't taking any more money from him. I figured that if you could support yourself, so could I. And then I went to St. Louis. I finished my Master's in two and a half years. And then I went to Chicago to get my PhD and I've been there for the past three and a half years. I'm almost done with my PhD and I've been accepted to teach at the University of Michigan starting in September. And I've basically cut my parents out of my life. I saw them at Carissa's wedding and a few other things that Carissa has insisted that I attend. But I'm liberating myself from them."

"Good for you," I replied. This was an awful lot of information to get all at once. I was overwhelmed and I didn't know what to think. He had dumped me because of his family but then he had walked away from them too. "You really are good at walking away."

He sighed. "I'm really sorry about it, Gianna. I shouldn't have yielded so easily. I should have fought more. I never should have ended our engagement."

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. "I'm trying to drive," I said feebly.

"I know," he said.

"This isn't fair."

"And what about Logan, is that fair?"

I sighed. "I had no idea that was going to turn out like that. It was just a game."

"Logan clearly wants more."

"Logan doesn't know what he wants," I protested. "And we both know that."

Ben nodded and smiled. "True, but you have to be careful. You can't just throw yourself around like anybody's business."

"I'm twenty-eight years old. I know that."

He nodded again; with all the nodding, he was starting to remind me of a bobble-head doll. "I know you know that. But, Gianna, I don't want you to get hurt or to see you get entangled in some ridiculous mess involving some guy who doesn't deserve you."

"And since when do you have any say in this?" I asked. "You walked out of my life six years ago."

"And you're the one who slammed the door behind me."

I glared at him and gripped the steering wheel tightly. "There was a reason I did that. What would you have done in my situation?"

"Told me to go to hell and slammed the door in my face," he replied sheepishly.

I sat there in silence for a few moments, just thinking about that and letting him think about it. I looked over at him and wasn't really surprised to see him staring out the window. He knew I was right and so did I. But that didn't really change much. So he was sorry. What did that mean for us?

"I feel like Holly Golightly," I said. "And I'm not sure why."

He looked at me. "You're talking about Breakfast at Tiffany's, right?"

I nodded. "I feel like Holly did when he told her he loved her."

"Didn't she say 'so what'?"

"Yep, that's how I feel. So what? What is all of this supposed to mean to me?"

"I don't know. I need you to know that I'm very sorry for everything and that I know that I messed up. I handled it all badly and I should have been honest with my parents and with you. I never should have ended our engagement."

"Do you know how much I hated you when you told me we couldn't get married?"

"I can only guess," he replied. "You had every right to hate me. I did something horrible to you. You didn't deserve to have me walk out on you like that."

I was crying and I felt like a mess, a disaster. "You broke my heart," I shot back. "And no one deserves that. I was so angry with you, so hurt, and so confused. I wondered what was wrong with me. I thought I had done something wrong."

"You were, are perfect. It really wasn't you. It really was all me."

I sighed. This was a lot to handle in one car-ride. It was just the two of us and six years of water under the bridge. He had broken my heart six years ago. We had been so close for four years. We were friends. We dated. He asked me to marry me. And then we broke up. I was miserable for a year, then I was fine for five years, and then he waltzed back into my life. And after a week of awkwardness, we were suddenly spilling our emotions when we were alone in my car together-for three hours.


We got to Long Lake just after noon. Kyle and Jenna had just gotten there themselves; and after letting us throw our bags in our respective bedrooms, we all had lunch. After lunch, Jenna and I took little Gianna and Ava to the beach to play in the sand while Kyle and Ben had a talk. Kyle said they were going to help Jenna's dad get the boats in the water but I knew that was just a "manly task to fulfill" while they had a serious conversation. Jenna wanted to talk to me as well. We knew that the others would be getting there around two or two-thirty. So I had my cell phone with me and wasn't really looking forward to their coming. But I'd invited them and I couldn't change anything now. Nolan and Chris would be fine. Logan would be absurd and awful. And Carissa would whine. In short, it would be painful. And I didn't want to deal with it after my conversation with Ben. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to know more. I wanted to think about it in peace. But as my mom always told me when I was a kid, you can't always get what you want. Oh Mamma, why didn't I listen to you more?


A/N: Please review!