Scott

No doubt anyone looking at me would think I'm being a complete ass hole right now. Juliette was looking at me in her pained way and I was torn between apologizing and glaring. I ended up glaring.

Shelby looked at me pointedly and I found myself under the displeased gaze of both girls. I ignored both of them and closed myself off in my room. I told myself Juliette was just being herself. Not that it was usually a fact that bothered me or anything, but I didn't think I had the energy to deal with her dramatics. I cared about her, of course, but there was only so much I could keep a handle on. I had enough emotional issues; I couldn't support more than one person at a time. I tend to involve myself in other people's problems and take them on as my own. I invest myself in them, in their moods, in their problems. This resulted in emotional exhaustion if I tried to help too many people at once. With all the baggage and with my brand of helping people, I couldn't be there truly for more than one person. Since it was so obvious that Shelby wanted more of me, I had to let Jules go. I hadn't meant to forsake her, but I think that's what's actually happening. I don't want Juliette to wedge a rift between Shelby and me. It's already begun to happen and I would do anything to stop it. Even if it meant being a little cold to Jules. Shelby needed to see that she was most important, and I don't want to do anything to make her question that. Of course Jules is still my friend and I'd help her if she approached me, but so far she hasn't told me anything aside from Shelby jealousy that's been bugging her.

I'm probably lying to myself. There's something a little off with Jules, I can see that even if I'm trying to block out my thoughts on her. But if she really needed my help, she'd come to me. She nearly always has in the past. I know I haven't exactly been approachable lately, but she's got to know that if she were in real need of help she could come to me.

When I had to mentally choose one girl or the other, I hadn't made an instant decision. It wasn't the simple 'Shelby' I had expected it to be. The mere fact that I had to think about which one to put my full attention in, even if only for a few seconds, scared me enough to realize that I seriously had become far too close with Jules. I had to end the increasingly close bond we shared; I had to take steps to stop us from relying on each other as much as we had. I told myself that I had made the right choice- who would choose a good friend over a girlfriend I loved? Except I had been incredibly close to Jules, I knew her as well as I would a sister. And if that were true, who would choose their girlfriend over their sister?

The thing that's been on my mind for the past few hours is the fact that Jules does need people. And with my back being turned from her and my attention away…will that really be good for her? Back at Horizon, after I had broken up with Jules and was with Shelby, Shel had gotten a bit on the jealous side when I showed the most platonic of concerns for Jules. I had once told her that Jules wasn't strong like Shelby was, that she needed people. I made the mistake at that moment in thinking that Shelby didn't need me. From that point on, I realized how vulnerable she could be. She needed to be assured of her status, and she needed support. My giving Juliette support had bothered her back then, and if her slightly accusing comments of late were anything to go by, she was still a bit edgy in that department. Shelby had to come first, and though I know Jules needs people, maybe Shel needs me more.

In the past year, Jules got a lot stronger. She seemed to finally be grounded a bit more in reality, not some made-up fantasyland. She stopped being a complete damsel, though I'm sure that had more to do with an extra year at Horizon than a first year at college. Her dependency on others dimmed and I was proud to see that she really became more self assured, more independent. The legs she couldn't stand on before developed and slowly by slowly she didn't need me to hold her up any more.

This was why I thought I could leave her side. At least, that's my justification for it. Shelby isn't the immovable pillar I had once stupidly assumed her to be. When she came back, everything about her screamed that she was worried that I had gotten too close to Jules. She wanted me back, and since Jules was stable…

That isn't the full story. Of course it isn't. I feel guilty, okay? I'm not talking about being cold to Jules. I'm talking about being warm to her. Yeah, we're friends, but we got so close. It wasn't something that disconcerted me before, but the truth is, she's not my sister and yet we're closer than friends. The truth is, I can understand why Shelby would be concerned.

"You're being kind of rude towards her, you know."

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

"No. She's our friend, and you and I both know something's up. You can't just pretend you don't see it."

"Shel, what is it you want from me? I'm close to her, and you get mad at me for caring too much. I'm distancing myself from her, and you get mad at me for not caring enough."

"I don't know what I want." She sighed. She slid down on my bed and looked at me with weary eyes. "I don't want to fight with you. I don't want to fight period. I don't want you to be closer with Juliette than with me, but I really don't want something bad to happen to her because you're too busy with me."

"You've got to give her more credit. She's gotten a lot stronger. Just because I'm not around her all the time doesn't mean she'll crumble."

"Just, don't completely faze her out, okay? I know what I said to you earlier about laying off on the intimate talks, but I didn't mean this. I didn't want this."

I wasn't doing this just because of Shelby's words to me earlier. "I just don't want to mess up anything between us, you know?"

"I think that's our problem. The more we try not to screw things up, the more fake everything becomes, the more screwed up it results in."

"How many relationship talks have we actually had in the last few days?" I lightly commented.

"It's better than ignoring and pretending."

"This is so much harder than it was before."

"We're growing up, that's all." She assured me, a little too quickly for her nonchalance to have its proper effect. With a last, somewhat unsure smile, Shelby stood up.

I seemed to stare into nothing for a few minutes, sparing a glance at my homework. I should probably get a start on the evil pile of torture. I was working for half of tomorrow and Monday was football practice, so I really didn't have much time to do it. Funny how my procrastination never seemed to change.

After much reluctance, I did manage to get a page written for one of my classes before my will power diminished. I changed out of my jeans and leant against the wall, wishing that things were simpler in my life. I was managing in school, not stellar, but afloat. Money wasn't an issue, not with the scholarship, my well paying job, and my dad. My love life was strong. And I had football… except that while I had been (easily) the best player in my high school team, college was different. Sure, I was good and everyone knew it, but I was surrounded by guys who were good. I wasn't exceptional anymore. Though I certainly wasn't falling behind or any sort of weakness to the team, I wasn't the star player. This took a lot of getting used to, and it used to seriously irk me. No matter what people tell me, it isn't just a game to me.

Then there are my friends. I make them easily enough, but few of them really know me. When I went back to my hometown, I dropped half of the people who I used to hang with before Horizon. In my pre-Horizon days, I had opted to spend time with people who wouldn't question me, who wouldn't try to find out anything about me. They were deadbeats, and I shed them. In my pre-Elaine days, I had a solid group of loyal friends. When Elaine came, I alienated some of them, some just got sick of my bullshit, and some just drifted away with time. I had two or three really great friends that had stuck with me through out everything, and resumed friendship with a handful of people who had come back into contact with me once I came back from Horizon. The majority of people who had sidled up to me in the beginning of grade eleven disgusted me, though. Many of them pretended as if the last year away hadn't happened, as if nothing was different. Some of them acted like they were my best friend, even though they hadn't made any effort to help or even contact me for the majority of the past year and a half. I was popular again in a matter of hours, and I saw through the pathetic people who sucked up to me.

My friends in college were existent, but I hadn't let anyone new actually into my secrets. I hated being shown as weak, and probably only one or two people outside of Horizon actually know about my full past. College took those people away from me and I found myself with mixed emotions. On the one hand, the absence of people from my past in this new college would mean I could have a totally fresh start; none of the judgements were there. I got a chance to reinvent how I wanted the world to see me. On the other hand, I lost a good chunk of who I once was because of the lack of my previous life. I had a small identity crisis and I had been a closed book to many new acquaintances, afraid to get to know them.

In some ways, I'm relieved to have a good number of friends here who know little of my past, who don't see me as a screw-up as some people from my hometown did. Here, I could just be a good football player; I could resume the shallow reputation of being the golden boy. It was refreshingly ordinary.

This lack of depth only provides more guilt for me as I push away Juliette. When Shelby left the country, Jules was literally the only person in the entire city who knew about my history, about me. Which meant she was the only one I could go to for help when my past tried to catch up to me. Which meant I really was being an ass, and I knew it.

It wasn't my intent to make her feel like Shelby's stand-in, but in certain aspects, that's exactly what I used her for. To be frank, I know that if Shelby had stayed here with me last year, the odds are likely that I wouldn't even be living with Jules- even if she had chosen this college. I had become relatively good friends with Juliette after grade ten, but my contact with her before college was limited. Though I wrote and talked to Shelby fairly often, spoke with Auggie maybe once a month or so, and kept up with Daisy every now and then, I hadn't really tried to keep in touch with Juliette. There were the generic holiday cards, and I gave bland 'tell the other cliff-hangers hi for me' when talking with my former schoolmates, I didn't make specific efforts to write to her. Sometimes when I phoned the school, whoever I happened to be talking to would suggest that I talk with other cliff-hangers, and then I would speak shortly with Juliette, but I don't think I ever specifically called the school and asked for her to talk to. I'd make it a point to meet up with every cliff-hanger when I popped by the school for visits, so I did see her occasionally, and I even showed up once just to wish her happy eighteenth in person. So we were on pleasant terms, but our friendship hadn't reached any truly substantial levels. If she hadn't chosen to go to the same school as me and if Shel hadn't chosen to leave, it's likely I wouldn't have gotten to know her much better.

The thought actually scares me a bit. It's hard to think about how different everything could have turned out. I don't know how I'd function without Juliette's friendship now, even though in the past it hadn't really affected me.

Dwelling about everything the two of us have been through was making me more and more uncomfortable with the way I was treating her. It wasn't as if she was trying to break Shelby and me apart, and she was, after all, my friend.

All this thinking was making my head hurt. I wished that Shelby and Juliette would just stop making me choose one or the other of them. Things were fine before their possessive streaks came out. It wasn't fair of me to turn against Jules, but it wasn't fair of her to ask me to turn against Shel. I was trying to do the right thing by choosing Shelby.

I had actually allowed myself to be angry with Jules for letting us get so close and for expecting the relationship to last. I was angry with her for making Shelby question everything. And I was irrationally pissed at her for making me question everything as well.

I hated that I felt this guilty, I hated that I didn't really know what I was doing or even if I was doing the right thing. I hated the puppy look Jules gave me, and I couldn't stand the look of disapproval Shelby gave me.

Couldn't she see that everything I was doing was for her sake? I was trying to stop her from hurting and trying to prevent future pain, and all it was doing was making her resent me. She couldn't see why I was doing it, she couldn't understand. A part of my choice was selfish, but part of it was as selfless as I could give. Trying to make everyone and myself happy simultaneously wasn't working out and I was sick of always being the bad guy here.

With a small sigh, I realized that I had completely gotten sidetracked from my homework. I grabbed the page I had written and propped myself up on a pillow as I re-read my writing, trying to decide if it was garbage or not. My writing was actually pretty neat, in comparison to how messy people would assume it to be, and it's small size meant that I often got rather pissed at how most people had to write almost half as much as I was forced to for a five page essay. There was the digital approach, of course, but I had chosen not to get a laptop for myself.

I used the money instead for having finer touches to my car, new additions to my personal book collection, and also for use in a rainy day. Yeah, Scott Barringer actually reads and saves money- what were the chances? I'm not a mindless jock, I do consider myself an intellectual, and I am a closet Edgar Allen Poe fan.

As for the money thing, I may not be poor but I certainly am not a millionaire (..yet). My dad is relatively well off, and so is my mom, but Horizon (however it's appearance as a crappy welfare-run school), isn't cheap in the slightest and I know that one year there wasn't a picnic for my family financially. With Elaine gone (so obviously a gold digger along with a creepy nympho pedophile) we managed to save some money. If she wasn't a money vacuum, I don't know what is. Anyways, I'd classify myself as in the upper-middleclass range. If it weren't for the full scholarship, I probably wouldn't be living in this rather posh apartment. Because the tuition was covered, my college fund money (though some of it was gone, thanks to Horizon) was available to me for use in food, bills, all that crap. Since my college fund was quite impressive, I didn't have trouble getting by, especially since I also worked a little. This didn't mean my future was set, and I wasn't stupid. Ergo, my money saving schemes. I had recklessly blown a lot of my family's cash in my high school years and I knew that people saw me as a rich brat. I probably would be able to have an easy life if I continued to mooch off my parents, but I wasn't about to do that. I hated that I drained a lot of money out of them, and I intended to support myself and pay them back one day. I wasn't reckless with money anymore, though I wasn't by any means a cheapskate, I got over my phase of spending money for the sake of spending it. My plan was to become a multi-millionaire by the time I turned twenty-seven and so I made it a habit of saving money. I think I do have a trust fund to my name for when I turn twenty-five, probably of an amount that would really help my goal along. And my stocks don't really hurt things either- when I was fourteen, I got into a money making obsession and that was the year I got a cheque account, had my first job, and also bought a few well chosen stocks that have been earning me a bit of money as of late. I kind of forgot about them, which is a good thing, since when I got into drugs I happened to start stealing random things in my house to get my hands on new stuff.

I was a smart kid, and it makes me wonder what would have happened if Elaine hadn't come into our lives. Our family probably would have a good half a million extra, if not more, if it weren't for her. I used to blame her for my parent's divorce, but though she did ruin everything, I've come to accept that my parents would've gotten separated with or without Elaine's prodding. My mom visits me now and then, as does my dad, and though they say everything is fine, I can't help but wonder if all the money they worked so hard for is going down the crapper. The divorce from Elaine wasn't pleasant, and she tried to leech off as much money as she could. My mom's work crippled, and my dad was getting steadily more stressed. Between paying for my school, making up for my drug use, paying Elaine and the lawyers, and pretending as if nothing was wrong/different, I knew that the money was slipping through his fingers. During my Horizon year, my dad had suddenly become really successful and we had gotten a boost of cash, but it was short-lived. My family had gone from being upper middle class to wealthy and back again. I'd still say, despite everything that's happened, we're still on the upper end of upper middleclass.

Juliette is in about the same boat as me, though her family is a bit wealthier. Her multiple step dads all seem to pay her and her mother, and her current one seems to be pretty rich. From what I've heard, she lived the high life- which is precisely why she started spiralling downwards. She was born into a somewhat struggling household and had worked her way to the lines between wealthy and upper middle class.

In our childhoods, she had music/riding/art lessons as well as finishing school, and skating if I remember correctly. Pretty typical and completely matching her princess personality. I had football/soccer/basketball/swimming lessons (it wasn't a compulsory thing, I really was a dedicated jock), and I did dabble in riding and music, though I quit music after I realized I sucked ass at every cool instrument there was. And then there's Shel… who never got to taste the rich class and who hadn't been given all that opportunities we had. She had ballet, though, and I have to admit, I never would've had her pegged as a dancer.

Dammit, I got sidetracked again. I scribbled out a few more sentences to the paper and scrunched up my eyebrows in an effort to get the thing done.

But my ears picked up on a faint sound. I frowned and listened harder. I couldn't make it out because it was so quiet, but I thought it was coming from Juliette's room. I let the piece of paper fall onto my bedspread as I looked at the wall separating the rooms.

"Juliette?" There wasn't an answer, and I still didn't know if the sound I had heard was real or imagined. It's pretty possible that my imagination made it up to give me an excuse not to work on the assignment. Despite the silence, the guilt I had felt earlier about Jules clouded my mind and I suddenly felt like a horrible person.

"Jules." My clock read one AM, she was probably sleeping, and so I kept my voice quiet. I didn't think she'd hear me, but I obeyed my conscience anyways. "I don't really care that you're not listening right now. I've been a bit of an ass lately." I sighed lowly and burrowed a little deeper against my sheets. I needed to get this out, even if I might as well be talking to myself, or a wall- which I was literally doing anyways. "It's not your fault, in case Juliette-logic led you to that conclusion, which I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Anyways, I know I've been pushing you away. I'd tell you that I'm going to stop doing that, but I don't think I can promise you that. I've got a crappy choice to make, you know that. I have to be fair to Shelby, even though I know that's not fair to you. But it doesn't mean that I don't care about you, okay? Because I do. And I've got no idea why you spazzed out in the store, but I get that you don't want to talk to me about it. That's okay… I just hope everything's okay with you. You'd come to me if they weren't, right? I'm sorry for all of this, Jules, I really am." I paused for a moment before continuing, "And now I feel a little bit stupid for talking to a wall, so I'll stop. I should probably be saying this to your face, but you know how I am. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm pretty much lost. I kind of wish we could be lost together, you know, how we used to be? I kind of wish nothing had changed. It's all so complicated now, and so freaking hard."

I stared at the wall for a moment longer with hesitation before I decided that I was being an idiot. I left my room and my hand hovered over the doorknob to Juliette's room for a minute before I finally turned it. I got the sudden worry that she hadn't been asleep and had heard every word, but a larger part of me hoped that she really had been awake. I wanted to do something about the very sad eyes she kept giving me every time our eyes met, but at the same time I was scared that she had heard my apology for it was sincere…and an all too sensitive and open apology than those that I normally gave. I stepped into her room, strode silently beside her bed and knelt beside her. I didn't even know now if I was checking to see if she was awake or making sure she wasn't. Her back was to me, but her breathing was steady and slow. I was part relieved, part disappointed. My hand lightly touched her back for a brief second before I stood up again. Jeez, I'm being kind of creepy, aren't I? I shook my head and headed for the door. She'd probably completely freak out if she woke up to see me bent beside her. This wasn't the time to apologize.

Giving the brunette one last look, I whispered, "I do love you, you know." I half hoped she would suddenly turn around and say it back, but her still form didn't move. I shut the door as silently as I could manage and crept back to my room. That paper was due on Tuesday, and I really shouldn't let girls get in the way of school. I snorted to myself and resumed my position against the wall, smiling a little with the knowledge that someone cared about me, just a few inches away. There was a lot of shitty and confusing stuff going on, but I never had to worry about going through it alone. Since Horizon, I hadn't been preoccupied with concerns that no one cared about me, I lost a lot of the loneliness that Elaine drove into my life. And for that, I would always be grateful.

A/N: Sorry about the delay, I finished the chapter a day late and the site was messed up earlier today and yesterday. Scott was pretty random in this chapter, I think I may have gotten a touch carried away...it's so much fun writing about him.

Since so many of you commented on the OOC-ness of Jules in the last chapter, I'll address your concerns, lol. Even when I was writing it I knew that it wasn't the way she reacted to the whole cutting thing on the show. The reason she's so changed about her emotions on it is because she did it partly as a cry for help, more so than an emotional outlet. In the past year, her and Scott went through a lot and it's not the first time she's started cutting again since Horizon and she knows that he's perfectly aware of most of her dark sides, they've moved past the hiding thing. She didn't want anyone to know in Horizon, but now she's just desperate for someone to notice that something's off. I'm pleased that you guys aren't afriad to point out when you think I'm getting off track, con crit is really appreciated.

Juliette Fan, Ilove you op, long reviews make me happy. It's sweet that you check for updates so often, but just to let you know, I normally have the chapters posted on the weekends, so it should be shown on the site by Monday (this week being the exception, sorry again).

Chrisy16, thanks so much for the gesture, that's so nice! Don't worry, I'm not going to announce when I've picked a pairing for sure.

Ghostwriter, you're right about the mood thing. I hope this chapter explained more about S & S and their reaction to Jules.

Dcstar408 & Keke1: Heh, all hail LAAH. I really, really love Hayden, I'm so proud to share a country with him. I was watching him on a cooking show and he was making caramel apples- him cooking very yummy. Again I noticed his voice was different. I think it is deeper. Keke1, I'm really glad you like my fic since I've read and adored yours- I think you're a great writer and your thumbs up for my story means a lot.

Wow, I don't usually do specific reader responses but I do feel bad about the delay, so what the heck. Thank you all so much for the support! Warm fuzzies all around.

Edit: Just for you Meg and Hi, it's changed. Sorry: I haven't seen Innocence yet.