A/N: I was so so pleased with the response from the last episode. I'm incredibly thankful that you all trust me deeply with telling their story well. Here is the conclusion of Emily and Alison's conversation with a flashback to their break-up. Enjoy!

Chapter Title Song: Goodbye For Now - Juanes

"But you did nothing! I was alone for days on end, and Jason had to take care of me. He fed me. He clothed me. He made sure I was showered. I told my mom that you would make sure I was okay and instead you left. You left!" My tone was harsh, but effectively panged the heartbreak I was feeling all over again.

"It doesn't make it right, and I know I should've been with you every single second, but I couldn't be. I couldn't do it, and there's nothing I can do to change that. I figured you had decided to be done with us and I should stay away."

"I definitely didn't give up on us then…" I trailed off, Emily looking at me quizzically.

I took another deep breath, "Em, I gave up when us when you didn't even bother to show up to her funeral."

Emily turned her entire body toward mine as if to plead a case, "Alison, by the time her funeral came around you hadn't spoken to me in weeks. Even when I came to sit in the chair in your room the weekend after, you ignored me. I didn't feel like you wanted me there."

"Whether I wanted you there or not wasn't the important part. The least you could've done is show up. She loved you. She loved you, so, so much. Even if I didn't want you there, she wanted you there."

Emily put her head in her hands, "You don't think I know that? It's one of the biggest regrets of my life, but I didn't want to ruin a day that was already going to be so difficult for you."

"I just don't get it, Em. I'll never get it. I have no clue how I can trust you again when you broke every ounce of trust I had in you when you didn't show up."

"Don't even start with me about breaking trust, Alison. You do not get to talk to me about breaking trust when you broke it first."

I stood up, walking away knowing that I had been caught again in the conversation I most regretted having. The conversation that led to Emily and I breaking up. So, I tried to avoid it. "Oh, really? We're going to go here again?"

She turned completely around on the couch so she could face me. "Of course we are! That was the whole damn point of this conversation. You knew we'd have to get to our break-up at some point!"

She was right. If there was any attempt of us reconciling, or at the very least forgiving each other fully, we had to go back there guts and all. We had to go back to last June. Two months after my mom passed away. Three weeks since my mom's funeral. Four days since school had ended, and so had mine and Emily's last conversation.

There's a haunting inside me that I can't seem to stop. When I notice my heart beating faster, I am haunted by the sound of my mother's stopping. When I feel myself finally becoming cozy in the comfort of my bed, I am haunted by the cold settling into my mother's bones. When I close my eyes to finally drift from my nightmare, I am haunted by the nightmare waiting in my dreams. I can't escape it.

My world revolves around how I can cope. How I can process this loss for another day. Losing her made me give up my will to try. So I sit. I cry. I mourn. I suffer. I went through the motions until the end of school, but my brain was withdrawn. Spencer did my homework. Aria took my notes. Hanna did my makeup. And Emily stayed away. I knew that she took care of necessities behind the scene, but for me, she was away.

Now that summer had hit, I tried to be as distant as I could from reality. I weaned myself to sleep frequently and would glance at my phone sparingly before turning over to cry and repeat the process. This was the only reason why I knew Emily was coming over today. Her text was the first real interaction we had in days.

I was just starting to doze off when I heard her rap at the door.

"Hey. Are you awake?" she lightly whispered as I turned so my head faced the door. "Well hey there, beautiful. How are you feeling today?"

I responded by turning over in the bed so that I was facing the empty side of the bed instead of my dresser, welcoming her to sit next to me.

She laid down next to me and placed her hand in my messy blonde hair to trace my face, and I muttered to her the first words I had said in days, "Why are you here?"

"I figured that I should check in on you and give us a chance to talk about some stuff that we've needed to."

I sighed, "Yeah, I'm sorry I've been distant." I paused, hoping for her to fill in part of my blank. Without her responding I continued, "And you…"

She finally interrupted. "It's completely understandable…" her voice faded, "Umm Al, I don't know how we can talk about it. I've never had to have a conversation like this."

She was more reserved. She touched my hair with hesitancy. She said my name with pause. On the other hand, I was torn down and had no reservations because I felt as though I had nothing left to lose. Though now looking back, I realize how many more losses I would have.

With this in mind, I sat up to speak bluntly, "No. Let's do it. Let's talk about the funeral."

Emily was definitely thrown off by my tone. "Yeah, okay."

"Let's do that." I replied, overly nodding to accentuate my frustration and disbelief, "So where the hell were you, Emily?"

She sat up to lean against my headboard, arms crossed over her torso, "I planned on it… I really did. But you've just been so distant, and we still haven't discussed how this has impacted our relationship, and so I talked myself out of it."

"Em, this hasn't just impacted our relationship, it's changed every aspect of my life. You can't take that personally."

Emily took my hands in hers, "But of course I can! Ali, I have done nothing but be there for you before this. Our very first date I asked you, I asked you if there was anything I needed to know so that I could be someone you could rely on."

"But I…"

"Yes, you did tell me about the divorce, but you did not tell me that your mom was struggling. You didn't tell me your dad left because he found the pills. You didn't tell me that you and Jason were taking care of everything for her. Instead, you told me what you thought I wanted to hear."

I rubbed my thumbs on the outside of her hands, "I could've been more honest, you're right. But I didn't know when would be a good time to tell you, babe."

Emily stood up off the bed. "A good time to tell me?! What about the first time you came home from school, and she wasn't moving on the couch? Why didn't you tell me when she was in the hospital the first time? What about when you guys finally decided to put her in rehab? Why didn't you tell me when I invited you over for Christmas Day and instead you lied about where you would be? What about the dozens maybe even hundreds of times I asked you what was wrong lying next to you? Lying bare next to each other after giving each other all of ourselves and you still didn't trust me enough to know what was hurting you the most." She took a deep breath. "You can't sit here and blame only me for not feeling welcome at your mother's funeral. You made it incredibly well-known that you didn't want me there when you chose to not tell me. When you deliberately decided day after day that I wasn't worth enough to you to open up to me. You had so many times to tell me! You had every opportunity. I even asked about your mother weekly! Even the night of our last date I told you how excited I was to see her and you told me she was out. OUT! I can't even rationalize in my head how little I must actually mean to you for us to have been together daily for 6 months and not to have said shit to me until she was already almost gone! I loved you so desperately, Alison…" She didn't come back to sit on the bed. She instead sat by my closet against the mirror, as far away from me as she could be while staying in the same room.

I was silent. I couldn't explain because there was no explanation. Emily deserved better than the sudden loss she suffered, but I couldn't form in my head the words it would take to try and make her understand. Because I was stuck on her last 6 words. 'I loved you so desperately, Alison.'

Loved. Past tense. Any amount of reasoning wouldn't change those words. Even with the tenderness she was showing me, it was just as I thought. She was reserved. She was hesitant. She was withdrawn. She was gone. She had come to talk with me, yes, but she had already decided that my silence the past two months was not what she deserved.

I looked up from the bed desperately, "Loved?"

"You're questioning that!? My life revolved around you! I dreamed only of the next time I could see your face. I looked to the future and could only see you. I tasted your lips on my own for days. I felt your touch on my bare skin, clinging and seeking all of me. I knew all of these things until I realized you never even truly trusted me."

All past tense. My life no longer revolved around her. She no longer dreamed of my face. She could no longer taste my lips. She could no longer feel my touch. She could no longer trust me.

"No Em…" I said, my voice still barely above a whisper, "…you said that you loved me. Like in the past but not now." She hadn't even realized it. She had no clue that her intentions had been betrayed by her words.

"Emily?" I questioned, pulling her from thoughts, "Is that why you didn't come? Because you no longer love me?"

"How could I? You haven't touched me or even looked at me the same way in months. You never even tried for me. It's like you expected me to know how to deal with this too. I get that I haven't been the greatest, but you chose sorrow over me. Just like you chose a lie over the truth every damn day since we dated."

"Okay… so you're breaking up with me?"

"Were we ever even dating? If you couldn't trust me for even one moment over the past 6 months, did we ever truly get to the point of dating, or were we just excellent friends who were screwing?"

She was trying to hurt me. It was apparent. I laughed before raising my voice louder than I ever had at Emily, "Are you fucking kidding me? Do not sit there and try to reduce me to any of the other women you've screwed! Do not try and make yourself better than me in this moment, Emily! Own up to the fact that you don't love me anymore and be done with it. I can't make you love me and if I lost the best thing I ever had, then so be it. I'll deal with that. But how dare you try to tear me down in the process? You can backtrack as much as you want, but you know you loved me. You know we were dating. You know that you loved me more than anyone else you've been with or you wouldn't still be here, Em!"

She copied my previous silence before her phone rang and she picked it up, "Hey… Yeah, I'm at Alison's, but I'll be right there…Sorry, I'm late… No, don't worry… Yep, I'll see you soon…Can't wait…Bye."

My tone continued, "And what the hell was that?"

"What was what?"

"That! You come here solely to break up with me, and now you make it obvious that there's another woman!"

"Paige?" she scoffed and headed for the door.

"Do not walk out that door, Emily! You owe me an explanation!"

She turned around walking to the end of my bed, "I don't owe you shit, but yeah, I'm going to hang out with Paige. No, we haven't kissed. Yes, she has paid more attention to me these past two months than you have. Yes, I may like her. Is that enough information?"

"It sure is! Guess I should thank you now for not showing up the past two months then. It'll make this whole break up a lot easier."

She was already halfway down the stairs, "Yep! You're welcome!"

We talked a few times after that. Mostly to iron out how our conversation ended. Reassure each other that our relationship wasn't a fluke, that at one point in time we did love each other. Work out that Emily wasn't and hadn't cheated, but emotionally was elsewhere. I apologized for lying but kept up my stance of not finding time to tell her. Emily didn't take responsibility for not attending the funeral because she still stood by her reasoning. I couldn't blame her, but at the same time, she was reading it entirely wrong.

But we went from a couple to strangers within an hour. Our laughter turned to tears. Our love to indifference.

Just like her words, we simply became past tense.

"Aren't you happy we've matured over the past year and a half?" Emily chuckled.

"I mean, the fact that we're even both sitting here together right now is enough of a statement."

"So let's talk about it. I know you apologized last year for not telling me and I get that you intended to save me from the pain of your mom's inconsistency, but do you see how that started this rift in our relationship that we couldn't even see?"

"Of course I do. You used to be one of the only people I could even trust in my life. I thought you'd think less of my family if you knew we were struggling. I thought you'd think less of me, and I know now that I've had distance from all of it, that was incredibly wrong."

"Thanks… and Alison, I know that you're never going to get why I didn't come to support you. I know that I let you down and ruined what we had because of my own insecurity. I understand that you may never forgive me for those actions, but please say that you'll give me a chance to make it right."

I knew that I had to look Emily in the eye. I needed to be able to sense each part of what she was saying. I needed to look at her and see trust in her eyes. I needed to know she wouldn't leave me again. I needed to know that she was safe. That I would be safe.

But her eyes had changed. The way she stared at me was different. It was no longer with the lust I saw 2 years ago. It was with a tenderness I hadn't previously seen. I believed her. I believed her words, but I had also believed them before. The decision was easy, but my words would be far more difficult.

I held her hand as I spoke, causing her to smile. "Emily… Em, I believe you and I want to give you a chance, desperately. But…" I saw her heart start to break in front of me. She gripped my hand a little more tightly. Her eyes teared up requiring her to tilt her hand backward to prevent them from falling. Her smile fading on its edges. "You have to give me time. I have to digest everything that happened today. I know that I want to find a way to make this work, but you have to give my brain time to figure out how. "

"Yeah… I get that. Just like I told you, I came back for you. I'll wait as long as I need to, Ali. I know it won't happen overnight, but I'll wait as long as you need. Don't worry, I'll woo you." She smirked, pleased with the outcome no matter how difficult it was to hear.

"Hm? Someone's holding themselves pretty damn highly. What makes you so confident?"

"I've done it before, haven't I?" I chuckled in response. "And, now I already know what works and what doesn't." She smiled so sincerely that I nearly doubled over with her adorableness.

"I guess you'll have to wait and see," I replied as I stood to head towards the door.

"Wait. Let me walk you there." She quickly jogged to where I was. "Thanks for talking with me tonight. It was a lot, but I really do appreciate it. Thank you."

"Of course. We both needed some support tonight. Would you want to get lunch or dinner sometime next week?"

"See Ali? My charms are already working. I definitely do want to. Can I text you?" I nodded in reply as I opened the front door. "Okay, great. I'll do that."

She leaned forward to kiss me lightly on my cheek. She was giddy. She was determined. And more than anything, she was willing to wait while I decided what the hell I wanted to do.

A/N: Whew. What a conversation. Let me know what you think. Next chapter: Alison catches up with Hanna and Spencer, and our first insight into Emily's POV. I'm really looking forward to writing in her voice. I hope you enjoy. Read. Review. Favorite. Spread the word. See you next time my loves! :)