AN: Are you eyes disbelieving you? Nope, they're not! I'm back, and with the longest chapter to date. Happy new year you lovely lot, and thank you so much for waiting. I love you.

28th June 2010

One, two… nine, ten… she counted eleven bruises, yellowy brown, up and down her legs, thighs and arms from the night before. They were splayed on her bones like constellations across the galaxy, and each of them seared with its own little pain. She ran her tongue over her teeth, and remembered that she hadn't cleaned her teeth since she threw up in the ladies bathroom of the club some hours ago. She threw up in the taxi on the way home too, out the window, and it ran down the car door and probably hit the window screen of the driver behind. She might have thrown up whilst Lara and Jess put her to bed too, wrapping her up in a fluffy duvet as she whined like a little child. Everyone has those nights, famous or not. She was just like every other girl in college, partying too hard some weeks and too little the next – right?

She unravelled herself from her sheets, emerging like a messy angelic Goddess who had been taken ill for a few days. She heaved herself onto solid ground, on two solid feet. The soft carpet tickled her toes, and she wanted to sink into it completely – she'd rather be swallowed up by carpeting than look forward anyway: her mirror was in front of her, bearing too much of her body, revealing too much of a hung-over Emma Watson. Her hair was long and mussed, dropping messily past her breasts. She was wearing cherry red lace knickers, too sexy for four o'clock in the afternoon, too sexy for her crumbly state of mind. Her skin and very heart felt delicate, like it had been attacked the night before and now longed for bubble-wrap. Her limbs felt heavy like led, her head equally so. Her eyesight was blurry, like she was constantly trying to take a photograph out of the window of a moving vehicle. The zooming trees were the books on her shelves, the dresses in her wardrobe, and suddenly her cheek was hitting the floor.

An hour later she was sitting sluggishly on her kitchen counter, her hand stuffed in an open box of cereal as she absently flicked through television channels. Her bare legs swung with the sound of her heels banging against the kitchen cupboard in unison with the banging of her head. She tried to sip some milk, and threw up moments later. It was too milky, ironically – there was too much dairy in her mouth, and it was the same when she made a steaming cup of tea. Instead, she settled for a cold glass of orange juice, and at one point stuck her head in the fridge door for the sheer reason that it was soothing on her temples. She realised what she was doing a few seconds later, and shut the fridge door with an air of disgust. That, surely, had to be a new low point reached in her twenty something years of life.

Her phone started buzzing against the marble of the kitchen counter and she jolted to alertness, put her glass of orange juice carefully down and reached for her mobile. Lara.

"Hello?"

"You're alive, thank fuck for that! How are you feeling hun?"

Emma collapsed on the sofa, groaning, "hmm. Would you mind if I delayed that answer for a few days? Currently I feel another wave of sickness coming on…"

"I bet you do, do you have even the faintest idea of how much you drank?" Lara's voice was incredulous, and a little too loud for her liking.

She winced and pulled the mobile further from her ear. "No, and please God do not tell me."

"Okay, I'll spare you for now. I wouldn't even know the exact number anyway, to be totally honest, but I'll say one thing: you were thirsty; very, very thirsty," she rolled her eyes at her friend laughing at her from the other end, and waited for her to sober up, "okay I'm sorry for that brief and very inconsiderate laughter, there – I swear I'm done! Oh! Have you spoken to that guy that called you last night? You seemed pretty cut up about it."

Emma was yawning and frowning at the same time. She was distracted by the television, where an advert was running about a new female razor that left the woman's legs as shiny as glass. Emma found herself wanting to throw something at the TV. Legs rarely looked like that - the media were bull-shitters, and no less than that.

"Emma?"

"Hmm, sorry, what did you say? I didn't hear you." She rubbed warily at her eyes.

Lara laughed all too knowingly. "I said have you spoken to that guy from last night?"

"You mean Rafael?"

"If I did mean Rafael wouldn't I say Rafael? No… I don't know who the guy was; you were really secretive about it. After he called you though, you – you were in bits."

"He called me? Are you sure this was me? Goodness, how drunk was I?" she thumped her head against the armrest, glaring at the ceiling, "I don't remember this at all…" her head hurt from merely attempting to remember.

"Yep, you were crying – a drunk, sobbing and generally hysterical Emma. Jess and I have never seen you like that, are you okay now? We were going to call round tonight and check up on you…"

"No it's okay thank you Lara, I'm fine just really, just dreadfully hung-over," she let out a long suffering sigh, "I'm going to have a shower and try and study."

Lara wolf-whistled, "That's will-power. I commend you. I'll see you tomorrow then. Take aspirin babe."

"Yes, yep, I will. Thanks for being a diamond of a friend – tell Jess too. You're both sweeties. I'll speak to you later; love you lots."

Emma had hung up before Lara had the chance to reply; her head was throbbing from technology being too close to her ear and from hearing the things that her drunk self did. Was it really her? Possibly, potentially, perhaps not? Remembering drunken antics from the night before the morning after was like fishing from a wishing well: sometimes she felt a tug on her line, brief and vague memories of her surroundings, the colour of the walls, recalling Jess applying mascara in the mirror - but pin-pointing what happened specifically was impossible. The wishing well, like her memory, was a smoky abyss of the unknown. Maybe there was something, some hard evidence, that would make things clearer...

Nibbling nervously on her lips, she swiped to unlock her phone again. She felt wormy uneasiness crawling inside her, something knawing at her fingertips and jangling at her nerves. She clicked on her recent calls. She scrolled down. There were three, four, five, six missed calls bleached in red from an unrecognised number. Weirdly, she had answered two of them.

She was suddenly shivering, even though the evening sun was still pouring through her open windows and casting bright light over her kitchen tiles. She could see the white reflections on her fridge door, mingling with letter magnets and faded pictures of the golden trio pulling faces at the camera in 2004. It was probably hot outside, the air thick with waxy orange evening heat and yet, here she was - teeth and jaw jittering on its hinges. It didn't make sense. She, in her bones, didn't make sense. Standing up slowly from the sofa she strolled over to the windows and peered out. Orange was spread through the sky, like a blunt knife had spread marmalade over the clouds.

Impulse startled her, and her feet carried her dashing to her bedroom. She lunged for the first warm sweater she clapped her eyes on and threw it scrambling over her head, and for the second time that day she tumbled to the floor. Standing up with an agitated huff, she adjusted the sleeves, fixed her messy hair and lazily ran a make-up wipe over her face. It was only afterwards, when she was striding quickly for the balcony and throwing open the door that she realised it was a purple sweater with the words 'PoT heAD' stamped across it – a gift from Rupert on her nineteenth birthday. Oh, how funny he thought he was.

On the balcony she sat, moments later, dipping her head back in a squishy chair with her naked limbs sprawled and stretched out around her. She could hear the sounds of the waves crashing on the sand, the soothing undertones from the beach that lay hidden just beyond the trees at the back of her apartment. She loved these days alone; even hung-over days where she crawled on the floor like a cave girl, licked her wounds and took aspirin to soothe her beating head. She fell asleep peacefully, her mind and dwellings pleasantly blank. Three minutes later, (and in reality three hours later) she blinked awake to shadowy trees and a night in complete darkness. She had woken up and the world had fallen asleep. Except one.

"Do you always leave the door open?"

She jumped so quickly her foot smacked against the coffee table, and she cried out in pain.

"Fuck, you fucker!" she blurted, "Who the fuck are you?"

She fell back against her chair, pulling her foot and sore toes up towards her body, clenching them with her fingers. She could feel her blood thumping hot under her skin. That fucking hurt. She immediately regretted her foul mouth now. There was something- someone with her, in her apartment. She squinted across at the person who had spoken to her, and sincerely hoped above all else that it wasn't her agent or her mother.

She could see nothing. Instead she heard movement in the chair opposite and to the left of her, shortly followed by a deep chuckle.

"Come here, love," said the voice. "What have you done?"

It was a man's voice, and she knew it. She knew it in an instant.

She tried to stand up, but the man had already pulled his chair forward with a gentle scrape and set her foot on his leg. His hands felt big and warm on her skin… she sensed also a familiarity about his fingers that unnerved her, trapped her in a situation in which she already knew the ending. Her heart wanted to whimper and cry out, ask permission from it's owner to hide, but her eyes held only confusion and disbelief. It wasn't him. It wasn't him.

She must have tensed up, for he patted her ankle and ran his fingers soothingly over her aching sole.

"Relax."

She could only see his outline; the night was giving away none of its secrets. Sometimes, when he moved, the silvery light of the moon leaked over his hair and she could see his long dark locks hanging over his eyes. She could see the faint rim of his black ray-ban glasses. Fancy fuck. No, this wasn't him, she told herself, and she nibbled on her lips for something to do. She could convince herself it was Rafael if she liked, though Rafael didn't have that long, charming London accent which was soft and rough in equal measure. Rafael didn't say his s's silky and smooth, nor did his r's roll off his tongue hot, like melting toffee. Rafael's hair wasn't as silky as this man's, nor did the Spaniards hands, upon touching her, feel as homely on her body as these hands did now. This set of hands moulded her, and she thought of clay on a spinning wheel, of leather, of Paul Smith shirts and smoky rooms. They were coarse and a little rough around the fingertips, but perfect.

"Look at you hurting yourself in my company like the hot chocolate spillage in 2003," he murmured lowly. There was amusement teasing every syllable. "Well it's not bleeding. It will probably just be sore for a while, but you're a strong girl aren't you?"

She felt his lips brush against her toes, and then he kissed the spot where she hurt the most. The pain seemed to shut off in an instant, like a parent shutting the bedroom door on their sleeping child, or a heavy boot crunching down on a fallen leaf in autumn. There was a clear distinction in before and after, and after the kiss she hurt no more. There was something strange about that. She felt her eyes prickle.

"What are you doing here," she whispered, and she wasn't sure if it was a question, and she wasn't sure if that was all she had to say. Part of her wanted to swear at him and kick him with the foot that he'd just loved, whilst the other part wanted to sob you're here! What took you so long?

"Is it you?" she swallowed hard when he didn't answer, "It is you, right?"

"Who do you want me to be, Em?"

She trembled. It was the same deep voice… the very same. How many times had that voice seeped through into her nightly dreams? How many times had it invaded, unwelcomingly, her daily thoughts? His voice stopped the traffic inside her, held her emotions hostage and was to blame for all the other things she fucked up. She wanted to turn and run, but there was nowhere to go. This was her fucking house.

Claustrophobia.

She pushed his hands off of her and stood up, feeling something rise within her. The glass of orange juice she had rested on the coffee table hours ago fell and shattered over the floor. Neither of them moved to pick it up; the blackness hid the broken shards and pieces, but they both knew they were there, and the irony of the metaphor made her ache in parts of her she didn't realise she had. It was almost funny. She wanted to know if he'd noticed it too, but she knew he had. Of course he had. He had always known everything, hadn't he? And about her most of all.

He remained sitting down, as if he expected her to break something eventually. She was accustomed to breaking things. If it was who she knew it was, then he'd know that she herself was already broken.

"Stop fucking me around and tell me!" she huffed, "Who are you?"

She was breathing hard, and she was all too aware of it.

"Tell me who you are." A demanding tone.

There were more seconds of silence, seconds that slipped by as he sat, unspeaking and as frozen as a statue. There was complete stillness. The relentless waves hitting watery and hard against the shore was the only sound that came between them. The world, and everything in it, had been muted to nothing more than those waves, that wind, and the whispering of the trees ahead of them. Then there was her and him.

"Who are you?" she said again, and then yelled, "WHO ARE YOU? WHO - ARE - YOU? Tell me-!"

Finally he stood up and smacked the light. A few flickers later and the balcony illuminated with a weak yellowy candlelight. Her eyes fell on the source of it all, the fairy lights that her mother had bought her as a moving-in present, twinkling in their place, and then onto him, standing before her in the flesh, open to her and in front of it all.

She needn't have mentioned his name. She had known all along.

"Hello, love."

His shirt was navy this time. She was sure that if she ran her hands over it, it would be soft. It would smell delicious, like him. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the leather jacket of his slung over the arm of his chair, discarded in the warmth of this ten o'clock. She could almost see beyond his skin and watch the nerves running around his tangling veins like little raging bullets. He gazed at her from behind his black rimmed Ray-Ban glasses, as he always did. His hair was long, dark and thick. The same... always the same. His stubbly goatee and neck was so sexy to her that it made her catch her breath, and struggle to get it back. She could see his throat jump as he swallowed, and he blinked and cast his eyes away, looking towards the sea. He was here, in her apartment, in the flesh.

She drank him in.

"You can tell me to leave," he said quietly. "I know how this must look."

Her mouth seemed to open and close without any real sound. She hoped he wasn't watching her struggle so, but of course he was. He opened parts of her that no one else had, seeing her hopeless and speechless was just another thing on the long list he had stripped of her. She shook her head numbly and found her voice, several attempts later.

"How does it look?"

He took a step closer, and his Paul Smith cotton sheathed shirt was catching to hers, their eyes fixated on each other unfailingly. She had never quite been able to get over how blue his eyes were; she was reminded of the sky in the height of summer, or what she imagined the surface of the ocean would look like underwater, as the sun beat down on it. They were so blue. She loved them inexpressibly.

It had been a long time, yes, but she couldn't justify the length of her stares with that pathetic excuse. They simply couldn't prise their eyes from one another. There was more to it, more that she felt, more under the surface with him than she could ever understand, and she saw it all in his eyes in that moment. He was lay open before her, vulnerable for the first time. She could see it in the loose clench of his fists, feel it in the tension of his forearms. If it was any one else from her past in her apartment, she would have hugged them - with Gary, she forced herself not to.

"I wanted to see how you are," he said, and his voice was croaky from lack of use. How long had he been sitting there, watching her sleep? It was a breach of her privacy, and yet some part of her didn't seem to mind.

He felt the need to elaborate, and she wondered how long he'd been rehearsing this speech.

"I wanted to check you were alright," he began, and ran a hand through his long hair, mussing it gorgeously. "You scared the shit out of me last night when you hung up on the phone. I - I sat in my car in a deserted parking lot and just kept having these - these thoughts; you'd fallen into a fucking coma, or you had died, and I couldn't seem to get them out of my head. I was going mad." He stared at her for longer than he had planned to, she felt sure, for the words fell away in his mouth and he resulted to shrugging weakly. "I had to see you."

"I'm – I'm sorry you had to go through that, but…" she nearly rolled her eyes at him, "I'm okay Gary. I'm fine actually; I've been in the house all day, drinking orange juice and being lazy."

He continued to stare at her, and she knew he wasn't convinced. There was a muscle twitching in his neck. She battled on.

"To say that you had to see me when I'd just hung up the phone in a drunken mess is..." she rambled off, on the brink of a tangent, then found her way again, her eyes becoming wetter every moment she looked at him. "Well it's not enough. Quite frankly it seems barbaric and reckless of you."

"Define reckless," he growled.

"You are an award winning director and actor, and just as intelligent as me and if not more!" she exclaimed hysterically, "you don't need a definition, you know exactly what it means! Rash behaviour, not taking into consideration the consequences, passionate and out of control-"

"Then that is fucking me Emma!" he surged forward towards her, his eyes alive and jumping, electric energy in his every fibre. "I am all of those things when you are concerned! The recklessness that stems from my body and brain is because you are rooted in my body and fucking brain! You are rooted in everything I am! EVERYTHING-"

She slapped her hands to her forehead, "I've told you-!"

"Told me what?" he yelled, What have you told me?"

"I - I-" she glared at him, furiously and weakly all at once, hating him for making her repeat these words again. "I told you repeatedly that we cannot do this and I'm fine-!"

"Oh, you're fine. You're fine," he agreed whole-heartedly, his eyes darkening. She could tell he was pissed off; his whole body spoke of it. "You always say you're fine, Em, and you can trick the fucking press, your family and your friends like a master of your field, but unfortunately you can't trick me." His voice dropped lower, quieter, "Do you know how much I worry about you? Do you have any idea?"

She swallowed hard at the lump of emotion choking her throat. She couldn't seal boards up over her heart to protect her from him. He ripped the wooden planks away with his eyes and occupied the abandoned house of her fucking soul, and tangled her up every day with tears and heartache. She was a helpless case now, and she had long accepted it, but it was because of him.

"It's not your job to check up on me, Gary." Her voice was quiet, almost sorry. "You aren't my protector. We can't do this, we can't-"

How many times had she said those words to him over the years? And always, all the time, he only half-believed her and now she knew the reason why: because she only half-believed herself.

His boots clinked hard on the concrete and he stepped closer towards her once more, their chests touching. He looked at her achingly, longingly. "If we can't do this, Em, then why did you tell me you loved me last night?"

His eyes washed over her achingly slowly, and for a moment she would have met them, if she had the courage to. Instead, a horrifying thought gripped her in a hold that refused to loosen: here she was, standing in front of this man of all men wearing nothing but a baggy sweater and a pair of red lace knickers. At another point in time she wouldn't have cared, but now it made everything worse. Where she should have felt cold, she felt hot. She glanced up at him, at the burning hotness in his eyes and the heat of his breath on her neck; he knew the very thoughts criss-crossing her brain before she did herself.

"I'm going to put some clothes on-"

She brushed past him to go inside, and he let her go.

She didn't relax until she heard the hard and sure sound of her door slamming behind her and, even then, her body was crumbling beneath itself at his words. Everything was so surreal; she felt like her mind was playing tricks on her. If she walked outside her door in ten minutes time she would find the balcony lights off, her house empty and untouched wouldn't she? Running stressful hands through her hair, she flexed her fingers and reached for the first pair of black denim jeans she could find. She didn't care enough to check her appearance in the mirror; if she looked unattractive then maybe it was an incentive for him to leave her apartment and never return. Never return. Did she want that? She didn't know. She didn't know anything – except that the man apparently outside years ago started a fire within her that was still burning now, endlessly.

She threw open her bedroom door and, with a new and admiral confidence, marched towards the balcony with the intention of telling him that due to difficult and unfortunate circumstances which she could not announce, he had to leave. What a grand and victorious stroke of feminism that would be. She caught sight of him leaning against the balcony wall, his eyes staring ahead of him towards the all-hearing, unseeing trees. His hair was blowing in the breeze and the indents of his shoulder blades pressed against his shirt. She felt her insides wobble and her speed reduced, as if the very sight of him was the cure for all fiery anger and venom to die in her veins.

Feeling exhausted and defeated, she slid open the door.

He didn't turn around. "Do you mind if I light a cigarette?" His spoke to the salty air.

"If you let me have one too, then…" she nodded.

He was already reaching for his leather jacket, feeling the pockets with his sure, firm hands. Hearing what she had just said and clutching the pack in his hands, he gazed up at her. His eyes were damp and gleaming, and there was a slow and sexy grin kissing his lips. "You don't smoke, love."

For some reason and somehow she seemed helplessly unable to give her eyes a rest from his face; she wanted to punched him hard all over his body, and then kiss him harder. She relented to pout her lips for him, silent but determined. "I don't...as always you're right about me," she said, her eyes twinkling, "But I'd like one now, if you so please…"

I need a fucking cigarette.

He put a cigarette to his lips and lit it swiftly, inhaling deeply. Wispy smoke filled the air around him, and she was reminded of the night before - a dingy club, dancing with nameless shadowy figures. Smoke under the strobe lights. She pursed her lips and his eyes were on her again, gazing at her like he couldn't help himself.

"I'm not going to allow you to hurt yourself because of me," he said, and it was followed by a smirk.

How funny he was. She raised her eyebrows in surprise, almost laughing; "You're five years too late for that."

He smiled and nodded, but didn't say anything. One of his hands still held his jacket. She watched as he shrugged it on, the cigarette dangling loosely in his lips. She was frowning before she could stop herself. It wasn't cold.

"Where are you going?"

She stepped closer to him, half reaching for his hand.

"I'm going to go," he said, and he avoided her eyes.

"No."

Still, he continued to shrug on his jacket and fix his collar. Still, he continued to avoid her eyes like the plague, like the very moment he caught them he wouldn't be able to leave. She wasn't ready for him to leave, just as she wasn't ready for him to arrive. She wasn't ready for the years to slip by so fast, and for them to argue like they always did. She wasn't ready to tell him all the things she loved about him, from the freckle on his temple to the curve of his lips.

"You can't go!"

Her fingers flexed to grab his hand, out of impulse, but she hesitated. She felt cold all over. Cold, and not from the wind.

"Why should I stay?" he demanded, and her insides clenched. "I want you more than I've wanted anything, love, but you're never going to stop pushing me away are you?"

His eyes locked heatedly into hers, and what she saw in them shook her off balance. She thought maybe he was speaking to her with his eyes instead of his mouth; he did that more than anyone she'd ever met - the language of him, who he was, was hidden deep within his smoky iris's than his tongue. When he felt things, he felt it with his entire body. It was one of the many things she loved about him.

"You c-can't go," she said again, and it was all she could manage. She felt nauseous at the thought of him leaving her to brave the world alone, nauseous that he could so casually turn up at her apartment for twenty minutes and fuck off for twenty years. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't manage a tear. She was spent.

"Tell me one good fucking reason why I shouldn't, Em, because I'm really dying to know."

"Because..." she breathed, and she knew she would have to give him more than that.

Now she held his hand, and she realised, in that moment, that she would do anything to make him stay, even if it meant doing stupid things like telling him the one truth that she had kept from herself for years- hidden in the back of her wardrobe, seeped deep within the springs of her childhood bed. Closing her eyes, she could still remember the chord of the telephone that night.

"I am, you're right Gary - fine. I'm in love with you," she whispered.

His lips parted, and he stared at her. His eyebrows quirked, his chest rose and fall, and a second later he lips twitched into one of his charmingly handsome grins. He pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her slim frame. She shuffled into his warmth, craving it, like nothing she ever had. His lips kissed her cheeks, her forehead, nose and neck, every inch of salty skin he could reach before kissing her lips. His hands, too, slid over the spongy material of her sweater and slipped under to feel her naked skin and she could feel the presence of finger. Instinctively, she curled her arms around his shoulders and he whispered "it's always been you." An amused smile played on her lips, and she breathed in the cinnamon, leathery scent she had long associated with him.

He was here, in her arms, and she had to bite down hard on her lip to stop stumbling over more 'I love you's'.

AN: It's 8:21am in England. I've been writing this all night, and I have uni in a matter of hours -(if you need a definition, this is love). Oh! If you think this is the end, darling do not be fooled. This is just a hint that there will soon be sex. And lots of it. I hope you're ready. Until next time lovers! :)