Hey, guess what today is! August 20th! You know what that means?

…

It means you get another chapter! So here you go! Another chapter! (I tried it without the exclamation marks and it just didn't seem as excited, it seemed more sarcastic.)

I'm sorry it's been so long!

P.S. There are people I have to thank! There are, of course, my lovely lovely reviewers, including Bronte whom I love very much (and is in my homeroom! Woot woot! Partay!), and my mother who tells me when I made a very huge mistake.

Okay. Enough intro. Time to actually write the chapter…

OH WAIT. Something creepy just happened. I'm sitting in my room, minding my own business, trying to slam my muse into a corner so I can tape her there and use her, and I hear this creepy bull-horn-type magnified voice from somewhere near the highway which is somewhat near my house. And there is a shopping mall type thing there, too. So I couldn't hear what it was saying, but I couldn't help picturing some huge monster thing going like, "Must. Eat. Humans." and that's what I was hearing! So that got me to thinking, what about the people who are the neighbors of the people who have really creepy things happen in horror movies? Like, what do the neighbors think of screaming and what-not going on in the house? And then I told myself to just forget about it, but about five minutes later, AKA just now, I heard a squeal of tires and I swear what sounded like a scream (but I'm pretty sure it was just an elongated squeal). And now I'm scared for my life. Thought I'd share.

Oh, wait. Now I'm hearing cheering. So either they defeated the monster, or it was a party at my neighbors' house. But I hope they shut up so I can shut up so I can write the darn chapter.

Mistakes Already Made

Chapter 13

"Bridget Vreeland, if you do not sit on that carpet," Carmen pointed, as if there was a way to be unsure as to what carpet she was talking about, "and pick up that phone," Tibby was gesturing with Bridget's cell phone, "and call that boy," Lena was standing next to Bridget holding a note from Eric that she'd found on Bridget's desk that just said 'Dinner's in 10 minutes' (written a few weeks ago because it was a dare between Bridget and Eric to see who could go longer without talking – Bridget won because Eric had to answer his cell phone), "or else none of us will talk to you ever again."

It was Wednesday night, and school had already been called off for the next day because of the forecast calling for snow. So Lena, Carmen, and Tibby had shown up at Bridget's house and were planning to get snowed in get Eric and Bridget back on speaking terms.

Bridget stood by her window. It had begun flurrying. She was still wearing her pajamas. She watched the little flurries as they fell from the sky, and she thought about how, wherever Eric was, it was snowing there, too. Was he in the hotel room? Was he eating dinner? Was he with Alison? Was he thinking about Bridget?

No. He wasn't. Bridget reached down to open the window and felt a cold draft immediately. She opened the screen, and even more wind blew in, bringing with it snowflakes. Bridget put her hand outside the window, her friends watching curiously, and caught a few snowflakes on her palm. She watched as they melted, and she rubbed her hand on her pants. She had on a short sleeve shirt, but she wasn't sure if she was cold or not.

"Bee…" Tibby said carefully, taking a step toward her. Lena was already next to Bridget, so she took Bridget's hand.

"I'm not going to jump out or anything, guys," Bridget snapped. "I just like the snow."

Bridget thought the snow was a lot like herself. Cold and stupid. Her heart was frozen over, frozen over because of its brokenness, and she was stupid. She felt stupid. She had fallen for a boy who wasn't loyal. Who didn't remember a girlfriend he had when he met a girl who was young – too young – and had spectacular hair. She realized they hadn't even known each other then – not known each other when they did what they did. Their attraction – her attraction, his attraction – they were both based off of shallow things – initial reactions to someone never meant anything in the long run.

Like Bridget had thought Eric was responsible and had good morals. But he had been a taken man from the very beginning, and that made it all that much worse.

Bridget sighed, pressed her chin to her collarbone briefly before looking up at her friends. She snatched the note from Lena and the cell phone from Tibby and hit speed dial 4. She glanced at Carmen to glare while it rang. It rang three times before Eric answered with a very tentative, very wary hello.

"Hello," Bridget said. Her voice sounded weird to her.

"Hello," Eric repeated, just seeming to grasp the meaning of the fact that Bridget was calling him.

Carmen was now in a huddle with Lena and Tibby, and Bridget continued to glare until she realized that they didn't care what she was doing. She turned to the window. A shiver went up her spine.

"You there?" Eric asked.

Bridget had forgotten the rule of the phone – you had to talk. "Yeah. Sorry."

Wait. No. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to be chewing him out. She was supposed to be yelling.

"Hey, Bee?" Eric asked.

Bridget was angry that he would have the audacity to call her that, but she couldn't seem to find the courage to yell at him.

"Yes?" Bridget asked.

"Alison and I started dating in September. After I got your letter." Open mouth, insert foot. Eric had probably thought this would be self-explanatory, but it just made Bridget angrier.

So he knew he'd made a sixteen-year-old pregnant, and he'd gone and gotten a girlfriend anyway? Bridget's nostrils flared.

"Oh. So you basically just forgot about me," Bridget said defensively.

"No! No, no, that was the point, so I wouldn't have to be thinking about you all the time, so I wouldn't come to you-"

But Bridget had already hung up.

"So I wouldn't realize how much I really loved you," Eric whispered to the phone.

There was a time, when Eric was in high school, when he thought that soccer would solve every problem he had. If his girlfriend was acting weird, he'd just go kick around a soccer ball. If he was worried about a test, he'd watch a soccer game on TV. He lived and breathed soccer. He rarely did anything that wasn't soccer-related. Eric got to a point where he thought that if he didn't play soccer, he wouldn't be able to live.

Eric was back to that point. He'd driven to the high school, and, even though it was snowing, had kicked the soccer ball around in the snow. Little white flakes were in his hair and on his coat, and the soccer ball was getting slippery, and Eric thought he might be getting a cold, and it was freezing outside.

And still Eric played.

He hadn't so much as touched a soccer ball in months. He loved the feel of it under his feet, when he dribbled it across the thin layer of snow now coating the field, when he kicked it straight into the goal. When he dug in his foot under it and gave it that extra lift so it would soar into the top corner of the goal. The stadium lights weren't on, and the only light he had came from his headlights, which he'd left trained on the field. There was something pathetic about it, actually. He was all alone in the snow on a night in February with just the light of his own headlights to show him the goal.

Eric took another shot, and it sailed past the goal to hit…

Another car, pulling in next to his. Whoever was driving cut the engine but left their headlights on, too. Eric couldn't see the car past the glare of the headlights, but he very clearly saw the person who climbed out of the car.

"You stole my spot!" she yelled, not angrily.

"Sorry," he called back, not talking about what she was talking about.

Bridget jogged toward him, holding a soccer ball of her own. "It's okay," she said, and Eric knew she wasn't talking about the spot anymore, either.

Eric thought it would be appropriate to say more, to talk it out, to see eye to eye for sure, but then he realized that they could do that later, after some of the friendship or whatever it was had built back up. Instead, when she dropped her soccer ball and kicked it to him, he kicked it back, and it was the equivalent of talking it out.

In the summer Eric had known Bridget, he'd never actually shared the soccer field with her. Eric had, many times, kicked the ball around with Bridget in the safe walls of his dreams. Some nights he beat her, some nights she beat him. They were always in beautiful Baja, the bright blue sea gazing at them. It was always a great experience in that the game was very easy – there was little effort on either of their parts. They were well matched for each other.

In real life, Bridget kicked Eric's butt all over that field. She scored goal after goal after goal, and he only scored a few. His pride was hurt, as well as his nose, when she kicked the ball too high and it hit his face. Eric had liked to think of himself as an exceptional player, a little out of practice, maybe, but overall very good. He knew now that he could not possibly be good if Bridget was better than him. So long as Bridget could beat him, Eric may as well have been playing basketball.

It wasn't like Bridget was the one being overly competitive. She wasn't taunting him. She really wasn't saying anything, except when she hit him in the face - then she apologized fifteen times over and asked if he was okay sixteen times.

Bridget had come to the soccer field for old times' sake. She'd come because her friends were pressuring her to go to his hotel and tell him she was sorry. She wasn't sorry. She was pissed off. She reserved the right to stay pissed off for as long as she wanted. So Bridget dug her feet in and drove straight to the soccer field with the intent of playing until she couldn't feel anything anymore, because that was what she wanted.

When she saw Eric there, what she wanted changed. Seeing him playing, seeing his face, which looked so anxious and upset, and knowing instinctively why he was there, changed all that. There was something inside Bridget that had told her that she couldn't hate him forever, and that something was right. Bridget couldn't even hate Eric for a few days. Bridget was beginning to think there was only one direction for the two of them to go: love.