Sadly, I don't make it outside very far before I hear someone calling my name…thank God it isn't Jace. I don't know what I would have done if it had been him. Instead, it's my idiot brother. I turn around to look at him and he is just staring at me with a pained smile. "You walked out of there pretty fast," he observes. "It was like your hair was a fire trail behind you."

I roll my eyes. Leave it to Jonathan to make redheaded jokes while I'm upset. "Is there a reason why you followed me out here?" I ask. "A quick exit is normally a hint to others that the person doesn't want to talk."

"I know that you don't want to talk to Jace," Jon says, shrugging. "I figured that I have a right above all others, being the amazingly awesome person that I am."

"You're referring to the fact that you're my brother aren't you?" I ask dryly. "Your ego is just so…so…."

"Destroyable," Jon warns me. "I didn't come out here to talk about me anyways, so no need to say anything hurtful. I was actually coming out here to let you know that I did my job as your brother."

I frown at him. "I wasn't aware that you had a job as by brother, Jon," I say slowly.

"Well, I do," he admits. "It involves you and other guys when they make you upset."

"You didn't—"

"No, I didn't beat my best friend up, yes, Jace and I are still friends, but I did talk to him," he tells me seriously. "I told him that he was making the largest mistake of his life by letting you go, and sooner or later he was going to realize that."

"You said that about me?" I ask, walking slowly toward him, so surprised that I cannot do anything else.

"Of course I did," Jon says, rolling his eyes at me. "Don't be ridiculous, Clare. I'm your brother, and as much as you're a pain to me, I do have to look after you when something's wrong."

That was so sweet, sincere, and thoughtful… "Who are you and what've you done with Jonathan Morgenstern?"

Jon rolls his eyes at me and says, "Just shut up and listen. I understand that you're hurting, and I'm sorry about that, but Jace wants to talk to you, and I think that you should let him."

"I will," I say stubbornly. "When I'm ready."

"Fair enough," Jon says, holding his hands out in surrender. "I can live with that, and I'm pretty sure that Jace can too."


I admit, with only a small amount of shame, that I didn't go to school for the rest of the week. Why not? Because I was sick! Fine, because I didn't want to face Jace, but to be fair, the thought certainly does make me sick.

It is Friday afternoon, and I am on the couch, watching a commercial advertising for a new movie that Chris Hemsworth is playing in when I hear the door open. I make a mental not to tell Isabelle about it so that we can both go and squeal over him the day it comes out before I turn the television off and stand up. I turn around to see who it is, and am met with Jon. He looks tired and annoyed…like severely annoyed. I know that the feeling is toward me, but I am sure that he can get over it. After all, it's only because of Jace.

"You look terribly unwell right now," Jon informs me with an angry huff. "Might as well be on your deathbed."

I roll my eyes at him. His patronizing doesn't exactly mean very much considering that he skips school more than anyone that I know. I am about to inform him of this when another person enters the house right behind him…Jace. My breath seizes in my lungs and I look at my brother with wide eyes, feeling the painful sting of betrayal. "I still have that project in art to work on," I mutter after a moment, looking down at my feet. My cheeks are flaring as I realize that I haven't changed out of my pajamas, or even brushed my hair all day. "I need to go and do that…." I trail off and just walk toward the staircase, determined to make it to my room with at least some dignity before I cry…if I even decide to cry at all.

"You could work on it out here, you know," Jon tells me. He is pleading with me to work with him, but I don't feel like working with anyone. "Stop being so antisocial."

"Shut up," I mutter as I begin to ascend the staircase. I move quickly, and before I know it, I am at my door. I open it as fast as I can and sigh once it is closed behind me. Why is Jonathan doing this? What's he trying to do anyway? I don't really want to have the stupid friends talk with Jace right now! I don't ever want to have a talk with Jace about friendship, mostly because I don't want to be friends with him. I don't want to be anything close to friends with him. I know that now. The things that I feel when I think about Jace are not the things that I feel when I think about Simon or I think about Magnus or Alec or Sebastian. The thought of being friends with him hurts too much. I know that it is inevitable. I know that I won't be able to tell him no when he asks me, because I don't want to kick him out of my life, but I also know that he and I both know that there's no way that we can ever be friends.

I inhale and exhale slowly, forcing myself to concentrate on only my breaths. Eventually they evened out and I felt as though everything was only in danger of slipping from my grasp again, instead of completely falling. I walk over and grab the sketch pad that is holding my final work in it and walk over to the desk that is sitting in the corner of my room. I sit down on the small stool and flip the pages of my book until I make it to my work. I manage a sad smile as I look it over. I hadn't shown Jace his portrait yet, but it looked amazing. Every part of him was a different shade of gold, from his hair, to his eyes, to his skin, just like he was to me…my Golden Boy. It didn't really matter now, though, because he wasn't my golden boy anymore…. He was just a Golden Boy.

"Clary, I know that I don't have any right barging into your room, but I think we need to talk…." he trailed off as I spun around. Jace was standing just past the doorway of my room.

I look at him with wide eyes, unsure of what to do. My mouth is wide open, and my breathing feels a lot more labored than it had a moment ago. My lungs are either on the verge of collapsing or exploding. "What are you doing in my room?" I demand weakly after a moment. I don't even sound angry, I sound scared. I can tell that he notices it too by the way that his stare changes.

"Clar—"

"I thought that it was agreed that I would come to you when I was ready to talk," I say. It is the only thing that comes to my mind, and I know that it is a weak argument. He's here right now, so why not just get it over with?

"I know that," Jace says, his eyes are wide as he looks at me pleadingly. "I want to talk to you when you're comfortable, but—"

"I'm not exactly comfortable right now," I say. It may sound shallow and conceited, but I wanted to at least look better when I was friend-zoned. That way, Jace might actually have second thoughts about all of this.

"Why are you uncomfortable?" he asks me. He raises an eyebrow as he looks at me, and I just shake my head.

"I just am, Herondale," I snap. I frown at him, finally feeling more angry than scared. Why was he harassing me about this when it was his fault that I was going through any of this anyway? He could wait until I was ready for him to wreck my world!

"Look, Clary, I just need to tell you something and after that, I'll leave if you still want me to go, I—"

"Yes, Jace," I say quietly, looking down. I feel the stinging of tears behind my eyes as I fight off the urge to cry. "We can still be friends. I can't promise that it won't be awkward. Now, please, just go and—"

"I don't want to," he cuts me off; looking at me as though I have fallen from space. "Have you been avoiding me this entire time because you thought I was going to give you the friends talk?"

"Tell me what else you could possibly want to talk to me about?" I snap at him defensively. "You want to ask me if you new girlfriend can borrow some of my clothes, or did you want to ask if she could come over to the house and hang out with the group?"

"I don't have a girlfriend, Clary," Jace says quietly.

"Really?" I ask, laughing humorlessly. "I think this is the longest that the great Jace Herondale went without one! Do you want me to clap for you? Throw a celebration?"

"I deserve that," he nods his head in acceptance to my insults. "It was so wrong of me to…" he sighs, shaking his head. "I shouldn't have done what I did. Coming to your house in the middle of the night to break up with you was unacceptable. I'm so sorry, and I probably shouldn't even be apologizing because that wasn't something that you can just say sorry to. I didn't know what else I was supposed to do, though!"

I frown at him, crossing my arms over my head as I try and figure out what he is talking about. "What do you mean 'supposed to do'?" I question. "I'm pretty sure on a scale of sucky to stupid, your idea was idiotic."

"I know," he says, his eyebrows creasing as he thought. "I'm trying to figure out how to explain to you exactly what I was thinking…." he looks at me, his eyes so sad that I have to physically restrain myself from rushing over to him and coddling him. "I'm not good enough for you, Clary. You remember the day that we started this whole thing, and we met Jon in the school parking lot?" I nod slowly. How could I forget how badly Jon had flipped? "Well, I wasn't silent because I was surprised; I was silent because I knew that he was right."

"What?" I demand. "How could he be right? You…you—"

"I was never even tempted to look at another girl the whole time that I was with you," he says quietly. "Even when it was fake I couldn't. I figured that there would be a day in the future when the Old Jace would come back, and when he did, you would get hurt." He looks at me pleadingly, as though begging me to understand what he was trying to say. "I didn't want to let you go, Clare, but don't you get how much easier it would have been for us to get over each other now versus later? I don't want to hurt you, Clary!"

"Then don't," I say as though it is the easiest thing in the world. It really doesn't seem like it would be that hard. "What could you do to hurt me?"

"That's the thing!" Jace says. "I can't think of anything that I could ever see myself doing, but I don't know…I don't know about later on."

I walk over to Jace before I can stop myself, and I pull him against me. He folds into my embrace immediately, pulling me closer, and burying his face into my hair. "This is what I mean," he says, his voice muffled. "I don't deserve you."

"Shut up, Herondale," I say, unsure of what he was getting at.

"I don't deserve you," he says, "but I don't want to let you go."

"Then don't," I murmur. "I don't want you to."

"We still have to talk, though," Jace says. "I was serious about that."

"I thought that was talking," I say confusedly.

Jace just shakes his head and says, "That was me apologizing for being a jerk."

"Then what else do we have to discuss?" I question, shifting slightly so that my cheek was against his chest.

"What happened to me," he says. "I think that might be important."

"You are so full of yourself," I inform him. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"Well," Jace says. "Your brother talked to me Monday and that was when I was going to talk to you, because he managed to talk some sense into me right before lunch."

"Was that what you guys were arguing about before Chemistry?" I ask.

"Pretty much," Jace says. "He told me to try and work things out with you in there, and I told him I wasn't about to go near you in a room full of dangerous chemicals."

"Smart boy," I inform him.

"I have my moments," he laughs. "I was going to skip lunch completely and just avoid you. It seemed like the least painful thing to do at the time. Jon caught me in an empty hallway, and we...talked. He told me that I was an idiot and that I was giving up the best thing that has happened to me since getting adopted by the Lightwoods." Jace goes silent, and I am unsure of what to say. Thankfully he isn't completely finished and begins talking again. "The thing is…he was right."

I tense up, and push myself away from Jace. I look at him with raised eyebrows as he smiles a pained smile. "What are you trying to say?" I question.

He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair agitatedly, as though he has never been more uncomfortable in his life. "You know in those cheesy movies where the guy royally screws up, and comes crawling back to the girl? Well this would be the scene, if we happened to be those people, where I would get on my knees and beg you to take me back."

I cross my arms over my chest and look at him with a calm expression that doesn't give away how much I am dancing on the inside. "Well."

"Well, what?" Jace asks, raising an eyebrow at me. "I said if we were those people, which we aren't, thank God. Our lives happen to be real, not a cheesy love story." He is silent for a moment and I just raise my eyebrows even further at him. Jace's eyes widen and he says, "If you want me to beg you, Clary, I will. You won't like it, though. Seeing me lose my pride isn't exactly a pretty sight."

I roll my eyes and say, "Because your precious pride is at stake, I think I can skip the groveling just this once."

Jace smiles and pulls me toward him. I place my palm on his chest and push him back. "What are you doing?"

"I figured that was obvious, Morgenstern," he replies, rolling his eyes at my apparent foolishness.

"I only kiss my boyfriends," I inform him cheekily.

"I thought we just resolved that!" he protests. "I even went so far as to agree with you when you called me an idiot! That was a lot for me to do!"

I roll my eyes. "Just make it official, Golden Boy."

Jace smiles at me and grabs my hand. "Of course, Angel. Would you do me the kindest favor of being my girlfriend again?"

I smile at him and nod. "As long as you promise to not be an idiot and dump me again for something that you might do in the future."

"Scouts honor," Jace says solemnly.

I snort and shake my head. "You weren't even a boy scout!"

"No," he agreed, "but it sounded pretty good."

"Shut up, Jace," I command. "Shut up and kiss me."

"Now that is something that I'm sure that I can do," he assures me as he pulls me toward him again.


Alright! I know it wasn't super dramatic, but it wasn't really a dramatic story. How did you like it anyway? Do you think that she should have held out more? Would you have been able to if Jace was giving you the innocent puppy dog eyes? I have one more chapter left to serve as an epilogue of sorts. *Sigh* I'm sad that it's coming to a close, but then I'm glad that I'm going to be able to label another as complete. I hope you all enjoyed the chapter, leave your thoughts on your way out!

I am kind of sifting through ideas at the moment, though I might have a couple of potential that I will work on after this is finished. The Epilogue should be up within the next couple of days. Promise! I'm going to save my thanks for next chapter :).