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It hurts

Her words were ringing in my ears almost burning. I almost wanted to scream how you could do that to me. But wasn't I the one who wrote the letter saying that I understood if she wasn't there for me when I got back home. The one person who against his better judgment urged her to move on with her life, all because I didn't know if I would ever be returning to Chicago. Still right now I didn't know if I would return or not. It was starting to look like I had nothing to return home to.

She said that she hadn't done it to hurt me. How could it not hurt me? I had come back here to find Luka and sent him home when no one else would. If I hadn't risked my neck to save his, he would have never returned home. Chances are that he would have died from the malaria and no one would have been any wiser.

In my head I asked myself how someone would answer. What should I say to now to her? I didn't want to be confrontational, nor appear that she had hurt me with her words. I know that she could probably see the pain that was there in my eyes. There was no way that I could hide that. I knew that I had always worn my emotions on my sleeve. Sometimes that was a good thing, but right now it was giving things away that I would rather keep to myself.

How could I be angry at her, how could I let this hurt me, when after all hadn't I done the same thing with Kem? I asked myself. That had to be different somehow. There had to be something that made what I did different from what she had done. Of course I hadn't gone out and slept with my ex-boyfriends best friend. If that was all that I was to her now, nothing more than an old flame that she had extinguished.

Eighteen months was a long time for two people to be apart. I started to try to rationalize the situation in my head. There was nothing that was holding the two of us to each other. No commitment, god no we were both to scared of that to have any kind of a commitment between the two of us. It needed to be ended; we needed to put each other out of our misery soon before one of us ended up getting burned beyond belief and it seemed as if that's where we were suddenly headed.

"You know what Abby," I started to speak; "you did exactly what I would have done if our places would have been switched. We left a lot of things unsaid, unresolved between the two of us. We weren't in a good place in Chicago when I came back here even though you didn't want me too."

It looked like she was about to say something when I put my fingers up against her lips. "Just listen to me." I said as I watched for her head to nod in agreement.

"It's not right, the time's not right, the place isn't right and we both have changed more than either of us would like to admit. Maybe it's better if we just remain friends, good friends, but nothing more nothing less." I paused just long enough to catch my breath but not to let her say anything. "I don't hate you, in fact I still love you and it's going to take awhile for those feelings to go away if they ever do go away. I will work with you; I'll even be a shoulder for you to lean on. I'll help you and teach you if you get stuck but that's all I can do Abby. I once said to you that it hurt too much to be just a friend, well right now it hurts to much to be anything more than just a friend. That's all I want from you Abby. I just want to be your friend right now."

I didn't give her the chance to say anything. As fast as my feet would carry me I turned and bolted inside. Space, I needed space right now more than anything. It took everything that I had not to break down into tears right there and then. But there was nothing that I could do about this right now. I needed time to sort everything out. I wanted to give her time to sort everything out. The only downside to all of this is that the two of us were going to be stuck working side by side in Africa with nowhere that either of us could escape too.