Chapter Four

Sick Sad Little World

It's a funny thing, timing. Why does it always seem that whenever you don't want someone to be somewhere, they are always there and whenever you are wishing and hoping they'll be there, they never show up? It's like some higher being or whatever, just lives to torture us. I'm serious when I say they are getting some kind of amusement up there.

We watch the WB for entertainment, they watch us.

Okay, well…really, I don't believe in God but if I did, I'm sure I would hate him, or her, for putting me through all this.

Ever since Reed left, I had been waiting for him to come back. Sitting by the phone, waiting for the call to let me know he couldn't live without me. And after we broke up, I still had that little hope that he would come back.

Needless to say, he never did.

But now, when I find myself into someone else, ehem, Nathan, Reed has to go and show up. It's like, hey, where the hell were you a month ago when I wanted you to show up? Insert sigh here.

I'll never understand.

"Haley?" He asked, and I opened my eyes, my lips still on Nathan's. Nathan seemed to grab me tighter when he heard Reed's voice. "Haley," he said again, this time a different tone. The first time he had said my name, it reeked of disappointment. The second, he was trying to get my attention.

I pulled away from Nathan, but not without difficulty. He was holding onto me tightly and he seemed to have cared less that there was someone trying to get my attention, which is, by the way, so Nathan. "Hey…" I said awkwardly when our eyes met. It seemed that no matter how normal I tried to sound when I was around him, my voice just couldn't match what I wanted. I guess that's one thing, these two boys share in common. Nathan put his arm around my shoulder and I didn't need to look up to know that he was probably smirking shamelessly at Reed. "This is Nathan…" I said, sighing.

"Your boyfriend?" Reed asked.

I shook my head and threw Nathan's arm off of me. "No, not my boyfriend."

"Then who is he?" He asked. Both boys looked at me expectantly.

"He's no one," I said flatly, looking up to Nathan who just scoffed at me before retreating down the aisle to a seat close to the screen. He didn't seem hurt; he didn't seem offended. In some ways, I'm pretty sure that he was amused.

He sure as hell knows that I don't think of him as no one.

"So you were just kissing…no one?" Reed said with a laugh that came out much more bitter then I'm sure he intended. Reed was never one to be bitter. He's always been the sweetest guy I know. We never fought when we were together. "If he's your boyfriend, just tell me, Haley."

"Tell you? Why should I tell you? It's not like it's any of your business, anyway," I said and my voice was calmer than I had expected it to be.

"I need to know, Haley." He said.

"Why do you need to know?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's none of your business anymore, Reed," I repeated. I knew that by now I sounded angry, but I was angry. I guess I had never quite gotten over the fact that he had broken up with me by answering machine with barely an explanation.

He sighed sadly. "I guess you're right. Look, Haley…part of the reason I came back was because of you. I missed you, a lot. And I made a mistake…I was hoping that maybe…"

"Maybe what?" I demanded.

"That maybe you would give me a second chance?"

I raised an eyebrow and stalked off to Nathan. "Second chances are a lie," I muttered under my breath before taking a seat next to Nathan in the theater. I sighed to myself. "Where the hell is Riley?"

"Riley's here," she announced before Nathan could say anything. "And she's got treats." She handed the popcorn to Nathan and handed the red vines to me in which Nathan stole in a matter of seconds. I glared in his direction. "Okay, well then I guess you get the Milk Duds, Hales." She said, putting them in my lap. Nathan took those too.

"You are such a brat," I said under my breath before taking them back out of his hands and scooting a seat over.

He laughed as Riley took the seat in between us.

"So what was up with the conversation with Reed?" Riley asked, taking out her own bag of Skittles and putting them in her hand. She handed me the purple ones and then popped the rest in her mouth.

"It was nothing," I shrugged.

"Oh it was definitely something," Nathan remarked from the side.

"We don't need any comments from the peanut gallery," I growled, opening my Milk Duds. "He was just feeding me some bullshit line about how the real reason he came back was because of me and he wants me back, blah, blah, blah. It's all a bunch of crap. Ten to one, he got kicked out."

She laughed. "Kicked out? He's like the sweetest boy ever."

I glared at her. "Sweet? Sweet? Did he not totally ditch me for some random skank?"

"Random? Are you sure she was random…I mean…"

"Not helping, Ry…"

She laughed. "I know. I really just love it when you glare at me. It's quite amusing."

"Shh! The movies starting," Nathan said, the smirk on his face not going unnoticed by either of us.

I only saw Reed once more before we left the theater, in which I smiled, again awkwardly. Nathan laughed beside me, and I didn't have to look at him to know it was me he was laughing at.

I was used to it by now.

It was quite pathetic, I admit, the way I was scared to talk to him, scared to tell him to his face how much he hurt me. I suppose I wasn't as over him as I had thought I was before I saw him again and Nathan had discovered that before me.

Riley's phone suddenly rang on the ride home. "Hello?" She paused, lowering her voice to a noticeable whisper. "Now's not a good time." I furrowed my brow. "Because," she said firmly. "Yea," she sighed. "I know, I will. Tonight…I promise." She hung up and an awkward silence filled the car.

"Who was that?" I asked, as casual as possible.

"No one," she sighed.

"What's tonight?" I tried.

"Nothing."

I gave up after that.

When we got back to Riley's house, Nathan disappeared back into his room without so much as a word. Of course, by then, I shouldn't have expected anything more. What did surprise me however was when Riley stalked up to her room as well. I watched her retreating figure and sighed, making my way into the kitchen, where I found Mrs. Scott dropping strawberries and Vanilla ice cream into the blender.

"Haley!" She exclaimed excitedly. "How are you dear?"

"I'm okay," I sighed, sitting down on the stool. "Exhausted."

"Me too," she admitted, leaning her elbows on the counter. "Why is it that my whole life, I couldn't find that one guy and now, I've found two?"

I laughed. "I know the feeling." I'd always found Mrs. Scott easy to talk to, sometimes easier than Riley, especially when she got in moods like these. Riley and I always said that Elizabeth Scott was a teenager at heart, trapped inside her mother's body.

"What do you do when you can't choose?" She asked me.

"I don't know." I admitted. "Don't you think the world would be so much easier if we did?" I thought about Reed, and I thought about Nathan. They were obviously two completely different people. Nathan and I probably would never even get a relationship started. For him it was all about sex. Shouldn't it be a no brainer?

But it isn't.

"What time is it?" She asked suddenly and I opened my cell phone to give her the time.

10: 25 P.M.

She gasped. "Oh no, I have to go. Tell Riley I'm staying at Ryan's house tonight. See you later, honey. Have this smoothie if you want it, I hate for it to go to waste." I laughed as she rushed out the door and then I poured the rest of the smoothie in the sink, cleaning the blender and placing it back in the cupboard. I was just buying time until I had to go talk to Riley.

It was a couple of minutes later that I walked up to Riley's room. I figured I had given her enough time to collect herself or figure out whatever the hell was bothering her so I knocked on the door lightly and let myself in. She was sprawled on the bed, looking straight up at the ceiling with a distant look on her face. "Hey," she said when I entered without looking up.

"Are you okay?" I asked unsurely, lying down beside her on the bed so that we were parallel. "You've been acting a little weird all day."

She nodded silently.

Usually, I can tell what's bothering her. When it's about me, she gets all snappy towards me but when it's not, she just doesn't talk at all. This time, I had no idea what was the matter. She had been acting weird lately and getting mysterious phone calls but I couldn't put any of the pieces together.

Did she know about me and Nathan?

No. She couldn't. She seemed totally oblivious to it all and I figured that if she did, she would just be telling me right off the bat that I'm being irrational. She knows that I can't be with guys like Nathan. She knows that I lose control easier than a lot of people and that it's really hard for me to stand my ground. If she knew, she would tell me.

So what's her deal?

"There's this guy," she said finally. And I was so deep in my own thoughts that it took me a while to register that she's talking to me. "He's great."

I turned my heads to face the side of hers while she's talking.

"He understands me. He's sweet, he's gentle…he listens when I talk." She says. Her voice was unemotional. She wasn't smiling or anything.

"That's great…" I said, still a little confused "…you deserve someone like that."

She cracked a little smile. "When I kiss him, there's really a spark, you know?

I nodded.

"So what's the problem?" I asked, finally unable to wait for her to say it.

She turned her head so that our faces were inches apart. "You," she whispered.

I furrowed my brow. "I don't understand."

She sighed before turning back up to face the ceiling. "It's Jesse."

Silence.

"Jesse?" I repeated.

"Don't hate me, Haley."

"Jesse?" I said again, rising to my feet. "Jesse Preston? Are you serious, Riley?" She stood up too so that we were now on opposite sides of the bed. The palm of my hand rose to my forehead and I sighed in frustration. "Do you not remember what he did?"

She closes her eyes. "That was forever ago, Haley."

"Forever ago?" I laugh bitterly. "That was three months ago, Riley."

I dated Jesse Preston a couple months after Reed and I broke up. I never really liked him all that much, but he was cute and I needed someone to rebound with. I hated the fact that Reed had moved on and I hadn't so I had clung to the next thing to come my way, in this case it was Jesse. He seemed like a cool guy but he wasn't. Three or four weeks into our relationship, he hooked up with a girl who was in my Trig class. They were doing it on the desk in my Spanish class when I came for second period.

I didn't have feelings for him so I didn't take it too hard, but that doesn't change the fact that he is an asshole for doing it.

"It's not that big of a deal. You didn't care, remember?"

"Just because I didn't care doesn't make it any less of an asshole thing to do! What if he did it to you, Ry? What if you walked in on him with another girl? You would be devastated. Don't do this to yourself." I said, my voice reeking of desperation.

"He would never do that to me!" She protested.

"He did it to me!" I said.

"Well you were a bitch to him," she defended.

I raised an eyebrow. "You're siding with him? Are you serious?"

She glared at me, her hand finding its way to her hip. "All I'm saying is he wouldn't have had to cheat on you if you weren't such a bitch to him all the time. You treated him like crap. Sometimes, you can be so selfish, Haley." I felt like I had been slapped, stumbling backwards involuntarily. She gasped. "Oh god, I didn't mean it, Hales. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to say that."

"Then why'd you say it?" I asked softly, turning around and walking out the door.

She didn't follow me. I couldn't believe that those words had come out of her mouth…out of Riley's mouth…the girl who I could always depend on. What do you do when the person you always run to becomes the person you need to run from? I turned the corner and realized I had nowhere to go, my house was too far away and I didn't have my car. Sometimes making a dramatic exit is harder than you would think.

My feet carried me to Nathan's bedroom door and I stood outside for a moment, wondering if I was maybe making a wrong choice. But nonetheless, I turned the knob without knocking and walked in slowly, barely making a sound. When the light from the hallway shined into his room I heard him sit up in his bed and I spotted his figure looking directly at me. "Haley?" He asked groggily. I nodded and walked in closer, closing the door behind me. "What are you doing here?" He asked.

I felt the tears that had been tugging at my eyes roll down my cheek as I made my way over to his bed. "Can I stay here, tonight?" I whispered, trying to hide the fact that I was crying…but failing.

As I moved closer and I saw his face, I could tell he was puzzled but even so, he opened the sheet for me to slide into. I turned the opposite way that he was, so that he couldn't see my face as the tears hit my skin. I could still feel his body against mine because the bed was only a single and barely fit the two of us. I pulled at the quilt and stared off into the space in front of me. "Are you okay?" He asked.

I nodded, though I knew he couldn't see me. "I'll be fine." I managed to say. I could feel his stomach moving in and out as he breathed and I found comfort in the fact that he was beside me. "Hey Nathan?" I asked after a moment of silence.

"Yeah?"

"You remember when you asked me what I was afraid of?" I paused. "Sometimes…I'm afraid I'll end up alone."

He didn't say anything, but it didn't matter…I hadn't wanted him to say anything. Instead, I felt his arm drape around me and pull me closer, holding me as I fell asleep.