Chapter Two: Maybe Later
Lucas paused by the seat for an infinite moment. Haley's mind quickened, searching for small talk, for topics for the two to touch on in the next three days that had nothing to do with Nathan or Chris, or her.
He finally sat down. She noticed immediately how much of the chair his body took up, more muscular than when she'd seen him last. She turned hesitantly to him, desiring that he'd put the past behind him, a task she'd failed miserably at.
"So, how are you doing?" she asked, folding down the page she'd stopped at and closing her book.
"Fine," he said, placing his bag under his seat and stretching out his legs in front of him.
"And how are…" she began. She fell silent as he put his earphones in his ears and stared ahead, ignoring the announcement coming through the intercom.
Haley fiddled with her hands in her lap, contemplating her options. Lucas obviously didn't want to talk. However, three days was an awfully long time. He'd have to stop listening to his music eventually. They had been best friends once. Haley was haunted by the possibility that they could be again.
Hours later, when the TV dinner style lunch arrived, and Lucas pulled out his earphones. Haley forced herself to wait a few moments, as to not seem overly eager, before launching into her small talk.
"So, how's everyone in Tree Hill?" she asked pleasantly, genuinely curious.
"They're good," said Lucas, lifting his sandwich to his mouth.
"Come on, give me details. I've missed it," she said lightly.
"Nothing was stopping you," he said rudely.
"Plenty of things stopped me, and you know that," she said, refusing to rise to her anger.
"Fine. Peyton and Jake got married a few years ago, and they have a son, Ben. Brooke works in PR, and is pretty successful, I guess," he began.
"And are you with her?" asked Haley, eager to hear of what had become of their high school romantic entanglements.
"No," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because she was my high school love. It doesn't make her my forever love, I guess," explained Lucas. Haley nodded, silently agreeing wholeheartedly.
"And Nathan?" she asked, staring down at her hands, knotted anxiously together.
"Better before his heart was broken," said Lucas dismissively. Haley sighed inwardly.
"So Peyton and Jake got married. Was it nice?" she asked.
"Yeah, it was okay. I was best man, Nathan was a groomsman, Brooke was Maid of Honour and Jenny was flower girl," explained Luke. Haley felt herself feeling gratified beyond words.
"Jenny's all grown up, I guess?" she asked.
"Something like that. About eleven now. Really into guys," said Lucas. Haley guiltily enjoyed a laugh at the expense of the small girl.
"Like Brooke?"
"Sort of. Less dangerous. A really nice kid all around. Sometimes Nathan and I take her down to shoot hoops, and she likes that," said Lucas, clearly fond of her.
"So you two are still playing all the time?" Lucas raised an eyebrow at her, and she instantly blushed without knowing exactly why.
"We're both on the New York Knicks. Do you live in a hole?" he asked, suddenly playful.
"Sorry, never been my thing. Is it fun?" She didn't press him when he simply shrugged.
"Does Nathan like it?" she asked. She gasped when he turned on her, face red and temples throbbing.
"Don't pretend like you care, Haley. I know you don't care. The whole world knows you don't care, and they don't even care that you don't care," he said coolly, obviously holding back his rage.
"I do care. We were married," she murmured.
"Oh, so you remember? Did you even love him?"
"Of course I loved him! Don't lie to yourself Luke, you saw how I loved him! It was too much! I was sixteen!"
"Yeah, keep telling yourself that. That your age mattered. Maybe you were sixteen, but you're twenty-five now," he said.
"Did it ever occur to you that it takes two to break up a marriage?" she asked harshly.
"Yeah. It took two. You and Chris. Speaking of which, how's he doing?" demanded Lucas. Haley rolled her eyes impatiently, amazed at how badly a simple conversation could go.
"He's fine. We speak fairly regularly, mostly on the phone. But don't you remember how I came back, and he turned me down. Turned me down for that game that has always run his life," said Haley, pain overcoming her. Lucas rolled his eyes.
"After you left. The second time, by the way, you left without saying anything to me," he said.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"It was always one or the other of us. It could never be both with you," he said, plugging back in his earphones.
Haley willed herself not to cry as she stared out into the countryside, remembering her lost life. Her career had picked up only months after Nathan had left her for High Flyers, when she'd offered herself to him and he'd turned her down. She'd gone back to New York, to the comforting presence of her friend Chris, and had never looked back. She'd though back, plenty of times, but never set so much as a foot in the vicinity of Tree Hill, North Carolina.
She fell deeper unto guilt when she thought about Brooke and Lucas. When she'd first left, she'd sensed Lucas falling again for the enigmatic Brooke, already beginning to change. When she'd left the second time, only one thing had stopped her from seeing her best friend: the image of him silhouetted in his window, hunched over. Crying. Over Brooke Davis, who only a year previously had never acknowledged his existence. Haley couldn't bring herself to help him. She'd never understood why. She'd never be able to explain.
Her thoughts, gradually an inevitably, drift to Nathan, as they do to often. It's been so long that she doesn't know if she still loves him, loves the him of nine years previously, or loves a shadow, the perfect male built up in her mind. Part of her hopes desperately that he's happy. After all, it's not like she's going back to New York to see him. In fact, every time she does go back, she dreads seeing him. Manhattan is an island of many millions, but sometimes it seems like you're constantly liable to run into those you wish you'd never have to see again.
Haley started as she began to doze off, her cheek pressed against the glass. She glanced over at Lucas, immersed in an ancient book and his I-pod.
"Later," she promised herself. "Later, when I'm awake, we'll talk and make friends again."