The retelling was proving to be as emotionally draining as the actual experience. Jenny couldn't stop a few tears from escaping. The girls all gathered around her and drew her into a comforting group hug, holding on until she indicated that she had regained some semblance of control.

Jenny opened her mouth to speak but was forcefully interrupted.

"If you don't want to keep going you don't have to." Dee asserted, and a quick glance around confirmed that the other girls agreed with her whole-heartedly.

"Thanks guys. But I think it will help to get it all out."

"In that case go on!" Audrey joked, and they all laughed at her impatience.

"So I tried to talk but he stopped me. He said that I never looked at him that way before. And he wanted me to, more than anything else. When we were in the car that night after the Lurker jumped on Audrey's car he wanted to kiss me and see that same look but this time for him. But then this song came on and he knew I was thinking of Julian."

"What song?" Summer asked.

"Well I don't really know what it was called. It caught my attention because the words had to do with darkness and light. It was weird because it was just like something Julian had said to me before. That's why I noticed it."

"So Tom was right and you were thinking of Julian." Dee announced.

Jenny didn't bother to deny it. She simply nodded in reply. She decided to skip the part where Tom revealed that he thought that incident in the car was the downfall of their relationship.

"After that Tom said he'd been thinking a lot about us and what we should do. He thought maybe we could patch things up and go right back to the way things were before. But then he realized that could never happen the way he wanted."

Dee smiled to herself at that announcement. She was glad to hear that her talk with Tom had caused him to think after all.

"And then he said he thought maybe things wouldn't be exactly the same but that maybe I could learn to respond to him the way I did to Julian."

The girls' eyes widened noticeably at that statement. Dee was the first to break the silence with a sharp bark of laughter. Everyone turned to look at her.

"Whatever! Was he serious?"

"Dee!" Audrey admonished.

"Well I'm sorry but let's get real for a moment. Was I the only one whose eyes were open when Julian and Jenny kissed at the end of the first Game? I mean I know Jenny's weren't, but what about you Audrey?"

Audrey looked so offended at the question that Jenny had to laugh. Trust Dee to not pull any punches.

"Dee, do you think you're helping with talk like that?" Audrey scolded her like she was a child.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about." This statement came from Summer, who whispered her declaration as if afraid of Jenny's reaction or more likely, of Audrey's.

The other three girls turned to look at Summer.

"That's right," Audrey mused as she gazed at Summer thoughtfully, "You weren't there to see it."

"So what did I miss?" Summer asked, her voice a little louder now that she had apparently been convinced she was not about to be reprimanded.

"Well you only missed our dear Jenny here locking lips with Julian in a very steamy kiss. But it was the fact that she so obviously enjoyed it that blew us all away."

"What?" Summer squealed, turning to confront her friend. "Jenny! Is this true?"

Jenny had retreated behind her hands, hiding her face from her friends. They probably assumed she was too embarrassed to look at them but truth be told she was hiding her face because she didn't want them to see the huge smile she was sporting, that she was always wearing whenever she thought about kissing Julian.

Summer took Jenny's silence as an affirmation. Looking at the top of her head she announced,

"Well I shouldn't really be surprised. I mean, I was there to see the two of you in the Tunnel of Love or whatever it was."

That wiped the smile right off Jenny's face. This time all eyes fell on Summer.

"What?" Summer asked, uncomfortable with being the center of attention, "Was I the only one with my eyes open during that whole scene?" her voice mocked Dee's earlier words.

"Summer!" Jenny exclaimed, astonished. Dee and Audrey just stared at Summer, their mouths slightly agape.

"I saw the way you looked at him. Besides that I heard you, Jenny. We all did. You said you *cared* about Julian."

Jenny couldn't form a coherent thought. What was she supposed to say? They were quickly deviating from the agreed-upon topic. She was ready (sort of) to talk about Tom. She was not ready to talk about Julian.

Dee recovered first and found her voice.

"That can wait. We're getting off track. Let's finish talking about Tom first before we move on, okay?"

"Er, right," Audrey agreed, "Where were we?"

Jenny searched her mind for the thread of their earlier conversation and winced when she realized where they had left off. This maybe wasn't the lesser of two evils as she had imagined.

"Fine. But we have to go back and talk more about Julian. Anyway, we were talking about how Tom said he thought Jenny could learn to respond to him like she did to Julian." Summer reluctantly announced.

Boy this was going to be hard. It had been so painful to hear in the first place that Jenny couldn't imagine that voicing it herself would manage to take away any of the sting.

"Umm, right. So he told me that in the car that night he knew I was thinking of Julian. He thought maybe that was a one-time thing. And maybe our relationship could eventually evolve into something else, something better, if not for one thing."

"I'm not sure I want to hear this," Audrey whispered. Jenny paused and looked around for a sign from the group. Should she continue or not? One by one they nodded, urging her to go on.

"Tom thought we could repair our relationship if," she hesitated for a moment, "if he honestly believed I never thought of Julian after The Games."

"Ouch." Dee said, shaking her head. The others murmured their agreement. Jenny decided to leave out the part about her behavior before Sarah's party. Some things were better left unsaid.

"Did Tom say anything else?" Summer asked hesitantly.

"Yeah. He informed me that he knew for sure that we were going to break up. He said it shocked him to realize that it meant he was going to have to find someone else. But more traumatizing than that was becoming conscious of a desire to actually do it, find someone else I mean."

"Oh my," Audrey exclaimed, grabbing Jenny's hand and squeezing it in a gesture of support.

"He wanted me to know that he only realized it because this whole experience made him aware of something he didn't even know he was missing. He has accepted that he can't force me to respond to him the way I do to Julian. But he realized that he wants it for himself. He admitted he was and still is jealous of me and Julian and he acknowledged that he wants that."

No one said anything for a long moment, though each of them was thinking similar thoughts. Summer was the first one to break the silence and she did so to voice a question that rendered all of them speechless again.

"What do you mean the way you do respond to Julian?"

With a tremendous effort Jenny found her voice. Unfortunately it wasn't the strong assertive tone she had hoped for. It came out more as a strangled whisper.

"What are you talking about, Summer?"

"You just said 'the way I do to Julian' Jenny, not the way you did. Why did you say it like that?"

"No I didn't." Jenny actually had no conscious recognition of having made a slip like that.

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Disclaimer: Note to Self: You do not own LJS' characters.

Author's Note: I'll do the thank you's in the next chapter. There's a huge storm here and I've already had one of my programs crash so I'm just posting and leaving my computer alone for a while.