Chapter 37

Filtered early morning, late spring sunlight shone over Tree Hill High school. It was clearly nearing the summer in North Carolina State. In the midst of the lovely spring rays, Jessica Seddyn sat, restfully on a bench in front of the school, waiting for her best friend to arrive. Ollie was later than she usually was. It was strange. Jess had already seen Ephraim arrive and Ollie generally walked to school with him.

For a while now, Jess had known something was up with her friend. She first started noticing it a few months ago. First Ollie dyed her hair dark black and completely withdrew into herself. At that point Jess had just presumed she was going through some Goth or emo phase. But it wasn't that. Over time, Ollie's hair had gone back to its normal dark gold colour and she started going out more and being social again, but something was still different. It wasn't that the change was necessarily bad, Jess just wanted to know what was going on. She and Ollie had been close since kindergarten, but every time Jess had tried to ask her what was going on, she received some kind of excuse or brush off. Jess didn't want them to start drifting apart now.

Jess glanced toward the car park. She really wanted to sort this out, but was beginning to wonder if Ollie was even coming to school today. A couple of cars came into the car park, some with teachers driving and some with seniors in their battered yet loved second hand cars. After another few minutes, and another few cars, a red, quite flash looking hatchback entered the park. At first, she took no notice as it was obviously another teacher and as far as she knew, there was no reason for Ollie to be coming to school with a teacher other than Nathan or Lucas. She had already seen Nate and she knew that the little red car wasn't Lucas's. So yeah, she did a little bit of a double take when Ollie emerged from the car, followed by Haley James.

Puzzled, she watched as Ollie smiled and said something to Haley before heading toward the school. It was strange, Ollie wasn't in any of Haley's classes, and while Jess knew Haley had been interested in Ollie's music when she first arrived, that couldn't be the case now because their wasn't really any music anymore. Jess shook her head. She really had no clue what on earth was going on.

Ollie hadn't yet seen her, so when she walked past, Jess fell into place, walking next to her.

"Hello Olivia." Jess quipped.

Ollie looked at her strangely, "Hello Jessica." She greeted in the same strange way Jess had greeted her.

Subtly, Jess steered Ollie toward an isolated corner of the school, catching confused looks from Ollie much of the way. Once there she turned to look at Ollie seriously.

Under her friends silent gaze, Ollie felt a bit uncomfortable. "What's going on Jess?" she blushed.

Jess was silent for a few more seconds then began. "Ollie we have been best friends since we were 3 years old."

Ollie nodded, squinting at her a bit confused.

"So please tell me what has been going on with you lately." Jess begged.

It finally dawned on Ollie where Jess wanted the conversation to go. "What do you mean? Nothings going on." Ollie smiled, brushing it off. Then turned to head back toward the school.

Expecting this reaction from her, Jess softly grabbed her arm to prevent her from leaving, "I saw you with Haley James this morning."

Ollie spun round. She had stayed the night at Haley's last night, something she did every so often since she had moved back home to Nathan's. Sort of like split custody only without all the lawyers.

"You've been spying on me?" Ollie snapped narrowing her eyes accusingly and shaking the hand off her arm.

"No." Jess defended, "I was just waiting for you so we could talk. I've been worried about you Olls."

Sighing, Ollie relaxed. Maybe accusing her best friend of spying on her was a bit on the extreme side. "I'm sorry," she apologized for snapping.

"You can trust me" Jess reassured her softly.

Ollie mulled it over in her head for a few moments before nodding. "I know." She took a seat down on the dry grass and Jess did the same.

It was not like Ollie hadn't come to terms with everything. She had, fully. She was just sort of worried if people's view of her would change because of it. With Kaleb it had been different, they had only just been getting to know each other, and he hadn't had a full opinion of her yet. To him, Haley being her mom was just another thing to learn. To Jess, it would be a major change to what she already knew of her friend. That sort of scared Ollie a little even though she had known from the moment she found out about Haley herself, that it would come out eventually. She had prolonged it as long as she could though.

She took a deep breath and began. "You know how ages ago, you were over at my house and we were listening to music or something and you said that I sort of looked like Haley." Jess nodded so Ollie continued, "Well you we right. A couple of months ago I found out Haley's my mom."

Jess stared at her dumbfounded, "No way."

Ollie shrugged, "It's true."

Jess's mouth was wide with surprise. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Ollie chuckled, "I wasn't at first but I am now."

"I can't believe I didn't guess it was this. It all makes so much sense." Jess let out a breath and grinned, "This whole time I've been terrified you had cancer or something."

Laughing, Ollie shook her head, "Nope. Nothing like that." Now, having gotten it out, she didn't know why she had been afraid. Of course Jess wasn't going to judge her for it or just want to be around her for fame by association. It didn't matter to Jess who Ollie's mom was, as long as her friend was OK.

"Good." Jess laughed relieved, "Is it weird though, like all of a sudden having a mom?"

"A little, it's sort of nice though."

Jess smiled, genuinely happy for her friend, "Yeah? It gets even better; just wait until you have both her and your dad ganging up on you about your curfew." She joked.

Ollie just laughed and hugged her friend, glad not to be hiding anything anymore. Apart from, that honestly, she was sort of looking forward to the kind of thing Jess had just said.

The room was painted cream, filled with red upholstered couch seats and smelled like fresh coffee. Of course, Nathan had been in here a couple of times before, but he had never liked it much. Today though, he and Haley had made a pact to sit in the staff room and not feel like students. Alright for her though, all the teachers had loved her in high school, him on the other hand, not so popular with them.

Haley was already in there, sipping a coffee and looking right at home. He poured himself a cup and went over, nodded awkwardly to Mr. Donald; his old Math teacher who he was fairly sure had been staring at him since he entered, and sat down in a seat near Haley.

She smiled at him, and already he felt more comfortable. He smiled back, "Hey." For a moment he contemplated giving her a small greeting kiss but hastily decided against it seeing as Mr. Donald still seemed to be staring at him. Drinking Coffee with old teachers was one thing; PDA in front of them was not.

Haley noticed what he was looking at and giggled slightly, "I don't think he's blinked once since I got here," she whispered.

He laughed and shifted slightly so he could no longer see the teacher out of the corner of his eye. He turned to Haley, feeling utterly elated to be sitting here with her without any awkwardness. "How was last night?" he asked.

"It was great," she grinned, "Ollie's great."

"Yeah, she is." Nathan was pleased. He had been a bit apprehensive about Ollie staying there for the night. Worried that maybe the only reason it had worked out the first time was because of Ollie's anger toward him, not her acceptance of Haley. Luckily though it wasn't.

"Hey Nate?" Haley asked a bit more seriously.

He looked up at her worried something was wrong.

"Before I came back, was Ollie really into her music? I mean I know that she's good, but did she love it?" She had wanted to ask the question for a while.

Nathan sighed. He knew the answer to this would probably hurt Haley. "Yeah, she did. More than basketball, more than anything." He smiled sadly. "When she was little, all she talked about was how when she grew up, her and Ephraim were going to go around the world just playing music."

She smiled, wishing she could have been there. "That's good."

Horrified, Nathan gaped at her, "How is our daughter giving up her dream a good thing?"

Haley shook her head, "Last night, I think she thought I was asleep.But I heard her playing again Nathan."