Author Note: If you're wondering, my new best friend, Writer's Block, had a lovely little visit with me. I was not busy at all and so we both had a lot of time to hang out and get to know each other better. We watched movies, ate good food and thought about some important and non-important things. However, he/she's is gone now and he/she did not say when or if he/she is coming back. We'll see.

Also, I have decided to not follow along with the story lines that happened after 6.19 because I have experienced myself being bored while reading recaps of what's happened in the show in other fics. I was originally going to add everything in there and just make the story lines now involve Chris, but I didn't want to rewrite the Peyton car crash, the Nick Lachey thing, the Jamie Oppenheimer School thing, etc. I actually started writing that last one about Jamie and thankfully deleted it. This would have been the chapter where the car crash would have happened also. That's not to say that some of the same things won't happen though, but the bigger stuff that would take away from this story and involve rewriting another story, won't happen. Yay.

naleyy- Thanks for your review! It's good to hear that, actually. I change the description, like, every other week and I've changed the title, too. I'm never sure about those two things. Maybe I'll tweak or just delete that beginning Author's Note in Chapter 1 LOL.

I've also decided that I don't like my current description. Expect that to change again. Surprise!

ReeseHolden- About the Public Enemies, don't worry, I totally agree with you! I was actually planning on changing the actor's name from Johnny Depp to something else, but I guess I forgot to do that before I published it. When I was getting up to righting that point, the preview for the movie was on TV and I was just like, "OMG, Johnny Depp in a mustache with a gun! I have to see that!" There was a reason why I didn't actually say a title of a movie. Shia Lebouff is an awesome suggestion to change it to though. Maybe I'll do that when I go back to edit the past chapters for the zillionth time.

War on Joypiter & Jewels.o'xo, thanks for your comments also. I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying the story.

Please, keep the reviews coming you guys! I love to hear from you. Also, thanks again to people who've subscribed/favoured.

Now, enough babbling(sorry about that)... The actual story:

-7-

She had never seen a hippopotamus so small. In fact, she had never seen a hippopotamus at all. Whenever she had the chance to go to the zoo in the city from the time she was a little girl, something always stopped her from seeing one. The hippopotamus would be giving birth, dead, too far away from the entrance, or any other story one could think up of. Every time she went to the zoo, it was another story. It may have been bad timing or it may have just been that she was just never meant to see one in her life at all.

Except for now. Only, this hippopotamus seemed too small to be true. She only saw its behind. Maybe it wasn't even a hippopotamus? It wasn't moving. That must have meant something. Or rather, it wasn't moving it's limbs or joints, but something else was moving it. It went up and down and up and down. She looked around and noticed other strange animals going up and down. She looked down and saw a pig's head. She was riding a pig. Why was she riding a pig? When she looked further away from the various animals, she saw a face.

It was an awful face mostly covered with white and its lips were stretched so far she thought she cringed. Not to mention, they were an ugly bright pinkish red. The lips were moving. It was singing. It disappeared. Where did it go? Then it appeared again, only to once again disappear.

"Blackbird singing in the dead-"

She knew the song without having the chance to hear the full line. The man disappeared again before he could finish it. Nathan liked it when she sang that song. Why was this awful looking man singing a song they enjoyed? He appeared again. Was that Brooke? They disappeared. They appeared again, flashing golden rings. Wedding rings? Oh God, Brooke married this man with his colourful hair and huge ass feet?

The next time they appeared, the man was holding on to Jamie.

"What is he doing with my son?" she thought. "Why isn't Brooke stopping him?"

"Jamie!" she called. She jumped off of the frozen pig, but lost her balance. The floor was moving. It wouldn't stop. What the hell was this?

Jamie, Brooke and the man kept disappearing and appearing again.

"Jamie!" another voice called. It was Deb riding on a frozen zebra. The song kept playing, only the man wasn't singing it any more. It sounded more like Paul McCartney this time. The music was now coming out of the speakers from the circular wall on the left and the mysterious man could only be seen laughing at her. Brooke looked at her worried when the man was distracted by his own laughter.

"We need to jump off!" she, herself, said.

"You can't jump off, the mechanic will go crazy!" yelled Lucas on a frozen elephant.

"Lucas?" asked Haley, realizing him being there as well as Deb. "What are you doing here?"

"We need to get Jamie back!" Lucas replied.

"Jamie!" Deb yelled.

"Jamie!" she called herself.

"Haley!" yelled Lucas.

"What?" she yelled back.

"Jamie!" Lucas yelled without answering.

"Jamie!" yelled Deb.

"Jamie!" she joined in, again.

"Jamie!" yelled Deb, coming into the living room and spotting the mother and son sleeping on the couch.

"Oh God, my neck." Thought Haley. "How the hell did we end up sleeping on the couch?" Jamie was still breathing deeply while sleeping in her lap. Realizing this, she thought,"I bet that was the reason behind the up and down merry-go-round. Of course, the clown just had to be there." She looked up and saw Deb staring at her as she was finally coming out of her thoughts and becoming more aware of her surroundings.

"Hi, Nanny Deb." Said Jamie, barely opening his eyes to talk.

"Deb? What time is it?" She asked, not bothering to think about where Deb ended up the night before.

"Oh, seven thirty. So it's early for a Saturday, but when I couldn't find Jamie in his room, well, I started panicking only to find him here… with you." She smiled at them, her relief coming to her.

"Yeah, okay. What are you doing waking anyone up this early?" Asked Haley.

"What do you mean? Don't you remember? Today is Saturday."

"Hey, sis'." Said Lucas, coming into the room. "And hello my little man James!" He said, acknowledging the half-asleep boy on top of Haley.

Jamie only groaned in response. The man behind the voice was not registering in his brain at that moment and he didn't feel like opening his eyes to look and find out who it in fact was.

"Hey Luke. How's Peyton?" said Haley, smiling at her brother-in-law.

"Oh, you know, asleep, as always at 7:30..." He responded and he did take into account the way Haley's face scrunched in dissatisfaction at the said time. "What's the reasoning behind the couch sleeping, anyways?"

"It's a long story that I haven't quite figured out yet." Said Haley, wondering how everything happened the way it did.

"Okay. Well, I hope you don't mind me being here right now."

"No, no, it's okay. It's not like I need to worry about space around here or anything." She looked around at her huge house. "It's been kind of lonely around here lately."

"Nothing a good friend can't fix. What's the plan for today?"

"It would be nice to go back to sleep and later, maybe, go grocery shopping?"

"We should go to the movies this time!" Said, Jamie, now becoming awake and butting into the adult's conversation.

Lucas laughed at Haley while agreeing with his nephew. "That sounds good- all suggestions, although, I kind of drank a lot of coffee once I woke up. I don't see sleeping happening anytime soon for me."

"Okay."

"Pancakes?" Deb butted in after being silent.

All three agreed to that suggestion. What better way was there to start off their day?

"I think I'll go get dressed." Said Haley, looking straight at Jamie to suggest that he should too.

As the two got up to go upstairs, Lucas and Deb were left alone in an awkward silence.

"So, I guess I'll go get started then?" Asked Deb, not really sure of what to say to Lucas.

"Sounds good." He smiled at her.

"Okay." She responded and walked into the kitchen.

Once the food was ready and Haley and Jamie had come back downstairs, fully dressed, the past and present Scotts all sat down to eat.

"I was scared when I couldn't find you two this morning. If I'd had known you were sleeping on the couch, I would have moved you." Said Deb.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Deb. If I'd had known we'd be sleeping there, I would have moved us too." Responded Haley.

"Yeah. How did that happen, Haley?" Asked Deb.

"I think Chris left us there when he left and he didn't want to disturb us when we fell asleep early in that awfully boring movie." Said Haley, thinking it was sweet, but kind of annoying since the result of the position she slept in was a tense pain in her neck. She figured she was going to have to look one direction for the rest of the day. The other directions would all hurt too much.

"Chris?" asked Lucas.

"Yup, he stayed to watch a movie with us last night…" Haley started, but then noticed the look on Deb's face. She was just staring at Haley, anger apparent in her features.

"Chris?" Asked Deb, making sure she had heard right.

"Yes. Chris." Haley confirmed.

"He made us nachos!" said Jamie who didn't like staying silent or the tense direction the adult's conversation seemed to be going.

"Did he, Jamie?" Asked Deb who didn't take her concerned eyes off of Haley.

"He did." Replied Haley. She wasn't going to let Deb's concerns get the best of her at that moment. Deb may have had a tough time forgiving Haley for leaving Nathan for the tour, but she was not in the mood to convince Deb that Chris being there was all right. Haley remembered her older sisters teaching her that you're not supposed to tell your mother when you and your boyfriend had a fight because, if you do, you may get back together with your boyfriend, but your mother will never forgive your boyfriend for hurting you. That was sort of the case with Deb and Nathan and Haley, but time and understanding had healed those wounds. Deb was clearly the most messed up in the family and Haley especially had been one of the few people who had been good to her. Most importantly, she loved Nathan and Haley together. She was so good for him. Still, despite all of this, talk about Chris Keller was not something that was going to bring back happy memories in Deb. It was a weak spot; one that was never talked about.

"Oh." Said Deb who was making plans to talk to Haley about it later.

"These pancakes are delicious, Deb." Said Lucas who was just as confused about the Chris situation as Deb. He, too, planned on talking about it with Haley once they were alone.

"Thanks, Lucas." Said Deb as she smiled.

"We're running low on syrup. I'll go get some of the Aunt Jemima in the fridge." Said Lucas when he noticed Deb's homemade blueberry pancake syrup was running out.

"Thanks, Luke." Said Haley with a smile as she watched Lucas pull the bottle out of the fridge.

"No problem," He said, soon reaching for the cordless phone that was ringing and handing it right to Haley. She nodded in thanks.

"Hello?" She answered after she pressed the "talk" button. "Oh, hey! What are you doing up so early?" She said as she started getting up from the table and smiling at her family to excuse herself as she walked outside of the room to be in private.

"Who was that?" asked Jamie.

"I'm not sure, bud." Said Lucas to the little boy. "Guess we'll just have to wait and see."

"So, how's Peyton?" Asked Deb.

"Oh, she's doing great." He said, lying. The truth was, Peyton had a condition called Placenta Previa. He and Peyton were just not saying anything about it yet.

"That's good." She said. Lucas just nodded and smiled. "So, Nathan's playing tonight." He continued, looking at Deb while Jamie played with his food.

Before Deb could say anything, the group at the table heard Haley talking in the distance and they all went silent to listen.

"Yes! Oh, that's wonderful!" She exclaimed. "Okay, I love you too. Yes, goodbye." As soon as she was done talking, her footsteps could be heard coming back to the kitchen. Lucas was pretty sure he could expect it to be Nathan she was talking to; he was just wondering what it was that was so wonderful.

"What, mama?" Asked Jamie as she came back into the kitchen.

Haley smiled at her son right as soon as he asked the question. "How about we go see daddy after all tonight, Jamie?"

"Okay!" he replied, excited.

"Haley, what's going on?" Asked Lucas who had planned to be with Haley that day, but knew that he couldn't leave Tree Hill for those plans.

"That was Taylor. She's running a marathon in Charlotte tomorrow and she'll be there tonight!"

"Taylor? As in, 'Taylor James' Taylor?" Asked Lucas.

"Wow, people come back in packs, don't they?" Asked Deb to herself. She figured it wasn't going to be for the better.

"Yes, my sister. Taylor!" exclaimed Haley, answering Lucas. She was clearly very excited about seeing her.

"Aunt Taylor!" Said Jamie. "Mama-"

"Yes, I'm sorry I didn't let you talk to her, baby, but she was in a rush." She tapped his nose, causing him to scrunch his face. He just smiled after. He was just as excited as his mama.

"Lucas, I know we had plans, and you can come with us! But, I just-"

"I know, Haley." He responded sincerely. He was just happy for Haley to have another old family member around. "I can't come this time, but tell her I say hi."

"Will do."

"When are you leaving, then?" Asked Deb.

"Oh, soon, I guess. We'll want to actually see Nathan off the court today too. Of course, the more time we can see Taylor, the better as well." Haley was now looking at the ceiling in front of her, no longer concentrating on the people around her. She was obviously planning and visualizing the day and what clothes to bring.

"Well, in that case, I guess I'll be getting ready then!" Haley said once she was out of her thoughts. "Lucas, you can stay around awhile if you'd like. I-"

"No, no. That's okay." He smiled at everyone before getting up. "Peyton's probably awake right now and it's a good idea to spend a free day with her. That is, until she goes to work later. What are you going to do about that, Haley?"

"Hm?" She looked at him, confused.

"Work."

"Oh, yes. I'll be calling Peyton or whoever I guess then."

"Or, I could just tell her."

"Yeah, of course!" She laughed, wondering why she didn't think of that before.

***

"Hello?"

"Hey, Chris? It's Haley."

"Oh, hey! Peyton told me that you wouldn't be in today. I'm actually taking the day off, too. So, no worries."

"Oh, yeah? That's good. I just wanted to tell you myself since I figured it would be rude not to."

"Okay. Well, thanks." He said. Haley could hear a smile in his voice.

"Listen, Chris, thanks for not being a jerk last night. I mean, after all the… well, you know…"

"You deserve it." He stated. Haley could hear more than just a smile in his voice now. She heard a woman speaking in the background.

"Chris, is that-"

"Um, I… I have to go, Hale…zzz…ly. I'll see you soon. I guess."

"Okay." She replied, but before being able to say goodbye, the dial tone had already starting ringing. He had hung up before she even had a chance to sound slightly annoyed at the almost "Hales". He was trying.