I want to apologize for the months' long wait. Multiple projects + huge family + three seasons of Friday Night Lights make for a busy me. Enjoy.

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He's nervous. His hands are shaking, he feels beads of sweat forming at the spot just below his hairline, his temple, and in his throat is a lump threatening to choke him. He raises his fist to the door, but second guesses himself before he could lay knuckles against the barrier, takes another breath and squeezes his eyes tight before blinking them open. There's spots now clouding the edges of his eyesight, colorful and evasive, and he doesn't know exactly what it is he's doing here.

He thinks back on his relationship with this girl he once knew. How alive she was, how she breathed and lived brutal excitement, how feisty she was, how much of a terror she seemed to be all of the time. Except.

Except for when he would trace his fingers along the side of her arms, when she would settle down just for a bit. Just for the time when they were together. When her noise level would decrease dramatically and her grins would turn into soft smiles, and maybe her touch was a little less bruising than it would have been had they not been alone, where they were, in their own world.

He thought about her all of the time. He loved her. He missed her. He's so anxious that he feels like his teeth might start chattering any second now.

He shook his head and rubbed his palm across his chin. Maybe he was at the wrong apartment, or even the wrong place. Maybe he had taken a wrong turn off of the interstate and sat outside of a mistakenly familiar apartment building, talked to the wrong little girl who looked so much like the girl in the video who knew a different person by the name of Sam who happened to live here. It could be a coincidence, he thought. Everyone but him was mistaken. Sam couldn't, wouldn't, live here, in this decrepit building in the middle of anywhere and nowhere, on her own as if she could survive without anything short of a crowd around her at all times. She was Sam. She wouldn't want this.

But then again, maybe this was a different Sam, the one he did see in the video with the short hair and the piercing eyes and the poignant half-smile, the Sam he last saw in Washington before she left them for good, not even a goodbye to her best friend of nearly ten years who had worried herself to death over where she could be. The one whose eyes were glazed over with tears as she stood in her gorgeous green dress at the wedding reception and told him, voice hard and teeth clenched, good. Good that he was with Carly, good that he finally got what he wanted, good that he was the prize-winning champion of a six-year long courtship and now had a great reason to celebrate.

Except for the fact that he had felt nowhere near to wanting to rejoice. He had gotten the girl, and in the process, had let another one go. He hadn't known what he was doing at the time, didn't for a second think that Sam had enough feelings for him to run off, heartbroken, as she had. He hadn't thought that she wouldn't be able to pick herself up from this without going halfway across the country.

She must hate him, he thought, and that's all that was running through his mind.

"She must hate me. She doesn't want anything to do with me so I shouldn't be here. She must hate me, she has to, she hates me," he said under his breath, and then bit his lip to keep him from repeating the mantra. He laid his head on the wall and breathed deeply to try and settle his nerves, exhaled as he tried to banish thoughts of what might happen if she opens this door from his mind, and then straightened up. Standing tall, chin raised, stomach flipping, he lifts his hand and raps his knuckles against the door.

::: ::: ::: :::

Sam is chewing on a pen and looking over a newspaper, her feet curled under her on the couch, when she hears the knock.

"Skylar," she groans and slams the paper on a cushion. She stands up and pulls her sweater tighter around her as she makes her way to the door. "Skylar, I thought I told you that I didn't want company right now."

When nothing but silence answers her, she furrows her brow and pressed her ear against the door, listening out for who that might be. Nobody ever knocked on her door, with the exclusion of Skylar. Not even Earl would knock. There was no one she knew who would give her a personal visit, and the thought had her stomach roiling in apprehension.

Her fingers curled against the wood as she called, "Who is it?"

A minute passed, and then there was yet another knock. She stood back from the door, wrapping her arms around herself. There was an uncomfortable feeling slithering down the back of her neck. She didn't think that she would like what would greet her on the other side. It could be just about anyone, but she had a feeling. She had a feeling.

She shook her head of the nonsense floating around inside and steeled herself, took a deep breath, and gripped the knob in her hand.

Her breath was knocked out of her when she saw who stood on the other side of the threshold.

He looked the same from the last time she had seen him, with the exception of a few inches added to his stature. He had on a blue jacket with a brown leather bag slung across his torso, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. His feet shuffled nervously. The sight of him nearly made her stumble.

He, him, Freddie.

Her eyes trailed back up to his face, and she caught him looking back at her with apprehensive brown eyes.

"Sam?" he asked cautiously, and she did stumble this time when she took a step back.

"You, what are you—" She shook her head, trying to quell that stifling feeling that was building up in the back of her throat threatening to make her voice shake. "What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?"

He flashed an anxious smile before clearing his throat. "Carly. She told me where you were."

"Oh, of course. How else would you—" Sam cut herself off. She leaned against the door and repeated her question. "What are you doing here?"

"I came here to see you as a… as a friend because I haven't heard from you in such a long time. Are you going to let me in?"

Sam paused. She thought about the reason as to why he might be here, showing up at her door after two years. Granted, it was she who had run away from him, and him-and-Carly, and everything else that had pushed down on her, weighing heavily on her shoulders, but the years were long and contact with Freddie was null, and the way they had parted, the final words that were said. They just… They shouldn't have to be where they are now, with him standing outside of her door, yet still so far away, hopeful—and that was hope, Sam could acknowledge, that was making her kind of dizzy—and dreading, and Sam can feel it, drying the back of her tongue and making her stomach ache.

But she felt so aged inside, a lot more mature, and so she thinks that she should be able to handle speaking to him like the decent person she never was whenever it came to him without flipping out as if her heart weren't torn unmercifully from her chest.

Unsure as she was, she cleared her throat and took a step back, said, "Sure. Come in." His smile got a little wider as he stepped inside and Sam turned away from him, closing the door. "So," she said once she felt as if she had her breathing under control (because he was here, and he was inside of her apartment, her space, and it felt just as invasive and foreign and raw as it had been when they were younger and he pressed his body close to hers and his intoxicating smell had flood her mind). "Do you want some coffee or anything? I just made a pot a short while ago."

"That sounds great," he said, and Sam can hear him treading after her as she turns toward the kitchen.

She's almost robotic in the way that she brings a mug down to the counter and pours a decently sized cup, is apprehensive but not forgetful enough to know that Freddie can read her and probably notices her rigidity. But it's not something that she thinks she can help. Not even a few deep, usually soothing breaths make a difference.

"Thanks," he says, accepts the coffee. It sits between his palms as he surveys the small kitchen and peers out into the small living room that should be visible from his vantage point, and Sam leans against a counter, arms across her chest as she stares at the wisps rising from the drink.

"Satisfied?" she asks when he finally brings his eyes back to her.

"It's a nice place," is all he says, and he brings the mug to his lips.

"Yeah, right. This place is a flop." She looks down at the counter and picks idly at a piece of peeling linoleum. "There's a wet spot in the corner of the living room ceiling, the toilet won't flush properly, and the damn cabinet… It's crooked." She trails off, sure that she's told him how pathetic her life has become and angry at herself for the sympathetic look he gives her.

"I can help you fix it," he offers, eyeing the crooked cabinet.

Sam laughs humorlessly. "Thanks, but no thanks. I've got the landlord coming in soon."

He stares at her for a few second more before sitting higher in his seat, smiling. "So, how is everything?"

"It's okay."

"I heard about Rick, and Carly tells me that he's good for you."

"I suppose," Sam answered tightly, angry at both Carly for telling him this and at herself for lying in the first place. She tries to mask her scowl. "He's real nice."

He pauses and looks at her warily. "Carly misses you."

"I know she does, okay?"

"Are you sure that I can't fix that?" He points once again to the cabinet. "I mean, I am kinda handy, I don't know if you remember. Give me a hammer and an hour and I can have it in top shape."

"No thank you, Freddie," she said, and her words were laced with more vitriol that she'd have liked, and she knew that she should take a breath to calm herself, but she continued anyway. "And quit pretending like you came here to sip coffee and catch up and be a handyman. Just ask the questions that I know you're dying to."

"Fine," he said and nudged his mug away before setting hard, accusing eyes on her. "Why did you leave Seattle?"

"Next question."

He raised his brows. "Next question? Okay. Why is it that you have been keeping in contact with Carly and not me?"

"Are you serious?" Sam asked, and he shrugged in reply. "She's my best friend. That means something."

"And we're not best friends? Sam?" His jaw twitched when she turned her back to him. "Or at least, was best friends?"

Sam's hands gripped the edge of the counter as she hissed, "I don't know if you noticed, Freddie, but we were never best friends. Nowhere near."

"More or less," he said.

"More and less," Sam corrected, and she stared him in the eyes with the same hard expression he held. "More and less, so I'm going to cut right through all the bullshit, all of your prying questions and everything to let you know that you are the absolute worst type of man and you shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you. Did you even think, for one second, about the people you hurt by disappearing? Your family? Your friends?"

She threw up her arms. "You know what? Yes, I did. I did. I know they were worried sick, and I'm sorry for that. And I knew that I would hurt someone with what I chose to do, and I'm sorry for that, too. I just… I needed to go somewhere, okay? I couldn't stay there as hurt as I was. I couldn't stay. The least I can do is apologize for hurting them." Sam took a deep breath and, through clenched teeth, added, "At least I can apologize."

The small kitchen was silent for a few seconds before Freddie's fingers intertwined on the countertop and he asked, voice stoic, "Are you saying that I should be sorry for something? Sam? Sam," he called after her as she walked out of the kitchen.

Her heart was thumping a little too wildly in her chest, she could feel a headache threatening to pound her skull and the absolute last thing she wanted was to have a breakdown in front of Freddie. But he was pushing her too much, making her reach her, evidently, very short boiling point, and Sam was afraid of what might happen if she stayed in the same room with him for even a minute more.

"Okay. Okay, that's fine, just be a coward once again and walk away."

Sam whirled around in fury, blinking back something she felt stinging her eyes. "So, I'm a coward, Freddie?"

He stopped walking toward her when he reached the couch and he shrugged, his brows furrowed in anger. "I mean, if that's what you're proving yourself to be time and time again."

He was wrong; she just couldn't put up with this heartache and headache again. She couldn't, she wouldn't. She shook her head. "How about you just leave?"

"I can't. I came here to talk."

"This conversation is over," she said and turned into the room, slamming the door closed behind her.