Peyton removed a worn photograph from her pocket. It was always within her reach, her favorite secret weapon whenever the darkness overtook the light as it so often did in her life. She was a longtime survivor of pain and heartbreak, but nothing she had been through up to this point could have prepared her for living this double life. Losing both of her mothers before she graduated from high school had been tough. Putting Brooke through the love triangle with Lucas not once but twice had been difficult. The shooting, doing cocaine and all the other little intricacies that came with being Peyton Sawyer were hard. However, these were things that she knew how to deal with eventually. There was always someone there to rescue her. With Nathan, she knew that all of that was different. For the first time in her life, she couldn't be rescued; for the first time in her life, she was going to have to rescue herself.
Her slender finger traced over Nathan's dark face and allowed her lucid green eyes to fall shut. No one else knew that she carried it with her wherever she traveled, but its presence was always known by her. When she was in the middle of a hard day at the office, thoughts of his blue eyes comforted her. When she was really missing home, a weight bench in a high school weight room strengthened her. When she was trying to block out the emptiness with Lucas, memories of Nathan's hands on her body allowed her to pretend that she was with someone else. This photograph was her escape. It was her way of going home.
Then, on days like today when just knowing that the photograph was there wasn't enough, she would head out to this bridge to stare out at the clear blue ocean and think of Nathan. When she wanted to be with him, she would always come here. She would just gaze out at the water and think about everything that happened with Nathan and everything that had happened since. Sure, she loved Lucas, but it stopped being the love worth of great novels a long time ago. It was more of a comfortable affection shared between two friends, at least on her end. Her life was a mess, and her love for Nathan was right in the middle of it. And of course, being Peyton, she had no clue how to fix it.
Furious with herself for dwelling on the negative, she shook her head to clear her mind of anything and everything related to darkness that surrounded her relationship with Nate. In her time at the water, she only thought about happy they had been. For one perfect night more than two years ago, despite Lucas and Haley or maybe because of them, the two of them had been blissfully content. Now, as she stared down at Nathan, his beautiful clear blue eyes still saw into her soul, even in a photograph. For a cynic like Peyton Sawyer, it was a very bitter pill to swallow.
Her cell phone broke her out of her happy daze once again, the ring tone indicating that it was Lucas calling. She felt guilt wash over immediately as she decided that she didn't want to talk to him. Peyton let her voicemail pick up, vowing to call him later. She should want to talk to him, she realized, but she just wanted to be alone. She needed to be alone. A sudden burst of wind whipped her hair around her suddenly, casting a fury of blonde curls across her face. Closing her eyes, Peyton turned her head up toward the sun. Letting the warmth radiate over her skin, she said her mantra silently. Said more times than she could count over the past two years, it was the one moment in each day where she truly felt like maybe it was possible that somewhere in North Carolina, Nathan was thinking of her at the exact same moment that she was thinking of him.
"Look at the water and remember me as I remember you," she implored inaudibly to herself. She squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut to keep the tears at bay. "Look at the water to know that you love me as I love you."
Peyton's cell phone rang once again. The ring tone was unfamiliar for a second. She hadn't heard it in so long. And then, as she searched furiously through her handbag, she knew who it was. Looking down at the tiny screen, it simply said "Him." As the last few notes of Yellowcard's "Empty Apartment" faded away, she briefly remembered hearing it with him that night on the stairs at that party at the beach house. It had been a sad ending to say the least, but the song had spoken to her then and said a lot about their relationship now. Finally, with a deep breath for both courage and look, Peyton flipped the phone open with her shaky hands. "Hey."