Let me just apologize for my lack in updating this story. My internet has been down for several weeks, and unfortunately, it's still down. I have had this chapter written for a while, but I don't have the internet to post it. lol. So here you go for now...hopefully this tides you over until I can get back to another computer. Thanks for all the replies. You are all awesome! :)

-Lindsay

PS - I didn't really check this for errors. I was trying to get it up for all of you, so I am sorry if you find some!

"Okay, Haley." Peyton put her hands on her hips. "We have two days to pick the dress you want and Brooke said she would alter it as soon as you bought it. The colors are black and silver. Brooke is wearing black and Jenny has on silver, so whether you wear black or silver, it's up to you."

She looked at Peyton from her place by a dress rack. "You don't already have a dress picked out? Isn't that how most weddings go? Brides pick the exact same dresses for their bridesmaids?"

"Well, yeah," she admitted. "But this is my wedding, and it's going to go exactly how I want it to go. I want my two best friends comfortable and in something that they like - not some frilly, poofy dress that most weddings consist of."

"Your wedding will probably be the best one I've attended then, Peyton." She smiled at her friend. "Let's get dress shopping."

"Okay. Brooke is going to be here in a little while. She was finishing up some meeting and then she promised she would come straight here."

"Ah, to live the life of a fashion designer," Haley mused, pulling a black dress off the rack. She studied it for a minute and decided to put it back. It was a little too…puffy for her taste.

"So…" Peyton pulled a silver dress off the rack and realized it was too risqué for Haley's taste and put it back. "How goes it with Nate?"

She sighed and looked at her friend. "Well, after calling me a bitch and leaving yesterday, I figured he wouldn't stay in the room, you know?"

Peyton nodded. "I sure as hell wouldn't. No offense, Haley, but we all know your temper. Nathan especially should. It doesn't show very often, but when it does…look out."

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Thanks a lot. Anyway, I get back from golfing last night and he was on the phone with Amanda or Alexis or whatever the hell her name -"

"Alyssa," she corrected, unable to stop the smile from forming across her face.

"Shut up," she mumbled when she saw Peyton's smile. "So we kind of fought a little bit more last night, and then we decided to be friends because we all know that in a few months, Lucas and Brooke will probably get married too, and we'll both be in their wedding party too. There's no way around that."

"Smart decision." Peyton passed a black, strapless dress to Haley. "But let me tell you something, Hales. You and Nathan? You have way too much history to ever be just friends," she told her, using air quotes around the word 'friends.'

She frowned at her friend and went to the dressing room to try it on. It was a beautiful dress. It was pure black with silver trim at the top and bottom. It started off as a straight dress, but the bottom flowed out. She smiled at her appearance in the mirror, thinking that it was a good choice. She decided to try a few more before making her final decision though.

As she changed, Peyton's words came back to her. Was it really true? Would she and Nathan never be able to be friends? After talking with him the night before, she was sure that they could at least try to be friends. It didn't seem that hard. She had spent an hour afterwards telling him about her career and he had seemed genuinely interested. She was assuming that they were getting to be friends until Peyton had told her that there was no possible way for that to happen. Life was so confusing. Wait. Scratch that. NATHAN was so confusing.

When she came out, Brooke was there telling Peyton all about her meeting. She waited until she was done to tell her hi. "Tutor Girl!" Brooke threw her arms around her even though they had seen each other the day before. "I'm sure you're going to get sick of my hugs! Oh well! I'm just so glad that you're here!"

"I'm glad I'm here too, Brooke," she replied, smiling widely at her friends. It was so good to be around them again. It really was. "Actually, you can help me figure out a good dress. I just tried this one on." She motioned to her dress. "I liked it but I wanted to look around a little bit more before I found the right one."

"Well, let me tell you something." Brooke grabbed the dress and put it back on the rack. "If it didn't stand out to you when you tried it on and if you have to look at others before you decide you want it, then it's not worth getting."

Brooke looked her hard in the eye and as she did, Haley caught her double meaning. Picking a man was just like picking a dress to Brooke. If she had to take the time and make sure that the guy was the right one for her, then the truth was, he really wasn't. When Haley had married Nathan, she hadn't thought twice about it, but when she had agreed to marry Jared, she had been wondering ever since. She felt like she didn't know what she was doing anymore.

"Hey, Haley." Brooke waved a hand in front of her face. "I know that you're thinking of what I wanted you to think of." She smiled at her. "And I just wanted you to know that if you need to talk about it, I'm here…Peyton and I are both here."

She raised an eyebrow. "Have you two been talking about me and my dramatic life behind my back?" She wasn't mad. She was just curious because they both, along with Lucas, seemed to be pushing the fact that she and Nathan were never going to be over on her.

"No!" they answered in unison immediately. It was a little too quickly for her liking as well.

"Right." She chuckled. "Thank you both for caring. Honestly, Nathan and I are just trying to be friends right now and when I get home, it will be like I never saw him again. I can guarantee it. I'll just go right back to Jared who is waiting patiently for my return."

"We know you love him," Peyton told her, picking a dress out for herself to try on. "We're not saying that you don't at all. All we're saying is you and Nathan keep fighting. We're picking up on the sexual tension and we think that you two still have feelings for each other that you're not going to admit."

"Yet," Brooke threw in. "You're not going to admit them yet."

She shook her head. "You guys…"

"Haley, it's fine that you're not going to admit it, alright? It really is. Maybe you haven't realized it yet, but it seems to me like the only people who haven't realized it are you and Nathan. He told you that you couldn't work things out," Peyton reminded her, wincing at the look of pain that crossed Haley's face. "And usually, when people are dumped like that," she said for lack of a better word, "they don't get over it. They might think they are, but in all reality, they're nowhere close."

"Just look in your heart," Brooke advised her. "See what it's telling you."

"You and Luke must really be meant to be," she said. "He told me the exact same thing last night."

"Really? Hmm."

"Well," Peyton said, "it looks like Brooke and I aren't the only ones who think this about you two."

"That stuff still hurts you to think about. I can tell. And if it's still hurting you, then you're not over it, Haley. Just think about it," Brooke said, walking across the store to check out a dress that caught her eye.

Peyton followed, leaving Haley alone with her thoughts. Later on, after she wasn't so busy, she was going to do exactly what everyone was telling her to do. She was going to look into her heart.

--

Haley slid her key in the door and pushed it open, kicking shopping bags into the room with her as she went. She had spent more money than she needed to in that store, after much convincing from Brooke. She really hadn't even liked it that much, but she figured what the hell. She had enough money to buy some new clothes, so she might as well do it. Luckily, she had found a dress for the wedding and sent it home with Brooke so she could alter it.

She smiled to herself when she saw Nathan sprawled out on his cot, sound asleep. He had his headphones in and she couldn't help but remember that he always listened to his music before he took naps back in high school. She didn't find that weird at all. What she found weird was his "naptime music." Instead of the slow stuff that most people would go to sleep to, Nathan went to sleep to rap. At least he did when they were married. She wondered if it was the same so she walked over and took a peek at his iPod. Sure enough, Kanye was playing.

It made her laugh as she folded some of her new purchases and put them in her suitcase. They were too dressy to wear around Tree Hill so she figured she could take them home for interviews and what not. She noticed her ring that she had moved to her suitcase the night before and took it out for a peek.

Lucas's words swirled around her mind from yesterday. He told her that the real reason she wasn't wearing the ring was because she was still feeling something for Nathan. It was crazy, she told herself, feeling something for someone she hadn't seen in six years. She couldn't possibly feel anything for Nathan anymore. Too much time had passed and she had someone new. The feelings for Nathan that Lucas said were there…well, he had to be wrong. She had too much to lose by feeling things for Nathan.

But looking in her heart like everyone had told her to do made her think that maybe she was feeling something for Nathan. It was like an old shirt. You put it away in a drawer and forget about it, but when you take it back out and wear it again, you wonder why you put it away in the first place. There was something so comfy and familiar about it that it was just silly to put it in the drawer.

If Nathan had told her that they had a future again, Haley had a feeling that they would still be together. They would have left California together for Peyton's wedding and the flight would have gone smoothly without any insults. The hotel room they would have shared without any argument, and instead of pouting over his dinner the night before, Nathan probably would have been flirting and joking with her.

But then again, fate might have been against them the whole time they were married before. They could have gotten divorced after he told her he wanted to be with her again. There was no way to tell and that bothered Haley. She was beginning to wonder how her life would have gone if Nathan told her to come home. Hell, she could have even been a mother by now.

Her phone rang and she jumped to grab it, not wanting to wake Nathan. "Hello?" she answered softly, taking the phone in the bathroom and shutting the door.

"Hey."

"Jared." She smiled at the sound of his voice. "It's good to hear your voice."

"Yours too. Is everything okay there?"

"Yeah, it's more than okay. I'm so happy to see everyone again, Jared. Coming back here…well, it's like I never left."

"Good. I'm glad you're having a nice time."

"I am," she replied, leaning against the sink. "I wish you could have come though."

"Me too. It would have been nice to see Lucas and Brooke again. Peyton too, even though she probably would be too busy to say much, getting married and all," he teased. "Which reminds me…we better get planning on our own wedding."

She took a deep breath. There was no way she was going to start planning a wedding when all of these thoughts about what-ifs with Nathan were swirling around in her head. "Absolutely," she lied. "Once work settles down for me and for you. I mean, it's so crazy for you now that you couldn't even come to this wedding with me."

"I'm sorry, Hay," he apologized. "I promise your next friends who have a wedding, I'll come with you."

She laughed. "Okay. It's a deal."

"Well, hey, I'm going to get off of here. I've got a meeting in a few."

"Alright, good luck."

"Thanks, babe. And, hey," he said before hanging up, "don't go finding any old high school beaus to hook up with, okay?" he teased. "Love you."

"Yeah. Love you too." She shut her phone and sat down, putting her head in her hands.

She had never even told Jared about Nathan. She knew that Jared was a big fan of Nathan Scott, and she had never told him that she even went to high school with him or that he was Lucas's brother. She wasn't ever ready to drag up the past with him, and if she were honest with herself, she still wasn't.

The Nathan secret was something that she just wanted to keep from Jared. She wanted to keep it in the past. Of course, she had considered telling him time and time again, but she could just never bring herself to do it. She never liked to think about it herself, let alone talk about it with anyone else. It hadn't ended the way she wanted it to, and that killed her. When he found out about them, he would flip. And he would flip even more if he found out that he had stayed in her room last night. She was treading on thin ice with Jared because of her secrets. She didn't know what to do.

Then he had gone and teased her about not finding old high school boyfriends to hook up with. That had made it ten times worse. When she told Jared, which she knew she would have to before their wedding, it would crush him. The lies would crush him and the guilt she was feeling would crush her then too.

She wiped the tears from her eyes that had fallen after her phone conversation and looked in the mirror. She still looked like herself, but she didn't feel like it at all. Normally she was calm and collected and confident. She never worried about anything except the people in her life, really. Now she was worried about everything.

She opened the door and found Nathan awake and turning off his iPod. "Hi Sleeping Beauty," she teased him. "Have a nice nap?"

"Mm, yeah." He stretched and smiled at her. "Have fun shopping with Brooke and Peyton?"

"Of course," she muttered. "I always love spending hundreds of dollars on clothing that I probably will only wear once because Brooke told me to."

He chuckled and looked at her face closely. Her eyes were a little red and he could see some makeup smeared beneath them. "You been crying?"

"No," she lied immediately, turning around and wiping underneath her eyes again. Damn it. She thought she had gotten it all before she left the bathroom.

"Haley." He got off of the cot and turned her around so he could see her face again. "I'm not an idiot, and I know when you've been crying."

"It's nothing, Nathan," she snapped. "Just leave it alone, please."

"You know, if we're going to try out this whole friends thing, then we actually have to be friends. Tell each other when things are bothering us…see how the other one's day is going…hang out," he rattled off, "tell each other why we may have been crying."

"Nathan, you have been my friend for like the span of a few hours. I don't think that earns you the right to know why I was crying." She folded her arms stubbornly and narrowed her eyes at him. "And I was NOT crying."

"Liar," he mumbled, going to sit back down. He wasn't going to get anywhere with her. She was as stubborn as she always had been, and he could see that that wasn't going to change anytime soon.

He began flipping through the channels on the television with the remote when he suddenly turned it off and turned to face Haley again. She was sitting on the bed fiddling with her phone.

"Haley," he addressed. "What's going on? You can tell me."

She sighed and looked at him. He looked like he was genuinely interested in her problems right then, and it made her feel good. Even though her problems were kind of dealing with him, she felt like she could tell him because of the way he was looking at her. She felt like she could trust him.

"I was crying," she mumbled, shutting her phone.

"Yeah, I got that." He chuckled, going to sit beside her. "Wanna tell me why?"

"I…that was Jared on the phone. He was telling me that we need to start planning this wedding, and - "

"Wait." Nathan could feel his heart drop, and he didn't even know why. He knew Haley had a boyfriend, and he also knew that they had broken up years ago. He didn't know why he was feeling like this now. "You're marrying him?"

Wiping away another tear, she nodded at him. "Yeah. I wasn't going to tell anyone because this is Peyton and Jake's week but Lucas figured it out last night…said he knows when I'm lying to him. And I'm just stressed out and him pressuring me to get this wedding planned doesn't help any."

He nodded. "How long have you been with him?"

"A year and a half," she answered. "I told him I'd marry him, but ever since I did, it's like…I've been wondering if I made the right choice. I just don't know if I need more time."

"Haley, if you're questioning this, I think you need more time," he said softly, not wanting to upset her even more with his advice.

"Nathan, you don't understand. I already told him yes. I can't just undo that and pretend it never happened. I can't go back as much as I'd like to."

He studied her tan face, trying to figure out what she was thinking. He used to be so good at that. He used to know everything that girl was feeling. He knew everything about her, and it was killing him that he didn't now. "What would you go back to?"

"I don't know," she whispered, the tears continuing to cascade down her cheeks. "Most of the time, my life is really good. I'm happy with Jared. It's just…sometimes I feel like I'm missing something, and I don't know what that is."

"Jared's not filling it for you?" he questioned in a small voice. He felt awful for Haley; he really did. It was killing Nathan to know that Haley was feeling like this. She had always been so sure of everything in her life, and it was strange that she wasn't anymore.

"I don't think so, Nathan," she whispered.

He moved to where she was sitting and took a seat beside her. Wrapping an arm around her in a very surprising move, he sighed. "You gotta figure out what you want, Hales."

She blinked at him several times. Nodding, a smile graced her features. "You called me Hales."

"Oh." He released her, obviously surprised at the closeness that had come between them in the past few minutes. "I guess I did."

She chuckled. "You must not be as mad as you were earlier. You called me Hales and you touched me," she pointed out. "Shocking move, Nathan Scott. Absolutely shocking."

"Yeah, well, I have to keep you on your toes."

She smiled at him. "Thank you."

He raised his eyebrows. "For what?"

"For listening to me…letting me get this out. I haven't had anyone listen to me like this in a long time except for Taylor, and her drama always exceeds mine. So thank you."

"You're welcome." He patted her shoulder. "If you ever need help with anything, Haley, you can talk to me. I know things aren't like they used to be at all, but I will help you if you need it. I promise."

"Okay." She nodded and took a deep breath. "You know what I was wondering earlier?" He shook his head. "I was wondering what it would have been like if we had gotten back together the night I came home.."

His eyes widened. He was surprised she had been thinking about that stuff when she had a man she was supposed to marry back home in California. But if he was going to be honest, he had wondered about it before…on the days where he had nothing to do, and he just let his mind wander. It would wander back to Haley and what could have been. "I, um, I've wondered too," he admitted. "I don't know what would have happened, Haley."

"Me either," she agreed. "I keep thinking different things, you know? Like maybe we would have gotten a divorce anyway because we weren't really meant to be, or maybe we would have been parents by now."

"I would have wanted a daughter," he said in a soft voice. "Remember when we got married and I told you that? That I wanted a little girl just like you?"

Of course she remembered it. That was the night she married the man of her dreams. She didn't forget anything about that night. As much as she wanted to forget it and move past it all, she couldn't. That was a major event in her life, and memories of that just didn't go away.

"I'd never forget that," she whispered. "That was one of the sweetest things you'd ever said to me."

"Oh, Haley! Anything I said to you was sweet. You just don't want to admit it," he teased.

She rolled her eyes. Their walk down memory lane was apparently over, and she was okay with that. She didn't need to wonder about what might have been anymore than she already was. It was too hard. "You're right. Anything that you said was sweet. Especially when we would fight and you would go off about how things you did weren't my business even though we were married," she muttered sarcastically.

"I was probably impaired by either alcohol or anger," he retorted. "Sorry."

She waved her hand at him. "Water under the bridge."

He was about to respond when his phone went off. He walked across the room to pick it up, cringing when he read the name. It was Alyssa calling. He began to feel a little guilty. Here he was, sitting in a hotel room with his ex-wife while his girlfriend called him. She had no idea what he was up to. He didn't feel guilty about a lot of things in his life, but right now, he kind of did. And he also felt guilty that he actually had a girlfriend when Haley was right there.

"Uh…" He looked up at Haley, who was looking at him with curious eyes. "It's, um, it's Alyssa."

"Oh." He saw her face fall for a brief second, but it was so quick that he thought he had imagined it. "Take it, Nathan. It's probably important."

"You're right." He gave her a slight smile and flipped open the phone. "Hey," he greeted. "What's up?"

"Hey you," she responded in her breathy voice. "I was just sitting here at my desk wondering what my star basketball player boyfriend was up to?"

"Just at the hotel," he replied, running a hand through his dark hair. "I think I'm going to meet up with Lucas and Jake later at the River Court and shoot around."

"Sounds fun. I wish I could see everyone again," she whined. "Stupid business."

"I know, but I'm sure you'll see them soon. You can come visit whenever you'd like. Brooke would love it. She'd drag you to all her favorite stores and what not. You know her."

She laughed. "I would rather be there with you than here, so if Brooke was going to drag me to some stores, I would have no problem with that."

"I'm sure you wouldn't. But hey, I'm about to go do something," he lied to her, "can I call you later?"

"Oh yeah. Just whenever you have time. I know you're probably pretty busy down there."

"Yeah," he agreed. "I'll talk to you soon."

After they hung up, he looked over at Haley. She was sitting straight up and looked just a little uncomfortable. He probably would be too if he was sitting there listening to his ex talk with her boyfriend or whatever Jared was.

"Sorry about that." He shrugged.

"Oh, it's okay…I think this is harder than I thought it was going to be."

He sighed. "What is, Haley?" Even though he knew very well what she was talking about.

The two of them being friends was going to be hard for her. It was hard listening to him talk to his girlfriend on the phone. And it was hard wondering what would have happened with the two of them had they stayed together. It was all hard to her when she knew in her heart that she still felt something for Nathan. As much as she didn't want to, she felt it. And that scared the hell out of her.

She didn't know she still had feelings. She couldn't have known it when she was getting on that plane to North Carolina. She had moved on with her life, and buried her love for Nathan. But seeing him again, and being near him, and talking to him again…it made those feelings she had long ago buried come back up. And that wasn't something she was expecting.

"Us being friends. It's hard with everything we went through back in high school."

He nodded. "I understand, and you're completely right. Maybe we can't be friends…there's a lot of history with us."

That was probably the truth. There was too much history there for them to even be friends. Too much had gone on and they knew too much about each other to make a friendship work. Sure, they would be cordial and all when they saw each other, but once this wedding was over, Haley had a feeling that they wouldn't be speaking again until their next meeting.

"We can be kind and everything," she assured him. "But I think that actually being friends and telling each other things is just going to be so hard. We know so much about each other, Nathan, and it's not easy to share things anymore like we used to."

"Back when we were married," he added softly.

She looked up at him with her big brown eyes. "When we were in love," she threw in as well.

And that was the truth. When they were married and in love, anything that was shared between them was easily spoken. And when the marriage ended, so did the ability to share things. It just wasn't easy anymore, and both of them knew it.