Hey guys! So an update as promised, but much quicker than anticipated I'll bet! and it's super long too so, that's for all of you lovelies who were patiently waiting for me over the last couple days while I went a little crazy and bought another guitar and 2 pedals... expensive hobby.

I just have to say to my friend anon...? is it? who has been reviewing, I just joined this site like a week ago and am still working out how to use it, I ended up stumbling across your reviews somewhere and pressed a random button... somehow they show up under reviews now. But thank you so freakin' much for your kind words, if I could hug you I would 'cause (of course, including the other kind words from all my other reviewers :)) that was the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me :) Fuck it, I'll hug you all!

So as always guys, thank you for reading, finding the time to review, and for just being so awesome :)

This Chapter is for you!

Emily POV

"She really fucked up, didn't she?"

"Yeah. She really fucking did" I let out a soft sigh.

"I don't know what to tell you Em. Love isn't always easy"

"You got that right"

"So. Tell me about her"

I squinted my eyes at her in confusion "What? Why?"

"Because, it helps"

I found that one amusing. "How would you know? You talk less than I do"

"How bout we make a deal then"

I looked at her, trying to figure out what she was on about. I finally gave in "...I'm listening"

"I'll tell you about... what happened, and you tell me about her"

Really? Well, I wasn't expecting to hear that. "... Really? You'd do that?"

"Mhmm" She replied nonchalantly

Fine, I'll bite "...Okay. Deal." And then I thought "But don't we have to get your stuff?"

"Well, the festival is going to be on until about 10pm, and it's only 4pm now. I know a quiet spot just through the clearing a little ways up. We can talk there"

"...Are you going to tell me something that you'll have to kill me for afterwards?"

"I could never kill you Em, Katie would find out and then all my hard work towards a twin-some would be ruined"

I almost choked on my breath as she said this as serious as if she just told me her cat had died or something "Oh my god, you're a PERV!"

"Ha ha, you havn't the slightest idea"

I playfully shoved her shoulder, she can be such a dork sometimes. If she had said that while I was drinking water, it would have been coming out my nose and spat out of my mouth, and she just smiled at me like a kid who got a free sucker at a candy shop. Fucking... hilarious... dork.

I guess now is as good a time as any to admit that Naomi was, and probably always will be, a huge part of my life. I had to tell September about her one day, and I do owe her a proper explanation since I ruined the sweetest gesture ever. Truthfully, I havn't really thought about Naomi lately, not since me and September have gotten closer. I've always been attracted to Sept, she is gorgeous of course, but she's also very sweet. But there's always been two things holding me back since we met. 1, she doesn't discuss her life before we met, and 2; I had yet to get over Naomi. I swore to myself that I would never get together with someone while still being hung up on someone else. It's just wrong. I wanted to fully heal before I moved on with someone else, and I thought that my lack of Naomi related thoughts over the last few months meant that I could finally scratch that itch I've had over September. So I guess what I was really so upset about was my reaction to the song she played for me. I wanted to badly for my brain to switch gears and associate the song with this moment instead of faded memories with someone else.

I guess brains don't work that way.

She reaches for my hand and gives it a little squeeze, as if trying to lighten the mood. I give her a small smile in return and follow her to... wherever it was that we were going to have this really serious discussion; and I was actually shitting bricks. Now, Sept is great and easy going, she doesn't put her own feelings into things that don't warrant it. But I didn't trust myself to not fuck everything up. What if she didn't want to be with me because I had too much baggage? What if she had a kid somewhere? ...Shut the fuck up brain!

I was lost in thought when we had finally arrived, and it was beautiful. A small fountain situated in the middle of all this chaos known as New York City, it was kind of surreal. She must have spent a lot of time in this park, because I probably would have never found it on my own.

"It's lovely Sept"

"Yep. A lovely place for a... lovely talk"

She gave me a wink before leading us to the fountain, we took a seat down on the soft, emerald colored grass and leaned our back against the concrete of the fountain; water rushing behind our heads and into our ears. If you listened closely, you could almost hear the bustling city streets in the distance. It seemed so quiet here for being surrounded by millions of people living their lives. it reminded me of that time with Naomi at the lake... Fuck it. Memories are memories. I'm making new ones now.

"So," She began "Tell me about her"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before starting. "Well, her name was Naomi. She was beautiful and bitchy, smart and driven. She was a lot like Katie with out all the..." I rolled my hands around in the air as if trying to come up with the right words.

"Eccentricity"

Well, I guess that works too.

"Yeah, eccentricity. Anyway, I loved her. More than anything. For a very, very long time. Since we were in middle school. One day I plucked up the courage to kiss her, and my sister saw. Katie ruined everything"

"But you guys ended up getting together"

"Yes, we did. I decided to be honest with myself, my family, and everyone else, and eventually Naomi followed suit. It was never easy with her, but it felt right. It felt like she was my soulmate" I don't know why I was being so honest. This isn't really something you tell the girl you fancy. Oh hey, by the way. I was head over heels in love before I met you, and I believe she is my soul mate. Get yourself together Fitch.

"But then she cheated on me with some random, who then ended up killing herself over it. She had a bloody shrine and everything!" I still couldn't believe it to this day. It felt like a scene from an overly dramatic movie.

"Anyways, I was really angry and I lashed out. I did stupid things and I couldn't get over it. Until one day she decided to confess her love for me. In front of all our friends, she told me everything. She wasn't hiding, and she opened herself up completely, even in front of Katie, for me. And in that moment I fell in love with her again. Everything was wonderful until one day her mom came home from a vacation and told us that the guy she was with cheated on her, and she left him"

She nodded in response, urging me to continue "What happened after that?"

"I don't know really. It's like Naomi lost her shit. She started going on about her mind playing tricks on her, making her criticize me because I took her back after she cheated. Something about how it made me weak and she..."

"Fell out of love with you"

"Yeah. Yeah I guess. I didn't know what to do. She made me so crazy, I lost myself and turned into someone I didn't care for. She begged me to let her go so I did the only thing I could think of and ran away. I just... I thought... I really thought we were destined to be together"

After a few moments, after thinking about what I had said and making sure I was really finished, she spoke again.

"What happened with Naomi was meant to happen for some reason or another. We all live and learn and grow, even when it's the hardest thing in the world for you to handle." She took another deep breath before continuing.

"You're not the same Emily you were back then, not even the one you were yesterday. That's the case for everybody. You never know why people do what they do, but you do know why YOU do the things you do. That's the only thing that will ever make sense to you, even if at the time it doesn't"

I understood what she was saying, and I was surprised she wasn't bad mouthing Naomi. That's usually the reaction you get from people. But then again, Sept was far from normal, or judgemental.

"I just... I really thought we were... special. One of those forever kind of things, you know?"

"Who knows, maybe you are"

I was so shocked by what she said that I think I stopped breathing for a full hour before I managed to find my words again. "Wha... what do you mean?"

"No one knows what's in store for us Em. Hindsight is 20/20, and if we pretend that we know what's going to happen in the future, we set ourselves up for failure. The only thing you need to worry about is the here and now. Leave the past in the past and try not to peek into the future" She was making sense, and somehow I felt comforted by her words.

"Live in the moment, because it can all be gone in a second. And the last thing you want to be doing in your last moment is missing what's right in front of you by worrying about something so far away. Whether it's what has happened, or what's going to. Just live babe"

I just had to nod because I had lost the ability to speak. I wasn't upset by her not mentioning her role in my future, because she was honestly giving me advice without bias. Now granted, my plan was to keep her around, and I know she wasn't going anywhere. But she was assessing the information and giving me a non-judgemental, non-personal answer, and it was refreshing. It's what you need in certain moments in your life, and I was really glad to be getting it right now.

"So, you're...I mean... are you planning on sticking around with me? Even though I've got... you know... baggage" I already knew her answer, but I was curious about how she was going to respond. Sometimes it's my favorite thing about her, the way she responds to questions sometimes absolutely stuns me.

She responded with a throaty chuckle, and replied "I have more baggage than you Hun. Why do you think I'm a musician? The ever tortured soul revealing their torment through the sweet sound of song"

She had me there, and I laughed again. She really does remind me of Effy sometimes.

"So... are you going to tell me about you now?"

She nodded. "Sure. What would you like to know?"

"I don't know. I'm terrified you have a child somewhere"

She let out a laugh and I couldn't help but laugh along with her. Either I'm way off or I'm dead on. At this point, does it even matter?

"No, I do NOT have a random child somewhere. The truth is, I'm an orphan. Have been since I was 8. My parents died, and my older brother took care of me. he was 11 years older than me, and didn't want me growing up in foster care"

I know she never mentioned her family, but I wasn't expecting to hear that...

"What about aunts or uncles? Grandparents?"

She shook her head. "My parents always told me and my brother that their families were very old fashioned. My mother came from a rich family and my dad didn't. So naturally, my mothers' family disowned her for marrying a poor man. And my dad well, he was from a European family. They didn't like the fact that he married outside of their culture and disowned him. Now granted, they did try to accept my mom. She even submitted to getting baptised Greek Orthodox. But they just couldn't get over it and eventually shunned them both"

I could only listen intently. There was a lot of information and I know how hard this must be for her, so I tried to absorb everything she said so she wouldn't have to repeat herself. I nodded for her to continue and placed my head on her shoulder while she talked. I could feel the words she spoke echo through her body, and just listened as she told me about herself for the first time since we met.

"So when everything happened, my brother filed all the paperwork to get custody, he was old enough. A few foster homes later, and we were together again. He dropped out of school so he could work and take care of me. We were extremely close. A few years later, he figured out what he wanted to do and went for it. I was older so I got a job after school, and helped him out when I wasn't working or in class"

"What did he decide to do?"

"Well, he saw all those kids that lived on the street. Sometimes kids fall through the system and end up homeless, you know? Once a kid hits 16, a lot of times the government looses interest and don't work as hard for them because they're considered adults. So he decided to build a shelter, kind of like a group home for teens. We modified our parents' old house that we were still living in and added extra bedrooms, bathrooms, stuff like that. That's how come I used to help run these events sometimes, my brother built up a status in the community"

I was surprised at this new information, it was definitely a complicated story. But I couldn't help but see one tiny flaw in the story as opposed to the present moment...

"Where is your brother?"

She quickly glanced at her shoes, as if trying to find the words etched into her shoelaces. "He died. Almost 3 years ago today. One of the kids tried to kill themselves and he intervened"

Holy shit. "I'm so sorry" ... Fucking lame Emily!

She just shrugged and went on "He died trying to help somebody. A noble way to go I guess. I was so angry, for a long time. At the kids, at people. At the world. We had both spent so much time trying to help people, trying to save them. And then that happened and I just snapped"

It's true. She was like that when we met, but I haven't seen it in her for a little while now, so I asked "And what changed?"

"I met you. And not in one of those sappy lovey dovey ways. One of those 'change the way you look at things' ways. I was given a way out of my little slice of hell through you, and I took it"

I understood it all then, why we were so drawn to each other. We were meant to be in each others' lives in those exact moments because we were what the other needed. We were just as important to each other as Naomi was to me, and Septembers' brother was to her. Life is fucking cruel and it may give us more than we can chew, but sometimes it throws something in there for you so you don't run out of oxygen. We were a second chance.

There was nothing else left to say to each other after that. Every word that needed to be spoke was said, and now it was just time to take in the moment. So I just kissed her cheek and was awarded a smile in return. We took in the scent of fresh cut grass around us, the random buzz of a bug flying by us, the feel of the breeze on our faces as the clouds drifted aimlessly above our heads. We must've stayed there for a long time because I ended up falling asleep on Septembers' lap while she gently stroked my hair, carefully making small circles in my scalp with the gentle tips of her fingers.

'

'

"So, how did it go? She must have prescribed you some pills since clearly she didn't bandage up your head" She had her all knowing Stonem smirk on her face and it instinctively made me roll my eyes.

"Very funny Eff. We just talked. She didn't give me any pills, we just set up weekly appointments. It actually felt really good, getting it all out of my system"

"That's great Naomi. I'm stoked for you but I'm starving. Can we please go somewhere to eat?"

Thank god it wasn't just me. I hadn't eaten anything since lunch because I was so nervous about going to therapy, so I had just chain smoked with Effy instead. That was a bad idea though because now it just made me feel queasy.

"Yes please. Anywhere in particular you want to go?"

"Anywhere I can get a strong glass of wine with dinner. I'm loosing my perma-buzz"

I had to love Effy. She didn't drink anymore because it could kill her, the meds she was on wouldn't exactly let her live if she had mixed the two. But she never stopped being herself, never changed her self image whether it be in the way she carried herself, or the way she thought about herself. She was still 'I'll-do-anything-for-a-riot-time Effy' and I loved that about her.

"How about we go to that pizza place we found a while ago, with the huge pizza oven in the back? You know, the one that reminded you of the hell fire where all those crazy little people in your head were sent to?"

"Don't make me stop short while you seatbelt isn't buckled Campbell. You'll fly right through the dashboard"

I chuckled "Alright. Sorry. You up for pizza though?"

"Sure, why not"

'

'

We had a lovely dinner together, in comfortable silence. Effy didn't like to pry about this sort of thing and we had already talked enough about it. The best part about being with Effy was that you didn't need to explain yourself like you were teaching a fourth grader how to multiply. She needed very few words before she understood whatever it was that you needed her to.

Our server came around a few times and seemed abnormally interested in trying to start up a conversation. He must have thought we were together, which is what the majority of people think. I always thought it was like a universe thing. The second you admit that you like fanny, it's as if the whole world sees the word 'lesbian' in bright flashing lights above your head and automatically takes an interest in you for no apparent reason, whether it be for a harmless one or a bad one. But Effy on the other hand said that people always 'assumed' we were together because they were all chauvinistic pricks who wanted to fantasize about two attractive women going at it, that it got them hard. I didn't understand her rationale at first, but when she pointed out two slightly more tomboyish girls actually out on a date, who by the way were completely adorable together, and showed me the guys that eyed them across the table muttering something like 'dykes' or 'the cure is my cock', I finally understood and agreed with her. She was right in her own way, and I couldn't help but think to myself:

This world is a fucked up, and messy place.

'

'

After dinner we went back to ours, she went to bed straight away because she had obviously been working all day and her pills tire her out. I on the other hand had a head filled with so many thoughts and questions that I decided to take a nice, hot bath. So I hugged Effy goodnight, thanked her for being there for me today, and went into the bathroom. I turned on the taps in the tub, and stood at the sink while the tub filled up with that soothing, warm liquid I call heaven.

I looked up into the mirror and just stared at myself. I scanned over my features, from my long jawline to the gentle curve of my nose, to the icy blue color of my eyes. And for the first time in years, I smiled back at my reflection.

Whew! Alright, that was a novel for me! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, the story feels to me like it's really picking up, and I'm doing my best not to write mundane or irrelevant chapters. Anyone seen the new pics for Skins Redux? So freakin' awesome! I love skins :D I'm so excited, this year has sucked for me personally, but for things like movies, TV shows, video games and left-handed guitars, it's A-mazzzzing :)

Oh and I hope the wait was worth it for all of you guys curious about September's past, I had fun trying to put all the pieces together :)

Soon my friends! and don't be scared to let me know what you think!

Violet