Spencer beat Hanna home from the game. She realised that they'd probably go out after, those four amigos, Hanna, Emily, Aria and Cassidy, to get a drink at Monchelos or a dessert in the town, to toast her engagement and, concurrently, their newfound friendship. It didn't surprise her that she no longer felt as bitter about their burgeoning relationship as she had at the beginning of the night.
She stood in the middle of Hanna's condo – no, it didn't quite feel like Spencer's too, not yet – and thought, long and hard.
She took a deep breath, let it out, and abruptly flung her heavy bag onto Hanna's polished wood floors, where its contents (CD demos, a copy of Sharks, / various crumpled press releases and, bizarrely, a piece of stale toast that she'd forgotten to eat that previous morning) spilled everywhere. What? She wanted to scream. What am I doing, what do I want, what is happening, what does everybody want from me?
Think rationally for once, she told logically and calmly and leave your feelings for Toby out of it. For including any mention of those emotions in her thought process was a certain way to unequivocally exclude rational or logical thinking.
Toby had Cassidy now. It was one of those unavoidable, inconvenient truths. And Spencer, even with all her powers of persuasion and the obvious power that she still had over Toby, had to accept that.
Whether Toby was mistaken about his feelings towards Cassidy remained to be seen. But for now, Spencer had to stop the sabotage. Tonight when she was stuck in the library, she had realised that Cassidy, though unnatural and different and just wrong for Toby, was nevertheless in love with him. And Spencer appreciated now that Cassidy was also a real person, with feelings, and emotions. Like Hanna had said, if the roles were reversed, Spencer could understand how unfair her treatment of Cassidy had been
Plus, she now felt ashamed of the way she had spoken to her. If she knew anything at all, it was that Cassidy right at that moment would probably be giving Toby a blow-by-blow account of Spencer's behaviour at the library, and her humiliating mistake about her dead father. To continue her tirade against Cassidy would lead to Spencer's image being further sullied in Toby's eyes, and that was just too embarrassing to consider. So, what now? Spencer mused. If not Toby, why am I back in Rosewood?
"You need something to take the edge off," Hanna had suggested the following evening, doling chocolate-chip ice cream into two bowls with her blue eyes narrowed suggestively. "You know what's the best cure for a broken heart, right?" "Hanna - ," Spencer had begun warily, knowing where this was headed.
"Sex," declared Hanna, finishing a spoonful of ice cream with relish and smacking her lips triumphantly. "I've got it all figured out. I have dibs on the new bartender boy at Oak because, well, I saw him first, but he's bound to have an equally yummy friend who would be more than happy to take you back to his house after our double date and make you forget allll about old Toby. You'll stop moping about Toby, I'll get to go on a date with Chase, it's a win-win for us both!
"Hanna -," Spencer interjected yet again, half-laughing, but her imaginative best friend wasn't , either that or I call up Jake Gyllenhaal, he promised me he'd make the visit down from New York sometime soon, and between you and me, he's known to be a liiiittle bit on the looser side when it comes to - "Hanna!" Spencer said for the third time, more forcefully, and the blazing look in her eyes stunned the brunette into silence. "I'm not having sex with anyone right now. Not yet."
"Not even Jake Gyllenhaal?" Hanna asked in a small voice.
Spencer, who had never quite understood the actor's appeal, shook her head grimly, and the two friends ate their ice cream in silence.
Hanna was right in a way though, Spencer thought later, perhaps in a more optimistic mood after a full helping of chocolate-chips. Definitely not about the sex part, but Spencer did need something extra to take the edge off. Something to fill in all the other time in which she would usually be thinking about him. She had work, and friends, and music, but she also had a little secret void in a little secret spot in her heart, in the place where Toby usually live and somehow, although it hurt, although it cost her more than she would care to admit, she was going to fill it, because this shell of a person she had become was no longer a genuine, or sincere, or viable version of herself.
She was going to take back the part of herself that Toby had uncaringly stolen, indifferently stamped on and maliciously thrown away, and become a person she was proud of.
After the reunion and the simultaneous library debacle, Cassidy sat on her side of the bed in Toby's house, brooding, and twirling her engagement ring around and around her finger. Actually, she wasn't really sure if it was her side of the bed or not. Now that she thought about it, she didn't seem to have a permanent side. Her and Toby would throw themselves, (or each other, she remembered nostalgically), onto whichever side of the bed was there at the time. She wondered if Toby had a side when he slept alone, or whether he stretched out, snow angel-style, his lanky form sprawled across the whole mattress. For a moment, she wondered sickeningly whether Toby had slept with Spencer in this bed. Of course he would have. Had Spencer had a side? She shuddered .
Cassidy heard Toby's car pull up in the driveway. They never seemed to go anywhere together, Cassidy mused. Sure, they were together once they got to the destination, but one of them always had something before or after which required them to take separate cars. Toby, usually. And as much as Toby tried, she couldn't quiet the little voice of doubt in her Toby want to keep his independence,she asked, and how often does he sneak off to see Spencer in that car?
Toby walked in through the bedroom entrance. He looked windswept, spinning a basketball and wearing a small smile. Cassidy knew if she approached him she would smell sweat and scruffiness mixed with a little jewel of pride at the Reunion. But instead she stayed where she was, twirling and twirling and twirling the ring. "I'm only going to ask you this once," she began, not looking at him, looking at the floor
"Seems to be a common occurrence these days," Toby tried to joke, but immediately became somber when he saw how high his fiance's eyebrows rose. He dropped his ball and sat beside Cassidy on the bed.
"Did you propose to Spencer?" Cassidy asked, and her eyes met Toby's for the first time.
Toby was caught off-guard. His eyes widened, and he drew in a sharp breath. Cassidy knew the answer to her question before he spoke."And where did this come from?" Toby asked slowly.
"Spencer said it," Cassidy said. "Well, sung it to me, actually," – she shook her head impatiently at Toby's confused expression - "and she denied it later, so I don't really know what to believe, and I'm certainly not going to trust anything that she says, but if it's true, then that means you didn't tell me that this ring was Spencer's before it was mine, and I'm really not going to have yet another one of Spencer's second-hand throwaways," She finished breathlessly. She was close to tears for the second time that evening. It suddenly struck her how many things, previously possessed by Spencer, were now in her life. Spencer's friends. Spencer's home town. Spencer's old school. Toby's book about Spencer. Toby, in actual fact. And now, apparently, the ring Spencer rejected.
She felt like everything in Toby's room, from the various photographs of the brunette still dotted on the bookshelves, to the deep, comfortable, secret recess of Toby's bed, were screaming out Spencer, Spencer, Spencer,and it was getting harder and harder to drown out that incessant chant.
"Cass. Please," Toby began, but Cassidy was too overcome with tears to listen, and collapsed into Toby's arms."I did propose," Toby said, more to justify his actions to himself than to explain to the now-sobbing Cassidy. "More than two years ago, Cass. But she said no. She didn't say yes, like you did. The ring was never hers. It was my mom's, and now it's yours. Please. I did propose, but it didn't mean anything to Spence. And it didn't mean anything to me."
Cassidy didn't respond, but continued to shake with tears.
"It didn't mean anything," he repeated fruitlessly.
And immediately, unintentionally, irrationally, an image of the sixteen-year-old Spencer, wide-eyed, and idealistic, and achingly beautiful, sprang uninvited into Toby's mind.
"Of course it did," the teenage Spencer whispered, self-conscious of her confession, yet defiant in her conviction, her mocha blazing into his own.
And transcending the time that had elapsed, and ignoring the history that had passed, and disregarding the assurances that he had said and repeated to all those around him, Toby knew that what she spoke was as true six years previously as it was at that precise moment. Of course it did.
Jogging was the extraordinary outcome of Spencer's identity crisis of the other night. Sure, it was about as un-Spencer-like as you could possibly get. But, as Spencer continually reminded herself, I haven't been that Spencer in three years. And she thought that some exercise, with the high of the endorphin, might be just the thing to fill in the gaping hole called Toby.
Hanna was positively incredulous when Spencer first stepped out in a pair of gym shorts, jogging shoes and a baggy Led Zeppelin t-shirt, with her wavy brown hair pulled back in a – gasp! – high ponytail.
Finally recovered after choking on her cereal in shock, Hanna asked the most obvious question that came to mind.
"Spence, you look cute. Don't worry about that. But – sorry – when have you ever, like ever, in your whole life, done any exercise?"
Spencer pouted. Sure, it had been a while, but there must have been at least one sport in her 28 years that she had excelled at. But what?
She had skived off almost every P.E. class, citing 'female trouble', and gone to the Mall with Hanna. She couldn't catch a basketball, let alone aim it into a tiny hoop. She used to go swimming in Alex's pool when they were dating, but mostly they just ended up making out in there. Toby had begged her in their senior year to join him on his daily jog to the gym, but she had consistently declined.
"I'll get sweaty enough with you when you get back, and we won't even have to leave my bedroom," she would say in a husky voice, wiggling her eyebrows. And with that, Toby would run out the door and complete his circuit at a near sprint.
Back in Hanna's kitchen, back in reality, Spencer shook out the painful memory. She needed to stop reminiscing about Toby.
"Cheerleading," she declared definitively, with a hint of desperation. "I was a cheerleader. Cheerleading's exercise."
There was a long pause. Then Hanna scoffed.
"Honey, you were, like, the worst cheerleader known to high school. You basically got into the team because you were the best friend of the cheer captain. Please tell me you're going on something better than that," she chortled, now giddy with amusement.
Realising she was never going to win this argument, Spencer shot a contemptuous look at Hanna, turned on her heel and stalked out the front door.
"All I'm saying, is maybe keep the emergency services on speed dial, okay?" Hanna called after her, still laughing.
Somewhat surprisingly, given Hanna's predictions, running came rather smoothly for Spencer. It was all in the breathing, she thought, and the steady pounding of each foot on the ground, left, right, left, right. There was nothing quite like it.
Once she leveled into a certain pace, and felt the wind on her cheeks, and cranked up her iPod, Spencer soon discovered she could forget all of her problems, and just run. It was exhilarating.
But of course when she would return back to the house and hear Hanna recount all of her inane dealings with Caleb for that particular day, or when she inadvertently ran past Toby's house and saw him through an open window laughingly accept a sip of Cassidy's wine, all of her anxieties and frustrations came flooding back as if they had never left.
In his eyes, Toby was getting back to his roots. He would throw on his old grey hoodie, pick up a basketball, and head for the Basketball Court after dark, dribbling the ball nonchalantly on the sidewalk.
Under the stars, moon, and, inevitably, the blaze of the Basketball Court floodlight, Toby felt as though he could think, which was exactly what he struggled to do every time he sat in front of his glaring laptop screen.
He hadn't seen Spencer in a few weeks, although both Hanna and Emily verified that all was progressing smoothly in the life of their favourite Hastings. Her store was going exponentially far, they gushed, and she was settling in without a hitch to her new home with Hanna. (Toby, too, had heard their cute-as-pie message-bank greeting, and secretly agreed that there was nothing quite as endearing as hearing those two girls bicker and giggle on a recording for two minutes).
Something puzzled him, however, and even Toby, master novelist and careful scrutiniser of thought and emotion, hated to admit it to himself.
Ever since Spencer had moved back to Rosewood, he'd gotten used to seeing her flash of brunette hair tilted towards him whenever he went out. He'd felt with a quiet pride Spencer's eyes following him wherever he walked. Without acknowledging her eyes burning into his own, he had known with a secret certainty that Spencer was watching him. He would never admit it, but he relished in the feeling of being wanted, and, even more shamefully, enjoyed denying Spencer exactly what she so blatantly desired.
But now Spencer had virtually disappeared, and Toby missed the sidelong glances and blazing looks. He had Cassidy, sure, and although he was certain of his feelings towards his fiancée, he found that her attention didn't interest him quite as much as Spencer's did.
Truthfully, Toby had begun to miss Spencer again. In mere weeks, Toby had once again begun a never-ending cycle of yearning, of thinking constantly about one person, and of wanting to be wanted: that ominous trifecta of bad habits which he had trained himself long ago to suppress.
Cassidy saw Toby's night-time basketball forays quite differently. She was convinced there was something he was not telling her. Sneaking out, she believed. Emotional affair, she suspected. And so she would call him on it.
Of course, outwardly, to any objective observer, Toby was doing little more than some night-time exercise. But Cassidy couldn't help but think that with every step he took, every shot he threw, every rush of that evening breeze, he was pulling further and further away.
So while Toby and Cassidy jumped headlong into a pattern of arguments, passive-aggressive accusations, reluctant apologies and half-hearted forgiveness, Spencer was building herself back into a semblance of her normal self. Life could never be entirely normal for Spencer Hastings – that generally won't be possible when you have a multimillionaire best friend,an lawyer lifelong career, and are a central character in, arguably, the most popular novel to ever come out of Rosewood – but Spencer relished in taking control of the few things which mattered most to her.
Perhaps it was the near-constant jibes about her work life that Spencer endured ever since she returned from LA – Spencer Hastings, unemployed; everybody fails, just look at Spencer – but even the smallest win became to her a proud victory.
When Spencer paid back Hanna all that she owed, plus interest, she knew she was doing something she loved which was also financially rewarding. It felt good to prove her right. And, to top it all off, when Mona came back into town for that brief and dramatic visit, Spencer realised that, at the very least, she wasn't quite the most fucked-up school-leaver in their graduating class.
"We've got that to be thankful for," admitted Hanna dryly, and they clinked wine glasses and toasted with gusto.
Hanna sidled up to Spencer in their living room a week later. Spencer was lying on the couch, reading a new novel, written – shock horror! – by someone other than Toby Cavanaugh.
"No more Sharks?" Hanna asked, in mock dismay.
"I thought I'd try something new," Spencer replied. "Besides, I'm a bit over romantic fiction."
"Fiction, huh?" said Hanna.
Spencer nodded. Hanna cleared her throat awkwardly.
"So, S. Hastings, I've been meaning to ask you about this new leaf you've turned over," said Hanna, and she sat down next to her on the couch.
Spencer groaned.
"I love the exercise, although frankly, you were looking a little frail already, and you're doing so great with your job, and I don't want to mess with this new person you're turning into, because she kicks ass, but - "
"But what?" Spencer said.
"But you haven't hung out with any of the group in a month and we miss you!" Hanna said accusatorily.
A month? Spencer thought. Had it really been a whole month? She tried to think of the last time she had seen Aria, or Caleb, or Maya, and she simply couldn't. Hannna must have asked her ten times to come out with the group to Lime Rack or to Aria's and Ezra's for dinner, but she had been so busy in the office, or committed to her jogging, or purely exhausted, that she had turned her down every time.
"It's because you don't want to see Toby," Spencer pressed on, with the condescending air of a psychiatrist giving a diagnosis to a patient. "I get that, and I know. Go cold turkey on Toby, and you'll stop thinking about him. Stop thinking about him, and you'll stop the Toby cravings. It's a classic defensive mechanism."
"Who are you, my shrink?" shot back Spencer. "So what if I've been busy?"
"Busy, huh?" said Hanna skeptically. "You keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, we live in a very small town and you're going to run into him eventually. It's called simple inevitability. That, or it's called next time I go out with the group I'm dragging your bony ass along with me. And when you finally do see Toby, and when you realise that avoiding him isn't going to solve the problem, I hope you'll allow me to say I told you so."
And with a final meaningful glance, Hanna swept out of the room, slamming the door behind her with a flourish.
And as it turned out, Hanna's warning quickly came true. Through fate, destiny, or, as Spencer saw it, pure bad luck, she ran – quite literally – into Toby, three days later.
It was any other ordinary night. And it was exercise, that unusual defensive mechanism that had sprung up on both sides, that brought them together.
It was quite simple, truly unpoetic: Spencer was jogging, he was bouncing his ball at a run. Both were listening to music (the same song, although none of them ever discovered that particular clichéd coincidence).
Both their heads were down. He was scrolling through his phone. She was watching her feet pound rhythmically on the pavement, running unintentionally to the beat of her song. He had a drop of sweat between his eyes, in the same spot where he used to get that adorable crinkle. Her cheeks were pink with exertion.
Perhaps if one of them had looked up a few steps earlier, or if each wasn't so absorbed in their music, the collision could have been avoided. As it happened, though, several things occurred at once. The two figures banged shoulders awkwardly, and Spencer burst out with an expletive-laden admonishment. Toby's phone fell out of his hand onto the road and promptly split its screen in two, while Spencer rubbed her bare shoulder with a look of deepest loathing at her assailant.
And slowly, timorously, each person recognised the other. An awkward pause, and then –
"Since when do you jog?" Toby asked loudly, and the volume of his exclamation rent the silence of the last month apart.
"Since when do you incapacitate innocent pedestrians?" returned Spencer, still rubbing her arm, but she was smiling.
Toby exhaled a deep breath of air, and started laughing weakly. It suddenly felt like he'd been holding his breath for a month. Spencer laughed nervously too.
"Are you okay?" he asked, and his blue eyes pierced hers. He placed his hand on Spencer's shoulder, where she had been rubbing before. He looked down at her, with that concerned, wide-eyed look only he could manage to convey. She automatically took a small step backwards, out of his reach. She broke off the eye contact.
"Oh. Um, yeah," Toby began. Everything felt awkward again. "Look, sorry about that. Before, I mean. I didn't see you. You came out of nowhere. You know, I haven't seen you in a month, Spencer, but it seems like everybody else has. How are you?"
He said this all very fast, in a breathless voice.
"Oh, I'm fine!" said Spencer airily. "Just working, you know. Emily's doing great. Hanna's fine. Yesterday we repainted the deck, it was looking a little scuffed, and tomorrow night we were thinking of cooking paella, it's supposed to be pretty difficult, but Hanna's determined because she tasted it once in New York, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. Oh, and Mona– remember Mona? – well, she came back for about a minute, and that was a total disaster, so - "
She giggled shrilly, then broke off confusedly, unable to remember what question she was answering. She looked into Toby's concerned eyes.
"I'm doing okay, thanks," she said honestly.
"I'm okay, too," Toby said quietly.
They stared at each other. Spencer could hear the crickets chirping in the background. It was getting really dark now. The sight must have looked strange to passers-by: two late-night joggers gazing fixedly into each other's eyes. But Spencer couldn't pull her eyes away. She drank in Toby's appearance, making up for the month she had been without it. His hair was a little longer. His eyes, though usually somewhat squinty, were wide with worry, or sadness, perhaps.
A strand of hair had fallen into Spencer's eyes, and Toby desperately wanted to push it back behind her ear. He wanted to touch Spencer's shoulder where it hurt, and thought madly that he would like to kiss it better. She looked better than he remembered. Perhaps it was just perspiration from the jog, but she looked glowing, somehow. Ethereal.
And as if by default, he looked down at her legs, and with an inward groan he realised he had never seen her in such skimpy running shorts.
"You know, I really don't understand why you're jogging. Your legs are looking even more chicken-y than usual, Spencer," he murmured without thinking.
Immediately, the atmosphere broke. Spencer grimaced. The old phrase hit her like a ton of bricks. She took another step back. She felt guilty for some reason, like a child who knows it is doing something punishable. Like she was dirty all over. Suddenly, she wanted to be anywhere else except there, on the pavement. Anywhere away from Toby.
"I should get going," she said coldly.
"Wait," said Toby. "I'm sorry, Spence. Look, I'm really sorry. That came out wrong. I never should have said that."
"You're right, you shouldn't have," Spencer said, breathing hard. It was like she was looking at Toby for the first time. "You know, we're not in high school anymore, Tobes. We're not the same people we were back then. You've made that embarrassingly clear. So you don't have the right to say that to me. Because now, you've got Cassidy to get back to."
"Spencer - " Toby said desperately. But Spencer was on a roll.
"You know, I haven't seen you in so long because every time I do, you somehow manage to remind me about our past. And just right now, while I'm trying to get over our history, while you're planning your wedding with your new fiancée, – who's just about the complete opposite of me, by the way, thanks for that - I could do without the constant reminders of who we used to be, okay?"
Toby looked dumbstruck. Spencer couldn't stop.
"So how about next time we both stick to the right side of the path. That way we never have to see each other again."
"But… what if we're going in the same direction?" Toby asked.
"We're never going in the same direction again, Toby," Spencer said forcefully. "Not anymore."
"Spencer - "
"Go home to your fiancée, Toby," Spencer said. Wordlessly, she picked up Toby's broken phone, thrust it roughly into his hands, and left the way she came.
Review. What do you think? I know you guys have alot of questions for me to answer, but they'll be answered in the next few chapters. I decided to make Spencer live with Hanna and Caleb, instead of having her own apartment, and I wanted to tell you guys that Spoby will be endgame. Chase will appear in the next chapter or two I don't know and I'll explain why Cassidy's jealous and doesn't like Spencer either in the next few chapters, and how she became friends with the girls.
-Sierra Keough