A/N: Thank you as always for your reviews, they really do mean a lot; I'm glad you're still reading.
Melodrama: a blanket term for dramatic events, particularly within soap operas, that are accompanied by appropriately intense or suspenseful music
"Hello?" Haley called, stepping through the door of the impressive house Brooke and Lucas resided in. She hadn't been able to get to sleep, so she'd crawled out of bed at the crack of dawn to make muffins. When the sun rose and it was still obvious that none of her family members were going to be waking up anytime soon, she packed up some muffins and trekked over to the 'Second Scott' residence for some girl talk with Brooke and some quality time with Miranda.
To her surprise, when she arrived, Brooke and Lucas were sitting on opposite sides of the couch in the living room, drinking coffee out of large mugs. Lucas was wearing pants and an unbuttoned button-down shirt, while Brooke had thrown a robe on over her pyjamas. They both looked tired and sad.
"Hey, Brucas," she greeted them collectively, trying to lighten the somewhat ominous atmosphere.
"Hey, one half Naley," Brooke replied, mustering up some pep. "Whatcha got there?"
"I couldn't sleep, so I made muffins. I thought I'd bring you some breakfast." She unwound the light scarf she'd thrown around her neck and sat down. "But it looks like I wasn't the only one up all night. I thought you weren't getting back for two more days, Luke."
"I wasn't," he said stiffly.
"Okay, well…are you writing again? What did Lindsay say?"
"I have…some stuff to work on."
Haley frowned at his vague coldness. She looked over at Brooke for some kind of explanation and saw that the brunette appeared on the verge of tears.
Haley shot Lucas a glare, but he was avoiding her eyes. "Hey," she said sharply, snapping her fingers like she did when she was trying to get the attention of a particularly rebellious student. "Look at me. What's with the attitude?" She sounded like she was talking to a troubled high school kid, too.
He fixed her with an unwavering stare. "Thanks for telling me that Peyton's in town."
She was struck speechless for a moment. Her first thought was Shit. He knows. Then she contemplated it for a moment, trying to figure out what to say, and then thought Wait. So what if he knows?
"Luke," she scolded him sternly. "Tell me that's not what you're upset about. What are you, seventeen again?"
Brooke threw Lucas a look as if to say See?
He leaned forward, scowling. "You are both reading something into this that isn't there. Peyton is my friend, just like she's yours, and we haven't seen her in years. She's been back for almost a week. Brooke hid it from me, and you didn't bother to inform me. Hales, I'd be just as upset if you disappeared for a decade, reappeared, and no one told me."
Haley blew out her breath. "I guess you have a point."
"Fill me in. Please."
"Brooke hasn't already?"
"We've been too busy bickering," Brooke interjected angrily.
Haley offered a sympathetic half-smile. "You know I'm doing Chris' music camp, right? I'm mentoring Jenny. I showed up at the airport to pick her up…and there was Peyton. They've been…through a lot since they got here. Peyton's kept a lot of drama hidden from Jenny and coming back home just brought it to light. It's been hard," she added in a whisper. "Peyton and I actually aren't speaking right now."
"Why?" Brooke and Lucas asked in unison.
"Just…Jenny thought Peyton was her birth mother all these years. And when my idiot of a husband," she joked, affectionately frustrated, "let it slip that she's not, Jenny was so devastated, and they kept on fighting…eventually I just kind of flipped out."
"Is it that bad?"
Haley's anger flared up again. "She was hurting her daughter, and she won't talk to me. She still won't tell me anything about Jake!"
Lucas squinted. "What do you mean?"
"Jake is out of her life. She won't say any more than that, she refuses to."
Lucas sat back, stunned. "She's not with Jake anymore."
"Hasn't been in a serious, long-term relationship since," Brooke reported. "Aren't you happy, honey?" she chirped, bitterly sarcastic. "She's fair game for you."
"Brooke," Lucas sighed tiredly, reaching over and resting a hand on her knee as he raised his eyebrows, indicating his frustration.
She lifted her hands in surrender, and let his hand stay on her knee.
"It's not a big deal," Haley said gently. "It doesn't have to be a big deal."
"What doesn't?" Brooke asked, her brow furrowing.
Haley shrugged helplessly. "Everything?" She popped the lid off of her container and extended it to them. "Let's eat. Okay?"
Brooke accepted one of the muffins, but held it instead of taking a bite. "You're the smartest person I know, tutor mom," she said quietly, the hand that was not occupied with her muffin resting tentatively over her husband's. "So you've got to know that nothing is ever that simple with us."
"Jennifer Lynn, I swear to God, if I have to listen to that song one more time…" Peyton said, trailing off threateningly as she regarded her daughter across the room.
"Just dance; spin that record, babe," Jenny sang out teasingly, grabbing the remote to crank the volume up.
"Do not make me take that away from you," Peyton replied, gazing at the remote.
"Come on, Mom, it's so catchy!"
"Sounds like something Brooke would listen to," Peyton mumbled. "Let me guess, it's on the radio like, every two seconds, right?"
"Good songs get on the radio. And I bet Brooke's music taste rocks," Jenny stated, and then got an idea. She bit her lip, practically able to feel the mischievous gleam in her own eyes.
"Jen…"
Jenny dipped her paintbrush into the electric blue paint and wrote, in big letters, across the living room wall: JUST DANCE.
Peyton gasped and rolled her eyes. "Thanks you, sweetheart," she said sarcastically. "Now I have to paint the entire room bright blue."
"I think it's your colour," Jenny said sweetly, blinking innocently.
Peyton blew out her breath exasperatedly and turned back to her own artistic creation on the opposite wall. "You are so my daughter."
Jenny abandoned her paintbrush and flopped down onto the couch to watch her mother work. When she was a little girl, only four years old, she used to sit at her mother's side with crayons and eight-by-eleven paper and try to copy Peyton's drawings precisely. She could never get anywhere close to the magic Peyton seemed able to coax out of her charcoal and onto her sketchpad, and she used to cry. Peyton would kiss her head and tell her she'd created a masterpiece. Her father would joke that he couldn't draw to save his life, so she must have inherited it from him, and she could be a great musician instead. They'd argue playfully over Jenny's head about which of their passions their daughter would be interested in. Jenny would revel in the happiness, the playfulness of the moment, but afterward she would throw her sucky drawings out.
One time, Peyton found her placing her pictures in the trash, and had hurried over to stop her. She didn't think she'd ever forget the look in on Peyton's face when she crouched down next to Jenny and the garbage can, quietly asking, "Hey, baby, what're you doing? Won't you let me put that on the fridge?"
Jenny had shaken her head, giggling in confusion at how attached her mother appeared to be to the piece of paper with her awful drawing on it. "It's bad, Mommy," she'd said simply. "It doesn't matter."
Peyton sat down right on the kitchen floor and pulled Jenny into her lap, cradling her protectively. "Jenny, no. Listen to me – no matter what you think of it…your art matters. It's important, and it means something. Promise me that you'll remember that." She'd smiled encouragingly, but Jenny remembered being alarmed by the level of seriousness in her mother's eyes, even as Peyton playfully demanded that she hand over her artwork so that it could go right on the front of the fridge.
Jenny scrutinized her mother's painting. "Traffic lights?" she questioned.
Peyton threw down her paintbrush, turning around and smiling softly. "It's nothing. It's stupid. You're right; it'd look better that crazy neon blue."
Her daughter frowned, staring hard at the elegantly painted, purposefully blurry, red light staring out at her. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that your art matters?" she teased, remembering Peyton's words from all those years ago.
At Jenny's words, a quotation of her own, Peyton's eyes took on the exact same emotional cloudiness they'd held back on that day in Savannah on the kitchen floor. "Yeah," she whispered, looking away. "They did."
"Who?" Jenny asked, but the question sounded pointless even to her own ears. She bit down on her lower lip, and a part of her was scared of what had truly been running through her mother's head back then. If it was the same as what was clearly there now, it was just another part of her history Jenny knew she couldn't trust.
Lucas groaned, slamming the basketball toward the ground in frustration. He'd been shooting around, trying to get some of his emotion out, for nearly an hour.
None of his baskets were going in.
His mind was swimming with ideas that he was too scared to put on paper, for fear that they'd look messy and unrealistic when he finally got them out. At the same time, he wanted to bolt to his computer and write them down, for fear that maybe they were brilliant, and if he didn't bring them into the physical world somehow, he'd forget them.
A sleek, silver SUV drove right up to the court. It exuded macho vibes, contradicted by the Baby on Board sticker stuck to the back windshield. There was no doubt in Lucas' mind as to who it was.
Nathan got out of the car, slamming the door behind him, and walked over to Lucas at a carelessly slow pace. "Ball!" he called out. Lucas threw it over, and Nathan ran a couple strides, leaping up and dunking smoothly.
He grinned triumphantly when he hit the ground again. "Still got it," he declared. "What's up, big brother?" He held out his fist for a bump.
Lucas hit his knuckles against Nathan's, shrugging. "Nothing."
Nathan laughed. "Not nothing," he argued. "Hales told me that you know."
"Know what?"
"Don't play dumb, Luke, you don't have it in you. You know what."
Lucas scowled, shooting for another basket and missing again. "Why didn't you tell me, Nate? Why didn't you just pick up the phone and tell me?"
Nathan shrugged. "Peyton has her own brain, Lucas. She makes her own decisions. If she wanted you to know she was here, she could've picked up the phone just as easily as I could have."
"Bullshit. She didn't seek any of you out, did she? Ran into Haley at the airport. Brooke found out by accident. There was no way she was going to call me."
His brother stayed calm. "Her life, her choices. None of my business, or Haley's, or even Brooke's."
Lucas glared at him. "I deserved to know."
A sudden anger took over Nathan's steadily neutral eyes. "You didn't deserve a thing. Why do you even care? Huh? Peyton's not yours to be protective of anymore. She hasn't been for a long, long time."
The older Scott lifted his eyebrows, stunned by the sudden surge of ferocity within Nathan. "Speaking of protective," he commented simply.
"Damn right, I'm protective of her," Nathan shot back. "I know how it is with you two. You have a wife, Lucas. You have Brooke, and you have your daughter. Peyton had Jenny and a hell of a lot of emotional baggage. You can't get into this again. You have to be bigger than this."
Lucas threw his hands up into the air. "What the fuck? Everyone keeps acting like I want to…I don't even know, like I want Peyton."
"Well, don't you?" Nathan said it the same way someone would ask Snow is white, right? or Red is a colour, yeah?
"Nate…what…are you hearing yourself?" Lucas was incredulous. "It's like you just said – I have a family. She has a family. We're history."
"Yeah, but you're not. You and Peyton…you get lost in each other and you hurt everyone else, then you get all scared of what you're feeling so you hurt each other and run back to everyone else. You two never had an ending. It's a cycle that you just can't break for some fucking reason, and I'm not going to let it happen again, okay? I'm worried about Peyton as it is. And I love Brooke, and I know she loves you. And even though you're an ass, I care about you, too, so just…let it go, Luke. Let all of it go and just stay the hell away from her."
"I'm not going to do anything."
Nathan sighed, glancing heavenward for a moment before shaking his head. "You know, Luke…when I came here today, that's what I wanted to hear you say. I wanted to hear it with…conviction. I wanted you to convince me."
"And?" Lucas demanded impatiently.
Nathan smirked sadly, wearily, as if he would have to deal with this for quite a while longer. "And I want you to stay the hell away from her, like I said, because I didn't believe a word of your little declaration. I hope you've got better stuff ready for your wife."
"Nate!" Lucas cried after him, outraged. He flung the ball toward the basket again.
He missed.
Peyton walked through the door of the apartment. She looked tired, Jenny noted, as she glanced up from her bag. "Hey Mom."
Peyton rewarded her with a weary smile. "You breaking up with me?" she teased.
Jenny rolled her eyes. "I gotta go back to Haley's. That's where I'm supposed to live for the summer."
"I know, hon," Peyton said with a nod, walking over and picking up a sweater, which she folded with practiced ease.
Jenny hesitated, setting a pair of shorts into her bag. "I'm not sure if I want to go."
Peyton shook her head. "You do. I know you do, even if you're scared. But you don't have to be, Jenny. Nothing else is going to change between us." She lifted her eyebrows. "Not much else to change, right?"
"Not even with Lucas back?" she asked hesitantly.
"What does Lucas have to do with anything?"
"Don't answer a question with a question," Jenny sighed.
Peyton folded a t-shirt and handed it to Jenny. "That's mine, by the way," she said. "Now listen. Nothing is different. You're going to go back to Nathan and Haley's, learn lots, have the summer of your life. I'm going to…paint the apartment and try to find some brilliant hidden band in this town. And at the end of the summer, we're going to go home, and back to what we had."
Jenny was surprised. "You could do that? You want to do that?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Peyton asked evenly, zipping up Jenny's duffel for her.
"Because it's going to be hard," Jenny said, her mind drifting to Jordan for a moment.
Peyton laughed lightly. "Trust me, kiddo, I'm a pro at goodbyes."
Jenny shook her head. "I don't understand how you can be so…whatever about it all. It's going to be hard for me. To leave Haley and Nathan and their kids…and the friends I've made. I just thought it would be that much harder for you."
Her mother hesitated for a moment before asking, "Why?"
"Why?" Jenny demanded incredulously. "Because these people love you, Mom! They're your best friends, and they've missed you. And even if you don't show it, I know that you've really missed them, too."
"Yeah. I have."
"Can you honestly tell me that you haven't considered…sticking around? Not for one minutes? You have a home here, not just this apartment but…this is your home, like Savannah was mine. Maybe we both don't really belong out in L.A."
Peyton looked alarmed. "Are you unhappy there?"
"No, it's where we live. I have my friends, the guys who I could maybe like, my teachers that are good and bad, that librarian who knows me so well, the mall I know like the back of my hand. I just…I kind of thought that maybe you were thinking of staying. It's obvious that everyone's missed you like hell, and they have since the day you left."
"Jenny, honey…I appreciate your concern. But I've built a new life, for both of us. My business is there, my life…it's there. Your school and your friends, like you said. That's where we belong now."
"Really? Seriously? Or are you just saying that?"
"I'm being totally serious."
"Mom…" Jenny sighed, looking down. She loved L.A., she really did, but a part of her always missed Savannah, and Tree Hill felt a lot more…comfortable, a lot more natural to her than Los Angeles did. She'd fallen apart here, but it seemed so much easier to get herself back together here than it would have been anywhere else.
And her mother was hesitant now, but she knew Peyton could thrive here. She owned her label, she could move it if she wanted to, and she had a family in the form of a group of friends that loved so fiercely that most people could only dream of that kind of complicated affection and loyalty and their determination to work through the past in order to move on with their lives, so that they could stick together forever. Peyton had friends in L.A. – people flocked to Peyton Sawyer, she was pretty and successful and outspoken despite the initial iciness of her exterior. But nothing…no one like she had here had befriended her out in Los Angeles.
Peyton kissed her temple. "I'm going to go put on some comfy clothes and lie down. Come say bye before you leave."
Jenny watched her walk away, frowning. "Mom," she called out when Peyton got about eight steps away.
Her mother turned again. "Yeah, babe?"
She shrugged helplessly. "I just think it's going to hurt. Everyone here will be hurt when you leave them all again…and I think you're going to be hurting more than you'll admit to me."
"Jenny…you are so beautiful in your…your lack of bitterness, your faith in the world. You get hurt, and you close yourself off…but you never give up, you stay hopeful. It reminds me of your dad, and it breaks my heart." She smiled sadly, tilting her head toward the traffic lights she'd painted earlier in the day. "I used to draw those all the time when I was your age, when I lived here. I don't know why. Anger, catharsis, grief, honesty…My mom died when she ran a red light, and that's what started it all. You know what I used to write next to that drawing?" She paused, but Jenny knew she wasn't actually waiting for a response.
"People always leave," Peyton quoted quietly. "And that's the truth. That's life. People leave, and it hurts, but that's how it is. And that's how it's going to be with me."
She turned and walked away, leaving Jenny alone with her luggage, her sadness, and her hope.
Peyton tossed and turned restlessly that night. It was odd to be alone in the apartment, even though Jenny hadn't been there long. She'd hated loneliness as a teenager, loathed it, a fear that stemmed from her mother's death and her father's constant travel. Brooke and boys filled that void for her, spending the night. Brooke got girl talk and silly tradition out of it; the boys got a variation of things depending on who they were and what they meant to her at that particular time, ranging from Nathan, who got sex, and Lucas at some times, when all he got was the simple pleasure of her company. Peyton got to feel safe.
When she moved to Savannah, she had a whole family in her home, a husband and a daughter. When she moved out to L.A., she still had Jenny. Peyton hadn't spent much time alone.
It was for that reason that she quiet knocks on her door startled her. She was wearing a pair of pyjama pants printed with clouds on a pale blue background and a tank top of a similar shade, and she was sure her hair was a mess. Nonetheless, she got up to open the door, sure it was Jenny coming to pick up something she'd forgotten and could not get through the night without.
She opened the mouth with the full intention of berating her daughter for failing to realize that the door would be open and making Peyton get out of bed, but to her great surprise, Lucas Scott stood in front of her, a hesitant, almost boyish expression on his face.
"Hey," he said quietly, his eyes traveling down her body, and Peyton sent a quick thank you to whatever god responsible for the fact that she'd chosen to wear full-length pyjama pants to bed. She'd didn't need Lucas staring at her legs.
"Hi," she replied guardedly, her own eyes hastily searching his face.
"Can I come in?" He asked the question with raised eyebrows and a small smile, as if he knew it was impossible for her to deny him entrance.
He deserved to have the door slammed in his face for that simple fact, but he was right – without having been granted permission from her mind, her body moved, stepping aside and clearing a path for him into her home. She couldn't deny him.
She scrambled for the light switches, illuminating the apartment entirely. She was trying to eliminate anything that could cause further awkwardness: bare legs, the intimacy of darkness…
Lucas looked around curiously. He gazed at the wall on his far left and smirked. "Just Dance? Isn't that the song that's always on the radio?"
Peyton nodded. "That would be the one."
"Always gets stuck in my head…" he muttered, and she had to work hard not to smile.
His eyes drifted further, to the painting she'd done on the opposite wall that morning, giggling with Jenny and eating cereal. "Still drawing that thing, huh?" he asked, his smile private, as though he was comforted, thinking that some things never changed.
She shrugged, unsure of what to say. Some things never change. People said that to you a lot when you up and left and then suddenly reappeared over a decade later. The familiar things were reassurances that they could try and pick up where they left off. The words made Peyton uncomfortable where they healed the hearts of others. So she still didn't lock her door, and she still drew the same stupid pictures, and she still wouldn't let Brooke set her up on blind dates…and she still couldn't say no to Lucas Scott. But things had changed, lots of things, and she felt like she was waiting for the bombshell to drop, for her friends to realize that reentering their past relationship was going to be a struggle, because none of them were kids anymore. They were supposed to be done making mistakes. Everything was harder now.
"People always leave," he said, as though mulling over the thought in his mind. His eyes moved from the painting on the wall to her face. "Well, you proved that one yourself, didn't you?"
Her expression hardened instantly into a glare. "What can I do for you, Lucas?" she asked stiffly.
"I thought we could talk."
She scoffed, though she wasn't entirely sure why. "What about?"
"It's been years, Peyton. There have to be things to say."
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "Did you come here…looking for an explanation?" she asked incredulously. The fucking nerve of him. To think that she had ever loved this boy. To think that she had ever not loved this man.
"No, Peyton…" He held up his hands. "I didn't mean it like that."
"Right."
"Really, I didn't…I just wanted to know how your life is."
"My life is fine, thank you."
Lucas rolled his eyes. "I was hoping for some details."
"Honestly, Luke, I don't really feel like giving you any. I don't understand why you're here."
"Because I wanted to talk to you," he repeated. "We were friends, Peyt."
"God, don't…shorten my name." She took a couple steps back instinctively, shaking her head. Part of her wanted to hug him, like she used to when he was just the boy who stopped by her room to check in on her, but she couldn't.
Lucas looked awkward and out-of-place as he stood there by her door, struggling to throw the conversation into more neutral territory. "How's Jenny doing?"
"She's good. She's fine." Peyton allowed herself a small smile. "She plays ball better than I ever did."
"Yeah?" he asked, grinning. "Good for her. She seems like a good kid. All you."
She laughed lightly, though it was a strangled sound. "I wasn't exactly the best kid ever. She's got other stuff going for her."
Lucas shook his head. "Nah. I know we only met for a second but…she's your daughter, for sure. You were a good kid, Peyton. You were just a little lost."
That made her laugh in earnest. "You say it like I'm not lost now."
The familiar concern of years gone by welled up in his eyes. "Are you?"
She wanted to yell at him, to be cold to him, but she couldn't do it. "What?" she asked again, the serious undertone in her voice coated over by a teasing lilt. "All these years, and you still haven't found a better hobby than saving me?"
Lucas arched an eyebrow, looking at her deeply. "Do you need saving?" he asked, the same question as before but framed more directly.
All of the mirth faded away as she regarded him seriously. "No. Not from you."
Lucas scowled, clearly wounded, but he didn't have any reason to be, and Peyton knew that was a fact. He'd given up his position as her saviour long ago.
"It's late. I think you should go."
"Peyton…"
"Please, Luke. Go home to your family."
"Look, I just want to say –"
"No!" she cried out, holding up her hands with her palms facing him, shielding herself from his words. "I can't do this with you, Lucas. I can't rehash…eight years ago."
"Okay, okay," he said softly, soothingly. "Okay." He took a few steps toward her and she backed up even farther, shaking her head.
"Please go."
And then out of nowhere, out of the blue, he demanded, "Did you tell Brooke you loved me? Back in senior year, before you left."
Peyton closed her eyes. "You don't believe your own wife?"
"Most of the time, yeah, I do. But not when she starts talking about high school declarations while she's jealous of you because you just came back and she thinks that changes things for us."
She let her eyes flutter open and stared at him in confusion. "She just told you?"
"Yeah, she just told me. So why don't you tell me if it's true?"
"That was a very long time ago, Luke."
He stared at her people-always-leave traffic lights on the wall. "Some things don't change," he said softly, aware of how dangerous his words were.
She felt her chest convulse in what was partially a gasp and partially a sob. Those words would always damn her. "Some things sure as hell do," she said pointedly, and they both knew what she was saying.
Lucas nodded, staring at the floor. "Yeah…and you really loved Jake. Even back…even eight years ago. I thought he was gone from your life then, but I guess he wasn't…even though I hear he is now." He looked up on his last words, right into her eyes.
Peyton wanted to scream from the frustration she felt and how much it hurt her. She stalked across the apartment, right past Lucas, her arm brushing his for a millisecond and intensifying everything she was feeling. She opened the door for him and clutched the doorknob desperately. "How know what, Luke? You're right, I did really love him. And you're right, he's not in my life anymore, but I told you, we are not discussing what happened…then. No matter who the hell is in my life or not, Brooke is still in yours." She met his eyes with fierceness in her own green orbs. "And don't you dare forget that."
Lucas stayed still for a moment, and then left without another word, dragging his feet a bit. Peyton didn't look at him again, and slammed the door shut right behind him. She leaned back against it, breathing heavily, and sank down until she hit the floor. She leaned her head back against the hard wood. Something instinctive and certain told her that Lucas was in the same position on the other side of the door. She thought of his mind, in tune with hers, and his body, perfectly in sync with hers, and the two-inch-thick door that separated them from one another.
She wasn't going to cry.
A/N: Reviews make me smile, and write.
