Jesse popped his head threw the hole in the floor of the tree house and spotted Suze sitting in front of the cork board. Since they had put up the map of Europe they had added a variety of different things such as different foods they were going to try and specific spots that they were going to see. The best part of the board was the pictures that they had taken and put on there. Jesse could tell that she was looking at one specific picture, a picture of the two of them sitting in a bucket on the Ferris wheel at a carnival when they were 13, before everything had changed.

"Hey." He said as he climbed in. She jumped and turned around. Her eyes were red and most of her make up had washed away. She wiped her cheeks and turned back to the cork board. "Sorry I didn't mean to scare you."

"It's ok. It's your tree house." She said wrapping her arms tightly around her tiny waist. He looked around the place and sighed.

"Jeez. It's been a while. I remember it being a lot bigger before." She smiled and nodded her head.

"Do you come up here often?" She asked making direct eye contact.

"No. I haven't been up here since…"his voice faded and she looked away. She inhaled deeply and let out a shaky breath.

"I should go." She said and crawled towards the hole.

"No. Please…stay." He said reaching out and gently grabbing her arm. She looked at him with shock and he let go. "It's just…well we haven't talked in a really long time. Years actually." He looked back up at her. "Please?" She debated it for a second and then sat back, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging them. They sat in silence and he felt like an idiot. He asked her to stay and couldn't think of anything to say. He sighed and rubbed his face. Her sudden chuckling broke the silence and he smiled at her. "What?"

"I was just…remember those stupid friendship bracelets that I talked you into making?" She said.

"Yea we braided them. Mine was black and yellow and yours was pink and white."

"Big surprise there! Everything I owned was pink." She said with a chuckle. "Big change now. Everything I own is black." She smiled and then it faded.

"I, uh, think I still have mine." He said and she looked up at him with amusement.

"You do?"

"Yea. I put it…in here!" He squinted at the bookshelf and crawled over to it. He pulled a little wooden box off the top shelf and blew the dust off. He brushed the rest of the dust off and the tiny pink heart that was painted on top of the box appeared. He smiled and lifted the lid. Sure enough the bracelet was sitting on top of a bunch of other things that he had kept.

"Is that the box I gave you for your birthday?" she said scooting closer to him and he smiled.

"Yea, the one that all my friends made fun of me for."

"Friends! Ha! They were no friends." She said bitterly as she leaned over and looked in the box.

"What? They were good friends?" He said and she looked at him with an "Are you serious?" expression.

"Where were they when you got locked in the girl's bathroom at school? Or when you were failing math and decided to study for it at 10 o'clock at night?" She raised her eyebrows and he smiled at her.

"Ok. Let's be fair though. They weren't as good of a friend as you are…were." Her smile faltered and she sighed.

"Let's see what we have in this box of secrets." She said snatching the box from his hands before he could stop her. She pulled out the bracelet and smiled at she studied it. Then she squeezed it onto her wrist and pulled of the next item.

"Oh my! You kept these too?" She said as she unfolded all the drawings and letters that they had made for each other, well all the drawings that she had made for him. "I never knew you were such a pack rat!" She said looking sideways at a drawing she had given him. She shrugged and put it in the pile beside her.

"I kept pretty much everything." He said with a smile. She looked at him briefly, giving him an expression that he couldn't read and then continued on, picking out birthday cards, letters and a pink shiny rock. He remembered her tiny voice say "so you'll never forget me" as she put the rock in his hands, when they were 9. At the bottom of the box was a folded up piece of paper. She stopped moving and he knew that she knew what it was.

"This one's my favorite." He whispered and took it out. He unfolded it and laid it out for both of them to see.

It was a drawing of Suze and Jesse as stick people. Behind them was the Eiffel tower and the ocean. In front of the ocean was a huge house that they would live in. Next to Jesse was a little boy with blonde hair and next to Suze was a little girl with dark brown pig tails. This was the future that they had planned, a huge house on the beach, in Paris, with two kids. She sighed and he looked at her. With tears in her eyes, all the familiar feelings rushed back to him and all he wanted to do was take the pain away and make it better.

"We drew that they day before my dad died, remember?" She said wiping away the falling tears. He looked down and remembered that he had added the kids because she had to leave early for supper. That was the last day that they had fun together.

"We were 14." He said.

"First week of high school." She sighed. Jesse remembered waking up at 2 in the morning to the sound of rocks hitting his window. When he finally managed to open it he looked down and saw a grief stricken Suze in her pink night gown, crying and shaking in the cold September breeze. She told him to meet her in the tree house. He remembered climbing down and seeing flashing lights outside of her house and seeing an ambulance drive away.

When he had climbed into the tree house she was sitting on her cushion, looking out the window at her house, her knees up at her chest and she hugged them tightly. Then she said those 3 words that he would never forget. Those 3 words that meant the end of life as they knew it; my dad's dead. He had wrapped her in his thin arms and she had cried into his chest.

"This probably wasn't a good idea." She said pulling him from his memories. She placed everything back in the box and closed the lid. She looked down at her wrist and sighed before she started to take the bracelet off. He grabbed her shaky hand and felt the fabric of his bracelet around her wrist. She stopped moving and her eyes met eyes, nervously shifting from eye to eye.

"Suze…I understand." He said. "I didn't then, but I do now."

"How…How could you? You're dad is still…is lying in there fast asleep." She cried as she pointed to his house. "You wake up every morning to a happy household. You don't have a mother who drinks every night and a little brother who wakes up to the task of cleaning up his mother's vomit from the night before. You don't have two brothers who abandoned you because they couldn't handle it. How do you know? How?" She was sobbing now. He moved closer and as he had 4 years ago, wrapped his arms around her and she cried into his chest.

"I'm sorry." He whispered. "Sh…it's ok."

"No. It'll never be ok. It will never be the same." She whispered back.

"Oh course it will. You'll see." He smiled. "I'll make sure of it. You want to find a shoe box and glue macaroni noodles and sparkles to the outside?" He asked. She shook her head and smiled up at him. This was when he noticed how truly close she was. He noticed how glossy her eyes were, and how the tip of her nose was red, and that she sill had a small cluster of freckles on her nose and cheeks. He also noticed how soft her lips were and how close they were to his.

"I'm sorry." He whispered again and then his mouth met hers for the first time in 4 years. He felt her hesitate at first and then she melted and kissed him back. She was the one who made the next move. As the kiss deepened she sat up straighter and climbed onto his lap, straddling him and pulling his head closer to hers, running her fingers through his hair. He pulled her closer and ran his hands under her shirt and felt the smooth skin on her back. She broke the kiss and looked down at him. She studied his face for what seemed like years before she kissed him again, this time softer, gentler. It didn't take long for their clothes to be shed and to be rolling around on the floor of the tree house.

Afterwards they laid side by side on the floor. She rested her head on his chest and watched his chest rise and fall with each breath. She traced her fingers along the indents of her toned muscles and smiled at the euphoric feeling swept over her. He gently stroked her back and listened to the sounds of the leaves rustling in the wind.

"Funny." She said with a sigh. "I never thought I'd be in this…position again." She said looking up at him with a smile.

"It was…different this time than it was the last time, huh?" he said remembering the first time they had both lost their virginity.

"We were are older now." She said a smile crept onto her lips. "And you've slept with every girl at school."

"Not every girl." He shrugged. "Just a lot of them."

"Ew!" She cringed and he chuckled. She rolled over and looked at him. Her long black hair fell over her face and she had to hold it back to keep it out of the way. He loved the way she looked at that moment. Happy and carefree with crazy sex hair. "Uh…I'm not going to catch anything am I? Because that's totally gross!" She said in her valley girl impression. She laughed and he pulled her onto his chest tightly.

"Very funny, Susannah. I forgot that you had a sense of humor." She smiled down at him and he lifted his head and kissed her. She pulled back, after lingering a moment and studied his face for the second time that night.

"Very different." She said with a sigh and he wondered if that was good or bad.

"We were really young." He defended.

"And I was an emotional wreck. You really took advantage of my emotional state." She said with a smile, as she bit her bottom lip.

"Me? You practically jumped me before I even got into the tree house." He teased as he tickled her side and she squealed and pulled away. She laughed as she sat back against the wall and then she went silent.

"So…what now?" She asked and he sighed. Always with the "what now's?" Why couldn't girls just live in the moment instead of worrying about what was to come in the future.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"I mean…everything goes back to normal, right?" She said turning away from him. He got a flashback of that first night they had been together. She had don't exactly the same thing, pushed him away and pretended that nothing had happened.

"Suze…"He reached out to touch her arm, but she moved it away. "Is that what you want? To go back to normal?" He asked.

"I think…that it's best." She whispered and he sighed with frustration.

"Fine!" He grabbed his pants and pulled them on. "I can deal with that. But I'd like to point out that it's you who is turning me down and pushing me away." He said, meeting her eyes.

"Jesse, I'm sorry." She said with a sigh. "I just don't see how-" he held up a hand and she stopped speaking.

"Don't! You know every girl I have ever been out with has never been good enough. There's always something wrong with her. I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized it's because I've been waiting for you to wake up and get a fucking clue! But I won't fool myself any longer. Good luck in life Susie. I hope you find someone who is truly worth your time." He snapped up his shirt off the ground and climbed down the tree. She didn't call him back. She didn't make a sound. She just let him go.

When she heard his back door slam closed she let the tears fall. She curled up in a ball and cried. Why didn't he understand? It would never work between them. He was popular and she wasn't. He was from a normal family and she wasn't. She was juts trying to save them the humiliation and the heart ache that would come with being a couple. Why didn't he understand this?

20 minutes later she started climbing down the ladder. She took one last look at the cork board and sighed. She had tacked their drawing of the future on to the board before she had gotten dressed. She sighed and then climbed down, leaving their safe little haven to the real world.