A/N: Hey there! So I saw that a few people thought that Jacquelyn's actions at the lake where excessive, let me try to explain. It all make sense to me, because I'm in Jacquelyn's head. Firstly, she was never contemplating suicide. The rope swing was just an escape from the noise in her head. Honestly, she just needed quiet. I had written her surfacing on her own, but Darry saving her seemed fluffier. As far as her overreacting, think about her character. She goes out of her way to help everyone she meets, and now she can't help someone who really needs her help. Not just anyone, her father. It kinda stings. Anyhow, just some food for thought and stuff. Anyways, thanks for the reviews and all that jazz. I love reading them in my email. It makes me smile. So keep reviewing.

The next morning, she woke up sneezing. She groaned and she fell back against the pillow; sniffling as she did. From beside her, she heard a chuckle that vibrated the bed. The brunette pulled the pillow over her face and groaned again. The chuckle morphed into a full laugh, and she felt Darry roll over and press his lips to her shoulder. She mumbled something under the pillow, and he continued to laugh. Feed up with his laughing, she tossed the pillow at his head.

"Tea or coffee?" he asked as he rolled out of bed. She sneezed again. "Tea."

The brunette rolled over onto her stomach and folded her arms under her forehead. Sick was something that she didn't get. She hated being sick. Hopefully, it wouldn't last too long. Hopefully, it would just roll over and she'd be fine later.

When she heard footsteps approaching the bedroom, she buried her head under the sheet. She really didn't want to be the butt of Darry's jokes at the moment. However, she realized that there footsteps didn't belong to Darry, they were much too light.

"Jac?"

The brunette poked her head from under the blankets to see a sad eyed Sodapop Curtis. She then pulled the pillow from Darry's side of the bed and placed it behind her as she sat up. When she'd completed her action, Soda handed her the steaming cup of tea that he'd been holding. He then picked up the pillow from the floor and placed it on the bed.

"Thank you," she muttered before sipping on the beverage in her hands. "You wanna talk?"

"That's why I came to you," Soda told her. "But if you aren't feeling up to it…"

"Nonsense!" she exclaimed as she patted the spot on the bed beside her. "Have a seat, kid."

Soda lazily moved onto the bed and relaxed back into the pillow behind her. She watched him from the corner of her eye as he pulled a letter from his pocket. His sad eyes were trained to the return address, with a frown on his face. Patiently, she sipped on her tea as she waited for him to speak. Instead, he just kept turning the letter over in his hands. "Sorry, I'm just not really sure where to start."

"The beginning is fine," she told him, before she sneezed. As she spoke, Darry poked his head into the room, his eyebrow arched at the sight before him. "What's up?"

"I'm gonna go put in a few hours at the site," he told her as he leaned against the doorframe. "You need anything?" The brunette shook her head and held up the cup of tea, in a silent thank you, he bowed his head in acceptance of her thank you. "Soda, don't stay too long."

"Be careful," she called after him in a singsong voice.

"Yeah, yeah," he said as he started down the hallway.

After the door closed, Jacquelyn turned her eyes over to Soda, who seemed to be lost in thought. "So the beginning."

A sad smile played on his lips. "You remember my girlfriend, Sandy?" he questioned. Jacquelyn bit her lip as she thought back. "Blond, blue eyes, real sweet girl," he described. The brunette nodded. She vaguely remembered her. "Well, she got pregnant." The cup of tea almost slipped form her fingers, but before she could scold the young man sitting next to her he shook his head. "It ain't mine. She'd been cheating on me." Jacquelyn frowned. What type of woman would it take to cheat on Soda? "Anyways, she moved to Florida, to live with her Grandma. She wrote me and said that she'd miscarried."

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"It's fine, it wasn't mine," he said angrily.

"Why are you so upset about it if it wasn't yours?" She coughed and rubbed the back of her hand over her nose.

"I was gonna marry her, Jac. When she told me, I was ready to marry her. Then she told me that it wasn't mine, and I still wanted to marry her."

Jacquelyn's eyebrow lifted. "Why?"

"Because I loved her," he stated as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. "I loved her so much that I was willing to look past all her faults," he rambled. "I was gonna marry her and she went and fucked some other guy."

"Soda, love is a two-way street," she told him. "They gotta love you back. You can love someone as much as you want, and you can love them 'til it hurts, but it only works if they love you back."

"What if everyone's not as luck as you?" Soda questioned, anger still in his voice.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Not everyone is as lucky as you and Darry," he said again. "Not everyone can just find someone that loves them as much as they do. There aren't a lot of girls like you, Jac. There aren't a lot of girls that want to be with someone without wanting anything in return."

Jacquelyn put the cup of tea on the bedside table and cleared her throat. "So then you keep looking for a girl like that." Soda scoffed. "What did her letter say?" she questioned as she pointed at it. She turned and sneezed into her elbow.

"That she had miscarried. That she realized what a mistake she'd made when she cheated on me, and that she wants to come back and try again, us being together." Soda looked over at the brunette next to him, and all the anger in his eyes melted away. "What I am supposed to do? Jac, I love this girl, but she broke my heart." He looked over her head. "What am I supposed to tell her?"

"Do you want her to come back?" she questioned.

"Yes."

"Is it a good idea for her to come back? I mean, do you think that she'll do the same thing or something different?"

"Do I think she'll cheat on me again?" Soda questioned as his eyes focused on her. Jacquelyn nodded. "Yeah, I do."

"Can you handle that? Knowing that every time you see her, you'll think she was cheating?"

"No." He was quiet for a while. "I love her, but I don't want her to come back. It'll hurt too much."

Jacquelyn settled back into the pillows before coughing into her forearm. "Well, tell her how you feel, but then tell her that you don't want her to come back because it won't be the same or because it won't work."

Soda was quiet for a long moment. "When you left, Darry was a wreck," he started out of nowhere. "I know that there were a lot of factors that went into that breakup, but he was a wreck. He would watch the phone, and start writing letters to you, and then just ball them up and throw them in the trash. One day, I read them, just to see. They all said something along the lines of, 'Jacquelyn, I'm sorry'. Then he'd throw them away. He was alone. His friends stopped talking to him. There was something missing from him. Whatever it was that made him human was gone. He was just a shadow of who he used to be for the longest. Then I guess he just got used to it." Soda shrugged.

"Why are you telling me this?" Jacquelyn asked.

"Because we you came back," he started, "he started to be himself again. You were missing. Without you Darry is just a rule following, strict, hard ass." Jacquelyn chuckled. "He's been more himself since you've been here."

"What does that have to do with you and Sandy?" she questioned as she looked over into his brown eyes.

"Hmm?" Soda hummed. "Nothing, I guess. I just, I'm glad that you came back, that's all." Jacquelyn lowered her eyebrows at him as he sat beside her. "Well, I don't want her to be my only view of love. I don't want every time I see a girl that makes my heart race, for my thoughts to go to her. I don't want her to be the only person I ever loved."

"You don't want her to define love for you?" she asked attempting to clarify his words.

"I don't want her to ruin love for me. You and I both know that Darry would never love someone like he loves you." The brunette shrugged as she looked at him. "I don't want her to be the only person I love. It was good for a first love, until I found out she was cheating on me. But I know that there's someone else for me, that's not her." Soda was quiet for a long moment, before clearing his throat. He looked awful embarrassed. "So just tell her that I'm done being sad over her. That she messed up. I can't tell her not to come here, but I don't want to see her," he said in an attempt to steer the conversation from the depths of his thoughts and back to the surface.

"Are you done being sad over her?"

Soda sat looking into her hazel eyes, as if the answer were there, for a long time. He then turned his gaze downward and sighed. "I think so. I'm ready to just get over her. There's so many girls here, beautiful ones, and every time I see them, my chest hurts and I just get angry."

"Closure."

"What?"

"Write the letter for closure," she told him. "Tell her how you feel and how she hurt you. You never got to tell her that, so tell her. When you send it, you should feel better."

"What if I don't?" he asked as he wrung the letter in his hands.

"You will." The young man sat next to her without saying anything verbally, but she knew that there was something that he wanted to ask her. "What's on your mind?" she questioned as she grabbed her warm tea cup.

"How did it happen?" Soda asked as she brought the cup of tea to her lips. When she arched her eyebrow for clarification. "How did y'all break up?"

"He didn't tell you?" she questioned.

"He just said that he regretted what happened, but what was done was done," he told her. Jacquelyn was quiet for a moment. "You don't have to tell me."

"No, I was just trying to remember."

The brunette climbed to the top of the stands at The University of Tulsa's football stadium. The wind tangling in her dark brown hair as she walked up to the man sitting in the stands. She sat beside him gently and placed her backpack on the ground next to her feet. Her hazel eyes looked over the football field in front of her. The lines were from the first game were still there. The numbers on the yard lines were still perfect on the field.

"I thought that I'd find you here," she said.

"Yeah."

The breeze tousled her hair as it blew by. "You know you can't detach yourself from society." He looked over at her pointedly. "I mean, you can't stop living because you lose someone."

"They were my parents, Jacquelyn! My fucking parents. I think I have the right to morn." The girl flinched at his works. She hadn't meant that he didn't have the right to morn. "What does it matter to you?"

Jacquelyn looked hurt. "I loved your parents too," she told him.

"They weren't your parents. You still have your parents," he spat.

The brunette through her hands in the air. "My family is falling apart. My father is having an affair, and my mother won't speak to me."

"At least you still have your father."

She realized that she wasn't going to get anywhere with him in this argument. He was right, though. She did still have her family. "What can I do?"

"What do you mean?"

"What can I do to help you?"

"Nothing."

They were quiet again. Her light eyes watching him. His elbows were on his knees and his chin was cradled in his hands. His blue-green eyes focused out on the field in front of them. She pulled her sweater closer to her body as another breeze blew through the stadium.

"I can't do this," he told her quietly. She looked over at him, hoping that this was him opening up to her. However, when she did she saw that it was the exact opposite. He was looking away from her as he spoke.

"What can't you do?" she question slowly, afraid of the answer.

"I can't have you-"

She pushed away from him and stood up. "No, you're just saying that. You're just saying that because you're frustrated and confused. You don't mean that."

"Jacquelyn," he called to her without looking at her. However, the way that he said her name willed her to look at him.

"No."

"Jacquelyn."

"No!"

For some reason, she felt as if she said it louder then he would stop trying to say what he wanted to say. He didn't mean it. He couldn't have meant it. She'd been trying all week to get to him and to talk to him and to be there for him. And now he was just gonna do this?

The girl grabbed her backpack and turned away from him. He then reached out and grabbed her arm, turning her to face him. When she looked up into his cobalt eyes, she could see that this wasn't what he wanted. This was the last thing that he wanted. Yet, he was doing it. The brunette felt his thumb run across her cheek, brushing away tears that she didn't even know she'd been crying.

"Don't," she begged as she looked down at the space between them.

Darry exhaled slowing. His heart aching. This was so far from what he wanted. There were plans for them. He wanted to marry her. He wanted her to be a part of his life. However, that life, the life they would have lived together, was gone now. He had to make a new one, and he didn't quiet see how she was going to fit into it. He'd tried to place her in, but ever choice seemed to lead to ruining her life. He couldn't do that to her.

"Jacquelyn, please. It's hard enough."

The brunette rocked back on her heels and pushed her dark hair from her eyes. "You need me, and I need you. Especially right now. Everything is falling apart. We need each other."

"I need to focus on my family," he told her. "I can't drag you down into this."

Jacquelyn nodded; she understood, but she didn't want to. "Say it."

Darry looked down into her hazel eyes, he ran his hand over his face. "Don't make me do that," he told her.

"I need you to say it," she told him.

Darry was quiet for a long moment. He touched her waist and she crumbled into his chest. Her hands fisting against the fabric of his shirt. His arms wrapping around her waist. He hadn't expected it to be like this. He'd honestly expected to tell her and then watch her walk away. He hadn't expected her to fight with him or cling to him. He didn't expect it to be this hard. He didn't expect to cling to her this way. He took a small step back and lifted her chin. He swept her tears from her cheeks and his blue-green eyes met her wet hazel ones. He inhaled slowly, taking in the citrus scent that always accompanied her. "Jacquelyn, I have to break up with up."

She noted how it wasn't 'I want to break up with you'. It was have. He had to break up with her. For some reason, she felt a little better about it. He didn't want to. She twisted out of his grasp, and let go of his shirt as she nodded. She took a step back and turned away from him. "Oh," she said quietly. "I guess this works out."

"What do you mean?" he replied in an equally quiet voice.

"I was coming to tell you that my mother wants to move us back to Wisconsin. She thinks that taking him away from the mistress will change things. I was coming to talk to you about how we were gonna do this long distance thing, but it's a non-issue now." She turned back to him and kissed him softly. Savoring what was more than likely going to be their last kiss. "I'll leave you my number and address so you can call if you need anything. I'm always here for you."

The brunette drifted off to sleep a few minutes after Soda left the room. He said that he hadn't imagined it going down that way. When she asked how he thought had happen, he shrugged and said that he was sure that there was some yelling involved. She laughed. She hadn't every really thought about yelling at him. Although she was no longer particularly intimidated by Darry's size, she wasn't about you yell at a man that size. She flashed him a smile when he stood up, saying that Darry told him not to stay for too long. The brunette dismissed him and told him that she was here if he needed anything. He smiled, ruffled her hair, and then left the room.

When she woke up, it was almost two. She groaned and rolled over. She wasn't feeling all that bad anymore. Her throat felt better and she wasn't sneezing as much. The brunette ran her fingers through her hair, in an attempt to have it do something other than look a mess, as she stood up and made her way out of the bedroom. She stopped by the bathroom, and grabbed placed toothpaste on her toothbrush, because she just could go another second without cleaning her teeth. She entered the living room to see Darry in his recliner with the paper in his hands and Soda and Steve playing cards at the living room table.

"What are you doing, Jacquelyn?" Darry said without looking up from the paper.

"Joining the world of the living," she told him through the toothpaste foaming in her mouth.

"That's a cute look for you, Ross," Steve told her with a smirk on his face.

"Only for you, Stevie boy," she shoot back.

Before Steve could respond, Soda had launched a handful of cards at him in frustration. Soda crossed her arms over his chest before tossing another handful of cards at him. "You're cheating!" Soda accused. "Cheating, Steve." Steve laughed fully at the accusation. "'S not funny."

Jacquelyn turned on her heel and made her way back to the bathroom to rid herself of the toothpaste in her mouth. She then rinsed her mouth and made her way back to the living room. Steve and Soda were rolling on the floor, wrestling, as Soda accused continued to accuse him of cheating.

"Dare?" Jacquelyn looked over her shoulder at Ponyboy, who she hadn't actually heard from all day. Ponyboy looked up at her, as Darry looked over the newspaper in front of him. "You should take a brush to that mane." Jacquelyn scoffed as she turned on her heel and stormed away from the boys. Darry laughed at her retreat before acknowledging Ponyboy.

"Better?" the brunette growled when she reappeared.

"Much," came Ponyboy's reply as he looked over at her.

The brunette sat down on the arm of the recliner as she ran her fingers through her dark hair. Darry shifted in the chair and she slipped from the arm and on to his lap. The bend of her knees over one arm of the chair and her back pressed against the other.

"So Ponyboy wants to learn to drive," Darry told her as he brought the paper back up in front of his eyes.

"Really?" the brunette asked, her hazel eyes excited. However, after a moment, she frowned. "Why are you telling me?" Steve and Soda chuckled, and the brunette looked at them from the side of the newspaper. "Darry?"

"Well, I was thinking that you could teach him. You have patience of a saint," Darry mused as he turned the page. The chuckling between the two seventeen year-olds increased. "Patience of a saint," Darry repeated.

The brunette rolled her light eyes and leaned back, her shoulder against Darry chest. He chuckled and the sound vibrated her arm. "Fine," she told him. Steve and Soda stopped laughing and Darry lowered the newspaper. Ponyboy's grey eyes brightened as he looked at her. "I'll teach him, but we are using your truck."

Darry looked down at her, his eyebrow arched. "Well played, Miss. Ross. Well played."

A/N: So did anyone happen to catch the book quote? I figured that Darry needed to have heard it from someone. Hope you enjoyed.