Epilogue part 3

Ok so sue me. I took the easy way out. I ran.

I didn't even know he was in town, which was odd considering how everybody in this tiny town knew everybody's business. I'm sure one of my friends would have thought to have mentioned it.

My mind was overflowing with all the thoughts I had been holding back about Romeo in the last few years. Getting over Romeo was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and I never let myself think of him.

The short time I was with Paul, I was mad at Romeo, and I still was for a long time afterward. When I got back to Verone, in the gap between Yale and St Martins, I tried to look for him, to talk things out and maybe get some closure. I tried to ask around to find out where he went to school, but nobody really knew. Ben told me he went to school somewhere in Europe and didn't offer up any more information. He told me I chose Paul, obviously not knowing we weren't together anymore, and advised me not to look for Romeo, telling me I'd only end up hurting us both when I went back to Paul.

After coming back from school in London, I knew everyone else would be coming home then too, including Romeo. I waited for him to come back so we could talk about things, because as much as I wanted to hate him, any thoughts I had about Romeo weren't bad ones. But none of that mattered anyway because he didn't come back.

I wondered around town anxiously for a few days waiting to 'run' into him but it never happened. After psyching myself up I went to speak to one of his friends. Gabrielle, one of the most approachable, told me as far as she knew he was travelling and not planning to come back any time soon. It was then that I lost hope. If he wanted to be with me he would have contacted me by now, surely hearing the news that me and Paul weren't together. He had clearly moved on with his life, and I needed to move on too. I went out on a few dates, even some really great ones, but however hard I tried I couldn't help compare them to Romeo. I would sit there thinking about what Romeo would say to that, or if Romeo would like something. As hard as I tried I couldn't get him out of my head. Eventually I realised I couldn't live like this and forced myself not to think about him. Whenever I thought about Romeo I would push the thought out my mind. It helped to focus on my life and my music. I had convinced myself it was all for the better, and this was how things were meant to be.

It was about a year later, and after not thinking of him for that long, I was making up for it now. My mind was creating so many thoughts at the same time, I couldn't keep up.

"Lee…" he whispered just as low as I had but I heard him. My stomach flopped at the sound of my old nickname. "How have you been?"

"Good," I replied. Was he seriously not going to address the fact that we were standing in front of each other for the first time in years. "What about you?" I asked him avoiding the situation just like him, unable to ask him what I really wanted to know.

"Fine," he said.

We stood there for a few more seconds just looking at each other before I couldn't handle it anymore.

"Wh...What are you doing here?" I asked croakily, a result of my throat going dry the second he came into view.

"I'm in town visiting Mom, Dad and Iz. I fly to New York tomorrow," he said and I nodded. "I didn't exactly have time to plan what to say."

"Romeo…" I said trying to urge him to say what he came here to say because I couldn't handle the silence anymore.

"I ran into Nala and Paul and they mentioned you'd be here," he said and I nodded.

So he wasn't actually trying to find me. Paul and Nala said I'd be here, and he thought he'd pop over and say hi?

"I still think about you," he said, taking a step closer, and on instinct I took a step back.

"You can't just come here and tell me you still think about me!" I said my voice, turning loud in the empty room, which had previously contained whispers. He jumped, not expecting the sudden outburst It was all too much in the short space of time. Ok, fine I had been looking for him, but it wasn't so I could jump into where we left off, regardless of how I felt he still hurt me. And it wasn't like he changed his mind now and came looking for me. If Nala and Paul hadn't offered up the information on where I was, I would still be spending my evening watching the little mermaid with Eden.

"It's been four years," I said. I was partially aware that my hands were beginning to shake. "You can't just tell me you've been thinking about me! So what? You just started thinking of me now? It's not like you came here looking for me Romeo, if you hadn't run into Nala and Paul, you wouldn't be here right now!"

"Lee," he said looking upset, and reaching out toward me. "I wanted to come before."

"Then what the hell was stopping you?" I said with a new fire in my voice. I was sick of being strung along by everyone. These past few years I had finally taken charge of my life, and I wasn't going to stop now.

"I didn't know about you and Paul," he said, looking at my face to try and figure out what I was thinking, but I'm pretty sure my face was expressionless. I knew exactly what he was referring to without him explaining.

"Everybody knew about me and Paul not staying together," I said, thinking that was a bad excuse to why he hadn't contacted me until now. Me and Paul kept up pretences until Nala became pregnant, and we had to tell our parents. Soon enough the whole town new, it was the hot gossip for a while, 'Carl Prince's son, gets a girl pregnant whilst engaged to Michael Capulet's daughter!' I guess in a way, Paul did end up taking the fall for me whether he intended to or not.

"I didn't. I was only in contact with a few people while I was away and I told them not to mention you."

I'm sure he saw the unstoppable hurt expression on my face because he said, "Not because I didn't want to think about you, because it hurt too much to think that you hated me and were with Paul."

I nodded.

"I have to go," I rushed out, thinking it was the only logical thing to say right now. He reached out toward me again, and I took another step back before his hand could make contact with my skin.

And that was when I ran. The mature thing to do would have been to stay and talk things out with Romeo. But I was in no way prepared to have that conversation right then, especially since I didn't even know what I thought.

X x x x x x

Ben POV

I dropped the box of my old stuff I didn't want to take with me to New York by the garbage, and was about to turn and go inside when I saw a glimpse of red next door.

I climbed over the fence from my back yard into Rose's, the action feeling like second nature to me after doing it so often throughout out childhood, despite not having done it for four years. I started walking over to the gigantic rock that she was sitting on with her back to me, not having noticed me yet.

As much as I didn't want to admit it, not seeing Rose every day for the past four years was harder than I thought. It felt wrong not to be able to just pop over whenever I just wanted to hang out, or call her when I needed some advice. Relationship stuff aside, we had been best friends for the majority of our lives. Even though I could have easily called her while I was away at college, after the way we had left things, I needed to distance myself from it all, and knowing we both needed some time to figure things out. By the time I finished college, three years had gone by and it felt weird to randomly call her after we had spent all this time without contacting each other.

In the three months I was home, after college, I was expecting to see her every time I looked out of my bedroom window in her back yard. It was weird to be home without her. I had become accustomed to having her around. I heard from my Mom that after college she went straight to go and live with her Dad in Chicago. It felt crazy not to have any idea what was going on in her life.

She had always had a great relationship with her Dad and when her parents got divorced, it made her relationship with her Mom, worse especially as she partly blamed her Mom for fighting for a one sided custody agreement and her Dad moving 2,016 miles away. It didn't help that her little sister and her Mom got on so well considering she was too young to remember anything else. She had lost her partner in crime. She saw her Dad once every few months, and I knew she looked forward to those weekends even as she got older and didn't want to admit it, and now that she was eighteen and had a say in her parents' custody agreement, she could finally go and live with him. I knew it wasn't likely that she would ever move back. She had no reason to.

The last few weeks had been amazing. When me and Romeo arrived home, I had no idea she would be down visiting her Mom and sister at the same time. I was sitting the dining table being force fed by my mother who was convinced that I hadn't been eating enough while I was away, when Rose burst into the kitchen from the back door like she always did, to give back a dish her Mom had borrowed.

She had cut her hair. That was the first thing I had noticed. Her long fiery red locks that were once her signature look had been cut short to just above her shoulders. She looked different, but she was still Rosie. Later when I asked her about it she told me she needed a fresh start, and needed to find herself. She thought about dying it too but didn't want to lose herself completely along the way. Even though I was back in Verone, I knew I wasn't home again until I'd seen her. That day in the kitchen, something was new. She had this glow surrounding her, which I later dubbed as happiness. Being back with her for the last month, had felt exactly the same as before, as if the last four years hadn't happened, and we hadn't lost touch. Neither of us mentioned what happened before we went to college and we just went back to being friends. As awkward as that sounds, it really wasn't. It reminded me why we were friends in the first place.

"Hey," I said, sitting down beside her.

"Hi," she said smiling, and brushing her bangs out of her eyes.

"Whatcha doing out here?" I asked her. We used to spend a lot of time out here on the rock, whether it was doing homework or just hanging out, but the only time when we did it alone, and just staring into space, it usually meant something was wrong.

"Just getting some air," she said pulling her legs up and hugging her knees to her.

"From your Mom?" I asked her.

"Surprisingly, no. We've actually been getting on better since I moved in with Dad," she said smiling.

"That's great," I told her.

"So finished packing?" she asked before I could ask any more.

"Just about," I said. She nodded and started picking at the edge of her shoes.

This was the first silence we had had in the month, both of us filled with stories of college and travelling for the other. It was times like this that I wish I could hear what she was thinking. The old Rose would have just come out with it, and I wouldn't even need to ask.

"So when do you head back?" I asked her, breaking the silence.

"I'm thinking I'll head back on Tuesday, and go back to work early. I have a few things to catch up on, and I need to sort out the house before Dad and Marcia get back from the Bahamas in a couple of weeks," she said. For some reason I got a weird feeling in the back of my throat, about her leaving Verone, even though technically I was leaving too.

"God, 'head back to work early', we've really grown up haven't we?" I said laughing. There was no way I could imagine us having this conversation four years ago.

"We sure have," she said smiling weakly, and playing with a bracelet on her wrist. "I just always thought we'd be in each other's lives when we did."

I stopped laughing, and didn't know what to say. I felt the guilt of not talking to her up until now and not even mentioning it when we saw each other again. Even though she didn't call me either, I knew the decision of it all was pretty much down to me. I knew from seeing her again that I was still totally in love with her, nothing had changed. But I also knew from this last month how much exactly our friendship meant to me, and I'd rather not lose that. And besides, everything seemed to be going well. I didn't want to mention what happened before, I mean people grow up and things change. Maybe she realised she didn't actually like me at all. She had definitely changed in the last four years. Just from hanging out with her and the gang, I could see that she no longer felt the need to be the centre of attention, and she was acting more like the 'Rose' I knew and she normally kept hidden from everyone else.

"Rose…"

"It's ok," she said.

"No it's not. I'm sorry for not –"

"Ben, seriously its fine I fully understand we both needed some time," she said, understandably. "I just—", she started but stopped. "Nevermind…"

"No, go on," I urged her.

"This last month has been so great hanging out again. But now when you go to New York, and I go back to Chicago, is it all going to go back to how it was before? Just not talking to each other again?" she asked, looking doubtful of what my answer would be. So that was what she was worried about. That I would move away and we would both go back to our perspective lives, and just pretend the other didn't exist again. There was no way I could just cut her out of my life after seeing her again and I didn't want to.

"Rose, we're friends and nothing's going to change that," I assured her.

"Promise?" she said warily.

"Pinky promise," I said holding out my little finger, like we used to when we were young.

She smiled softly and linked her finger onto mine.

Review! With your thoughts on what happened!