A/N: Backtracking a bit in Austin and Christine's story. Just a moment I felt needed to be told.
Enjoy!
"Chris! Christine! Wait!" He's chasing her; bare feet pound on the pavement. The freezing wind hits him square in the face, takes his breath away, but he keeps going. She's walking away from him, shoulders hunched in her coat.
Everything was going fine. They were sitting in his dorm room, working on homework and making out a little, like they always did when they met up on the weekends. Then it just went silent. Not the comfortable silence of two people working alongside each other and listening to film score playlists on Spotify (Christine's favorite, he didn't get to pick), but the weird, heavy silence when something is about to happen.
I can't do this anymore.
What happened?
What went wrong?
Sure long distance relationships are hard. But they were making it work! They were. As best they could. He would go down to her; she would come up to him. She would cheer him on in his games; he would look for her flying through the air with all the other cheerleaders. They both went to each other's Homecoming weeks and sent each other silly gifts during the stress of finals. It was going well.
What happened?
"Chris, wait!" He finally catches up to her and grabs onto her shoulder. She turns back to face him and her face is wet and tears are falling from her eyes. He doesn't know what to do; just acts on habit and instinct and pulls her to him, wrapping her in a hug.
"No!" she growls, pulling away as fast as the hug started.
"No? Why?" he presses, his brow furrowing.
"I can't do this anymore, Austin! I can't!"
"Is it because of lacrosse? Because I'm always at practice? I'll quit the team. I will! I'll quit the team and we'll fix this. We can fix this," his voice softens and he takes her gloved hands. The soft leather giving his hands a reprieve from the cold.
"No. We can't," she shakes her head again. "This is not fixable." Her voice cracks and tears continue flowing down her face.
"Why?" He whispers, looking down to get her eyes. She looks at him through her eyelashes that are wet with tears, her mascara clumping, but turns away quickly. "You didn't-" he doesn't dare say those words, that would hurt way too much.
"No!" she sighs, laying a palm on his face. "I would never, but who are we kidding? Long distance relationships never make it. They always end in disaster. Maybe we should end things before it all goes to hell." She sniffs and wipes at her eyes, daring to look at him again.
"But we won't!" Austin isn't going to let this end without a fight. Maybe Christine is, but he won't "We'll be the ones who change that! We'll break the curse! We can make this work, Chris," she's looking away from him again and he tries meeting her eyes but she isn't having it. "Can't we?" Now he's starting to doubt it, himself, everything.
"We gave it a good try," her nose and cheeks are bright red and all he wants to do his hold her close and make everything stop. "But it just wasn't meant to be."
And with one more kiss on the cheek, Christine turns and starts down the sidewalk again.
And Austin doesn't stop her.