Hey guys! I know, I've had you waiting, I'm sorry…

It took me a little while to write this new chapter because almost none of what's in it was in the show.

This is my take on what I think happened in Hershey with Lea and her family. Since the show only told us that Lea and her brother were trying to "save the shop" but ended up "tanking it, along with their relationship", I tried to work with that and basically fill in the blanks, my way, not just about what happened to the shop, but also about other things.

I hope you like it!

2,424 miles, 3900 km

2,424 miles, 2 planes, 1 bus, a night in a hotel, and exhaustion from traveling and overthinking, but she was finally in the place where she was born, and was ready to embark on the adventure of her life, the one for which she basically had left everything.

She grabbed her things, got a taxi and went to her parent's house. It was the exact same house she left years ago to go to college, it was like time never passed through there, it was like that every time she'd visit.

She smiled and got off the taxi after paying the driver, walked to the front door of the house and took a deep breath before ringing the doorbell. She wasn't sure what her parents reaction would be but, there she was, there was no going back.

Her dad opened the door a minute later and looked at her like in shock, just surprised to see her there after so long. Last time they saw her was a Christmas ago and it hadn't gone so well.

"Lea…" He said softly, still in shock, and she chuckled softly at his reaction.

"Wow, such a warm welcome for your only daughter that you have't seen in a while" She said and chuckled again.

"I'm sorry, we just weren't expecting you…" He said and reached over to hug his daughter, but while doing that he looked around, like looking for someone else, which Lea realized and knew exactly what he was doing.

"I didn't bring anyone thing time, dad…" She said in a somewhat annoyed tone and pulled back from the hug, rolling her eyes. "Where's mom?"

"She went out to the store with your grandma" He said and reached for her bags to help her, then stepped aside so she could walk into the house.

"Thank you" She said and walked inside, glancing around. "This place is still the same, every single time. It's comforting…"

"I know, right?" He closed the door behind them "…So… don't take this wrong but, why are you here?" He asked looking at her.

"I came back home!" She said simply and shrugged with a smile on her face.

"Right…" He chuckled softly.

"I was hoping I could stay here until I find a place of my own?" She looked at her dad and, at that moment, her mom walked into the house with her grandma, carrying a few grocery bags, and Lea looked towards the door.

"Lea?" Her grandma asked as soon as she saw her face. "Oh my goodness!" She reached to hug her granddaughter.

"Nonna!" Lea said and wrapped her arms around her grandma while her mom looked at her dad, puzzled, he shrugged lightly in response.

"I have missed you so much! It's so nice to see you again. Are you okay?" Said the old woman as she pulled back from the hug and took a look at her granddaughter from head to toe. "Look at you, you're always so thin, you need to eat more! Have you been cooking like I taught you?"

Lea laughed some "I cook when I can, Nonna, BUT, your food has dazzled other palates in San Jose!" She grinned remembering how much Shaun liked the food.

"Aah, who have you cooked for?" Her grandma smiled proudly.

"Surely some of her boys" Said her mom and Lea gave her a quick glare.

"He's not one of my boys" Lea replied annoyedly but then looked back at her grandma and smiled "He was my neighbor, we became friends. He's usually picky with food but he loved every single one of your recipes!"

"Aah, he's got a fine palate then" He grandma joked and Lea giggled.

"You would love him if you met him" She nodded some then moved closer to her mom and hugged her, too.

"You brought a lot of bags this time" Her mom commented as they pulled back from each other.

"Yeah, I was telling dad I came back home, literally… and I was also telling him that I was hoping I could stay here while I find a place of my own"

"You know this is your house too, you can stay here for as long at you want" Her dad said and she smiled, her mom nodded.

"But why?…I mean, what made you come back like this?" Her mom asked.

"Well… " She hesitated for a second then continued "I'm going to work with Donnie at the shop!" She said excitedly but her parents looked at each other with a concerned expression on their faces.

"You haven't talked to Donnie?" Her mom asked her and Lea frowned slightly, worrying some.

"Not much, why? What happened?" She looked at her parents and grandma, expectantly.

"He's selling the shop…" Her dad said in a serious tone, and added "It's not going well and it's been like that for a while. We thought he had told you"

Lea felt a knot form in her gut and her grandma looked down in a sad manner.

"What… no, he didn't tell me anything! Why? Why did nobody tell me? Why am I always the last to find out about things?! He can't sell it, it was what grandpa Rod worked his ass for! The work of his life! It was fine, what happened?" She took a deep breath, feeling like she could start crying at any moment.

"Things at the shop haven't been the same since Rod died…" Her grandma said and Lea sighed.

"You brother has barely managed it to keep it afloat for the past months but someone else is interested in buying it to do something else with the space, and Donnie says the bills keep piling up and there's not enough income nor profit to keep it going for much longer, so he's going to sell it, maybe open another business with the money or I don't know…" Her dad said and shrugged.

"Where is Donnie right now?" Lea asked, still frowning.

"He's at the shop" Her mom answered. "But Lea, it's the best for everyone… there's nothing else that can be done."

"No, mom, there's always something that can be done" She said irritated and looked at her dad "May I take you car?" she asked and he nodded slightly.

Lea turned around, grabbed her dad's car keys and left the house. Everyone sighed when she slammed the door closed.

She got in the car and drove to the car shop, clenching the wheel in her hands. So far, her dream was more like a nightmare.

About 20 minutes later, she arrived at the shop and walked inside. She felt a knot form in her gut again, seeing the shop that used to be filled with mainly classic cars, waiting to be repaired or restored, was now almost empty and the few cars in there were recent models. Not that new cars are bad, but grandpa Rod had opened that shop with the purpose of rebuilding old cars… it made her want to cry.

She walked to the office where her brother was, sitting behind a desk, in the middle of a call.

"Donnie, what the heck?!" She exclaimed as she stood by the office's door.

His eyes widened when he saw her "I gotta go, I'll call you back" He said to whoever he was talking to on the phone, then hung up, and continued "Lea, what are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question! What are you doing here? What have you done? Mom and dad just told me you're selling the shop. What the fuck, Donnie?! Why am I finding out until now?"

"Lea, calm down… Sit down, please" He signaled the chair in front of him.

"I don't want to sit!" Lea frowned.

He sighed "Fine… let's get to the point. Selling the shop is the best option. There's barely any money to keep it running… Since grandpa died, people stopped coming here. They know my work, they know we're good but, they just… they're not coming here anymore" He shrugged.

Lea shook her head in disbelief "Where are they going then? Because I'm sure they're going somewhere, have you studied the competence, the market, etcetera? What have you done to try to go back to how it was?"

"I'm not stupid Lea…" He glared at her.

She stared at him sarcastically "Then why is the shop failing?"

"Well, if you're so good at this, why didn't you stay here and ran it yourself, huh? You just ran away to whatever city you went to!" He said getting defensive.

"Because grandpa left YOU the shop! He trusted you! And I left because I had to! I needed to!"

He rolled her eyes at her "Yeah, right…"

She sighed "I came back because I wanted to be here with you and work here but I came to find out that the shop is failing and you're about to sell it. What if I hadn't come back? Would you, would ANY of you have told me about this? What if you sold it before I came back? Would you have told me? …What the hell Donnie? You know how much this mattered to grandpa, Rod. You know how much it matters to me and you didn't even consult me about it, no one had the courtesy of telling me anything!"

"You just said it, Lea. He left ME the shop! Why would I consult you about this or anything?"

She huffed disappointed and shook her head again, then there was a moment of silence between them.

"You can't sell the shop… We should do something, try to save it!" She said desperately.

"Did you come back with lots of money? Because that's the only thing that could help. There's no money to invest nor to pay the workers"

She rolled her eyes "Come on Donnie, you can't just give up on it! …Please" She begged tearing up, not wanting to accept that she had gone back to Hershey to follow her dream and it was being taken away, just like that, before she could even try it or something. She had just arrived and everything was so NOT going as she had expected, everything was a mess.

"I don't know what to tell you, Lea…" He said and sighed, then Lea sat down on the chair he had pointed out before.

They calmed down and had a long chat about old times, remembering when their grandpa was still alive, when they were kids and used to help him, and when he died and what his last words to each of them were. They laughed some and cried, too, just thinking of their grandpa and what a great man he was.

Eventually, she came up with a plan and they agreed on giving it a try in order to try to salvage the shop.

About a month went by and she received a text from Shaun.

"Lea,

Your old apartment got rented fast. My new neighbor's name is Kenny, he seems okay, but I don't know anything else about him, yet.

Glassman says he can't be my friend because he can't avoid giving me advice and because I said I needed space.

Also, today I bought a Royal Pine car-freshener, it reminds me of our road trip."

Lea read it with a smile, while on her lunch break at the car shop and replied.

"It's so good to hear from you, or rather read about you, Shaunie.

So Armen replaced me fast, huh? I would have thought he would miss me some more -laughing emoji-

Tell Glassy to stop being such a grouch. Friends can give advice, too, but an advice is just that, AN ADVICE. We can be given a thousand opinions and advices, but, at the end of the day, we have the last word, we decide whether to follow someone's advice or not, and it's not the end of the world.

I miss you too, Shaun.

I'm so sorry about not messaging you earlier. I have so much to tell you about Hershey, but I don't think texts would be enough. Maybe we can video chat someday?

Take care"

She was glad he had texted her, with everything that was going on at the shop, she barely have had time to think about him, and she felt bad about that. She didn't want him to think she had just abandoned him as his friend, as if nothing between them had happened, as if they had never met, or something. She told him they'd stay in contact and she had sort of failed at it.

"This isn't going to work, I'm telling you" Her brother interrupted her thoughts as he entered the office.

Lea rolled her eyes "It really won't work if you keep having that mentality, Donnie. You're supposed to send good vibes into all this, not have negative thoughts everyday!"

"It's all so expensive Lea! How are we going to afford this idea of yours? We just keep buying and buying things, putting in more and more money, the profit margin will be shit at the end of all of this, and who even knows if we'll be able to finish before the auction" He sighed stressed.

"We'll make it…" —I hope…— She thought as her own insecurities started to creep inside her head.

She really wanted things to work but she also knew, deep down, that her brother was right to worry about it all. She felt his insecurities, too, but she didn't want to give him the reason. She wanted to prove it to them that she could do it, and also prove it to herself.

Another month passed and the tension between her and her brother continued to grow as a result of the stress that Lea's project caused them. She had used up almost everything in her savings account and the store still wasn't flourishing the way she wanted it to, but her faith was in the project they were working on, however, they were running low on money and everyone knew it.

"You're being too optimistic about this" Donnie said shaking his head "You should have just let me sell the shop, we wouldn't be dealing with this!"

She sighed "No… You're being a whiny ass. I'll get the piece, calm down!"

"I don't want to calm down! You always come up with these crazy ideas, I always fall for them, and they're always bound to fail. Your ideas are almost always bad ideas, Lea. I can't believe I still believe in you…" He said pacing around.

"Wow, Donnie…" She interrupted him "You can really be an asshole sometimes…" She huffed and got up from the chair where she was sitting, grabbed her bag and walked away to leave the shop, hurt and angered by her brother's words. She got in her dad's car and drove off to a diner nearby.

Once she arrived at the diner, she sat by the bar and waited for someone to take her order. She was hungry but, after what happened with her brother, what she really wanted was a drink, but it was too early for that.

"Tequila STAT" She remembered Shaun saying, the night she introduced him to tequila, the memory made her smile.

"Lea?" Said a girl who had just entered the diner, with a voice that sounded familiar.

Lea arched a brow and turned her head around to look in the direction the voice came from "Sarah?"

"Oh my God, I haven't seen you in YEARS!" The girl exclaimed and opened her arms, moving closer to hug Lea and she got off her seat to return the hug in a somewhat awkward manner, because she didn't really know what to say, like the chick mentioned, it had been years.

She used to be her best friend, they basically grew up together, went to school together and everything, until they lost contact and Lea suddenly moved away.

They pulled away from each other and Sarah smiled. "Look at you, you look great! I love your hair!"

Lea blushed some and grinned "Thank you. You look great, too! And yes, it's been years, indeed. How have you been? What have you done?" She sat down again and Sarah sat on the stool next to her's, smiling

"A lot has happened, I'm getting married a couple months! You're invited, of course!" Sarah said excitedly.

"Oh wow! Who's the lucky guy?" Lea grinned letting out a small squeal, feeling happy for her friend.

"Remember the guy I was dating after college? That same dork" She grinned and Lea giggled.

"I do remember him. He's such a good guy! I don't know who's luckier, you or him. I'm so happy for you, like, I mean it." She smiled at Sarah.

"Thank you. But, tell me about you! What happened? What's happened in your life?"

Lea rolled her eyes playfully and chuckled again. "I feel like a lot has happened but, at the same time, I feel like not much has happened, you know? It's weird"

Sarah nodded slightly, then they both ordered something to eat, and while their food was being prepared, they continued chatting.

"Long story short, I left town. I basically moved to Silicon Valley and I lived there for a few years, but iI wasn't feeling it, so I came back. I've been here for like two months now" Lea said with a small nod.

"Why did you leave? I'm sorry, it was just so weird, you ghosted everyone and next thing I knew was you were gone!" Asked Sarah with a slightly concerned tone.

"I know, I'm sorry about that… It's kind of a long story, but I don't really want to talk about it, if you don't mind…" Lea replied feeling awkward again.

"It's okay, I just hope you tell me someday… you know, even after al these years, I thought about you, I missed you! I used to ask your parents about you but we know they're not very communicative" She chuckled and added "But all in all, I was worried, and I still consider you my best friend, you know? Even if maybe you don't consider me your friend anymore, you know you can always talk to me about anything, anytime." Sarah said kindly.

Lea smiled appreciatively and nodded a little "Thank you, Sarah. I really appreciate that… I know me leaving was very out of the blue, but I just had to… maybe one day I will tell you the whole story, just not today"

Sarah nodded and smiled, then leaned in to hug her friend again, after all, she had missed her dearly.

They got their food and they continued talking about Sarah's life, Lea's life in San Jose and why she got back to Hershey, the car shop, her brother, and how they were trying to save the shop.

"We should hang out sometime soon, I mean, since you're back in town and all" Sarah suggested and Lea agreed.

"Of course! I look forward to it. I'm really excited about your wedding, I can't wait!" Lea said reaching to hug her friend as they stood outside the diner, ready to get back to their cars and leave.

"I know, me neither! …It was so good to see you, Lea. Don't be a stranger again, okay?" Sarah said rubbing Lea's back a couple times

"I won't, I promise" Lea said and they pulled back from the hug.

"You have my number, I got yours, we'll be in contact!"

Lea grinned and nodded, then they climbed into their cars and drove away. In Lea's case, she drove back to the car shop.

When she got there, there was a guy by the front desk that she was able to see from the parking area, talking to her brother, and he looked familiar to her. She jokingly wondered if everyone had suddenly decided to come find her and greet her, or something.

She chuckled to herself as she got out of the car and the guy talking to her brother turned around slightly, pointing at something, and that was when Lea realized who he was.

Ben Davis, a probably 6 foot tall, somewhat muscly, green eyed guy, the one she had left Hershey for, years ago.

Her heart skipped a beat, then it beat fast and hard enough to make her feel like her heart was going to come out of her chest. A knot formed in her stomach and throat, and she felt unable to move or speak for a moment, as bad memories suddenly filled her mind. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down, but she was finding it hard to achieve.

After a few minutes, she gathered enough strength to walk away from the car and head into the shop, repeating in her mind —I'm invisible. Please be invisible, please, please, please…— hoping Ben wouldn't see her or recognize her, but her brother had something else in mind.

"Hey, Lea, look who's here!" She stopped walking as soon as she heard her name and sighed —Stupid Donnie… I hate you!— She thought, then subtly took a deep breath and turned around to face her brother and Ben.

"Look who's back!" Ben said in a teasing tone, which made Lea's blood boil and chill ran down her spine, yet, she faked a smile for the guy, and he added. "I see you're still wearing those ugly tops" He chuckled and so did her brother "But I actually like your new do" He said pointing to her hair.

Lea looked at him exasperated and tried to remain calm "Yeah, I see you haven't changed much either"

"Why would I?" He teased again in an arrogant way.

"Right… I don't know" She said wishing aliens would abduct here or something, in that precise moment.

"I see becoming a nerd didn't turn out so well, after all, huh?"

"If making almost a hundred grand a year is bad, then yeah, it was really bad" She snapped at him, and added "What have you done?"

He rolled her eyes but didn't reply, because he actually had nothing to say and, deep inside, he wasn't happy about it.

—Touché— She thought and mentally smirked to herself, turned around and walked to the office, while her brother and Ben continued their chat.

Meanwhile, in the office, Lea felt proud about what she had pulled off a minute ago, but she also felt like she was about to crumble, and she hated that. She felt in real need of the drink her brother had made her want just a couple hours earlier.

A tear trickled down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away, pulled out her phone and texted Sarah, asking her if she wanted to go for drinks that night, to which Sarah agreed and replied almost instantly, telling Lea where they could meet.

Minutes later, Ben left and Donnie walked into the office chuckling. "That was impossibly awkward, what the heck?"

"I didn't know you two were still friends…" She said as she pretended to check some things on her phone, not wanting to look at her brother in the eyes.

"Just because you two broke up doesn't mean WE broke up, too. Why would that have ruined our friendship?"

"Right…" She put her phone back in her pocket and grabbed something that was hers from the desk, then added "You're closing on your own today, I have other plans"

Donnie chuckled sarcastically "What are you going to do?"

"I have a life too, Donnie. And, not that it's any of your business but, I'm going out with Sarah, tonight" She said straight forwardly and walked out of the office, muttering "Jackass…" then left the shop.

She got back in the car and sighed, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling a headache and tears coming, but she didn't want to give in to that. —No… not for him… not again…— She thought, took a deep breath, then drove away.

She drove around town for a while thinking about what had happened and how his brother was still friends with Ben. She knew she couldn't blame him, he was right, why would her break up with Ben ruin their friendship? Well, it was because Donnie, or anyone else, didn't know the kind of person Ben Davis really was.

They knew a version of her relationship with him, but there was also a version that no one knew, and there was no one to blame for that other than herself, because she wanted it that way, she had decided not to tell anyone, she also decided to take control of her life, grabbed her things and left town, years ago, without really explaining anything to anyone, not even the people she trusted the most, her grandparents, and up until that day, they were still unaware of what really had happened between her and Ben back then.

WILL CONTINUE IN THE NEXT CHAPTER…