Be my friend; hold me [Jamie]

[AMY WINSTON]

She didn't stop crying until she hit Oklahoma.

It would creep up on her, she'd think that she stopped, and then suddenly more tears would make themselves known.

It was stupid, she should have known better. She was always so quick to talk other people out of shitty relationships, but when it came down to it, she had no right giving anybody any relationship advice. As she drove the flashy red convertible down Interstate 40, each glance at the speedometer caused her heart to pang as her eyes fell on the obnoxious engagement ring still clamped onto her left hand.

He was supposed to be different now! He was supposed to love her, he was supposed to have changed! She had been making plans to be Mrs. Amelia Rossum! She had forsaken everything for him! She had just picked up and left, following him like a lost puppy. Something that he owned.

Well, not anymore.

She considered throwing the stupid ring out the window somewhere in Illinois, and that's when she knew she needed sleep. No sense in trying to drive for 45 hours straight. One night in a cheap motel, staining the uncomfortable pillow with her tears, and she was back on the road again, needing to get back to where she was comfortable.

She had almost driven back down to Florida, back where her parents were. But then she remembered how at home she felt in New York. She remembered her friends, and her classmates. how everything felt so alive, she could actually enjoy her day sober. People like Jamie, who was always ready with an easy smile, who had been right about Jon the whole time, and who wouldn't tell her that he told her so. And then people like Charlemagne. Who was she kidding, there were no people like Charlemagne. That was what she liked best about him.

Not that he would be too pleased to see her. She hadn't even had a proper goodbye with him. Hardly an explanation that she was leaving. She had been awful to him. He wouldn't want to see her.

She drove on, letting the road disappearing behind her take her thoughts. She was going back home, and she would fix everything this time. Make it all better, all right again. And Jon would never see her again. This thought caused her to blaze through New Jersey like it was nothing, finally reaching New York City in just under 38 hours.

It would have been nice if it weren't raining, but at that moment she didn't care. Unconscious of where she was actually going, her subconscious took the wheel and parked in front of a familiar apartment complex.

Jamie's place.

Of course.

She couldn't go to her old apartment, she had left when the lease was up. As a matter of fact, it seemed that the timing of Jon's friend Matt and his little job coincided nicely with the end of her lease on her apartment. It wasn't hard to make a decision to leave when she didn't have to worry about breaking a lease agreement. Jon had planned it all out perfectly to ensure the least amount of resistance from Amy. And she had played into his trap perfectly. And then he went and fucked it up for a threeway with two barsluts.

She wanted to get angry. She wanted to scream and yell and call Jon and tell him to go die in a hole somewhere. She wanted to break things and get mad and just punch something. But she couldn't. In the rain, in her car, she couldn't do anything except for cry. Hands still clutching the steering wheel, she wept openly until she felt herself getting out. The rain outside was soaking her to the bone, but she could barely even register anything past the walkway she was following. Still crying, just a lot quieter, she made her way up to apartment 22B. Exhausted from her trip and her emotional breakdown, she leaned up against the doorframe and raised her fist weakly. Pounding it against the wooden door three slow, deliberate times, she only hoped that it was a new moon outside.

[JAMES KENNEDY]

Of course Jamie would never tell her that he told her so, though that didn't change the fact that he had. Jamie hadn't liked Jon since the moment he'd met him, smelled him, and while he didn't like to talk about it because Liam thought it was absolutely hysterical anytime he did anything that might sound like something a dog would do, Jamie didn't trust the way Jon smelled. It was hard to explain that to Amy however, and so he'd listened when she talked about Jon, decided that he liked him less the more he heard, and was forced to just offer advice and be there when she needed someone, since she didn't want to hear what he had to say. It was something she had to figure out for herself.

That didn't stop him from getting upset and trying to talk her out of moving to Los Angeles with Jon when the man got a job out there at the end of her lease (too convenient in the timing) and proposed to her. She went anyway, and fortunately, she kept in contact with him, or he'd have had to contact people he didn't want to contact, people he didn't want near Amy, to make sure that she was alright. That, or go out there himself, which would be impossible to explain to Maggie. She didn't like giving him time off, and wouldn't have been okay if the reason was to go find Amy, despite the friendship they claimed to have; Jamie wasn't stupid, Maggie didn't like Amy and Amy thought they were good friends, but he could hardly do anything more than try to protect Amy and gently suggest she not be too close to Maggie. It didn't work until Amy moved, but that didn't make him feel any better. She was still across the country with Jon.

Liam had been even MORE upset by it, but more angry with Amy for refusing to listen, and to a point, Jamie blamed Amy's unwillingness to listen on Liam. If Liam hadn't been so heavy-handed, Amy wouldn't have shut down so quickly and completely, and maybe they'd have stood a chance. Probably not, but maybe. Jamie would take a maybe.

He hadn't ever told Liam that was how he felt about it, but there were a lot of things he hadn't said to Liam, things he wasn't even consciously aware of, but that bothered him. There were problems here, and Jamie was refusing to look at them head-on, much like Amy had, but Mona wasn't hesitating to point them out. It was these problems he was considering after declining Mona's offer to go for a run in favor of ordering pizza and being home when Liam got in, if he got in. Sometimes, Liam stayed at Phoebe's when they got out late and had to open early the next morning, and he didn't blame him, but it was tough to plan around. He wanted to go run, was antsy with the full moon coming up in a few days, but he didn't.

When he heard someone at the door, he expected the pizza man, so he put his game controller down (he actually had some time to himself to play Red Dead and have pizza, so he was taking it) and approached it without any real investigation. That was stupid on his part, since it could have been anyone with those three slow, deliberate knocks, and he could have smelled the difference between Amy and a pizza guy, but he didn't pay it any mind before swinging the door open. That was when his eyes went a little wide and his lips parted in a surprised sound that was aborted almost as soon as it started, definitely not expecting her. "Amy?"

Now that he could see her, it was obvious that it had been her at the door, her smell strong in his nose and the emotions around her manifesting in pheromones and smells of their own, and Christ, was she unhappy. His surprise gave way to concern, and he didn't smell blood, so at least there was that, but his hazel eyes flicked up and down her, looking for injury anyway. When a second's investigation didn't offer any clues, he stepped into her space and wrapped her in a hug, not caring that she was cold and wet against his skin and dry clothes.

"Jesus Christ, what happened?" he asked into her wet hair, giving her a squeeze and pulling her into the apartment all at the same time. He kicked at the door to shut it, not needing an audience and forgetting about the pizza man, and instead focused entirely on her. What the hell was going on?