A/N:  Whenever a chapter spans multiple months, I'll just list how long ago the last month was. 

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august-september 2013 : 7 years ago

Lily didn't mention her encounter with Henry on the first day of school to her parents or Kathleen because she considered it a very real possibility that he would go back to hating her tomorrow.

But that wasn't what happened. He sat with her at lunch again.

She wasn't sure if she should expect him to return or not but when she walked out to lunch on Tuesday, she found him already sitting at the same table as the day before working on homework. She slowly sat down, looking at him curiously and slightly apprehensively, and was unsure if she should speak up or wait for him to do it.

He glanced up from his book and simply said, "Well, we can't have you failing chemistry, can we?"

Lily quietly pulled that day's homework out of her backpack and had him check her work. She was beginning to understand what Henry was doing - or at least trying to do - even though he wasn't saying it. Extending an olive branch.

So that was how it all started, with them sitting together at lunch. She worried less and less with each passing day that he was going to snap back to the old Henry at any second. He wasn't very talkative at first and it took some time to get him chatting about anything besides her homework, but he slowly started to open up. And as he did, it dawned on her just how little she actually knew about her cousin.

Some of his answers to her questions surprised her (they had the same favorite Disney movie - Tangled), but what surprised her more was that for every question she asked him, no matter how brief he kept his answer, he tried to ask one back.

He was either excellent at pretending or actually interested in getting to know her.

At the end of the first week, when she had a little more confidence that he wasn't going to go back to ignoring her or worse, she decided to fill Kathleen in on the bizarre development with him. She was itching to tell someone about his change of heart because as nice as it was, it honestly didn't make any sense to her.

As soon as she got home Friday afternoon, she dumped her backpack off in the living room and headed straight to Katie's. Lily was more grateful now than ever that the Watsons only lived five houses down from her. She didn't know what she would do without having her best friend at school with her this year if she wasn't able to just walk down the street to see her afterward.

Her parents didn't even have Lily knock on the front door anymore. She was over there almost every day so they allowed her to let herself inside. Katie was the only one home at this time of day, anyway, with both of her parents being at work and her older brother Harry at football practice.

Lily knew from the couple of occasions that Harry had left his bedroom door open that it was usually a total mess in there, but Katie was the total opposite. Her room was always pristine and today was no different. When Lily opened the door, the floor was spotless and the bed was neatly made. "I Knew You Were Trouble" by Taylor Swift was playing from the iHome sitting on the nightstand.

Katie poked her head out from her walk-in closet. Lily didn't know how there was room for any clothes in there; she was pretty sure that the giant mountain of all of their Webkinz they still had from second grade took up half the closet.

When her eyes landed on Lily, Katie cut right to the chase. "I know that face." Was Lily really making a face? "You have something to talk about. Oh my gosh, did you kiss a boy?!"

Lily gaped, heat rising to her cheeks. Why did Katie's mind go straight to that? "No! Who would I be kissing? I don't know anyone. It's been a week!"

"I dunno," Katie answered as they plopped down on her bed, Katie sitting crisscrossed while Lily flopped on her stomach. It was a bit of a ritual for them to sit on the bed whenever they had something to gossip about. "Are private school boys any cuter than public school boys? Because our pickings over here are kind of slim-"

"I've seen a couple of cute guys," Lily admitted. There was this boy named Ben in her history class and she would not have minded if he talked to her. "But that's not the point! It's my cousin Henry. I don't know if you remember h-"

Kathleen interrupted, her hazel eyes narrowing. "Isn't that the one we hate?!"

Lily nearly laughed at her use of "we." She didn't think Katie had spoken a singular word to Henry in her life. They might have met on one or two occasions, but no more than that. They certainly hadn't been around each other long enough for Katie to form her own unbiased opinion of him, but she was a loyal friend through and through. If someone messed with Lily, Katie simply didn't like them. And Lily had complained about Henry on many occasions.

"Well, that's the thing," Lily elaborated. "He's always hated my guts, but this week he started being nice to me out of nowhere. I keep waiting for him to do something and he hasn't, even though he's had plenty of opportunities to. We've been talking, like a lot, and he's being totally normal. Normal normal. Not normal him. Normal him is a jerk."

"I guess that's a good thing?" Katie offered.

"Yeah..." Lily drifted off. Henry was a total enigma. Talking about him out loud somehow made all of this make even less sense in her mind than it already did, although she had hoped that discussing it with Katie would offer her some insight. "I mean, why wouldn't it be?"

Katie shrugged, a lock of her blonde hair falling in her face as she did so. She absentmindedly brushed it away. "I don't want to freak you out, but isn't it a little weird that he's being nice now that it's convenient? Why not before?"

"I don't know," Lily admitted.

She had been asking that same question her whole life. All she had ever wanted was his approval and now it seemed like she might have gotten it. But she didn't see what was different about her now that suddenly made him like her.

"Are you gonna keep hanging out with him?"

"I don't know if we're even hanging out. We're just sitting together at lunch. But yeah. Is that a bad idea?"

As the question left her lips, she realized that she wasn't sure what she would do if Katie said yes. She didn't think she was ready to give up on whatever had started between them.

"No, he's your family," Katie assured her, a wave of relief washing over Lily. "Just be careful. Boys will manipulate you without even realizing it. They think they can do whatever they want and then don't understand why it hurt your feelings. Harry is such an idiot sometimes."

Lily got the impression that Harry had broken quite a few hearts over his high school career, but she quite frankly never wanted to know any of the details there. What she did know was that Katie was great at reading people. She was better at distancing herself, at not getting too caught up in personal emotions or loyalties to see people for who they were.

An unpleasant sensation settled in Lily's stomach and it took her a second to figure out what it was. Once she did, she resisted the urge to bury her face in Katie's blanket and let out a little frustrated scream.

She was feeling defensive of him. How had she gotten here? Maybe Katie was right. Maybe he was just trying to stay on her good side.

Her mind felt like it was at war with itself, but she attempted to be transparent. "I want it to work," she sighed.

Lily had always wondered what she and Henry could be if he didn't hate her so much. She had always wanted a sibling and wished that he would just accept her. He could have been like the big brother she never had. But he'd never wanted that. He'd wanted his real sister back.

"I want it to work, too," Katie promised. "Just don't let him off the hook for how he's treated you this whole time."

Lily's discomfort increased as she realized that she was already in too deep, having gone and given him control over even more of her emotions. She'd gotten her hopes up and now she was going to be disappointed, not only if he did something stupid or mean, but even if he just backed off and stopped paying her any attention after they had come this far.

No matter what he did, he was going to end up hurting her again, wasn't he?

It was hard to worry about that when Henry actually smiled at her the following Monday upon seeing the big red A at the top of her first chemistry quiz.

The second week of school wasn't too eventful after that, but Lily found herself getting very excited for the third Friday of the semester - the day of the first football game.

Whenever anyone talked about how great high school was, they inevitably talked about football, and Lily was not about to miss the first game considering that it was a home game. Neither of her parents had any interest in coming to pick her up afterward, but a girl from her English class named Olivia offered her a ride home. They had started chatting in the mornings before class began and it turned out that they didn't live too far away from one another. Lily spent entirely too much time picking out an outfit that was cute but not too cute to wear that day. She didn't want to look like she was trying too hard.

What she didn't grasp until after her mom dropped her off was that she actually found football to be pretty boring and it was difficult to talk to people over all the noise. She could barely hear herself think over the cheerleaders, the band, and all of the students shouting.

The early September air was hot and sticky and she regretted wearing her hair down - she could already feel it frizzing up. Olivia was off somewhere with her boyfriend, so Lily wasn't sure who to talk to. She didn't really know anyone yet and wasn't sure how to strike up conversation with random people. She couldn't see any other stragglers like her. Everyone seemed to already be with a group of friends.

She sat a little further back in the bleachers where it was less claustrophobic, but she was already bored out of her mind after forty-five minutes or so. She and Katie texted back and forth a little bit. Lily spotted that cute guy Ben and even talked with him for a minute or two, but he was focused on the game and chatting with another girl.

She returned to her spot on the bleachers and glanced at the time. It had only been fifty minutes since she got here and the game was going to last at least two hours. By that point, she was ready to just call it a night and leave, but Olivia was her ride home unless she could find someone else.

She opened the contacts on her phone and scrolled down, her finger hovering over Henry Caruso. She didn't even know if she had his current number; the one in her phone was what she'd gotten for "emergencies only" the last time their families went to Italy together a few years back.

Just how desperate to leave was she? Asking him to come get her wasn't the same as just sitting together at lunch. He might be busy, or say no, or say yes but then make fun of her for it later.

But if she really wanted stuff to work between them, she was going to have to take some chances. She clicked on his number and typed out the message before she could regret it.

L: what are you doing right now

That probably sounded creepy. This was a bad idea, wasn't it? She held her breath when she saw the three dots indicating that he was typing something.

H: would this happen to be the little demon who graces me with her presence at lunch?

Ugh. She had the right phone number alright.

L: jerk

H: I'm going to take that as a yes. Is this an emergency?

L: yes, i might die of boredom

L: you can call me a loser if you want but how much would i have to pay you to get you to pick me up from this football game

H: that bad huh

L: ...yeah

H: fine give me 20 minutes

H: loser

Lily rolled her eyes, but she had brought that one upon herself. Even so, Henry kept surprising her. She hadn't anticipated him agreeing to her request so easily. She texted Olivia to tell her that she wouldn't actually be needing a ride home and then tried to force herself to care about the game for another fifteen minutes.

A few minutes before Henry was theoretically supposed to be showing up, she walked out to the parking lot, nerves starting to wriggle their way back into her. Was he going to be annoyed that she made him drive over here? She'd never ridden in his car with him and quite frankly wasn't sure if they were good enough at small talk for this yet. Perhaps it would have been less painful to just sit through the football game, but it was too late to turn back now.

She stood alone on the sidewalk for a couple of minutes. There was no one else around besides a couple of students sitting in the bed of a truck. A slight breeze picked up and now that the sun had set, the sky a muted blueish gray, Lily was slightly chilly. She rubbed her arms for a moment to warm them until she spotted a car turning into the parking lot.

The shiny black Jeep pulled up to the curb next to her. When she opened the passenger side door, she was relieved to see that Henry didn't appear like he wanted to punch her.

"Thanks," she mumbled as she slid into her seat and buckled her seatbelt.

Henry simply gave a slight nod, as if he wasn't entirely sure what to do with being thanked. "I made the same mistake you did my freshman year," he said instead. "I'm not much of a football person, either."

That explained why he was being nice about it. A long silence followed, but Lily did a poor job at trying to alleviate it. "Your, uh, car is nice."

She resisted the urge to cringe. Why did she have to be so clueless when it came to talking to him? She didn't even know anything about cars.

Fortunately, he rolled with it. "Yeah, it was my birthday present. I tried to pay for some of it but Mom and Dad wouldn't let me."

"That does kind of defeat the point of a present."

He kept his eyes locked on the road ahead, but she thought he nearly smiled. "I suppose you're right."

She hadn't intended for money to come up at all. The financial disparity between their two families, yet another rift between her and Henry's worlds, had always made her a little bit sad. And unsettled. She knew that he lived a comfortable life, so there wasn't really anything to feel bad about, but she was also aware that she got more excessive things than he did. The big house, the fancier vacations. She had been avoiding thinking about the fact that her parents had more than enough money to send her to private school whereas Henry was only able to go because his dad taught there and got a cut on his tuition.

It wasn't the sheer fact that her parents had more money than his that bothered her. That was just how the world worked sometimes. What actually bothered her was that it had quite little to do with them working better-paying jobs - Lily's mom had stayed at home to take care of her for several years - and quite a lot to do with knowing that their families would most likely be much more similar financially if having a dying kid didn't dry up all of your savings. Lily had overheard snippets of conversations over the years about Sarah's medical bills: it wasn't pretty.

She was yanked from these thoughts as Henry very abruptly turned left across three lanes of traffic into a McDonald's parking lot, a pained squeak leaving her as her seatbelt dug into her shoulder and ribs.

"What was that for?!" she complained, rubbing her shoulder.

He shrugged. "I want a McFlurry."

"You don't have to kill us for it!" she huffed.

He glanced over at her with an amused smirk. "Fine, I'll let you take a turn driving then."

Ughhhhh. Why was he so irksome? She said nothing as he pulled into the drive-thru line.

"Oreo or M&M?" he asked.

"What?"

There wasn't time for him to respond. They were already at the speaker, so he ordered one of each.

"Did you really need two?" she questioned as he shoved them into the cupholders.

"Of course not," he replied, rolling his eyes. "But you weren't answering my question, so take the one you want."

Oh. She was astoundingly slow. He'd gotten one for her.

Lily felt her cheeks warm and prayed that Henry wouldn't notice her blushing. She quietly reached for the Oreo one as he pulled the car into a parking space while he ate. The interior of his car was surprisingly clean, so perhaps he didn't want to drip ice cream on it. Or maybe that was giving him too much credit and he actually just sucked at multitasking.

It was hard to see when it was so dark inside the car. The heavy shadows between them were only broken up by the glow of neon signs and streetlights that streamed through the windshield and onto the dashboard. But for some reason, that made talking to one another a little easier. Even if they felt the tension, they didn't have to see it. They chatted while they ate so that they didn't have to sit in total silence. But then, even after they were done, Henry didn't move the car. They kept talking.

He was...not so bad. Once she got him going, he was actually pretty funny and - she couldn't believe she was actually thinking this - kind of sweet. They didn't converse about anything too deep, but the conversation kept flowing, as if the two of them were gradually becoming more conscious of all of the words unspoken between them before now.

Henry broke off into silence and looked over at her with a curious expression on his face. Lily studied him, a lump forming in her throat as she realized how much of herself she could see in him now that she was looking for it. They really did look like they were related. They had the same noses, the same eye shape. She had always been jealous that he had gotten blue eyes, but she had never noticed that they had the same dimples because she never saw him smile until so recently. And there was a kind of uncertainty in his expression now that she could relate to. A smidge of vulnerability from the boy who was never vulnerable. For the first time, it felt like he was actually seeing her. Some sort of new realization flickered in his eyes and his eyebrows furrowed slightly. It was as if it were finally hitting him that she had gone and grown up without him noticing.

Lily was just as guilty as he was. As that heavy silence permeated the air between them, it occurred to her that she had never really stopped thinking of him as the little boy who didn't know better than to take his anger out by teasing her. She had never thought to investigate and see what he was really like as he got older. She always just avoided him, too intimidated by the idea of going near him and everything going wrong. But he was basically an adult now - old enough to work and old enough to drive and less than a year away from going to college. Maybe the space between them and the passage of time really had been what they needed.

He broke the tension and pulled his eyes away, looking down at the empty cups they had returned to the cupholders. "Are you, uh, making friends okay?"

Lily was so fascinated by him at that particular moment that she didn't think before she spoke. "You."

Alarms immediately started going off in her mind, screaming that she'd gone too far. She waited for him to tense up or retreat back into his shell.

Instead, he glanced back up at her. "Is that what this is?" he asked quietly.

Was this actually happening? Her tongue felt like it was twisted into a knot, but she tried to ease some of the pressure of the situation. "Well, we're, um, hanging out, so I guess so."

"Okay."

Okay.

Okay?

Had he actually said okay?

Oftentimes that word was nothing, but right then it was everything. For starters, it meant he didn't hate her, which was already infinitely more than she would have expected from him a few weeks ago. But friendship required a certain forgiveness on both ends. It meant he was finally going to forgive her for not being his little sister and let her just be her. It meant she was going to forgive him for his wrongdoings, embracing the fact that she had never experienced a fraction of the pain he had and giving him the chance to try to be better to her.

That's what this was for them. A second chance.

But now that they were here, she didn't know how to keep her mouth shut. "There are some girls in English I've been talking to, too," she rambled. "I just...I dunno. I've been trying to pick your brain for like ten years."

A slightly pained look crossed his face for a second. Regret? He shoved whatever it was down.

"There's not much of interest in here," he said simply. "You probably would have gotten bored nine years ago."

He knew that was a lie. She knew that was a lie. But there was nothing else to be said right then. They weren't going to be able to work through their past in one sitting. Henry clearly didn't know how to approach that topic out loud and Lily honestly wasn't sure, either. If they wanted to be friends, they were both at one point or another going to have to own up to where they went wrong. That wasn't going to be a walk in the park for either of them. But they had time.

Time. Lily had totally lost track of it while they were talking. She yanked her phone out of her pocket and stared at the clock. Oh, crap. She was supposed to have gotten home ten minutes ago. Her mom had tried to call and she had multiple text messages from both of her parents.

Henry glanced over at her screen as she frantically texted her mom that she would be home in fifteen minutes. She smacked his arm. "Excuse you. No snooping. And wipe that smirk off your face, it's annoying."

He ignored her comment, looking highly amused.

"What's so funny?!" she snapped.

"You know what they're going to think, right?"

"Uh..."

"Oh come on, do I have to spell it out for you?" Whatever his point was, he was having way too much fun dragging it out. "Girl goes to her first high school football game. Girl meets boy. They probably think you're making out with some jock under the bleachers right now-"

"HENRY!" She turned tomato red.

He held up his hands defensively. "I'm just telling you the truth," he argued, clearly relishing in her embarrassment.

He was infuriating. Why was she bothering with him if he just wanted to torture her so? She attempted not to let him get away with it easily. "As if you have any experience making out with girls under the bleachers," she retorted.

"You're underestimating me," was all he said as he put the car in reverse.

She shuddered. Henry was probably still just messing with her - like, come on, he was such a nerd - but she decided it was for the best to not find out. For once, she was content with being naive.

"Drive fast," she muttered.

"I thought you hated my driving," he teased.

"I changed my mind."

She nervously tapped her foot all the way home. Her parents were going to kill her and Henry was going to enjoy watching it. Great.

"Oh no," she groaned when they pulled up in front of her house. The porch light was on and her dad was waiting there for her. Yep, she was definitely dead.

Henry snickered when her dad started walking towards the car. "He thinks he's coming to scare off your new boyfriend."

"Would you just shut up?"

He rolled down the passenger side window. "Oh come on, lighten up. I'm sure I'm about to get lectured, too."

As her father got close enough for Lily to see the irritated look on his face, she wished that she could simply sink into her seat and disappear. He opened his mouth to say something, but his expression blanked when he realized who was driving the car.

All of the anger was replaced by confusion, a slight frown forming. "Henry?"

"The one and only," Lily grumbled under her breath.

Henry ignored her snarky comment. "Hey, Uncle Daniel," he smiled as if he were completely innocent and hadn't just been annoying her to death. What a pushover. "Sorry for keeping her out late. It won't happen again."

Dad just stared at them for a second, apparently bewildered that the two of them were voluntarily within fifty feet of each other. Join the club. He cleared his throat slightly. "Just, uh, let us know next time," he said awkwardly, his whole protective parent spiel now out the window.

Lily opened her door. "Goodnight, Henry," she muttered as she got out of the car.

"'Night, Lily."

She heard the Jeep pull away as she and her dad walked inside together. As she opened the front door, unexpected tears pricked at her eyes and she prayed no one would see. But nothing was wrong. No, it was quite the opposite.

She couldn't remember the last time Henry had actually said her name. 

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Henry sweetie you're not doing a very good job at pretending not to like her.

I honestly feel like my writing is already a lot better than it was when I wrote this chapter now that I'm more used to writing in third person, but I hope you enjoyed this cute Lily chapter nonetheless! 

I'll see you sometime next week with Liam's update. The next chapter is...*fun*