"I'm sorry, that was...unexpected."

    "Yeah, just a bit." I replied, pulling away from Jacob. I wasn't exactly sure what I was feeling, but it was definitely not the heart flutters I usually got after kissing someone.

"Can I ask what that was for?" I asked after the silence that fell between us. There were essentially two options for why Jacob had decided to kiss me: either he had simply wanted someone to kiss at midnight, or he had actual feelings for me.

I preferred the former.

    "Look, you're not with Connor anymore..." Jacob began.

    Crap. It was the latter.

    "...and I just feel like if I don't make my move now, I never will." he continued. The notion would have been sweet if he hadn't been screaming it over the music.

    "Jacob, I--"

    "You don't feel the same way, and that's okay." He nodded, smiling at me. "I figured that much."

    "It's not that." I shook my head, "Maybe I would feel that way, eventually. But Connor and I broke up a week ago. We were together for four years, and a week is just too short for me to get over him. And that wouldn't be fair to you if we started something up. You deserve a girl who is wholeheartedly in love with you, and I just...I can't give that to you."

    Jacob nodded again.

    "I understand, Syd." He said, a small smile on his face. "And hey, if nothing else comes out of tonight, at least I got to kiss the prettiest girl in the room on New Year's. I think I started 2021 off right."

    I shook my head, blushing. I was nothing special, and yet every guy who was ever into me was always the sweetest thing.

    Except for Kevin Long. But high school was so long ago, I pretty much forgot about him.

    "I'm gonna head home." I told Jacob, "It's been a long night."

    "No problem." Jacob nodded, "I'm gonna hang out for a bit longer. Have a great night."

    I walked away from him slowly, contemplating everything in my head. If his timing had been just a few weeks later, we could have had something. And if his confession hadn't occurred within spitting distance of wherever my ex-boyfriend was, it would have been even better.

    But life wasn't perfect, and I had come to accept that. Getting out of a four-year relationship that you were sure was going to last a lifetime hardened you up to the true nature of the world. It sucked. But unlike Monica Geller, I wasn't sure I was going to love it.

***

    I kept walking out of the Festival Ballroom and out into the parking lot, trying and failing to brace myself against the bitter January cold. There were practically no people in the parking lot, as they were all still inside celebrating the new year with their friends and loved ones.

    It just sucked that my most loved one didn't love me anymore.

    I kept walking through the parking lot, passing by someone else walking quite a bit slower than me: a guy hunched over against the chill and wind, moving as if he had been physically wounded.

    I walked past him and kept going, determined to get home before I died of frostbite.

    But then plans changed.

    "Hey! Hey, you!"

    Every girl with any common sense knows not to turn around when a random guy starts yelling at them. If anything, you pull out your pepper spray and make sure he knows who's boss.

    "Sydney!"

    Most attackers didn't usually know your first name, though.

    I turned around to see the guy straighten up, and my heart caught in my chest.

    Connor.

    Why in the world would he want to talk to me? And why in the world were we the only ones in the parking lot?

    "Connor?"

    "Yeah, it's me." He walked faster until he stopped directly in front of me. "What are you doing?"

    "Walking home."

    "Inside. What were you doing, kissing Jacob?"

    "You saw that?"

    "Yeah, I saw that!" He shook his head, raising his voice to be heard above the wind. "How could you? We just broke up!"

    "And if you had stayed long enough to avoid your hissy fit, you would have seen me reject him."

    "What?"

    "I rejected Jacob after he kissed me."

    "You kissed him back."

    "What would you do if a girl kissed you at New Years? I'm single, after all."

    "Don't throw that in my face." He snapped, his eyes narrowing.

    "Throw it in your face? You're the one who broke up with me!"

    "Because you allegedly cheated on me!"

    "You should have trusted me, not a girl who wanted nothing more than to see my life crumble."

    "I was panicked."

    "You were insane. And while we're on the subject, you had plenty more chances to cheat on me with Shelby than I ever did with Jacob."

    "But I never did. There was no video of me."

    "There was none of me either!"

    "I'm not the one who was kissing other people a week after we ended a four-year relationship!"

    "Why do you even care?" I screamed finally, my hands flying in the air. "Why do you care who I kiss? It's not your business anymore, and you made that perfectly clear!"

    "Because I'm still in love with you!" Connor gasped out, "I'm still completely in love with you."

    There was silence between us for a moment; even the wind quit its incessant howling.

    "You what?"

    "I love you." Connor repeated, "Breaking up with you was the biggest mistake I've ever made, and seeing you with someone else hurts more than I ever thought it would. I'm so in love with you, it's completely ridiculous. I'm a moron for how much I love you. I don't even know how I landed someone like you in the first place, and then I let you go. Without so much as a fight. And I have never, ever, regretted anything more in my entire life."

    I stood still, shocked. He had just confessed to still loving me. I had been thinking the same thing just a few minutes earlier: about how I still loved the stupid nerd boy whose first letter to me had been a list of facts about himself. How I had read that letter for the first time and had thought, 'Wow, this kid could use some social assistance'. How he had turned into my best friend and partner in crime, someone I couldn't believe I had ever lived my life without.

    But he had broken my heart.

    But the thing was, the list of the good outweighed the list of the bad. He was still the love of my life.

    "Sydney, please...say something."

    I looked him in the eye, the big eyes I had looked into hundreds of times before. But this time felt different. It felt like a fresh start.

    "I love you too."

    He closed the distance between us in an instant and kissed me. And after four months without being with my love, that kiss warmed my frozen body to the core.

A/N: ...and then she woke up.

KIDDING! That was real life. They still cuties.

Ya'll I got so much done yesterday writing-wise. I finished this chapter, I wrote THREE chapters of Three's Company, I put Recalling Lincoln Carter on Radish (shameless self-promo, check it out @kathpowell), AND I have officially planned every chapter for the print version of RLC and started editing it. It's gonna be awesome, and I might add some bonus chapters in Lincoln's POV for the print version!

Thoughts on Connor and Syd's reconciliation? Are you happy about it? Upset? Think she should be with Jacob because he's a sweetheart? Let me know!

-Katherine