(Angel’s POV)

“Angel,” Archer addressed.

“Hey,” I smiled as I was sitting on the floor of my hotel room with two notepads, giant shipping boxes, and a giant pile of wedding gifts that I never actually sent back to America. “Lulu’s not here. She actually said she was going to your room. Maybe she got lost—”

“No. She found it,” he assured. Oh? “I came here to talk to you.”

“Um. Alright,” I allowed as I turned toward the bed that he sat on.

“Don’t freak out though,” he said, holding his hands up defensively.

“You didn’t get Lulu pregnant did you?” I asked, concerned and narrowing my eyes.

“No!” he yelled. “Forget that. It’s not about me or Lulu. It’s about you…”

“Me?” I asked. Me?

“…and Zac,” he finished.

“Well this will be a short conversation,” I presumed. Archer knew nothing about us. He could be Zac’s current best friend and military buddy, but he knew nothing to talk about me and Zac.

“I know that he’s been acting…weird,” he started. Well, yeah. “But last night, he got trashed and was telling me—”

“Wait what?” I asked. That’s when I got concerned.

“He was…messed up from the reception and I found him last night drinking away all his problems,” he informed. I looked away from him. So I wasn’t the only one with problems last night…

“Well where is he?” I asked. I may be over him and understand how it could possibly be depressing that his love interest was gay, but hey, at least I still cared.

“I don’t know,” Archer sighed before scratching his head and standing up to walk to the balcony.

“Well it can’t be that bad, I know that he and Grace were—”

“Grace is a lesbian. There’s no reason for him to have gotten drunk,” Archer said. I think otherwise. “Like I said this is about him and you; no one else. He was drunk and he was telling me that—”

I looked over to see why he stopped speaking, but then found him dashing out the door. I looked from where he was standing and saw Zac and Lulu on the bottom floor, outside of the hotel.

(Lulu’s POV)

“No, you don’t care, Tyler,” I said to Zac. “While everyone thinks you changed, you haven’t. You’re still the a$$hole we all knew before.”

“Oh really?” he asked, looking up at me with his shades on that probably hid the eyes of a hungover man.

“Really,” I said, crossing my arms. “You still think it’s alright to throw aside your problems. You still think it’s alright to do whatever the h3ll you want. You think it’s okay to hurt whoever is in the way in the process!”

“My problems!?” he yelled, standing up close to me. “You know NOTHING about my problems, but it’s ironic because if it wasn’t for your a$$ cheating on me, none of this would’ve happened!”

“Don’t you dare blame this on me!” I yelled. When he came back two years ago, he was soft-spoken. Now, that was different.

“And why not!? Afraid that—”

“Hey!” Archer yelled, claiming my waist and pulling Zac away from me. He was furious when I looked up at him. He stood between the both of us and looked at me. “You should of let me handle it, or left it alone, Lulu.”

“Archer, I—”

“Listen to your boyfriend and shut up,” Zac hissed. That’s when Archer looked over to him pathetically.

“Now I know why you can’t have anyone. You don’t know how to treat them,” he dissed. “Last night you said that Angel didn’t deserve sh!t…well neither does Lulu. She’s trying to stand up for herself and her best friend. So do her a favor and just shut up—”

“I have been keeping my mouth shut for the past three years!” Zac roared. “Not being able to talk to my family; not being able to talk to my friends—and especially not on duty within a 50-foot range of people shooting me. I’m tired of all this sh1t!”

“Then do something about it!” I challenged. He looked right into my eyes and his fell into a charcoal black. I even started to see flickers of bright flames dance in the rims. It looked like he was about to beat me up or something. He even grabbed my collar to do so.

“Calm down,” a soft voice said. We looked over to see Angel. Zac’s jaw tensed and he looked over to her. “We need to talk.”

At that, I couldn’t understand the way he acted toward her. When he immediately calmed down by her presence, I knew that he loved her. So why was he making this entirely too complicated.

(Angel’s POV)

“It’s just you and me, now, alright,” I said to Zac as we were both in my hotel room. Like I said, it was just me and him now. “So…what’s up?”

He snickered at me pathetically, making me look over to him instead of my continuation of sorting the Callaghan’s wedding gifts.

“You saw me fighting with Lulu and you’re asking me ‘what’s up?’?” he asked. “I’m sure Archer would be wanting to rip me to shreds right now.”

“Well I’m not Archer,” I said to him. And that’s when it happened. For the first real time since Junior Year, I looked into his eyes and saw the confusing colors as if they reflected the thoughts and emotions running through his brain. I was hooked, but I still stood my ground when it came to being over him. I still cared, but the sincerity in his eyes were pulling me in and making me question why he had been acting out earlier.

His eyes were far different than his actions because it was as if he was some innocent guy that I used to know, trapped in the body of a post-traumatic Military freak that didn’t know what he wanted. My theory seemed even more evident because he looked away not even a second after I made contact with him.

“Can I ask you something?” he muttered. I nodded, expecting him to see it.

“Sure…”

“How did you feel about me and Grace?” I stopped writing down the stupid gift information, and looked over to him. Why was he asking me this? Grace was a lesbian. Nothing could change that. Or was he drunk then, too, and forgot it? “When you first met us.”

When you first met us. He said it like he truly was a new person that never met me. But he also said ‘us’.

“Well, I mean, from what I heard from Nelly, Grace was fine. I saw you with her and you were happy…so that’s pretty much it,” I said, honestly.

“That’s it?” he asked with his voice cracking.

“Yeah…I mean, what else was I supposed to think?” Really; it’s not like I could really think anything else.

“Right…” he said, unconvinced. I went back to doing my job of gift sorting, also thinking ‘Where the h3ll is Grace?’ “Do you need help with that?”

“No,” I said immediately, but I didn’t know why when I clearly needed help. I kept my eyes on the carpet and felt Zac stand up.

“I hate this, you know,” he said down to me. Excuse me? “I hate how we are now. We used to be better than this.”

“Better how?” I asked, pressing my lips together. “Better because instead of not talking, like now, we were arguing just like you were just doing with Lulu? Yeah right.”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Then what did you mean?” I asked, getting frustrated.

“I miss you!” he yelled suddenly. “I miss hanging out. I miss teasing you. I miss those petty arguments between that made me stay up and think about what I shouldn’t have done instead. I miss you.”

“There’s no reason for that,” I mumbled. I was getting fed up from his confusing little message.

“Yes there is…and I think—”

“You can’t miss me because I’m still here. You’re the one that everyone should be missing!” I yelled. “Only you! You abandon all of us and come back like some new person and I accepted that, alright? It was hard, but I accepted whoever you were, even though Lulu and Brian were making some big a$$ deal about it.”

“Says the girl exploding on me like some Hot Head,” he hissed, but then his eyes widened when he didn’t mean it. He expected me to be mad, but in actuality, it would’ve made me calm down because it reminded me of the old him…I liked the old him. I missed the old him. I was just fired up from before.

“I don’t understand you,” I choked.

“No one does.” Sh!t, ain’t that the truth. There was a silence among us. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that already,” I reminded. He said that two years ago. An apology to everything.

“Well I’m going to keep saying that,” he said, fiercely. “I’m going to say it until you forgive me.”

I laughed.

“Why should I?” I asked him. “Your…your idea of making things right between us is giving me a stack of letters that you wrote but never sent—”

“Did you read them?” he asked. He didn’t ask it as if shocked; he just asked it as if it meant something. But that wasn’t important to me. I had read maybe five letters out of a total of probably a year’s worth. I knew he was at least trying to…prove something to me in those five letters, but then I started thinking about the letter I had written him about my feelings to him years back and how he made me verbally confess them.

“Why should I have to read your stupid letters when a few years ago, it was you not reading mine and yet you set it on fire?” I asked, quietly.

“I’m sorry about that,” he whispered. Of course… “But I’m serious.”

“So am I,” I assured. “And it seems to me like the only one that was important was the one you actually sent.”

He looked over to me.

“You’re over me,” he assumed. I didn’t know what to say. I knew what I felt, but I didn’t want to say it.

“What do you expect?” I asked him. “I find basically a breakup letter when I’m home looking for you, you come to Providence with some girl, you act completely different…yes I’m over you.”

“I’ve known you since kinder and I’ve seen you go through your rules about not giving any guys another chance, but—”

“I gave you more than one, but you’ve run out,” I stated in a calm voice. It was plain and simple. Why would I give him another chance when not even Brian got one after a tiny mistake?

“You gave Joey another chance to talk to you…befriend you…and touch you…and kiss you,” each reason brought him a step closer to me until he had reached up to my jaw and stroked a thumb across my cheek. Each time his thumb grazed my skin, it tingled and I had to look away from his face. I froze. Sh!t. “Can I maybe…have that chance just to kiss you?”

…just to kiss you? That’s when I looked up at him. He didn’t want to talk, then. He didn’t want to be my friend again. He just wanted to kiss me. I reached my hand up to his and pulled it away as I stood my ground.

“No,” I answered. The normal Zac I knew would defy my rejection and kiss me anyways—I expected that, actually, but why? Maybe because I wanted to see someone fight against me in order to have me? But this wasn’t normal Zac. This Zac was listening to me and I didn’t like it in this way. I didn’t want this Zac to kiss me, so he didn’t.

He looked from my eyes to my lips and there was hope that the normal Zac would resurface and take the initiative to kiss me anyways, but he took a step back.

“I see where we stand,” he nodded.

“It’s just how it is,” I stated. “But about the befriending thing—”

“I don’t want to be your friend,” he muttered. That was like a punch in the face to me. “I can’t be.”

“You’re the one that asked for another chance—”

“I asked for another chance to kiss you, not be your stupid little friend,” he hissed. I wanted to choke back tears now. He looked to the side before back to me and stepped closer to me. “You and Joey are friends. He has a girlfriend even though he’s kissed you. You and Brian are friends. He doesn’t have a girlfriend—”

“So what?”

“—he looks at you like he has when you were going out, but you don’t see it,” he finished in a shout. “I’m not gonna be like Brian. I don’t want to be. I can’t just be friends with you because I want to be more—I need to be more.”

“We tried being friends once—”

“Well you know what? That was all fu**ed up when I fell for you!” he interrupted lastly in a yell. I stayed quiet, with a hand over my mouth. “And…and now I can’t seem to stop.”

“Now do you see why I said it was easier to hate you because there was nothing to let go?” I asked him in a whisper. He sort of growled at me with a scoff before just turning and storming out.