The bed shakes a little and I stir, it shakes some more. What the hell? I realize its not the bed shaking, its me. I open my eyes curiously and see Hazel stood beside the bed, smiling at me.

"Rise and grind my fellow padawan" she chirps and I close my eyes again.

"No" I mumble rolling onto my right side so my back is towards her. I hear her sigh heavily and the next thing I know I'm on my back and she's straddling me.

"Wha-" I mumble half asleep

"Wake up, woman!" She giggles poking my face gently. "Wake up" she repeats and I finally open my eyes. She smiles down at me, her hair a curtain dangling in my face, she's all sparkly eyes and pearly teeth. Probably the best thing to wake up to.

"I don't want to" I groan, attempting to push her off of me but she grabs my wrists and pins them at either side of my head. In order to pin down my wrists she has to lean closer to me, her face inches from mine.

"Hi, get up" she smiles and pecks my lips.

"I want to stay in bed." I state, blinking a little to make my eyes co-operate with staying awake.

"I'm not going to let your little fight with Mike make you bed bound. You've been here for days! Unless you're leg less, you have no excuse." I smile, simply because her being assertive makes me do that. I lean up and kiss her, it's brief but passionate and leaves me wanting more.

"That's more like it," she smiles after breaking the kiss "Now, there's cocoa downstairs with your name on it, see you in ten" she pecks my lips once more and climbs off me, heading out of the room. I laugh a little and roll out of bed, I kind of love how she waltzed into my life so suddenly, she always keeps me in check and never let's me wallow in self pity. She knows how badly I get down some times.

When I get downstairs—due to severe lack of furniture throughout the whole downstairs of the house—Hazel is sitting on the floor with two Starbucks take away cups in her hands and her ever present smile tugging her lips upwards. I realize she's curled her hair today, making it look shorter and her bangs are pinned away from her face, making it easier to see her beautiful eyes.

"Hi there," I say entering the room "Two cups? You must be thirsty" I joke, she gracefully stands up without putting the cups down and hands me one.

"Drink up, ace. I'm taking you out" she takes a sip of her cocoa

"Taking me out?" I ask confused, that is totally backwards, isn't the guy supposed to take the girl out?

"Yup, grab your coat, you've pulled" she winks and heads past me.

The car ride was peaceful, Hazel's glasses with their thick frame and pitch black glass hides her eyes from me, but a smile is on her lips, thus putting one on mine.

The day is beautiful, the sun high in the sky, beating down through the glass and making me squint but it's pleasant and warm so I don't mind.

"So where are we going?" I ask

"IKEA" Hazel replies without taking her eyes off of the road.

"You're kidding" I say, thinking of a million other things I'd rather be doing than that.

"Yes, I am" she smirks and I shake my head at her with a smile. "It's a surprise"

"Can't I just know?" I ask hopeful

"Nope, be patient" she glances to her left briefly taking her eyes off of the road and flashes me a smile.

After a while we begin to slow down and I wonder what is going on, we aren't anywhere special, not that I can see anyway. She unbuckles her seatbelt but doesn't get out right away, she bites her lip and steals a glance my way.

"What is it?" I ask, simply because she's making me nervous. She shakes her head and climbs out, I unbuckle myself and climb out too, meeting her around the front of the Range Rover.

"I thought this would be a good idea, but now I'm not so sure" she clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip as if she's in seriously deep thought.

"I don't understand" I speak honestly.

"Come on" she nods with her head in a random direction and takes my hand and we begin to walk. "You said you feel like you don't know me, because I'm so good at pretending or something—I don't know. So, I brought you here."

"And what is here?" I ask not really understanding. We cross the street and head towards a bridge, traffic zooms across it but there's a narrow lane for pedestrians that we head down. Once we're in the middle of the bridge we stop and she climbs up onto the gritty ledge, sitting down on it and dangling her legs towards the water below. I climb up too, sitting beside her, our thighs touching.

"Oh" I say as I realize this is the bridge. "This is the bridge isn't it" she nods.

Her smile isn't present anymore and I feel bad. I don't say anything for a while, what can I possibly say to make it better anyway? Her face is impassive, looking out into the distance, I can't tell what she's thinking. I reach up and snatch the sun glasses from her eyes and throw them away from us, they float delicately downwards and eventually get so far down we can't see them anymore.

"I like to be able to tell what you're thinking..." I explain but she doesn't seem to care for the glasses anyway. I reach next to me and take her hand.

"Now that we're here I feel like such an idiot for bringing you here"

"No its okay, I said I felt like I don't know you and I still feel that way so yeah, it's good you did. Bring me here I mean." She nods. "Tell me about them" I say softly.

A bittersweet smile toyed with her lips, turning them upwards half way and halting as if it was too much effort to make it reach her eyes

"My dad, he had a moustache that tickled when he kissed me and tucked me in at night and I remember his hands used to shake in the morning. Every day when I'd get back from school he'd scoop me up and put me on his lap and ask me to tell him my day from start to finish, he always listened intently and then he'd make a funny joke and tell me to go wash my hands before I ate." Her smile turns sad.

"And your mom?"

"She was away a lot, she was a photographer, travelling the US and Canada for a new book she was putting together. I used to draw a lot of pictures while she was away, dad always helped me pin them on the refrigerator door so she could see them when she got home."

I interlock our fingers, stroking her thumb with mine, trying to encourage her to go on but letting her know I'm here to just hug if she doesn't want to.

"She got home once, I think I was about nine or ten. I was so excited to see her," her eyes lit up as she said that "But when I ran to her, she didn't open her arms, she told me no, said she was too tired, she retreated to her room and I didn't see her for three days, when I asked what she could possibly be doing that could take three days my dad told me she was being creative and fighting monsters in her dreams. I never knew what he meant."

She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks at me, I nod in a way that tells her to carry on and she smiles weakly and does so.

"That room, the creepy, memorial one...that used to be her dark room, she'd spend up to eighteen hours a day in there, developing pictures she had taken, the other six hours she'd spend asleep or out taking more pictures. I barely saw her." She sighs. "I began to notice how tense dad would get whenever she emerged from her darkroom, smelling like chemicals and looking ridiculously happy, he'd tense up and it wouldn't matter what you said to him, he wasn't listening, his sole focus was her and her only, he was worried." I feel like its unnecessary to interrupt her and ask questions so I sit silently listening intently and waiting for her to elaborate.

"Mad-Hatter syndrome," she sighs and I tilt my head to the side in confusion.

"Mercury poising" she clarifies

"Ah..." I look down at our knotted hands and sigh, not really knowing what to say.

"I know how you feel, Vic. I understand." I look back up and she's just looking at me expectantly. I furrow my brows, not understanding what she means.

"You tell me you feel you don't know me because I pretend so much but you're pretending too, and you're pretty good at it too, but not good enough."

"I don't pretend" I say all too quickly and defensively

"You're pretending right now, you're pretending to not be thinking of him, but you are..." I sigh because she's right "...and that's okay because he was - is special to you and you miss him, its okay to hurt"

"Thank you" I whisper without looking at it "I'm grateful for you"

"And I am for you too. Now come on let's not be corny" she giggles and nudges me slightly.

"I don't believe in heaven, but I do believe in something, something that happens after you die, I don't know what that something is, I just know I believe it and I believe its happy and I believe my parents and your dad are there, happy too." She says extremely sure of herself, which makes me smile.

We stay in a blissful silence, staring out at the vast water that seems to travel for miles. I begin thinking about what it'd be like to die here, what went through her parents heads before their car crashed against the barrier and flew through it, what were their last words as they hit that water and realized that they'd never be able to inhale after that point, did they see their lives? Did they see Hazel? Were they frightened?

"I don't want to go home yet, can we go for a drive?" I ask still kind of stuck in my own thoughts. She tilts her head ever so slightly and smiles, its her million dollar anything-for-you smile and it makes me want to lean over and kiss her. We both rise slowly to our feet, nothing separating us from the dark calm water below, I stare down at it.

"What do you think it'd be like to jump?" I ask almost as if I'm thinking aloud. She snapped her head in my direction, looking at me warily, her perfectly tweezed eyebrows dipping low in the middle. "I-I wasn't thinking about actually jumping...I just wanted to ask." I explain quickly, she raises and eyebrow and I wonder what she's thinking and then she smiles like all of a sudden her mask has been applied.

"Come on knuckle head" she smirks and jumps down from the ledge, I follow her, landing awkwardly and hurting my ankle a tiny bit but I walk it off as she giggles at me.

—Hazel's POV—

I try to keep my eyes on the road but my head is elsewhere. I keep sneaking peaks at Vic, his words swim around my head: what do you think it'd be like to jump?

I swallowed hard. I've read a lot about people who get extremely suicidal after one of their loved ones passes away (and rightly so.) I'd been through it myself, it was torture but I learned to be okay again and I knew Vic could do that too but I had to teach him how. I mean he wouldn't just say those words for nothing right? What do you think it'd be like to jump.

"Where are we going now?" He asks and I exhale quietly, my mind still consumed with Vic and the strange things he says.

"I'm taking you to an old diner I used to go to when I was a kid" a smile stretches across his face.

We pull into the car park of the diner, it's dimly lit behind the big glass windows just like I remembered. 'Patty's' is stuck against the window in big swirly lettering, it makes me smile. The paint on the door is a little chipped and creaks as we open it but it brings so many memories back happiness bubbles inside of me. The tables are set out in rows of booths, kind of old fashioned but lovely, and all are vacant (just like they used to be) I order an ice cream sundae for me and a mango frappucino for Vic and we head to a booth way way in the back.

"I like this," Vic says with a smile

"The frappucino?" I ask

"No" his smile is goofy "You, allowing me to get to know you better" I shrug in reply not really knowing what to say.

"Um Vic..." I say cautiously, something has been on my mind all day and I have to tell him, I know I have to but I didn't know if I had the balls to, but now I know I have no choice either way "I'm going away soon...to Arizona" I think he's going to spit his frappucino out like they do in those movies but he doesn't, he just halts mid sip and looks at me, his eyes go wide and I imagine the information slowly settling into his brain.

"Your..."

"Going to Arizona" I finish the sentence, guilt swarming me, he looks like a small child being told that he can't celebrate Christmas this year.

—Vic's POV—

My jaw drops, her words settle into my system and I inhale sharply. She's leaving. No. The thought makes my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

"Arizona..." I repeat the word tasting foul in my mouth

"Yes" she says slowly, avoiding eye contact with me.

"Why?" I ask breathlessly, I all of a sudden feel suffocated

"I've been asked to do some modelling down there," she explains "Of the clothes I made for the boutique—Polly's" I nod slowly pretending to understand

"Right" I nod again

"It's only temporary, Vic. Like a couple of months tops" she reaches across the table and grasps my hand, I barely feel the contact. "While I'm down there my friend is going to help me make a website to broadcast my designs and clothing and hopefully I can get something going. Then I can come back" she smiles like everything is okay. But it doesn't feel okay at all. I'm terrified.

Everything was going so well. What if she doesn't come back?

"Oh come on, don't look like that, Vic." She pleads, looking sad and I feel bad for making her feel guilty. I swallow hard and smile the best I can

"No, I, um, I'm really happy for you" I sound unsure but I just hope she doesn't notice.

"I'll be back before you know it!" She beams, attempting to cheer me up, it doesn't work. I allow a silence to stretch out between us by not replying. She looks around awkwardly, tears welling into her eyes. I sigh and get out of the booth, and go round to her side, I wrap my arms around her sideways.

"It'll be okay, I'll just miss you, that's all" I sigh "But you gotta do what you gotta do and I want you to be happy" I kiss her lips chastely and smile "it'll be okay" but I'm lying because it doesn't feel like it will be.

Notes

This story will be finishing like anytime now so
Dundundun.

Feedback is appreciated you little hotties <3