⌜ chapter thirteen ⌟

Letty's eyebrows furrow as she looks at Cory — he just walked into the living room from upstairs, and he has a lemon slice in his mouth. "Hey, Cor?" The brunette gets his attention.

"Hm?" He turns and looks at her.

She pauses for a moment, and then decides that she doesn't want to know. "Nice shirt." She says, and he smiles around the yellow fruit that's still between his teeth.

"Thanks." His voice is muffled.

"Yeah, it matches your lemon." Hope mutters as she walks over to where her friend's sitting.

"Don't be so grumpy all the time." Letty says as she sits down beside her.

"But I must." She argues, and her friend rolls her dark eyes.

"Hey, when's the appointment to find out what you're cooking?"

"Tiny humans, unless you know something about Dean that I don't." Hope says, and she lets out a sarcastic laugh.

"You know what I meant." The brunette shakes her head, and her friend shrugs.

"I don't like going to the clinic."

"You have to at some point for a check-up anyway." Letty says, and she groans in the annoyance as she sinks into the couch. "Okay, that's nice." She then gets up and heads into the kitchen.

"Have fun with the lemon suckers!" Hope calls after her. "Fruit must be the only action those boys can get these days!"

"Your friend's nice." Eric says sarcastically from where he's sitting at the table.

"Hey, that's what I just said. I'm blaming the hormones." Letty tells him as she walks over to the fridge. "Hey, Morgan. I see you're finally allowed out of your room."

"Yeah. That was the longest time-out I ever had." The little blonde says, standing beside her oldest brother, and she chuckles.

"So, who's the unlucky girl?" Eric asks as he then looks back at his younger brother.

"Well, if you must know, her name is Melissa, and we're just seeing a movie." Cory says as he sits down across from him.

"With that thing on your nose?" Morgan questions, and Eric starts laughing.

"What thing?"

"It's too easy." She's busting up as she turns to high-five her older brother, who's highly amused by her antics.

Movement catches Eric's attention in his peripheral vision, and he looks over as Letty leans against the counter by the fridge. She's smiling as she watches the way they mess with their middle sibling, and her smile widens when he looks at her, a smile still on his face as well.

"Mom!" Cory looks at the oldest in the room.

"Come on, Morgan. Let's go watch tv in the other room." Mrs. Matthews says as she starts toward the living room.

"Watch out for Pregzilla." Letty says, breaking eye contact with Eric.

"I heard that!" Hope yells, and her friend starts laughing.

"Tv's not funny. Cory's life is funny." Morgan says as she looks up at her mom, and her older brother sighs.

"Come on, Morgan." Mrs. Matthews insists as she flips through their mail.

"I just got here. I have to leave again?" The little blonde questions as she picks up an apple.

"Well, Cory has to talk with Eric."

"Yeah, sure. Cory talks to Eric. Cory talks to Scarlett. Cory talks to Shawn. Cory talks to Mom and Dad. When does Cory ever talk to Morgan?"

"Are you here now?" Mrs. Matthews asks.

"Yeah."

"Were you here before?"

"No. I was in my room for a real long time." She shakes her head, and Letty chuckles as she watches Mrs. Matthews tap her daughter's head with the newspaper that she's holding.

"Be happy." She tells her, and then they leave the room.

"Hey, Cor?" Letty gets his attention, and he looks at her. "Kiss someone besides a lemon tonight, yeah?" She pats his head as she walks back into the living room with the water bottle that she got from the refrigerator.

Cory eventually leaves for his double date with Shawn, and Hope goes to bed early, so Letty's left alone watching tv in the Matthews' living room. She's flipping through the multitude of channels when Eric makes his way down the stairs, jumps over the back of the couch, and sits down beside her.

"I was bored upstairs. What are we watching?" He asks as he sinks down into the cushions.

"Nothing interesting." The brunette mutters. "Why didn't you go out tonight?"

"M-mm." He shrugs. "Why didn't you?"

"Because I have all of four friends — one is fifteen and on a date, Hope's in bed before nine because pregnancy has turned her into a grandma, Jason moved to South Dakota, and I assumed that you had plans." She says as she glances at him.

"There's still time. We can go out now, or tomorrow night. Wanna go to Chubbie's for a burger or something?" He asks, and she turns her head to look at him.

"Eric..." She takes a deep breath as she sits up straighter and turns her body to face him. "I don't expect you to...wait for me to be ready to date again. 'Cause I have no idea when that'll be, and it's not fair to you."

"I told you, I have plenty of patience." He says as he then takes the remote and starts flipping through the channels.

Letty quickly takes the remote back from him, and he sighs. "You're seventeen. You should not be waiting around for me to fix what years of abuse and neglect have broken in me."

He pushes himself up and turns to face her. "I don't want to date other girls, and I'm not going to. Honestly, it wouldn't be fair to any girl that I go out with." He tells her.

"You sitting at home on a Saturday night doesn't feel right to me. You never did before."

"Okay, you know what?" Eric gets up onto his knee and then practically tackles her back so that she's laying flat on the couch. He has one hand resting near her head on the couch, to keep himself propped up, and his other hand is resting on the side of her face. She raises her eyebrows as he positions his knees on either side of her hips. "Look at me, and listen carefully — are you focused?" He asks, and she narrows her dark eyes at him.

"You're a pain in my ass." She says, her hands resting over his ribs because she feels awkward just laying underneath him.

"I love you, Letty. I could go on a date every Saturday for the next hundred Saturdays, and not a single one would mean anything if it's not you sitting there with me." He tells her. "Because I've never met anyone who compares to you, and no one will ever make me stop loving you."

The front door opens, and Mr. Matthews walks into the house. "What's going on here?" He questions. "I thought you two were broken up."

"We are." Eric says, not breaking eye contact with Letty. "She's stubborn. I think she hears me, but she's not listening to me."

Letty's expression softens as she looks up at him. "I'm listening, Eric, and like I always do, I think you're the sweetest guy on the planet, but—"

"No buts. Why does there have to be any buts?"

"What exactly are you trying to convince her to do?" His dad questions, and Eric looks up at him then.

"The position is weird, but my intentions are good. Don't turn this into something it isn't." The teenage boy says. "I just needed her to look only at me." He tells him as he returns his attention to the brunette.

"As long as she's okay." Mr. Matthews shuts the front door and then walks out of the room, wanting to remove himself from the awkwardness he feels seeing the two teenagers like that.

"And I need you to listen to me." Letty says as she moves her hands to rest on either side of his face. "I spent basically sixteen years not dealing with any of the crap that I've been through. I thought I could just ignore the bad things and they'd go away, but they haven't. Now, I have to actually work through them, and it's not easy. I'm broken, and it's gonna be hell putting the pieces back together, Eric. I don't want you to be stuck waiting on me to be okay."

"You say that you're broken, but I've seen so much more. I've seen the way that you've been there for Shawn and Cory, all the times that you've come over just because you promised to play with Morgan, and how you're always there for Hope. That's not what broken people do." Eric argues, and she sighs as she looks at him.

"That is exactly what broken people do." She tells him. "We hide behind fake smiles, and help other people so that they don't become just as broken as we are. I wasn't just hiding bruises from you, Eric. I was hiding how absolutely terrified I was to go home every night. You have no idea how many times I was faking being happy... I had to fake it less after my dad left, but I've never been entirely okay."

"I know that you love me. I could see it in your eyes every time you called me the sweetest guy you've ever met." He says. "And I can wait until you believe that you're capable of feeling it, until you can finally admit it to yourself. And whether or not I date in the meantime is up to me... So it's my choice to sit here and watch cartoons with you on a Saturday night."

Eric suddenly pushes himself up and he swipes the remote from where she let it go beside her on the couch. He then returns to his original spot and turns up the Scooby-Doo episode that's playing on the screen. Letty takes a deep breath as she stares at the ceiling above her.

"You know, I liked it better when your face was right here." The brunette grabs at the air above her, and he smirks as he glances over at her. "Can I ask you something?" She sits up and scoots closer to him, one of her legs still on the couch so that she can face him.

"Of course." He mutes the tv.

"I feel really lame asking this, but... How did you know? When did you first know?"

"Do you remember when you first got back after Summer break, and we were in my room? We were making out and then you started joking about how I'm gonna die a virgin?"

"Who was joking, single-boy?" She smirks as he narrows his eyes at her. "I remember."

"My dad overheard us talking. I guess he was coming to ask me something when he heard what we were talking about. I was actually saying some things that he approved of, so he didn't come in to talk to me." He tells her, and she sighs.

"I'm gonna pretend that that's not embarrassing. Where is this story going?"

"Well, he started talking to me about it later — I handled the situation very well, he was proud of me for putting you first and not trying to pressure you into anything that you weren't ready for."

"Oh, you mean, you being your usually incredibly sweet self?" She says, and he smiles.

"He went off onto other stuff, talking about how much better any experience in life is when you're with the right person. All this sappy stuff that usually makes me wanna puke." He tells her, and she chuckles as she listens to him. "Instead of being repulsed by everything that he was saying and telling him to save it, I just kept thinking about you. He reminded me about that crazy kid that Cory dated — she was asking about wedding dresses and kids. I flipped out, and you calmed me down." He shrugs. "Suddenly, that's not quite so scary.

"I mean, I'm not saying that I'm thinking about getting married anytime soon, but... I can see it, with you. Me and you, a house, maybe a dog, a kid or two someday." He says, and she smiles as she looks at him. "What about you? Can you ever see us together like that?"

Letty pauses for a moment, and then nods. "Someday."

His smile widens. "And that's how I know you love me." Eric says. "I didn't tell you that I loved you so that you'd say it back. I said it because that's how I feel. The only reason we broke up was because I didn't understand why you said nothing and then just left me sitting there alone. But now that I do know, I can wait for you... And in case you've forgotten, I did go out after we broke up. The whole time I was wishing that it was you that I was talking to, and I don't feel like wasting any more time that way."

"You're making it really hard not to kiss you right now." She says, and he chuckles.

"Something to look forward to." His comment makes her smile, and then he motions to the tv that's yet to be unmuted. "Watch cartoons with me." He says, and she turns so she can see the screen.

Eric smiles as he looks at her, and then she looks at him out of the corner of her eye. A smile grows on her face and then she sinks into the couch, resting her head on his shoulder as he then unmutes Scooby.

—

Letty's about to walk into the kitchen a few days later when she hears Mr. and Mrs. Matthews talking to Cory. "Your mother and I, we broke up once before we got married." He tells his son.

"And did you guys stay friends?" Cory asks.

"There were some rocky points, but we were always there for each other." He says, and Eric walks up behind Letty.

"See, I think that's what brought us back together." Mrs. Matthews adds. "I mean, if you really care for each other, you don't just throw away the most important bond you have — your friendship." She tells him. "Isn't that right, Eric? Scarlett?"

The two teenagers look at each other and both smile before walking into the kitchen from the entrance by the stairs. Cory turns and looks at his older brother.

"How do you do it?" The younger boy asks. "How can you be just friends when you're in love with her?"

"Because I'm not just in love with her, I love her." Eric tells him. "She was my best friend before she was my girlfriend, and that's more important. It never worked out with anyone before her because I didn't care about them the way that I care about her. Sometimes the friendship you have with the girl you love is more important than the relationship. We wouldn't be where we are now if we weren't friends first."

"You love Topanga, Cor? You know that she's the one that you're supposed to be with?" Letty asks, and he nods. "Then give her some time to catch up. She and I aren't exactly the same, but that doesn't mean we're entirely different either. And apparently... You Matthews boys are just a little ahead of us with this whole relationship thing." She says, and Eric chuckles as he wraps his arms around her shoulders from behind. "You'd be amazed how much it means to someone when you just be their friend, be someone that they can count on... The rest comes after." She tells the younger boy as she leans into Eric's chest.

The next day, Letty walks into the kitchen and she sees Eric and Morgan at the table. "Scarlett!"

"Hey, kid." She smiles at the little blonde. "Can you give me a minute with your brother?"

"Uh-oh. What'd he do?" She asks as she looks at Eric.

"Morgan, go bug Cory." Letty tells her, and she then runs up the stairs yelling that she's in his bedroom.

"What did I do?" Eric asks as the brunette pulls one of the chairs over to sit closer to him.

"You didn't tell me about Penn State." She says, and he sighs as he looks down.

"You want me to tell you every time I get a rejection letter?" He asks. "You like to hear about what you and the colleges I apply for have in common?"

"Ouch." She looks down at her hands, and he sighs.

"I'm sorry. That..." He shakes his head. "That was uncalled for. I didn't mean..."

"I've known you since we were kids, Eric. I know." She nods as she looks back at him. "Since that was just you being a pain in my ass... What's the real reason that you didn't tell me?"

"That I keep getting rejection letters, and I haven't gotten a single acceptance?" He asks as he looks at her. "You've spent so much time helping me study, and I... I just didn't want to let you, of all people, down."

"Me?" She questions. "You'd only be letting me down if you weren't even trying. And that's obviously not the case here." She says as she looks at the dozens of applications that he's been working on. "I could've been helping you with all this."

"I started all this after we broke up, and we weren't..." He sighs. "I wanted to do it on my own. I mean, you're dealing with enough. And I'm not talking about your family. I meant that you're already doing so much for Hope. I didn't want to be another..."

"Eric, I said that I would always be here to help you. And I didn't just say it because we were standing in front of four of our teachers." She tells him. "I'm here for you, always."

"And you know that I appreciate that, but..." He reaches for her hand, and her fingers curl around his. "I have no idea where I could end up actually getting in, and I... I don't want your help finding the school that could take me away from you."

"Look at me." She rests her hand on the side of his face, and his light brown eyes meet her darker ones. "If you can wait for me to work through my childhood trauma, then I can wait for you while you better yourself at school... Eric, I may not have as certain an idea about what's meant to be as you and Cory do, but I know that my life is significantly better with you in it. I don't have a lot of good, so I'm willing to wait for and fight for this." She squeezes his hand. "I want you to go to a damn good school, even if it takes you a million miles away. No distance — big or small — is gonna change what little I do know for certain."

"I love you." Eric says, and she smiles as he leans over and kisses her cheek.