Songs for this chapter are:

Come Up Short- Kevin Garrett (listen to this song omg) 

Untied- Green Light Theory 

When We Were On Fire- James Bay

When I step out of the bar, Dakota is standing on the sidewalk, raising her hand to hail a cab. I run up to her side and push her hand down.

"Don't touch me," she hisses, a cloud of smoke puffs out of her mouth from the chill fall air. I drop my hand and step in front of her. She keeps her arms down, crossing them in front of her chest in her defense.

I immediately begin to explain myself. Or try to.

"It's not what you think," I say in rushed voice. Dakota turns away from me. She's not going to let me explain. She never has.

I gently grab her arm but she wretches away from me as if I burned her. I ignore the judgmental glances of the people walking by and step in front of her.

"Bullshit!" she shouts. "Are you kidding me, Landon?"

I can smell liquor on her breath. Since when does she drink? Her eyes are bloodshot. She's had more than a few.

In my mind, she's sixteen again, her curly hair pulled up into a bun. She's wearing gym shorts and high socks, the kind with the red stripe on the top, sitting cross-legged on her bed. We are flipping through college applications over pizza. Her house is quiet for once. Her dad is gone, Carter is out with Jules. She's talking to me about how she's never been drunk, but wants to be.

It didn't work out the way she expected, alcohol doesn't taste as good as the characters in Gossip Girl made it seem. Within ten minutes of her statement and three swigs of eighty proof vodka, she was hugging the toilet and I was holding her hair while she swore to never drink again. Before I put the bottle back into her dad's crowded freezer, I dumped out half and added water. Maybe if the alcohol were diluted, his temper would be too. Apparently, vodka doesn't freeze, but water does. The next morning Carter came to school with a black eye and a sore ribcage because of my mistake. I never made that mistake again.

Moving back into present day, I delve right into the sticky mess I've made for myself. "She's Tessa's friend, I barely know her. I know what it looks like-"

Dakota cuts me off and doesn't look at me when she speaks.

"She's been talking about you for weeks now!" Her voice is loud, cracking at the end like a whip.

"He's sooo sweet," she croons, mocking a sultry female voice.

Passerby's on the sidewalk stare at us as I try to calm her down. One guy in a beanie gives me an "I would save you if I could, Bro" look as he passes with his girlfriend. His quiet girlfriend who doesn't seem to hate him. Lucky guy.

I attempt to defend myself, I begin to babble, "I don't know what she has been saying, but I didn't-" Dakota raises her hand in front of my face, waving for me to shut up. Her dress is bunched at her hips, exposing the line of her tights underneath. The more she moves, pacing on the sidewalk, the higher her dress moves. She doesn't even notice as she continues to let me have it.

She turns back to me after a few more seconds of pacing. Her eyes light up and she seems to remember something.

"Oh my god! She kissed you! She told us!" She takes a few steps across the sidewalk and bumps shoulders with a man walking a St. Bernard.

"That's who she was talking about! It's been you this entire fucking time."

Jesus, has Nora been giving Dakota a play by play of our every encounter? Dakota raises her hand for a cab again.

"Get away from me," she warns me when I touch her elbow to steady her. I haven't said anything and I know to be careful with how I approach this. I hadn't expected the two of them to be sharing stories about me at their dinner table. I didn't think Nora liked me enough to even mention me to her friends, and if she did, I would have never imagined that Dakota was her roommate. How can the world be so small?

"I'm coming with you. How much did you have to drink?" I ask her.

She shoots fire at me; her eyes are damn near glowing red now. I get no answer.

Not that I expected one.

"I'll call an Uber. I'll have it drop you off at your place," I tell her and reach into my pocket for my phone.

She doesn't stop me. That's a good sign.

While we wait for the car, I decide to keep my mouth shut. She's not going to be very reasonable until we can get away from the crowd. This is all one huge misunderstanding and I need time alone with her, and quiet to be able to explain.

After three minutes of complete silence, Daniel in a blue Prius and a five star rating, pulls up to the curb and I put my hands on Dakota's shoulders to guide her to the car. She dips her shoulders away from my touch and stumbles off of the sidewalk to get to the other door. A car is passing at the same and I rush to her, pushing her out of the way and into the car. I hear her talking to me, something about not touching her, as I walk back around and climb into the other side. This is going to be a long night. Not to mention, I put my address into the app, not hers and I'm pretty positive she will be pissed about that too.

"How are you guys tonight?" Daniel asks.

Dakota ignores him and presses her cheek into her hand and leans against the window. "We're good," I lie to him.

No need to drag him into the mess, he seems like a nice guy and his car smells like caramel. He even has little bottles of water in the pockets on the back of his seat.

"That's good to hear, it's getting chilly out," he makes small talk.

"I have some waters back there if you're thirsty, and chargers too," he offers.

Now I see why he has a perfect five-star rating.

I look at Dakota and she doesn't seem interested in either thing.

"We're good, thank you though," I respond.

He looks into the rear view mirror and seems to take a hint. He turns his music up slightly and drives in silence the rest of the way. He'll be getting a five from me.

"Where do you have him taking us?" Dakota finally talks to me a few minutes into the drive. I stare out the window. We're about halfway to my apartment. I know this because we just passed Grind.

"To my apartment. I don't even know where yours is," I remind her.

I'm reminded that she has barely kept in contact with me since she moved here. Does she really have the right to be this mad over all of this? I can't tell if she's being as completely irrational as I feel she is, or if I just deserve the cold silence.

She huffs, but doesn't fight me on it. I assume that she doesn't want to deal with Nora and her other roommates who witnessed the entire awkward exchange just minutes ago. I get the feeling that their living situation is one of those weird frenemy types of relationship Tessa explained to me while we binge watched Pretty Little Liars.

Five-star Daniel pulls up to my apartment building and gives me one last sympathetic glance before I step out of the car. Dakota is quick to climb out of the car and she slams her door as I step onto the sidewalk.

"Let me help you," I hold my hand out for the big purse she's wrestling with.

The straps are wrapped around her shoulder in a tangled mess of brown leather. She shrugs and stands still, allowing my aid. I quickly untangle the straps, trying not to bother her with my touch, and carry her bag for her. I don't think she wants to, but she leans into me as we walk toward the door of my building. The moss growing on the brick walls of my building seems thicker tonight, more suffocating.

Dakota stands in front of the door. I pull it open for her and she sighs in relief when we step into the warm hallway. My apartment building doesn't have a doorman or any fancy security, but it's always clean and the hallways usually smell like chemicals. I'm not sure if it's a good thing, but it's better than some of the alternatives.

As we walk in silence down the hall, I realize that she's never been to my place before. When I first moved here, we were supposed to get together for dinner at my house, just to catch up, but she cancelled an hour before. I had made a full meal, four courses, with Tessa's help of course. I searched nearly every corner store in Brooklyn for her favorite drink, blue crème soda in a glass bottle. I found it after an hour of searching and even stopped myself from drinking them before she arrived. Well, I had two, but I left four for her.

Dakota's flat shoes squeak against the concrete floor and I don't remember it ever taking so long to walk to my apartment. We finally reach the door and I turn the key into the lock. With a click, the door opens and Dakota pushes past me. I lay her purse on the table and kick my shoes off. She takes a few more steps until she's in the center of the room. The living room feels much smaller with her in the center of it. She's a beautiful storm, all waves and anger as her lungs fill with air. Her chest rises up, then down, in a harsh pattern.

I step toward her, right into the eye of it all. I shouldn't know how to approach her. I shouldn't remember the exact way to talk to her, to ease her temper.

But I do.

I remember how to slowly step to her and wrap my arms around her waist. When I do, they fall into their protective place, trying to shield her from anything and everything, in this case, myself.

My fingers should have forgotten how to gently raise her stubborn chin and look into her eyes. But they haven't, they couldn't.

"We have to talk about this," I whisper through the heavy air between us.

She takes a breath and tries to look away from me. I bend at the knees, leaning down to her height. She looks away again and I refuse to give in before she listens to me.

"I met Nora a while ago, back in Washington," I begin to explain.

"In Washington? You've been seeing her that long?" She hiccups at the end of her question and pulls away from my embrace.

I wonder if I should offer her something to drink? I don't think this is the best time, but hiccups usually mean someone is going to get sick, don't they?

Where did I even hear that?

This is one of those times where I wish I knew more about drinking and the effects it has on your body. Her toe catches on a pile of textbooks on the floor and she stumbles, taking a few unsteady steps toward the couch. She's going to need that water after all.

I shake my head. "No, no, no. She came over a few times because her parents live close to my mom and Ken."

It sounds like a lie, but it's not.

"I barely know her. She was baking with my mom and now she's Tessa's-"

"Your mom?" She met your mom?" Dakota shrieks. Everything I say seems to add a layer of dirt to the hole I'm digging for myself.

"No, well, yes." I sigh. "Her parents live by mine. I didn't have her over for family dinner or anything like that." I hope something clicks within her and she sees that this isn't what she thinks it is.

Dakota turns away and her eyes scan the living room of my apartment. I watch her as she walks over to my couch and sits down on the side closest to the door. I pull my jacket off of my arms and drape it over the chair. I hold a hand out for Dakota's jacket, but she isn't wearing one. How did I not notice? I remember looking at the line of her tights, the outline of her bra through the thin cotton of her dress. I'm not used to seeing her dressed like this, in such tight clothing. That's my excuse for being a pervert who didn't even notice that she wasn't wearing a jacket. It didn't even cross my mind to offer her mine, what's happening to me?

While I wait for her response, I walk over to the thermometer and turn the heat up. If we are lucky, it will work.

"For some reason, I believe you, but should I? I mean, this fast?" She shakes her head and looks past me, struggling within herself. "Just like that?"

She rests her chin on her elbow and stares across the room.

"I didn't think I would care this much if you dated someone," she admits to me.

Her words take me by surprise and as I mull them over, something shifts in my reasoning. She's acting like this because she thinks I'm dating Nora? I guess I saw that from the beginning of the small-almost cat fight, but for some reason, I thought she was upset because I lied to her about what I was doing tonight.

She broke up with me over six months ago and has barely given me the time of day since. Her logic just isn't there, but she must feel that she's justified in some way. I do my best to try to see it from her side before I say anything or react and I know that if I do speak now, my words will do more damage than good. Especially if I'm only thinking of my point of view. I'm mad too, that she thinks after six months she can yell at me for dating someone who I'm not even dating. I want to tell her that, tell her that she's wrong and I'm right and I'm pissed too. But that's the problem with this type of quick anger, expelling it will make me feel better for a few moments, but I'll feel like crap after. Anger doesn't often offer a solution, it only creates more problems.

I know anger.

The type of anger that I know isn't some small thing ache that pops up when you see your ex of six months hanging out with someone else. My experience with anger isn't getting pissed off because your neighbor ran into your car with theirs. The anger that I know cuts at you when you're watching your best friend get his eye split open because his dad heard someone down at the bar whispering about him looking at another boy a little too long.

The anger that I know seeps inside of you and turns you into lava, burning slowly as it rolls down the hills and covers the town. It's when your friend's bruises are in the shape of knuckles on his cheek and you can't do shit about it without causing more destruction.

When you have been akin to that type of anger, it's very, very, hard to fly off at the handle over small things. I've never been one to add fuel to a fire. I've been the water, extinguishing the flames, the salve to heal the burns.

Little problems come and go and I have always avoided confrontation at all costs, until it's too much to bear or too big to ignore. I'm terrible at fighting, I can't keep an argument going to save my life. My mom always said I was born with a gift, an enormous amount of empathy, to a fault.

I can't help it, I can't stand to see other people suffer, even if it causes me to. I'm struggling to understand her anger.

"I'm not saying you can't date," she finally says after my silence.

I sit down on the arm of the couch furthest away from her.

"Just not so soon. I'm not ready for you to date."

Soon? It's been six months?

I can tell by her expression that she's completely serious and I don't know if I should call her out on it, or just let this blow over. She's pretty drunk and I know how stressed she's been lately with her academy and all. I'm smart enough to pick and choose my battles and I don't feel strongly enough about this one to let it fruition to war.

What she's asking of me isn't remotely fair and I'm frustrated by myself at how easily I've slid into this role again. I'm enabling her, but is it really that bad? We are communicating and no one is yelling, no one is losing their cool. I want to keep this going. If she's handing out secrets, I'll take a few.

"And when will you be ready for me to date?" I softly ask.

She sits up straight, immediately defensive. I knew she would be. I stare at her, my eyes telling hers that there's nothing to be upset about, we are only talking. No judging here.

Her shoulders relax.

"I don't know. I haven't really thought about it," she shrugs. "I assumed it would take you longer to get over me."

"Get over you?" I ask, worried for this woman's sanity. What would have given her that assumption? My kiss with Nora? It's not like she even gave me a choice to get over her.

But, man do I wish she didn't know about that kiss. Not because I want to hide it, but some things really are better left unknown. I keep my distance still, leaving two cushions of space between us.

"I'm not over you," I calmly say, "but you didn't give me much of a choice here Dakota. You've barely spoken to me since you moved. You broke up with me, remember?" I look at her. She's staring at the floor.

"You wanted to focus on yourself when you moved and I got that. I let you have your space and you didn't stop me. You didn't reach out to me at all. Not once did you call me first, not once did you answer the first time I called. Now here we are and you're acting like I'm a villain because I went out with someone."

So much for biting my tongue and letting it blow over.

I truly didn't want to fight with her. I just want to communicate openly and honestly.

"So you did go out with her," she points out.

It's frustrating as hell that after everything I said, that's all she picked up on.

She's so obsessed with this idea that I'm dating Nora. I'm trying to find some reasoning behind her accusations, but I'm coming up short without knowing what Nora has been telling her. All night I've telling her over and over that Nora and I aren't dating, but she's not listening.

If the roles were reversed, I would believe her. I know her well enough to know that she wouldn't lie to me. She's complicating things. Why is she complicating things?

"Stop lying to me. I get it Landon, she's beautiful and older, and men like that kind of shit. You like that, and I've been replaced again," she waves her hands through the air and the metal bracelets on her wrists clang against each other.

I can either sit here and let her cook up her own explanation for everything, or I can bite my tongue and remember that she's drunk, upset, and has already been under a lot of pressure lately.

With a sigh, I move from the arm of the couch and kneel onto the rug in front of the couch where she's sitting. I look up to her stoic expression.

"I would never lie to your face about something like this. I'm telling the truth," my hands grab at hers in her lap.

Her hands are cold and the chill forces a memory into my mind. I'm thrown back into a back yard make out session when we were fifteen. Her hands were so cold and she put them up my shirt to rest on my warm stomach. We kissed and kissed and we were frozen by the time we went inside, but we didn't care. Not one bit.

"Can I ask you something?" her voice is soft and it melts something inside of me. I'm a sucker for her. A goner. I have always have been.

"Always."

Dakota draws a long breath and pulls one of her hands away from mine to tuck her hair behind her ear. I turn her other hand over and trace over the lines in her skin, over the scar there. She flinches out of instinct and I feel the throbbing ache from the memory behind it.

"Do you miss me?" her hands are soft and light in mine.

It feels familiar yet foreign. How is that?

Do I miss her?

Of course I miss her.

I've missed her since I moved to Washington. I've told her how much I've missed her. I've expressed how much I miss her more times than I've heard anything remotely close to that come from her.

I lean into her further and squeeze her hands between mine.

"Do you miss me?" I deliver her question back to her. 

(author's note: I'll be updating Sunday! I'm in France and my schedule is a little full with signings and having so much fun meeting so many of you, but I'll update Sunday! xoxo)