AVERY smiled until every muscle in her face physically ached, she'd heard once that there were fourty three muscles in a human face and she reckoned each and every one of them was being strained. 

She didn't know what she'd expected from Brooklyn, but it certainly hadn't been this confident guy who had his life sorted out, who was engaged to someone who was clearly far superior to her. How stupid she had been to think because her life had hit a massive pause his had done the same, every time she'd imagined him in Orlando it had been through her rose-tinted glasses because she had thought that he would feel as empty without her as she had felt without him.

Whenever she'd let her mind stray towards him she'd thought he would be living in a small apartment drinking coffee every morning, making new friends because despite his less than outgoing personality he was the type of person who people naturally gravitated to, but she had never imagined him having a girlfriend, let alone a fiancée which in hindsight seemed awfully naive on her part.

She was the worst friend ever, if they could even be called friends in their current situation, she was  like a small child who had treasured a doll who had loved her back in equal measure until that love had been become too consuming and then too tiresome and the child had tossed the doll away carelessly but now that someone had picked it up, now that Abigail had clearly overtaken Brooklyn away she wanted him back.

That secured her thoughts that she was a bad friend, throughout the years they had known each other she had been the dramatic one, the one who had needed hugs, corny jokes sent her way in the hopes of making the problem that seemed so monumental smaller and tubs of Ben & Jerry's to send her into a sugar coma after a particularly bad day. She had always counted on the fact that she would never walk alone in life because she had Brooklyn, her constant shadow and when he had come to her house looking as pale as a ghost and told her he couldn't go on the way they were, she hadn't been able to smile and pretend that they could salvage what was left of their friendship, she'd been filled with a need to make him stay and so she'd done something so incomprehensible that even now thinking about it her cheeks flamed with embarrassment.

It would be great if she was unselfish, if she was more like her Mother, she'd hated her Father ever since she could remember, hated the way he saw people only as a means to an end, a way to get what he wanted but maybe she was far more like him than she wanted to admit. And she didn't want to be like him, so she smiled like her Mum would have in her situation and listened to his ramblings about Abigail for once choosing to be unselfish rather than make a scene.

She could do this, it would be perfectly fine to resume their old friendship just so long as she kept a mental block over everything that had happened in the past because that would be guaranteed to make things not so friendly.

Right now, she felt tired, like the machines that were, in fact, keeping her alert were filling her up with drowsiness from head to toe and though she tried her best to keep eye contact with Brooklyn she knew it was a lost battle. This wasn't like before in her past life she would never go to sleep before three a.m., this was now and when she was tired she had to sleep.

Brooklyn seemed to sense how tired she was, and she couldn't help thinking how different everything could have been if she hadn't uttered the words that had been the undoing of their friendship. He would have been here with her every step of the way because he was Brooklyn and he didn't give up on people. He wasn't selfish and completely caught up with petty gossip like Cameron was.

And even though she knew that she was meant to be getting over Cameron, that she had persuaded herself a hundred times over that him dumping her because she'd done something as inconvenient as getting leukaemia, Avery couldn't help but wish that she was sitting here with her hand being held by someone she loved rather than feeling so empty and lonely like Brooklyn had taken a ship out to sea and left her stranded on the shore. 

Thinking about Cameron made her feel two things at once that was completely at odds with one another, she knew that she should have gotten over him by now, overtime she brought him up Kristen would get the same look on her face, the look that meant he should mean nothing to Avery. But she couldn't let go that easily.

"You're tired, aren't you?" Brooklyn looked worried, she'd almost forgotten how well he knew her, how it felt to have someone in her life who just understood without pointless questions.

Avery wanted to be able to shake her head and tell him she was fine, that she could go for hours longer talking and hearing all about moments she had missed out on because of her own stupidity.

"Yes, I am, but you can stay if you want..."

He was the one to shake his head.

"You need to rest, we can talk more tomorrow I've booked a room at Quentin's up in town"

They seemed to have reached a stalemate, it was all far too strange. Avery had once been a huge fan of romance novels of a plot that was so predictable she could recite the twists and turns off the top of her head, but she had no idea how her own story would end.

She felt her eyelids droop and she could no longer find the strength inside herself to speak that's what happened when you had chemotherapy drugs flowing through your veins, they might potentially save your life, but they had a draining effect on your body. 

The last thing Avery registered was Brooklyn's shadow moving over towards her and a light kiss placed on her forehead, a single brush of her hair and then she was gone to a world which seemed far brighter than her own.