"Did you actually have to tweet before you started the car? It's freezing in here."

    Jacob rolled his eyes and turned the key in the ignition. My ears practically jumped up and down with joy at hearing the heat kick in; New York City tended to get below freezing at the end of December.

    December 28th, to be exact.

    Three days post-Christmas.

    Three days post-breakup.

    "I did have to tweet first, because otherwise I would forget. And we have to document this trip! I've never been anywhere outside of New York before."

    "You went on a tour across the country."

    "But that was for orchestra. I've never been on a vacation anywhere outside of New York, where I could just relax and have fun without worrying about my vibrato being fast enough for Amy to not look over and yell at me for slowing down her pace."

    I couldn't help but laugh at that; I had been privy to too many arguments from the two of them during the fall season about Jacob's inability to vibrato at exactly the right speed to fit Amy's needs.

    The heat was really starting to work and I stopped shivering in my jacket; three years on the East Coast and I still couldn't get used to the freezing cold winters. California had never even had a winter; it hardly got below 60 degrees in the middle of January. And yet at this point the East Coast felt more like home to me than the West ever had. I had friends here, and despite being far from family, the East Coast was where I had begun to build my own life; a life that included people I wanted it to, and a life that was independent.

    Maybe that was why I had had a relationship with Connor. I had always assumed that it had been to marry him and form our own life, together. But perhaps it had really been meant to bring me to the East, somewhere where I could meet my actual soulmate and begin a real life. I never would have considered applying to James Madison University if it hadn't been for Connor; I would have gone to whatever school Jen and Riley had ended up at.

    And yet I chose to follow my long-distance boyfriend to where he was.

    Long distance had been so much easier back then. Why was it so difficult now?

    I shook my head and forced myself to stop. I hadn't pined over Connor once in the past three days, and I wasn't going to start during the six-hour car ride back to JMU.

    I had been planning on surprising Connor by arriving at his doorstep six days before Britt and Dan's engagement party. Britt, Katie, and Mel already knew I was coming and I had sworn them to secrecy.

    Now, I was still going down six days early, but instead to simply see my friends; Connor wouldn't be on the list of places to stop by.

    I had asked Jacob to come along with me as company in a purely platonic sense--he would be my date to the engagement party, but he was my best friend in New York and I needed to be with someone. I couldn't make a six-hour car ride by myself at this point. For all I knew, I would break down halfway there and refuse to keep going for fear of seeing my ex-boyfriend.

    Ex-boyfriend used to be a term of anger, one that brought the image of Kevin Long to my mind. I had never dreamed that it would apply to Connor Hall.

    Jacob had dropped everything to come to JMU with me for a week, and I was insanely grateful. I was just hoping that I would be able to get through the engagement party without anything terrible happening. Drama seemed to follow in my wake no matter what part of the country I was in.

    "Better?" Jacob asked, causing me to jump; I had been so lost in my thoughts and my almost-pining that I had forgotten about the person driving the car I was in.

    "Definitely." I nodded, pointing to my arm. "See? No shivering."

    Jacob laughed.

    "No shivering."

    We were silent for a moment before he breached the question I knew had been in the back of his mind but that he had been avoiding for fear of upsetting me.

    "So where are you gonna stay when you get back?"

    I had been kicked out of the apartment four days earlier, on the day I had woken up to a video plastered all over Twitter of a girl and a guy going ham in Justin's bedroom at the apartment. I knew for a fact that the girl in the video wasn't me and that the guy wasn't Justin; Justin had been with Adrian the whole night, and although I was hammered, I would never cheat. It wasn't who I was. I had been with Connor for four years--there was nothing that I would purposefully do, drunk or not, that would compromise our relationship.

    I had kind of figured he would be the one to do that if it ever happened.

    I didn't know who the people in the video were. For all I knew, it was Amy and a random guy who had shown up, and she had gotten Chloe to record it so she could "ruin" me. All I knew was that I had been kicked out of the apartment the next morning by an irate Lucy who gave me absolutely no time to explain anything. I had checked into a hotel and spent Christmas there--and the ensuing three days.

    "I don't know." I shrugged. "I guess I'll start the apartment hunt again. I don't know what to think."

    Jacob nodded.

    "I'm sorry about all of that. Amy just doesn't know when to stop."

    "Yeah, she doesn't." I agreed. "I don't think that she has a single human bone in her body, let alone a heart."

    Jacob let out a short laugh.

    "You're right about that." He shook his head, "My door's always open if you need anything. I mean it. I--"

    "Thanks Jacob, I know." I smiled genuinely. "And I really appreciate it. I'll definitely take you up on that if I need it."

    He grinned.

    "Good."

    I felt a buzz in my pocket and pulled out my phone to see a message from Katie.

    "It's Katie. She wants to know what time we're gonna be there?"

    Jacob checked the time and shrugged.

    "I would guess sometime after 5, but we might take some pit stops and there might be traffic. So I'm not really sure."

    "That's fine. I'll just say we don't know. She'll be fine with it."

    I typed out a reply and got one back instantly.

    "She's the sweetest." I grinned over at Jacob, "She wants to have everything ready for us when we get there."

    "Nice." Jacob nodded.

    I typed a reply before tucking my phone back in my pocket.

    "So what are we gonna do for the next six-or-more hours?" I asked, looking over at Jacob. I could feel the excitement rising in me as I pushed Connor to the back of my mind and focused on my destination: my old college to see some of my closest friends and celebrate their love. "We have to have something to do, right?"

    "All I know is that you'd better not fall asleep on me." Jacob laughed, "I don't think that that would be a very good start to the trip, and I'll be bored."

    "Of course not!" I exclaimed, "I wouldn't fall asleep on you in a million years, man."

    I fell asleep approximately thirty-seven minutes later.

***

    "Alright Miss "I wouldn't fall asleep on you in a million years, man", we're here."

    I opened my eyes and immediately felt like the worst person imaginable; if we were there then it meant that I had been asleep for hours.

    Like, six hours.

    To be fair, I hadn't slept hardly at all in the past three nights. Whoever was staying in the hotel room next to me had insanely loud kids who screamed at all hours of the night, and the person across the hall from me screamed on the phone until at least 3:00 in the morning every morning.

    A car was the most comfortable and easiest place for me to sleep at this point.

    "I am so sorry, Jacob." I shook my head as I unbuckled my seatbelt, "I didn't mean to fall asleep, I swear."

    "I know." Jacob laughed, "And if you weren't in a terrible situation right now with everything in your life, I would be upset. But maybe a seven-hour nap was what you needed."

    "Seven-hour nap?"

    "Traffic wasn't great."

    I shook my head, angry with myself for being a complete waste of space and essentially using Jacob to drive me to Virginia as I stepped out of the car. It felt good to be back at JMU, however much I hadn't enjoyed my time here; looking back on it and feeling the college atmosphere around me, all I could remember were the late nights gossipping with Katie and the long car rides where Dan almost killed us on the way to McDonald's. The tests and studying and 8 AM classes weren't the things I remembered.

    Which was probably a good thing, or I would have run screaming in the opposite direction.

    I walked with Jacob up to the apartment building that I had shared with Katie and that she now shared with Britt and Mel. The three of them surely had wonderful times together, and it made me a bit sad that I was no longer a part of those great times.

    "Oh crap, I was supposed to text Katie when we were half an hour away." I shrugged, "Oh well. We'll surprise her!"

    "There you go." Jacob laughed. We walked up two flights of stairs to get to the girls' apartment, and as I knocked on the door I couldn't help but feel elated at the fact that I was about to see my best friends again.

    The elation evaporated quickly as the door swung open and I felt my eyes bulge out of my head.

    "Hi."

    Connor.

A/N: OOOH it's started. I am SO excited for Part Two guys, you have no idea! Let me know what you think is going to happen in this part (which hopefully get over 20 chapters if I'm not lazy) and what you want to happen in the end!

Also, I think we set a record for comments on one chapter of this book with "The Second Phone Call"--as of last night when I checked, it had 227 comments on it. You guys are really not happy with me.

But hey, that's what being an author on Wattpad is about!

Don't forget to check out my works on Radish as well, and follow me on social media--there's new stuff being posted all the time that just adds to your experience in reading the book!

I love you guys and your support and comments. Until Sunday!

-Katherine