“Now you t ell me that you’re sick” I let out a long breath. “Look, I lost you once, ok, and I can’t lose you again. I don’t want to roll over every morning, depressed because you aren’t in my bed. I don’t want to come home and have no one to share my day with. I don’t want to be alone anymore” I feel the damn tears coming to the corner of my eyes. “I don’t want to be away from you anymore.”

“Alice, I’m not going anywhere,” she pushed a strand of hair out of my face, “Ok, you don’t have to worry.”

“I love you, Dana. I have loved you from the first time we met. I always said you didn’t “have the balls” to go after certain girls, when really it was me who didn’t have the balls to go after you.”

She smiles, letting out a light laugh. We embrace one another. I take her in. Her smell, the way her hair feels against my skin, the feel of her skin against mine. I let out a light sigh.

With my head still on her shoulder, “We still have so many things we need to talk about and work through, I’d be a damn fool to let you walk out of my life again, Dana Fairbanks.”

She brings my lips to hers. I can feel the electricity of her kiss surge through my body. I’m instantly hooked. God, I’ve missed her. I’ve missed this familiar feeling. I’m monetarily silenced.

“You know,” I joke, “I hope this isn’t a pattern for you.”

“What’s that?” she asks as she wraps her arms across my body, as I rest my head on her chest.

“You getting the hots for me only when you’re in a relationship.” I smile.

“Alice, don’t say that.” She looks at me seriously.

“Dana, I’m just joking.”

She turns to face, “Alice, as clich as it sounds, I left you because I love you so much that it scares me.”

I rest my hand over hers, “It’s ok.”

She shakes her head, “No it’s not. When I found you that night, in my apartment, crying because you didn’t know where I wasyeah I was freaked out. Not because I thought you were clingy or that you were some stalker. Alice, I was afraid because that proved just how much you love me and, at the time, I didn’t think anyone would or should love me like that.”