Falling For Amelia Manning

Phoebe didn't understand why she was standing outside of the house they had been forced to help clean out. She didn't know why the lights would still be on at such a late hour either, not when it was supposed to be empty. She didn't even think about why she walked all the way here from the school without telling her mom or anyone else she made it this far.

Taking a few tentative steps forward, she found herself at the front door before she knew it. She didn't raise her knuckles to knock on the door, not when she heard the sound of someone hammering on the other side. Instead, she choked up on the doorknob, knowing it had stuck the last time she was here and twisted it until it let her in the house.

The lights were low, just enough to see your way around the rooms. The walls looked new, the bare bones were no longer visible and if this was any other situation, Phoebe would be impressed. She followed the humming coming from the kitchen. Careful not to step on nails or broken pieces of the floor, she made her way over to the open kitchen only to be met with Amelia Manning working on her hands and knees trying to get the last of the new floor done.

Standing in the empty doorway, Phoebe watched her until her quick movements to stand up made her back away and run her back into a wall creating more noise than before.

Freezing, she didn't dare look up when the sound of Amelia's shoes stopped dead in their tracks.

"Edan, what the hell are you doing here?" Her strained voice made Phoebe's heart pound with adrenaline.

"I – I..." She stammered as her back met the door frame of the kitchen. She was scared Amelia might lash out and do something justified that she couldn't tell her why she was standing in the kitchen with her. So, she turned it around on her. "What are YOU doing here? Isn't it illegal to trespass?" Phoebe poked at her through the air. Amelia rolled her eyes and tossed the hammer to the ground before wiping her brow with her gloved hand.

"It's none of your damn business why I'm here, and I'm not trespassing. I'm working, something you don't understand." Amelia harshly lashed out at her and Phoebe wasn't going to take that standing up and cowering by the doorway. Picking up a bottle of water, Amelia busied herself somewhere else than with Phoebe.

"You weren't at school, I got worried, I don't see how that makes me the bad guy! You and James both have been on my ass about stuff that's not my fault! How can I help that I'm good at school and have ambition and sometimes that clouds my judgment?!" Phoebe shouted all the things she had thought about after her talk with James. She still didn't see everything from that side of view, but she had no other way of expressing herself aside from yelling and spitting on the ground, on accident, but still.

"God, this again, I thought I had you out of my life and here you are. Messing it up again."

The look of stern stone on her face made Phoebe's stomach turn. Maybe she had burned their new bridge before it was even completely remodeled.

"I'm sorry I'm such a mess up, that I seem to rip into people's lives like a tornado, and only leaving devastation in their wake." Phoebe dug on herself while Amelia rolled her eyes as she drank down a water bottle without taking a break until it was empty. Crushing it with her hand, she threw the bottle into the sink before rolling her shoulders and neck. She'd been working since this morning. She had to talk Hank into letting her stay late after getting some training this morning. It took him a while to let her and she wasn't going to let Phoebe ruin this for her, but she couldn't keep ignoring this either. Even she didn't want to admit to herself that seeing her here was doing something to the butterflies in her stomach.

"I guess you've hit the 'feeling sorry for yourself' bump in the road on this path to figuring your life out," Amelia started as she moved about the kitchen fiddling with anything, she could get her hands on.

Phoebe noticed her hair back in a loose bun, something she usually did when she was cleaning a room, she remembered fondly. When she practiced, her hair was in a tight ponytail to make sure nothing was in her way. Phoebe could remember her walking around her house when they were younger with strands of blonde hair stuck in her face, getting stuck in the Chapstick on her lips. She reeled herself back, trying not to think about her lips again, but when their eyes met across the half-done kitchen, it was all that she could think of.

"Tell me the truth," Phoebe started "if I had come in here, guns blazing, telling you to go back to school because it was what's best, what would you have done?"

Amelia thought about it, she knew that's why she was here, at least at first. When she saw her face, the pain and tears etched on the surface, she changed her mind.

"I would have told you to stay out of it because it's not your business. It's not like we're friends," Amelia's words cut Phoebe like a knife. She was right, and that stung worse than water hitting a fresh cut. The sound of heavy pieces of tools being thrown on the counter and into the sink made her jump where she stood.

"I'm worried," Phoebe whispered.

"What?"

"I'm worried! About you, about what's going to happen to you without a high school degree. Where are you going to live? What happens if – if," Phoebe's voice started coming out high and squeaky and Amelia couldn't understand the last few words she was trying to say. Seeing no other way, Amelia crossed the kitchen floor and grabbed the weeping, squeaking Phoebe in her arms, muffling anything trying to come out of her mouth.

Her squeaks turned into full-blown sobs of panic as her arms curled around Amelia, holding her tighter against her shaking body.

"I'm a bad person, I never saw it before, but James – James wouldn't have said all those things if I wasn't." Phoebe sobbed into Amelia's shoulder and the sweatshirt that was covered in worst things than tears and snot.

Amelia relished in their position. It wasn't something she saw happening tonight. Sleeping like the dead because of how tired she is, sure. Hugging and comforting your former best friend, turned enemy, turned romantic interest, turned back to the enemy, was on the bottom of the list. But as she held her shaking, crying, form in her arms and with her chin placed on the tops of her head, she saw something for the first time. Something she hadn't seen since they were much younger, a future.

"Phoebe, you are not a bad person, and if I know James – which I used to, but I still feel like I have a good grasp on her – she didn't imply that you're a bad person. What did she tell you?" Amelia asked, gentler than usual. Pulling apart, Phoebe wiped her face and tried to catch her breath.

"She laid out the worst things about me," she croaked while sniffing back the snot that was still all over her face mixed with the tears.

"Oh, like the obsession you have with that commercial, what is it again?" Amelia thought long and hard on the subject while Phoebe bit her lip with the answer hanging from it.

"International delights, yeah, you hate that so much, it's hilarious. The first few times, after that you can see it for what it truly is, a weird hate obsession." Laughing, Amelia tried to get her to crack a smile, but it wasn't the right time, she saw.

"Those commercials are sins against humanity, I am only protecting myself. She did bring that up, but it wasn't all about that." Her voice fell and the smile was wiped off Amelia's face when she watched her go from funny angry to sad again.

"She told me that I involve myself too much. That I am too passionate about getting people to see my way of thinking, that apparently isn't everyone else's way of thinking, and it can hurt people. I don't see it though." Phoebe began to pace in the little eat-in dining area of the kitchen.

"So, you don't see how coming over here, preparing to tell me to go back to school or live a life unfulfilled, isn't being obsessive over someone else's life?" Amelia asked her with one hand on her hip and the other narrating the conversation with her words.

"No, I was going to talk to you about coming back, you need a high school diploma to get a good job, it's simple!" She argued.

"I don't. You wanted to know why I'm here at night, working on something that shouldn't be my job, but your punishment?" She asked and all Phoebe could do was nod along and watch her walk around the kitchen. "Hank said I had a talent for contracting and he offered me a job the other day when we were working here. Gave me his card and I showed up here knowing that I could make double what that fast food place was going to give me, and I don't need a degree. Some training and outside classes over the next year or so, but that's it. I'll have the proper money for the apartment I'm trying to get, otherwise, the floor in here is just fine."

Phoebe felt like she had been punched in the stomach. She's been sleeping on the floor in here, instead of sucking it up and staying at her house? A different type of pain crossed Phoebe's face, something Amelia didn't get the chance to see before Phoebe started shouting again.

"You would rather sleep on the floor in here than in a bed at my house! I don't get it; you throw everything away just to suffer further. Why can't you see I'm trying to help you!" She was nearing screaming levels and Amelia had to take a step back.

"Now I know what James must have told you. She was right, you can't see the other side of things, it's your way or the highway, and even then, you're telling people to go your way!" Amelia yelled back at her making Phoebe jump a little.

"Why can't either of you see it my way! You would rather suffer?" There was a wild look on Phoebe's face that Amelia didn't like seeing.

"I would rather it be my choice, you're trying to take that away from me, you need to see that. It would be like if I came over to your house, took a sandwich that you chose to eat from your mouth and forced you to eat something I thought was better. Maybe it is better for you, but you wanted the other sandwich. Does that make more sense to you?" Amelia broke it down further and oddly enough, it was starting to click

"Why does everyone around me want to suffer? James wants to be around people that made fun of her, calling her ladyboy and awful things to her face and worse behind her back. I want to protect her from that, but she runs the other way. I could have helped you get the grades you needed, you would have graduated and maybe – maybe things would have been different. Between us, that is. All the people I care about in my life are out to make the most reckless decisions and I'm stuck back here, left behind." The root of the issue was being dredged up and Amelia could see it so clearly now.

"Your future is so bright, Phoebe Michelle, so bright you'll need to wear shades. James' will be just as bright. She doesn't need you to beat people up for calling her names or looking at her the wrong way. Maybe she'd even be able to date someone for more than a week." Amelia laughed lightly knowing that Phoebe was the one that scared off most of the people James tried to date.

Phoebe took a seat at one of the random wood chairs in the kitchen with them and tried not to think about the future that terrified her. Hearing the screech of the other chair on the floor, she felt Amelia pull up the other chair next to her.

"We're all scared, these decisions are not made rashly. Sure, mine was thrown at me but that's how I like to deal with things. Rash thinking is my middle name." Phoebe scoffed; she knew she was joking but her real middle name caught in her throat making her want to say it.

"You just need to learn a new way of seeing other people's fears. They're just as real as yours and they have to deal with them in their way. Unless someone asks for help or you can see them shutting themselves down instead of asking for help, then maybe you could try and help. Otherwise, focus on yourself for a change. That big brain of yours is going to give you enough grief once you get into a bigger pond next year."

Phoebe wasn't sure when it happened, but her head found its way onto Amelia's shoulder while she talked to her. She wasn't sure why she couldn't see it this way when James screamed it at her. The love between her and James was unbreakable, and this fight wasn't going to stop either of them from caring for each other.

"If you had told me at the start of this year, that I would be sitting in a crappy house, with my head on the devil's shoulder, I would have punched you in the face." Phoebe laughed making Amelia laugh with her.

"Hey, not even the devil can get this good of a deal on a sweatshirt from Target," Amelia told her while pulling at the dirty sleeve of her sweatshirt.

"I better get home; my mom is probably calling the cops. You sure you don't want to stay at the house?" Phoebe asked with hope in her voice. "I need to clean up here, then I'm going to go to my house and talk to my sister. Maybe I can do something about that. But I'd like to see you tomorrow."

"Why?" Phoebe asked, already suspicious. Laughing, Amelia rolled her eyes and stood up from the chair making Phoebe's head roll to the side.

"Because I want to take you somewhere if that's allowed," she told her with a taunt to her voice.

"Like a date?" Phoebe asked, surprised.

"I guess I didn't consider it that way, if you'd like it to be a date, then sure. But you're not going to say that when we get there." Curious, Phoebe wanted to ask more questions, but she held her tongue. Maybe some mysteries were good.

"Your mom's coming too, she knows where we're going. Be ready by nine," she told her as they walked toward the front door.

"AM? What kind of date is that? And my mom's going to be there? Do all of my friends talk to her more than I do, or what?" Laughing, Amelia caught the use of friends when she talked about her, but she wasn't going to bring it up tonight.

"Just be ready," she told her.

"Fine," Phoebe turned toward the door one last time, but before she left for the night, she twisted back and pecked Amelia on the cheek quickly before she could say anything.

Blushing, Amelia threw her gloves down and picked up the broom. Thinking about her bright future, she saw the house around her come to life with the possibilities.