The knock on the door the next morning had the gentle tones that Erin recognized as her best friend's. Of all the people she had ever known, Ivy was the single one who would not disappoint her. Though it was Lydia she had named as her sister, the truth was Ivy was the only one who had ever come close to the dependability, love, and comfort she imagined a sibling would bring.

"Erin, you in there?" The gentle voice came through the door, and was followed by a few more taps.

Erin responded by pushing her key through the door before returning to her bed, pulling the covers over her head. She closed her eyes, indulging in the teenage desire to hide from everything. The door rattled a bit and Ivy wandered in, shutting and locking it behind her, before placing the key on Erin's desk. Turning her head, she looked to the bed, and the lump that was the small mad Englishwoman.

"It's almost noon," she said lightly. "What are you doing still in bed" You missed our lunch date." The chiding, even, was gentle, and Ivy pulled the desk chair to the edge of Erin's bed, waiting for her to emerge.

When Erin pulled the covers from her head, she looked a mess. Last night's well-placed makeup was running down her face, and her hair was abysmal.

"Sorry, Ives, I just?" She let out a long sigh, shaking her head.

Ivy took a moment to investigate the room, hunting for clues as to her friend's state. Falling on the headboard, now minus one yellow momento, she bit her bottom lip.

"Did you see him?" She asked, her tone returning to the gentle lowness of a mother come to settle her distraught child. "Or is he?" trailing off, then, unable to say the words, in case they would send Erin off.

"No, no?" Erin shook her head. "I just' I really miss him, Ives." That was an admission that had perhaps never been made. Ivy always knew it, respected it, but to hear it caused her to bite her bottom lip. "I just want to let him' He's dead, right?" The purple glint in Erin's eyes told Ivy everything she needed to know and she shook her head.

"You went looking again," it was more a realization than an accusation. "Erin, even if he is, and I don't think" you're not going to find him." Ivy reached out over the bed to rest her hand on her friend's. "He didn't come to you in life, I don't think he'd come?"

"You don't know that," Erin snapped back. "You don't know that he doesn't?" she trailed off. "He misses me, too."

"It's been what? Three years?" Ivy let it set in a moment. "Three years since you've seen him. And for all you know, he still thinks you're married and happy on some island somewhere" he doesn't even know to come here looking for you, dear. You need to?"

"Ivy?" Erin cut her off, shaking her head. "I know that. I know." The fa"ade of defiance melted from her face. "I know he's not coming back."

"Then why are you sitting here in bed at noon, honey?" The gentle prodding that got Erin to open up was something only Ivy had ever mastered. "What's different today from yesterday, from the day before?"

"I came home last night," Erin started. "And I was all alone. It was so cold in here, and dim, and sitting there over my bed like some sick joke was that flower, and I just' felt it. Like part of me was missing. All over again. It hit me like a fracking tidal wave, and so I thought maybe that meant that he" that he died." The last part said in the faintest of whispers. "That I knew. Because, wouldn't I know?"

"No, baby.." Ivy whispered, pulling her chair closer and squeezing Erin's hand. "You're never going to know. Not really. You have to....you have to let him go. You have to move on, you've been back two years and you haven't even really been out of this room. And don't think I don't know that you stand by the window every night waiting. I've seen you, on my way home after inventory. You can't will someone to love you, baby. If he felt this way, he'd?"

"He did." Erin said quietly. "Once, after" When I was in London." She looked up at Ivy, guilty. "He was just there, one night, and he held me, and it was" "

"Erin?" There was almost pity in the voice of her friend. "Are you sure it?"

"Yes." The defensiveness returned. "Yes, I'm sure...he took me to his apartment and we played monopoly and ate Doritos and just laughed until the sun came up. Then he took me home and that was it?" Erin turned her head to look at the window. "But he had changed, Ivy, I saw it. He was a man, and he was different. He" came back. To me. He missed me. He?" she trailed off and shook her head.

"He did not love you." Ivy was strong on this fact. Had been since the beginning. She did not believe that someone could love and not be able to say it. She could not believe that someone who had the love, so completely, of such an unattainable woman would walk away rather than reciprocate. Sometimes she hated him for it, even. That he had broken through the hard, detached shell that held her dear friend and just walked away to leave it oozing on the floor. "He does not love you. If he loved you, he would have told you? he wouldn't have walked away from this. From you."

"I think he did because he does," Erin said quietly. "Because he knew that he never could...be normal. Because he knew he could die. Because he thought I would just forget it all and?"

"Stop lying to yourself, Erin. No one walks away from someone they love like that. They wouldn't?"

"I walked away, Ivy!" Erin's voice raised till it was almost a scream. "I turned around and walked away. I pushed him out of my life because I said I was getting too close, but' it was already too late. It was too late from the first time we kissed, from the dance. It was always too late."

"Erinalle Victoria Dunbridge." Ivy said it with such a stern tone, that it pushed Erin back to lean on the headboard. "We've been over this and over this for three years now. You told him, if he even admitted he was capable of loving you, you'd wait forever, and he didn't say it."

"He only told me not to wait, Ivy. He didn't say no?" She pleaded with her better half. "And I did. Look at me. Look!" She waved her arms around as if her room alone proved a point. "I waited. I'm waiting. I'm still waiting."

"That's the problem, honey," she said quietly. "He doesn't want you to, because he's not coming back to find you. There is no happy ending here. It's time to just?" Ivy trailed off, and thought for a moment. "Maybe he is dead. Or needs to be, to you. And not the kind where you go out to the cemetery at night and look for him, honey. You're killing yourself with all that. Have you looked in the mirror lately' You've lost weight, and you didn't have it to lose. You're pale, and honestly, if you keep this and the drinking up, it'll be me out there looking for you."

Erin shook her head slowly then a bit faster, then just sighed.

"I don't know how to let him go," she admitted. "I don't know why he's so much harder than the others."

"Because he fought for you, Erin. With himself at least." Ivy admitted. "That's why he kept coming back, I think. He was trying to love you because" who wouldn't' Who would leave someone like you, especially if they loved them so much. But, baby, he lost the fight. If he won it, he'd have come back. Two years it's?"

"The longest he's ever been gone, I know." She nodded.

"And no notes, no letters, no left roses, no tokens that he's been here, watching you." Ivy said, as if for the fiftieth time. "He's never coming back. Dead or alive. And you cannot live your life like Mrs. Havisham in a big dark room waiting for something that isn't going to happen. You have a choice."

"It's like a piece of me is gone, and I can't remember how to live without it," Erin sighed. "I tried, I tried to forget, I really?"

"Erin." Ivy said with some formality. "From here on out, we're regarding that man as dead. Period."