Fic: Nathan/Haley: Unpredictable: 1/1
This is massively long. Written actually for a surprise Christmas present... and I have literally been working on this for possibly over a year. Pretty sure this is the longest thing I've ever written.
And if you requested Christmas cards - I'm posting them tomorrow. If you still want one and haven't sent me your address, do it! I'm happy to post anywhere! :)
Fic behind the cut and in two posts, it's just that long.
He’s driving along with the radio blaring, still trying to block out the sound of his dad’s voice, even after all this time. No matter how much time goes past, he still remembers the bullying and the yelling every time he fumbles a pass, or takes a shot that creates a rebound for someone else to “claim all the glory.” Even after a great practice where he knows he couldn’t have tried harder, he still hears his dad’s voice, tearing shreds off him, for the tiniest little error.
The commercials prove to make him more agitated, more revved up, so he flicks stations over and tries to find some music, any music, that would calm him down. It was then that he heard a song he hadn’t heard since senior year, and all he could think about was a small town named Tree Hill, a brother unclaimed, and a tutor named Haley James, who he’d never quite forgotten.
He hadn’t seen her since graduation, standing in front of their graduating class with her Valedictorian speech, and he remembers the sick feeling in his stomach he got as he sat there watching her, feeling Lucas’ leg beside him jiggling with nervous anticipation for his best friend and then pride, knowing that there up on stage before him was the girl he let get away.
Between him and the brother who was only a brother by blood, he’s sure they screamed louder for her at the end of her speech than the rest of the seniors combined. He tried not to look at Lucas, who was staring at him in a mixture of confusion and anger, as he clapped and resisted the urge to fight his way to the front to greet her as she came off the stage.
He remembers thinking, “screw it” and taking a step towards the stage, only to feel Lucas’ hand on his shoulder. He turned around, a sneer already firmly in place, only to have it ripped away by the words Lucas spits out. “She’s not yours to congratulate, Nathan. You broke her heart, I’m pretty sure that rules you out of the right to even step foot in her vicinity.” He remembers the sick feeling in his stomach at Lucas’ words, knowing he was right, and that there was nothing he could do that would change that fact.
He remembers watching her across the crowd as his parents grabbed him, determined to photograph them as the perfect family that they were so far from, and all he wanted to say to her was that he was so sorry, that he wished it had ended differently, and that he never intended to break her heart. He’d silently add that he never intended to fall in love with her, but that would simply be an aside.
Because 18 year old Nathan Scott had no idea that he’d still love her aged twenty five and that no matter how many girls crossed his path (and there were lots, he was the NBA super star from the Celtics), they’d never compare to the girl who tutored him in high school, the best friend to his brother that his family had never quite claimed. He’d never intended to even like her, in fact, it was all just a game to show said brother that he would never belong in the world that was Nathan’s. He only realised that his exact opposite could be his perfect other half once everything between them had fallen apart, and been damaged beyond repair.
He hears her voice, once so familiar, through the radio of his car, and he feels like he can breathe, he sees the world a lot clearer, and while Tree Hill brings back a lot of memories he’d sooner lose a limb than remember, the cocky, somewhat obnoxious part of him isn’t quite ready to let go of the ones that involve Haley James, and the affect she once had on him.
It makes him remember days wasted away on the docks, watching the beautiful blushing girl trying to explain mathematical concepts he doesn’t understand, even now. He remembers plastic bracelets from Cracker Jack packets, “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” winks, flirting, and Brooke’s love rectangle plus one, whatever that is, dinner of prime rib and mac and cheese, and even now, he can’t eat macaroni and cheese without thinking of the girl who called it “food of the gods.” He remembers first kisses on front lawns, and all the empty promises he made that she believed. He thinks of all of the moments with the girl he would never have looked twice at if it hadn’t been for Lucas, and then couldn’t forget.
--
He’s glad he’s this famous basketball player, because it makes getting into places a lot easier than standing in line for the gate or by the side door like some groupie from Almost Famous. All it takes is a nod and a smirk, and he’s in the door, watching the girl who is still eighteen and wearing graduation regalia as she says her valedictorian speech in his head perform on stage the one song that brought him to this backstage. He’s clasping a bouquet of flowers and the only thing that is making him confident that she won’t turn him away in a fit of rage is that no girl has ever turned him away from her door. He’s Nathan Royal Scott, after all, and no girl has ever been able to resist him.
“Hi, super star!” He hears from behind him while he’s too busy focusing on the girl he remembers all too well, performing on the stage. He turns quickly, immediately seeing before him Brooke Davis, another Tree Hill alum who he hadn’t seen since graduation. “So, break any hearts lately, or are you saving that for round two tonight?” She smirks in a way that only proves to piss him off, and he shakes his head.
“I see you haven’t changed, you’re still a bitch, Davis. Learnt to keep your legs shut yet?” He makes his disdain obvious as he spits out the words.
“Woah there, champ. I’m engaged. To the brother whose life you made a living hell, as a matter of fact. But you definitely haven’t changed. You’re still an asshole. Thank god she moved on from you.” He flinches at her words, because he’s not going to lie, he was a prick to Haley back when the mess began, and he’d never successfully tried to win her back after the whole mess went pear shaped.
“Oh, sweetheart. You didn’t think she was still pining away for you? Crying over you and what you did to her?”
“I know she’s single.” He throws that bit of information out in front of her.
“Wow, you can Google. Impressive.” She’s clearly looking down on him, and he’s trying to reign in his temper.
“She’s playing in Boston, Brooke. I just thought I’d stop by, see how she was, maybe try to briefly catch up with her. A lot has changed, high school was a long time ago. Except that my life? Is still not your business.”
“It’s never been that simple as just a ‘catch up’ with you though, Nathan. Not when you were in a relationship with Peyton and sleeping with half the cheerleaders on the squad behind her back, not when you selected Haley as your next method of trying to ruin Lucas’ life, taking things from him one item at a time. She was just a pawn, and she got her heart destroyed because of you. You’re a player, Nathan, and you’re good at it. You’re good at breaking hearts and leaving sheets cold, but at the end of the day, what do you have to offer her that is going to make her memories of you a little less painful?”
The cheering that breaks out at that particular moment signals that Haley’s first set is finished, and she’ll be appearing before him at any time. He’s nervous, pissed off with Brooke and her words that are potentially (realistically) all too true, and he feels a sweat break out across his palms as all the carefully planned words go out of his head and are instead replaced by Brooke’s. “What do you have to offer her that is going to make her memories of you a little less painful?” And he can’t think of anything else.
Brooke runs squealing into Haley’s arms, proclaiming how amazing she was. It doesn’t take long for her to break apart, and for Haley to see who is currently leaning against the doorway, watching the scene before him, smirk firmly in place.
“Nathan?” she asks, and he can tell she’s not entirely sure whether to believe it’s actually him standing before her. The nervous tinge to her voice and the uncertainty only seems to remind him of times long before, and as he replies with a “hi” he conjures up the memory of their first kiss, her first kiss, ever.
--
He’s standing on her front lawn, staring up at the window that he believes is hers. He throws a pebble at it, and then another one, wondering just how deeply she sleeps. He knows he has fucked up, he knows he’s made a big mess of everything, and he needs to win her back in order to make sure Lucas knows exactly where he belongs on the totem pole - the very, very bottom. Maybe lower, in fact. She appears behind him, startling him somewhat, as she bitterly asks him if he’s trying to wake up her parents, because that’s their room. He flinches, wondering how scary her dad could be and whether he owns a gun - he’s had some scary experiences involving fathers and weaponry as he escapes after nights out.
She starts talking in her rambling way, trying to cram as many words in as she can before she takes a breath, and all he can think to do is kiss her because he cannot let her go. He doesn’t want to let her go, and thinks she’s kind of adorable, with her words all running together because of the speed she’s talking at. He’d been watching her lips as they moved, wondered what they’d feel like pressed up against his own, and couldn’t resist any longer. His lips slide against hers, and she tries to break away, before he swoops down and kisses her again.
It’s not until later that she confesses that that was her first kiss, and he tells her with his Scott smirk that at least it was memorable, romantic, and because it was with him, pretty damn perfect. She smacks him lightly and calls him conceited.
He remembers going home that day with a smile on his face that he couldn’t explain to anyone, let alone himself.
He tries to convince himself that he needs to keep the plan in check, that this girl is just another method of showing Lucas that he’s overstepping his boundaries into a world he’ll never belong in, and Haley James is just the perfect example. A girl who ordinarily wouldn’t be looked at twice by anyone on the basketball team. She’s pretty, sure, but not really anyone you’d think of with the display of willing and eager girls constantly ready to be at their beck and call.
But he still convinces her that he’s a safe bet, that he’s worth loving, that, “sure baby, I believe you when you say you see something in me that I don’t show the rest of the world.”
It turns out, try as he might to believe otherwise, she actually did, because she believed in him to be better than he was. She believed in what he was capable of becoming, and despite the cocky exterior he showed the world, he was actually the person she’d told him he could be, when he was off the basketball court and away from the lights and camera flashes and reporters prying into his life, his family history, the scandal and rumours the residents of Tree Hill are only all too happy to repeat for their five minutes of fame.
--
Haley and Brooke are still standing in front of him, waiting for him to respond with more than just a hi. Brooke walks away, rolling her eyes, and he knows if he turns around, he’d probably catch her flipping the bird in his direction.
“What are you doing here, Nathan?” She asks softly, her gaze firm on his face, staring at him patiently, like she used to do when it came to the math shit he could never understand, yet now could never forget.
“I heard you were in town, and thought I’d come and see what you’re doing with yourself these days. I can’t believe how many people are here tonight, Hales, you’re truly amazing.” He can’t help but let the pride slip into his voice as he speaks to her.
“I hear you’re not doing too bad for yourself either, Super Star.” She smirks at him, and he begins to wonder if that’s just something her and Brooke practice in the mirror often enough for it to resemble his own.
“I just… I just needed to see you.” He says, his voice betraying his nerves, his fear, his insecurities, as it comes out barely above a whisper.
“Why, Nathan? Why after all this time? Whose life are you trying to make miserable now, or who are you trying to convince that they’re lower than low and barely deserve to breathe the same air that you do?” He flinches, because he never expected bitterness from Haley, who never used to have a bad word to say about anyone.
“It’s not about that, and when you found out, it wasn’t even about Lucas anymore. It didn’t have anything to do with anyone except you and me and my feelings for you, which were stronger than I’d ever thought I’d feel for someone. It hadn’t been about that since the moment I fell to the floor that night, and all I could think was how badly I wanted you to make things okay. Because you’d always been able to fix all the broken parts of me.”
“Except when you were too broken to fix, and I realised you’d never change. You broke up with me, you broke me, and you sure as hell don’t get to come around here now to see what I’ve done with my life. You gave up that right when you held onto those pictures of Peyton, and maybe even before that, because god knows what went on with you two while you were on that auction date. You don’t get to come around here now with your apologies, because it’s been six years, and I stopped waiting a long time ago, the minute I found out I was just another ploy for you to use to get back at Lucas for merely existing.”
She breathes loudly, like she’d forgotten to breathe while she was letting him know exactly where he stood in her life.
“Look, Nathan, I’m glad your life is so wonderful. You worked hard to get to where you are today. And thanks for coming tonight to show your support, that was really kind. I need to get back. Enjoy your life.” She gives him a quick smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes, and it hurts him a little, or a lot. Because she’s always been that one person he never really wanted to hurt, or never wanted to hate him. And he’s done that because he was a cocky, immature boy at 16 who didn’t know how good he had it until it was gone.
It’s not until he’s watching her walk away that he realises he’s still clutching the bouquet of flowers, so he scribbles a note and attaches them to the flowers, which he leaves on her dressing room door.
--
It may have been six years, but she would recognise that handwriting as if it was her own. She rolls her eyes but reads it anyway. “You were amazing. I’m still an idiot, and an asshole, but I miss you.” And maybe he’s learning to be honest for the first time… ever. She’s just determined she’s not going to wonder what exactly he is now, or about the what if’s, could haves, or what might have been. It’s just not worth it when the future will never be hers.
But as she reads the note again, suddenly she feels sixteen all over again, blindly falling for a basketball player, the one basketball player whose only mission in life was to destroy the life of her best friend, who never actually intended on catching her.
--
She goes home after her concert, worn out but still on a high that only performing in front of a large crowd screaming for you and your singing and your passion can provide. She empties her bag out, stretching her tired muscles, and comes across the note he left, the one that came attached to the flowers she kindly donated to the poor tour assistant forced to run around fetching her bottles of water and simply waiting for anything she may require.
She reads over his words again, and all she can think about is being sixteen, and believing naively that the star of her high school basketball team may actually be somewhat falling in love with her, despite what the hierarchy of high school dictates.
But at sixteen, or seventeen, you never anticipate your first love being someone you fall in love with who never falls back. You don’t anticipate falling in love feeling almost alone, as happy as you may feel. You’re still half convinced that there’s a Prince Charming out there, waiting to come in and whisk you away on his white horse. And for a while there, she actually thought that Nathan might be the somewhat imperfect perfect Prince Charming, and that maybe they’d be that one “high school sweetheart” couple that made it out of their graduating class of Tree Hill High School.
Instead, she graduated with a broken heart, and was currently still trying to find someone worth taking a risk for at twenty five. She’s casually seeing someone, a guitar player she knows through Jake, but it’s nothing serious, and she doesn’t see it going anywhere near where her mother is hoping she’ll be in the next few years.
But seeing Nathan again, she feels like she can’t breathe, like she’s drowning, and all she can feel is his presence surrounding her, even though he’s no longer in front of her. Then she feels like she’s standing on the docks, waiting pathetically for him to apologise, to tell her that the photos she finds on his laptop of Peyton in various forms of undress aren’t what they look like at all, but just something he’s forgotten to erase, or something she’s sent him in a moment of desperate lonely teenage angst, longing for someone to hold on to.
Instead she’s greeted by his smirk and him telling her he had to get it from somewhere since she wasn’t meeting his needs, and she’s trying not to cry as she realises that who she believed he was becoming was just an act, a front, and that he truly was all the things Lucas had tried to make her aware of.
But while he broke her heart, she still couldn’t forget the way his lips felt upon hers, her first real kiss aside from one awkward moment with Lucas when they were in their wondering phase that they both choose to believe never actually happened. She remembers the surprise of seeing Nathan throwing rocks at her parents window, believing it to be hers, and the butterflies as he inches closer and closer, before his lips meet hers, and even now, as she sits alone in a hotel room in a strange city, she believes she can still feel his lips pressing against hers.
--
He sits in his apartment, throwing a mini basketball up and down, debating what to do. He almost wants to call her, but he knows he’d be on a manhunt just to find her, and he’s not going to be the desperate loser calling all the hotels in the Boston area just to see if there’s a Haley James or a Brooke Davis or a Tutor Girl James or whatever else name she may have checked in. He’s not Hugh Grant in that stupid Julia Roberts movie, and he refuses to look that pathetic. His fingers are twitching with a need to dial a number, but he concentrates on throwing the ball up and down. Up and down. Up and down. He feels his phone vibrating in his pocket, and reaches for it quickly, trying not to believe it could be her.
“’Sup, loser. Heard you went a-visiting today.” He rolls his eyes at his brothers voice, the fiancé of Brooke Davis, because some things had changed after high school, and they’d become close despite all the shit that had gone down between them during their school days.
“Haley or Brooke?” He asks, and he hears a chuckle down the line that makes him want to throttle Lucas.
“Both, actually. And Brooke was not impressed with your random appearance in her best friend’s life, let alone the attitude that you apparently failed to check in at the door. She wants you to know though that you may be older, more built, with more money to your name and more fame, but you’re still the asshole you were at sixteen and she doesn’t see that ever, ever changing.” He hears Brooke congratulating him down the line for remembering all of that.
“Whatever, Lucas, your girlfriend is still the same stuck up bitch she always was.”
“I’ll choose to ignore that. So, Haley…” He rolls his eyes again.
“Lucas, you watch too many soap operas. Reel in your girly drama, because Notebook-esque romance you’re conjuring up in your mind is simply your imagination in overdrive.”
“Is this going to be a one time thing, or are you planning on sticking around in her life to make things more complicated for her than they were at school?”
“It was sort of impulsive. Dan was being a dick, as always, heard her song on the radio, that one about boys she used to love with hearts as hard as stone, heard she was in town -“
“-Realised she was that girl you never quite got over, despite how much of a dick you were to her at school, how much you broke her heart, and decided to pay her a visit because you’re Nathan Scott, you like things complicated and a tad crazy, and because you’re still somewhat deluded and believe there is not a girl alive that would turn you down.”
“Yeah, thanks for the support and love, bro.”
“Seriously. Figure out what you want, make sure it’s what you want, remember she’s not a chess piece or the pink stick in your game of Life car, and then go after her if you’re sure. If you’re 150% sure. But you may not have a fighting chance in hell.”
“As always, you’ve been beyond helpful, charming brother of mine. Later.”
He hears a sigh before he ends the call.
He releases the basketball up in the air, and still has no idea what the hell he wants, or what he was even hoping for out of the evening. He just sort of wants to go back to lazy days in Tree Hill when things were so much simpler, before they both had fame and fortune and people screaming their names, when they were just a boy and a girl with dreams, and he was playing a risky game that ending up with him falling in love and breaking her heart.
He never intended for her to find those pictures, mementos from the dysfunction that was his relationship with Peyton long before Haley even crossed his mind, and didn’t even know she had found them, until he was sitting on the docks waiting for her for well over an hour before he’d realised she wasn’t coming, and Lucas was standing before him, Brooke by his side, yelling at him for breaking her heart and for not caring, and putting her innocent heart into his sick twisted little game in his vendetta against Lucas. “You never should have used her in your arsenal, because she’s distraught and she’s broken hearted, she actually gave a damn about you, Nathan, and you’re still doing god knows what behind her back with Peyton?!”
He flinches then, realising, understanding. She’d found the pictures when she’d borrowed his computer to type an essay up, something about one computer amongst too many people in the James household, and had come away with an incomplete essay and a torn apart heart.
Then he affixes his smirk in place, stands up and faces his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. “Tell her it was fun, but it’s not like we were going to go anywhere.” He’s going to push her away because its better this way, he’s not equipped to be in love, and definitely not equipped enough to love someone as pure and perfect as Haley James.
He’s unsurprised when he crosses paths with Haley the next day and she slaps him. He guesses the message was repeated and received. “You’re an idiot, and an asshole.” She tells him, and he realises people in the hall are starting to stare. The look on her face breaks whatever he’s got in his chest masquerading as a heart, and all he wants to do is pull her closer and tell her the truth, that she means everything and Peyton never really meant anything except an easy, regular lay, that he didn’t have to work too hard to get when he needed.
The words don’t come, and he gets to stand there rubbing his jaw, watching the girl he loves (kind of, sort of, does) walk away from him without looking back.
And a few years later, he’s just some guy in the audience at one of her concerts, who knows he sure as hell doesn’t deserve a glance back, some guy full of fucked up problems from a family life he wishes he never had, knowing he doesn’t deserve a girl like Haley James, and realising he never should have broken her heart the way he did when they were younger, because now he’s alone in a too big bed, in a house he still can’t call home, thinking about what he could have had, what he should have had, but he fucked it up and lost her, and he’ll never have it that good again.
And if you requested Christmas cards - I'm posting them tomorrow. If you still want one and haven't sent me your address, do it! I'm happy to post anywhere! :)
Fic behind the cut and in two posts, it's just that long.
He’s driving along with the radio blaring, still trying to block out the sound of his dad’s voice, even after all this time. No matter how much time goes past, he still remembers the bullying and the yelling every time he fumbles a pass, or takes a shot that creates a rebound for someone else to “claim all the glory.” Even after a great practice where he knows he couldn’t have tried harder, he still hears his dad’s voice, tearing shreds off him, for the tiniest little error.
The commercials prove to make him more agitated, more revved up, so he flicks stations over and tries to find some music, any music, that would calm him down. It was then that he heard a song he hadn’t heard since senior year, and all he could think about was a small town named Tree Hill, a brother unclaimed, and a tutor named Haley James, who he’d never quite forgotten.
He hadn’t seen her since graduation, standing in front of their graduating class with her Valedictorian speech, and he remembers the sick feeling in his stomach he got as he sat there watching her, feeling Lucas’ leg beside him jiggling with nervous anticipation for his best friend and then pride, knowing that there up on stage before him was the girl he let get away.
Between him and the brother who was only a brother by blood, he’s sure they screamed louder for her at the end of her speech than the rest of the seniors combined. He tried not to look at Lucas, who was staring at him in a mixture of confusion and anger, as he clapped and resisted the urge to fight his way to the front to greet her as she came off the stage.
He remembers thinking, “screw it” and taking a step towards the stage, only to feel Lucas’ hand on his shoulder. He turned around, a sneer already firmly in place, only to have it ripped away by the words Lucas spits out. “She’s not yours to congratulate, Nathan. You broke her heart, I’m pretty sure that rules you out of the right to even step foot in her vicinity.” He remembers the sick feeling in his stomach at Lucas’ words, knowing he was right, and that there was nothing he could do that would change that fact.
He remembers watching her across the crowd as his parents grabbed him, determined to photograph them as the perfect family that they were so far from, and all he wanted to say to her was that he was so sorry, that he wished it had ended differently, and that he never intended to break her heart. He’d silently add that he never intended to fall in love with her, but that would simply be an aside.
Because 18 year old Nathan Scott had no idea that he’d still love her aged twenty five and that no matter how many girls crossed his path (and there were lots, he was the NBA super star from the Celtics), they’d never compare to the girl who tutored him in high school, the best friend to his brother that his family had never quite claimed. He’d never intended to even like her, in fact, it was all just a game to show said brother that he would never belong in the world that was Nathan’s. He only realised that his exact opposite could be his perfect other half once everything between them had fallen apart, and been damaged beyond repair.
He hears her voice, once so familiar, through the radio of his car, and he feels like he can breathe, he sees the world a lot clearer, and while Tree Hill brings back a lot of memories he’d sooner lose a limb than remember, the cocky, somewhat obnoxious part of him isn’t quite ready to let go of the ones that involve Haley James, and the affect she once had on him.
It makes him remember days wasted away on the docks, watching the beautiful blushing girl trying to explain mathematical concepts he doesn’t understand, even now. He remembers plastic bracelets from Cracker Jack packets, “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” winks, flirting, and Brooke’s love rectangle plus one, whatever that is, dinner of prime rib and mac and cheese, and even now, he can’t eat macaroni and cheese without thinking of the girl who called it “food of the gods.” He remembers first kisses on front lawns, and all the empty promises he made that she believed. He thinks of all of the moments with the girl he would never have looked twice at if it hadn’t been for Lucas, and then couldn’t forget.
--
He’s glad he’s this famous basketball player, because it makes getting into places a lot easier than standing in line for the gate or by the side door like some groupie from Almost Famous. All it takes is a nod and a smirk, and he’s in the door, watching the girl who is still eighteen and wearing graduation regalia as she says her valedictorian speech in his head perform on stage the one song that brought him to this backstage. He’s clasping a bouquet of flowers and the only thing that is making him confident that she won’t turn him away in a fit of rage is that no girl has ever turned him away from her door. He’s Nathan Royal Scott, after all, and no girl has ever been able to resist him.
“Hi, super star!” He hears from behind him while he’s too busy focusing on the girl he remembers all too well, performing on the stage. He turns quickly, immediately seeing before him Brooke Davis, another Tree Hill alum who he hadn’t seen since graduation. “So, break any hearts lately, or are you saving that for round two tonight?” She smirks in a way that only proves to piss him off, and he shakes his head.
“I see you haven’t changed, you’re still a bitch, Davis. Learnt to keep your legs shut yet?” He makes his disdain obvious as he spits out the words.
“Woah there, champ. I’m engaged. To the brother whose life you made a living hell, as a matter of fact. But you definitely haven’t changed. You’re still an asshole. Thank god she moved on from you.” He flinches at her words, because he’s not going to lie, he was a prick to Haley back when the mess began, and he’d never successfully tried to win her back after the whole mess went pear shaped.
“Oh, sweetheart. You didn’t think she was still pining away for you? Crying over you and what you did to her?”
“I know she’s single.” He throws that bit of information out in front of her.
“Wow, you can Google. Impressive.” She’s clearly looking down on him, and he’s trying to reign in his temper.
“She’s playing in Boston, Brooke. I just thought I’d stop by, see how she was, maybe try to briefly catch up with her. A lot has changed, high school was a long time ago. Except that my life? Is still not your business.”
“It’s never been that simple as just a ‘catch up’ with you though, Nathan. Not when you were in a relationship with Peyton and sleeping with half the cheerleaders on the squad behind her back, not when you selected Haley as your next method of trying to ruin Lucas’ life, taking things from him one item at a time. She was just a pawn, and she got her heart destroyed because of you. You’re a player, Nathan, and you’re good at it. You’re good at breaking hearts and leaving sheets cold, but at the end of the day, what do you have to offer her that is going to make her memories of you a little less painful?”
The cheering that breaks out at that particular moment signals that Haley’s first set is finished, and she’ll be appearing before him at any time. He’s nervous, pissed off with Brooke and her words that are potentially (realistically) all too true, and he feels a sweat break out across his palms as all the carefully planned words go out of his head and are instead replaced by Brooke’s. “What do you have to offer her that is going to make her memories of you a little less painful?” And he can’t think of anything else.
Brooke runs squealing into Haley’s arms, proclaiming how amazing she was. It doesn’t take long for her to break apart, and for Haley to see who is currently leaning against the doorway, watching the scene before him, smirk firmly in place.
“Nathan?” she asks, and he can tell she’s not entirely sure whether to believe it’s actually him standing before her. The nervous tinge to her voice and the uncertainty only seems to remind him of times long before, and as he replies with a “hi” he conjures up the memory of their first kiss, her first kiss, ever.
--
He’s standing on her front lawn, staring up at the window that he believes is hers. He throws a pebble at it, and then another one, wondering just how deeply she sleeps. He knows he has fucked up, he knows he’s made a big mess of everything, and he needs to win her back in order to make sure Lucas knows exactly where he belongs on the totem pole - the very, very bottom. Maybe lower, in fact. She appears behind him, startling him somewhat, as she bitterly asks him if he’s trying to wake up her parents, because that’s their room. He flinches, wondering how scary her dad could be and whether he owns a gun - he’s had some scary experiences involving fathers and weaponry as he escapes after nights out.
She starts talking in her rambling way, trying to cram as many words in as she can before she takes a breath, and all he can think to do is kiss her because he cannot let her go. He doesn’t want to let her go, and thinks she’s kind of adorable, with her words all running together because of the speed she’s talking at. He’d been watching her lips as they moved, wondered what they’d feel like pressed up against his own, and couldn’t resist any longer. His lips slide against hers, and she tries to break away, before he swoops down and kisses her again.
It’s not until later that she confesses that that was her first kiss, and he tells her with his Scott smirk that at least it was memorable, romantic, and because it was with him, pretty damn perfect. She smacks him lightly and calls him conceited.
He remembers going home that day with a smile on his face that he couldn’t explain to anyone, let alone himself.
He tries to convince himself that he needs to keep the plan in check, that this girl is just another method of showing Lucas that he’s overstepping his boundaries into a world he’ll never belong in, and Haley James is just the perfect example. A girl who ordinarily wouldn’t be looked at twice by anyone on the basketball team. She’s pretty, sure, but not really anyone you’d think of with the display of willing and eager girls constantly ready to be at their beck and call.
But he still convinces her that he’s a safe bet, that he’s worth loving, that, “sure baby, I believe you when you say you see something in me that I don’t show the rest of the world.”
It turns out, try as he might to believe otherwise, she actually did, because she believed in him to be better than he was. She believed in what he was capable of becoming, and despite the cocky exterior he showed the world, he was actually the person she’d told him he could be, when he was off the basketball court and away from the lights and camera flashes and reporters prying into his life, his family history, the scandal and rumours the residents of Tree Hill are only all too happy to repeat for their five minutes of fame.
--
Haley and Brooke are still standing in front of him, waiting for him to respond with more than just a hi. Brooke walks away, rolling her eyes, and he knows if he turns around, he’d probably catch her flipping the bird in his direction.
“What are you doing here, Nathan?” She asks softly, her gaze firm on his face, staring at him patiently, like she used to do when it came to the math shit he could never understand, yet now could never forget.
“I heard you were in town, and thought I’d come and see what you’re doing with yourself these days. I can’t believe how many people are here tonight, Hales, you’re truly amazing.” He can’t help but let the pride slip into his voice as he speaks to her.
“I hear you’re not doing too bad for yourself either, Super Star.” She smirks at him, and he begins to wonder if that’s just something her and Brooke practice in the mirror often enough for it to resemble his own.
“I just… I just needed to see you.” He says, his voice betraying his nerves, his fear, his insecurities, as it comes out barely above a whisper.
“Why, Nathan? Why after all this time? Whose life are you trying to make miserable now, or who are you trying to convince that they’re lower than low and barely deserve to breathe the same air that you do?” He flinches, because he never expected bitterness from Haley, who never used to have a bad word to say about anyone.
“It’s not about that, and when you found out, it wasn’t even about Lucas anymore. It didn’t have anything to do with anyone except you and me and my feelings for you, which were stronger than I’d ever thought I’d feel for someone. It hadn’t been about that since the moment I fell to the floor that night, and all I could think was how badly I wanted you to make things okay. Because you’d always been able to fix all the broken parts of me.”
“Except when you were too broken to fix, and I realised you’d never change. You broke up with me, you broke me, and you sure as hell don’t get to come around here now to see what I’ve done with my life. You gave up that right when you held onto those pictures of Peyton, and maybe even before that, because god knows what went on with you two while you were on that auction date. You don’t get to come around here now with your apologies, because it’s been six years, and I stopped waiting a long time ago, the minute I found out I was just another ploy for you to use to get back at Lucas for merely existing.”
She breathes loudly, like she’d forgotten to breathe while she was letting him know exactly where he stood in her life.
“Look, Nathan, I’m glad your life is so wonderful. You worked hard to get to where you are today. And thanks for coming tonight to show your support, that was really kind. I need to get back. Enjoy your life.” She gives him a quick smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes, and it hurts him a little, or a lot. Because she’s always been that one person he never really wanted to hurt, or never wanted to hate him. And he’s done that because he was a cocky, immature boy at 16 who didn’t know how good he had it until it was gone.
It’s not until he’s watching her walk away that he realises he’s still clutching the bouquet of flowers, so he scribbles a note and attaches them to the flowers, which he leaves on her dressing room door.
--
It may have been six years, but she would recognise that handwriting as if it was her own. She rolls her eyes but reads it anyway. “You were amazing. I’m still an idiot, and an asshole, but I miss you.” And maybe he’s learning to be honest for the first time… ever. She’s just determined she’s not going to wonder what exactly he is now, or about the what if’s, could haves, or what might have been. It’s just not worth it when the future will never be hers.
But as she reads the note again, suddenly she feels sixteen all over again, blindly falling for a basketball player, the one basketball player whose only mission in life was to destroy the life of her best friend, who never actually intended on catching her.
--
She goes home after her concert, worn out but still on a high that only performing in front of a large crowd screaming for you and your singing and your passion can provide. She empties her bag out, stretching her tired muscles, and comes across the note he left, the one that came attached to the flowers she kindly donated to the poor tour assistant forced to run around fetching her bottles of water and simply waiting for anything she may require.
She reads over his words again, and all she can think about is being sixteen, and believing naively that the star of her high school basketball team may actually be somewhat falling in love with her, despite what the hierarchy of high school dictates.
But at sixteen, or seventeen, you never anticipate your first love being someone you fall in love with who never falls back. You don’t anticipate falling in love feeling almost alone, as happy as you may feel. You’re still half convinced that there’s a Prince Charming out there, waiting to come in and whisk you away on his white horse. And for a while there, she actually thought that Nathan might be the somewhat imperfect perfect Prince Charming, and that maybe they’d be that one “high school sweetheart” couple that made it out of their graduating class of Tree Hill High School.
Instead, she graduated with a broken heart, and was currently still trying to find someone worth taking a risk for at twenty five. She’s casually seeing someone, a guitar player she knows through Jake, but it’s nothing serious, and she doesn’t see it going anywhere near where her mother is hoping she’ll be in the next few years.
But seeing Nathan again, she feels like she can’t breathe, like she’s drowning, and all she can feel is his presence surrounding her, even though he’s no longer in front of her. Then she feels like she’s standing on the docks, waiting pathetically for him to apologise, to tell her that the photos she finds on his laptop of Peyton in various forms of undress aren’t what they look like at all, but just something he’s forgotten to erase, or something she’s sent him in a moment of desperate lonely teenage angst, longing for someone to hold on to.
Instead she’s greeted by his smirk and him telling her he had to get it from somewhere since she wasn’t meeting his needs, and she’s trying not to cry as she realises that who she believed he was becoming was just an act, a front, and that he truly was all the things Lucas had tried to make her aware of.
But while he broke her heart, she still couldn’t forget the way his lips felt upon hers, her first real kiss aside from one awkward moment with Lucas when they were in their wondering phase that they both choose to believe never actually happened. She remembers the surprise of seeing Nathan throwing rocks at her parents window, believing it to be hers, and the butterflies as he inches closer and closer, before his lips meet hers, and even now, as she sits alone in a hotel room in a strange city, she believes she can still feel his lips pressing against hers.
--
He sits in his apartment, throwing a mini basketball up and down, debating what to do. He almost wants to call her, but he knows he’d be on a manhunt just to find her, and he’s not going to be the desperate loser calling all the hotels in the Boston area just to see if there’s a Haley James or a Brooke Davis or a Tutor Girl James or whatever else name she may have checked in. He’s not Hugh Grant in that stupid Julia Roberts movie, and he refuses to look that pathetic. His fingers are twitching with a need to dial a number, but he concentrates on throwing the ball up and down. Up and down. Up and down. He feels his phone vibrating in his pocket, and reaches for it quickly, trying not to believe it could be her.
“’Sup, loser. Heard you went a-visiting today.” He rolls his eyes at his brothers voice, the fiancé of Brooke Davis, because some things had changed after high school, and they’d become close despite all the shit that had gone down between them during their school days.
“Haley or Brooke?” He asks, and he hears a chuckle down the line that makes him want to throttle Lucas.
“Both, actually. And Brooke was not impressed with your random appearance in her best friend’s life, let alone the attitude that you apparently failed to check in at the door. She wants you to know though that you may be older, more built, with more money to your name and more fame, but you’re still the asshole you were at sixteen and she doesn’t see that ever, ever changing.” He hears Brooke congratulating him down the line for remembering all of that.
“Whatever, Lucas, your girlfriend is still the same stuck up bitch she always was.”
“I’ll choose to ignore that. So, Haley…” He rolls his eyes again.
“Lucas, you watch too many soap operas. Reel in your girly drama, because Notebook-esque romance you’re conjuring up in your mind is simply your imagination in overdrive.”
“Is this going to be a one time thing, or are you planning on sticking around in her life to make things more complicated for her than they were at school?”
“It was sort of impulsive. Dan was being a dick, as always, heard her song on the radio, that one about boys she used to love with hearts as hard as stone, heard she was in town -“
“-Realised she was that girl you never quite got over, despite how much of a dick you were to her at school, how much you broke her heart, and decided to pay her a visit because you’re Nathan Scott, you like things complicated and a tad crazy, and because you’re still somewhat deluded and believe there is not a girl alive that would turn you down.”
“Yeah, thanks for the support and love, bro.”
“Seriously. Figure out what you want, make sure it’s what you want, remember she’s not a chess piece or the pink stick in your game of Life car, and then go after her if you’re sure. If you’re 150% sure. But you may not have a fighting chance in hell.”
“As always, you’ve been beyond helpful, charming brother of mine. Later.”
He hears a sigh before he ends the call.
He releases the basketball up in the air, and still has no idea what the hell he wants, or what he was even hoping for out of the evening. He just sort of wants to go back to lazy days in Tree Hill when things were so much simpler, before they both had fame and fortune and people screaming their names, when they were just a boy and a girl with dreams, and he was playing a risky game that ending up with him falling in love and breaking her heart.
He never intended for her to find those pictures, mementos from the dysfunction that was his relationship with Peyton long before Haley even crossed his mind, and didn’t even know she had found them, until he was sitting on the docks waiting for her for well over an hour before he’d realised she wasn’t coming, and Lucas was standing before him, Brooke by his side, yelling at him for breaking her heart and for not caring, and putting her innocent heart into his sick twisted little game in his vendetta against Lucas. “You never should have used her in your arsenal, because she’s distraught and she’s broken hearted, she actually gave a damn about you, Nathan, and you’re still doing god knows what behind her back with Peyton?!”
He flinches then, realising, understanding. She’d found the pictures when she’d borrowed his computer to type an essay up, something about one computer amongst too many people in the James household, and had come away with an incomplete essay and a torn apart heart.
Then he affixes his smirk in place, stands up and faces his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. “Tell her it was fun, but it’s not like we were going to go anywhere.” He’s going to push her away because its better this way, he’s not equipped to be in love, and definitely not equipped enough to love someone as pure and perfect as Haley James.
He’s unsurprised when he crosses paths with Haley the next day and she slaps him. He guesses the message was repeated and received. “You’re an idiot, and an asshole.” She tells him, and he realises people in the hall are starting to stare. The look on her face breaks whatever he’s got in his chest masquerading as a heart, and all he wants to do is pull her closer and tell her the truth, that she means everything and Peyton never really meant anything except an easy, regular lay, that he didn’t have to work too hard to get when he needed.
The words don’t come, and he gets to stand there rubbing his jaw, watching the girl he loves (kind of, sort of, does) walk away from him without looking back.
And a few years later, he’s just some guy in the audience at one of her concerts, who knows he sure as hell doesn’t deserve a glance back, some guy full of fucked up problems from a family life he wishes he never had, knowing he doesn’t deserve a girl like Haley James, and realising he never should have broken her heart the way he did when they were younger, because now he’s alone in a too big bed, in a house he still can’t call home, thinking about what he could have had, what he should have had, but he fucked it up and lost her, and he’ll never have it that good again.