A Spoby Story

Chapter 1: A Little Big Surprise

Spencer Hastings sat in her office, jotting down some information for paperwork she was supposed to fill out. Everything she did in high school paid off. The long nights of extreme studying landed her in a career that fit all her needs. The job got her parents to accept her, it got her a roof to live under, it was where she met her current boyfriend, and it also paid her a generous amount of cash to live off of. So you could say that her life was pretty good. Sure, it had always been missing something, and she used to have that something, specifically someone, but she had lost that someone back during her senior year of high school. He broke her heart, and he jetted off, never to be seen again. It still hurt her to think about it.

Interrupting her paperwork was a phone call, on her office telephone, so it obviously wasn't a personal call. She was really hoping that her boyfriend would call her. He had pleaded for a 'lunch break', and jetted off with his friends over two hours ago. It seemed like he had just used the fact that he was dating his boss to get out of doing work. It didn't matter, though. She had to live with it. He was her boyfriend of three whole months, and she wanted their relationship to last! She wasn't afraid of dying a virgin, like her old high school friend Hanna used to joke. Actually, she lost her virginity back in high school, to him, otherwise known as the guy who broke her heart.

Answering the phone, she said, "Hello, this is Spencer Hastings. Rosewood Law Firm. How can I assist you today?" The person babbled about some new case. She sighed. She didn't want to take on a new case already. She had just helped some other woman out of legal trouble with an old case, and she wasn't ready to restart the process. "Alright, alright. We should meet up and talk. I'm going to need to speak with the real client. And if you're not him, I can't help you." The person babbled on. "Fine, sounds good. We'll meet up later, thanks for calling. Tonight at seven? Got it." She hung up the phone. The goof wasn't able to come to the phone, but some other person was able to set the original goof to meet up with her for dinner. She didn't even get a name from the criminal.

The door of the law firm bursted open. Her boyfriend was back from his lunch break. He grinned as he approached the desk of her office. "Hey Spenceroni!" he greeted her. He scooted her over on her work chair, and started to kiss her neck. "Thanks for letting me go out with the guy for lunch. We had a blast. How's work going, by the way?" He pulled his head back from her neck.

She cocked her head to the side a little. "Good, I guess. Oh, and don't call me Spenceroni. You took so long to have lunch. What's going on?" She filed her paperwork away as her boyfriend thought for a moment. She could tell that he was going to come up with some dumb excuse that she wouldn't care about. She didn't even know why she bothered to ask. It was just going to be an eye roller, as usual.

He swallowed for a second before trying, "I lost track of time?" It came out as more of a question than a statement. "Hey, it doesn't matter. I'm back to be with you." He kissed her neck again, and started to rub her back. She blushed wildly as she pushed him off of her. His face looked super offended when she tried to retreat from his neck kissing. He was just attempting to make up for being a bad boyfriend and leaving all the work for her to do. He got points for trying, right? Maybe.

She shook her head, and half pushed him off of her work chair. "Andrew, I have lots of work to do. Maybe you would know what I mean if you were doing your work right now! On the clock, I'm your boss, not your girlfriend. Get back to work, or I'm seriously going to have to fire you." He nodded his head and got up from her chair. "I don't want to have to make up for all the work that you're supposed to be doing. Go finish this paperwork that I assigned for you before you ran off to have lunch with your buddies!" She shoved the paperwork file against his hard chest.

He nodded his head and said, "Sorry. I won't slack off anymore, boss. But, once my clock is over, you're my girlfriend again, which means we can pick this up tonight. Do you want to grab some dinner tonight? Lunch was for friends, and dinner is going to be for the woman. What do you say? You, me, the Grille, six thirty tonight. It'll be romantic and perfect. You'll love it, baby."

She sighed and shook her head again. "I'm sorry, Andrew. I can't do dinner tonight. I have dinner with a new client tonight. I'll see you tomorrow, though." He nodded his head and walked out of her office room, filled with disappointment. She hated to reject him, but she really did have dinner with a new client. She literally just got the phone call minutes before he came into her room! She would have scheduled a different time with the client, but she had already agreed to seven, and she didn't want to be rude. She got back to filling out the other paperwork that she was filling out before the new client called her and interrupted.

~ Six-fifty five ~

She walked up to the booth at the front of the fancy Italian restaurant. The guy working the front booth nodded his head as she approached. "Welcome to Mondo dei Formaggi. How can I help you, ma'am?" She cringed at being called a ma'am. Was she already that old? She didn't think twenty-four was that old of an age. It was pretty young for a lawyer, too. But he didn't know she was a lawyer, so it didn't matter.

She faked a smile and said, "Hi there. I'm here to meet up with Marshall, reservation for two. I'm Spencer Hastings. Maybe my client mentioned something about meeting up with someone named Spencer. Well, I'm that person." The booth man nodded his head again and looked through his book filled with reservations.

He smiled and said, "Ah, yes." He pointed to 'Marshall' in his latest reservation page. "Mister Marshall is supposed to be meeting here with a Hastings. Come right this way, he is waiting for you." The young booth man guided Spencer to a table somewhere in the restaurant. She thanked the young man as she sat across from his client. The man walked away as she settled down.

She greeted him, "Hello, I'm Spencer. You're the client the person who called me was talking about, right?" He didn't say anything, so she looked up. She finally got a good look at his face. "T-Toby? Is that you?"

He looked almost weak, but his blue eyes were glimmering. "Spencer, it's me. It really is." He tried to smile, but he couldn't really do it. "It's me. It really is." He tried to look up at her, but she looked away. He knew she was still mad about what happened during senior year, and he didn't blame her for it. What he did was very much like an asshole. But he did it for a reason. And now, he needed to make things right. Maybe he could finally tell her why he did what he did.

"You are not a Marshall," she hissed. "You are a Cavanaugh. Why did you make up the last name?"

"It's Jenna's last name," he clarified. "I was scared that if I used Cavanaugh, you would realize that it's me, and run away. That's why I had someone else call you. When I found your number in the directory for Rosewood's Law Firm, I had to call. I didn't know that you would still be here after all those years. I was baffled. And I needed to talk to you. So I wasn't going to let you run away from me before I got the chance to talk."

She rolled her eyes and snapped, "I could still walk away from you right now." And it was true, she could. But she wouldn't. He raised his eyebrows. Was she really going to leave? He had a feeling she wasn't. "You know what 'baffled' me? The fact that you left me with a stupid ass reason in high school! I thought you fucking loved me! I thought that we were going to last forever!" Tears were already falling out of her eyes and rolling down her pale cheeks. "My friends used to all tell me that you and I were perfect together. They thought that we would last, too. But then you left. And I still don't know what the hell happened that night! Was I just a mistake to you?"

He looked at her with sorrow in his eyes. "I made a lot of mistakes in my life, but you were not a mistake, Spencer. I didn't leave for no reason. I didn't leave you. You just wouldn't understand what happened." She glared at him sharply. Wouldn't understand? God damn! It had been years. Of course she could understand. When would she ever be able to understand if not at that very moment?

She snapped, "Try me, Toby, try me!" It felt so weird to say his name again. Had it been forever since that perfect four letter name had rolled off of her perfect pink tongue? Seemed like it. She shivered at the fact that Toby Cavanaugh was sitting across from her, explaining his ass (barely) years after they broke up in high school. She always thought about the day he dumped her. She couldn't forget it. She had never been dumped like that.

He quietly looks down and says, "I wanted to protect you." His words are so faint, they almost come out as a mumble. "Before I left, I realized that you were still getting texts from A, so I had to stop it. I wanted to keep you safe." She doesn't know if this is a sob story. She wants to believe him, but this just isn't possible. "You know the texts stopped right when I left."

She nods her head and glares at him. She chokes out, "We assumed that meant you were A. Emily and I were hesitant, but it made the most sense." She shudders as she looks down at the menu of the restaurant. "So tell me Toby. Am I sitting here with the guy that was torturing me? When I was sixteen years old, there was a guy who used to make me feel all fuzzy inside. He made me fall in love for the first time. I didn't even know what love was until him. And that him is you. Was you. Were you A? Was that a lie?"

His eyes widen. "You thought I was A?" He shakes his head and clarifies, "Spencer, what we had was real. I loved you more than anything in the world, and I still love you now. That's why I did what I did. I would never want to hurt you. Leaving wasn't my choice. It was A's. They told me if I broke up with you, they would stop sending you texts. It was a risk I had to take. It was either our relationship or your safety, and I wanted to make sure you and your friends were safe."

She trembles. Is he for real? Before she can even process anything, a pair of lips are inching towards her, and those lips do not belong to Andrew Campbell. They belong to Toby Cavanaugh. And as their lips touch, she feels like a dirty cheater. She's cheating on her boyfriend. How could she? How the hell could she? But once their lips are touching for real, and they're actually kissing, she forgets about Andrew. Because damn, after years of being apart, Toby Cavanaugh still manages to make her feel like a love struck teenager.