AN - Yes, yes. I know it's been forever and a day. But I did say I'm working on this, and I am. This is half the chapter I wanted to post, but the rest just isn't ready. So to appease the few that are still reading, here is what is done.

"Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." - Hippocrates

Aria set down her keys next to her purse on the small entryway table. The loud jangle they made intermingled with the clicking noise of typing.

"Hey," Aria said softly as she walked into Emily's apartment and rounded the couch, "why don't you come to the office with me?"

Emily looked up from where her laptop was perched on her thighs as she lounged against the arm of the sofa. She closed her eyes and forced her face back into the computer screen. Aria was trying to help, trying to get her out of her slump, and she appreciated it. But that didn't mean she was ready to leave the bubble she had created. "I can't. Alison is coming over in a little while to go over some things with the new contract."

"You've been spending a lot of time with her the last few weeks," Aria remarked. She pushed Emily's feet out of the way and sat down next to her. "Anything you want to talk about, you know I'm here for you. We all are."

Emily bit her lip. Talk? She could hardly get out of bed in the morning, let alone discuss the jagged edge of self-loathing that ripped at her every time she had a moment when she wasn't working or spending time with Alison. Thank god for Alison, the one shining light in all this darkness. She kept Emily focused on work and knew not to offer her ear for a heart-to-heart. Because Emily's heart was broken. And talking about it? That was out of the question. "I don't want to talk about anything. I just want to work on this contract and make it through the day, okay?"

Aria's large earrings swayed around her face as she shook her head at her friend, but she placed a soothing hand on Emily's calf and then patted a few times when that didn't elicit a response. "Well, you know I'm available, Em. Anything you need. Whenever you need it." Emily's quick nod and resumption of typing left Aria little choice, so she stood up, straightening her skirt before taking a breath and blurting out the one piece of information she was sure the dark-haired manager would respond to. "Paige is getting out of rehab soon, and with all the Grammy rumors swirling about Serendipity- well, they'll need their manager more than ever."

She stopped typing, a statue in mid action. "Aria, I-"

"She needs you," Aria quickly cut her off before she could continue. "And you need her."

A broken sob erupted from Emily. "She won't want to see me. What I did as her manager. What I didn't do as her girlfriend." She choked back more tears. "I couldn't- I can't-" Emily didn't finish the thoughts, opting instead to cover her mouth with her hands, as if trying to push the recriminations back inside. Back where they were safe from platitudes. Back where they could stay and grow. Back where the only person they could hurt was herself.

She sniffed hard and set her jaw, turning teary eyes to Aria. "Please, will you leave?"

"Emily, you shouldn't be alone."

"Please. You said you'd do anything I need. And this is what I need. Please. Please just go."

Aria's shoulders slumped in defeat, but she finally agreed. "Okay. I won't push anymore," she said as she held up her hands in a show of surrender. "I just want you to be happy."

Emily nodded, "I know you do."

Emily wanted to be happy too. But wanting is not the same thing as deserving. And she didn't deserve it.

At the beginning, Paige had felt so goddamn undeserving and listless. Without the alcohol to lean on- without Emily to lean on- it was like she was the tide, and her moon was gone. Even when the other patients in the rehab clinic, somewhat in awe of her celebrity, had cautiously inquired as to her state of well being, she sat silent in the group therapy sessions. How could she explain to them the depth of her regret? So she had slouched in the uncomfortable chair. Still. Unchanging. An ocean masked as a secluded mountain lake.

Instead of answering the incessant questions from the staff psychologists, she poured herself out in songs to the silence of her private room, which was the only place she felt safe enough to uncork the bottle. Her tiny space was the snifter glass that she filled nowadays with music instead of whiskey.

And slowly, the music she'd thrown her life away for had mended bits of her, had put her back together in treble clefs and half notes, had built her in staffs of adagios. And so she sang whatever came to her, whether it was a vengeful alternative rock song or a forgiving folk ballad. She sang and she healed until finally she was able to answer the questions thrown her way. She was able to explain that her mother dying, her father's expectations, the devastation of the end of a first love, and the weight of all her friend's livelihoods and lives had finally pushed so hard at her that she'd fallen.

I never meant to get us in this deep

I never meant for this to mean a thing

Oh, I wish you were the one

Wish you were the one that got away.

The overly shiny wall, painted over and over with years upon years of mended heartbreaks and failures seemed a fitting audience. The layers of paint certainly seemed like an apt audience. After all, hadn't she sang to audiences all over the country of the same color? Colorless and yet somehow glistening from a fresh layer of- something. Teen angst? First love's yearning? A desire to feel something?

Paige continued to strum the old beat-up guitar, a gift from Julie when Paige had first walked away from the pain and into this place of healing. It was the guitar Julie had used in their first days of coffee shops and open-mike nights. It was the guitar Julie had when she'd played in the open green area in Stanford when they'd first dreamed up the idea of the band. It was the one she had kept even though she'd bought a new one when they'd scored their first paying gig.

Paige continued play to the wall of glimmering nothingness, strumming and singing through the pain in her sternum. She played even though it felt like her lungs were trying to break the tenuous thread that her body had used to mend itself together. It felt right. It felt like her music was her deserved pain. This was the whole reason she was here in a rehabilitation center. Why she needed time to heal.

Oh, if I could go back in time

When you only held me in my mind

Just a longing, gone without a trace

Oh, I wish I never ever seen your face

I wish you were the one

Wish you were the one that got away

"Maudlin much? I mean fuckin' seriously. The Civil Wars? Taylor Swift would be so proud of your fucked up ass." Julie strolled in with a loud thud as the heavy door slammed behind her. Immediately, she filled the small room with the harsh color of her personality, defying the pasty nothingness Paige had lived in for the last six weeks.

"Shut it, Jules." Paige dumped the guitar back into her lap with a thump and an offkey hum of strings.

Julie harrumphed and joined her best friend on the small bed in her room, pushing the covers away to make a space for herself. "You know they broke up, right?"

"That's kind of what I was feeling."

Julie leaned into her best friend, laying her head on Paige's shoulder and grabbing a lock of Paige's hair that escaped her loose ponytail and was flowing freely along her collarbone. "They invited us to play at the Grammys, McCullers." She dropped her phrase as she often did. With no preamble and no segway.

"I know."

"You gonna make it?" Julie's hand left the piece of hair and grabbed the opposite side of Paige's waist, pulling her close into her warmth as she huddled into the space Paige's body made automatically for her closest friend.

"Of course," Paige soothed. "Two weeks left in here." She shuddered as she felt the pull of the outside and the sweet call of bars and unattached girls just waiting for her to ease her pain. This would be her test. Could she make it? Would she want to without Emily?

"Fuck," Julie sighed. "I'm worried about you."

Paige sighed right back. "I know you are. I am too. But I promised you, and I promised my dad, and I promised Emily. And I am going to keep my promise."