Author's Note: Hi everyone! This is the first fic that I've written in several years. I'm trying to get back into fan fiction again. Feel free to review!

Disclaimer: I don't own The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Chapter One

It started out as one of those rare days where I had some time off, and I wasn't so exhausted that I spent the whole day sleeping. I wanted to do something with my old friends because I hadn't seen them in several months, but there was too much to do around the house. Soda had been sent to Vietnam about six months ago, Pony's classes at school took a lot of time, and I had picked up another job to help ends meet. With the gang hanging out at our house all the time and Pony and I always busy, the house was a mess. So instead of doing something fun, I used my precious time off to clean the house.

I started in the kitchen. About two week's worth of dishes had piled up in the sink and on the kitchen counter. I washed them all and then cleaned up the living room. After several hours, everything but the bedrooms was clean. I decided to let Pony clean his own bedroom by himself, and I started on my room.

I hadn't been cleaning my room long when I found an old shoebox that had been shoved into the back of my closet. I couldn't remember what was in it, so I sat down on my bed and opened the lid. I instantly regretted it. Inside the box were pictures of me and my ex-girlfriend, Shirley. I slammed the lid down as fast as I could, but it was too late. All my memories of Shirley and I came flooding back.

I had met Shirley when I was about to start my freshman year in high school. I had made the football team, and I was at one of the summer practice sessions. Shirley had made the cheerleading squad, and she was also at a summer practice. Sometimes during breaks, the guys on the football team and the girls on the cheerleading squad would talk. That was how Shirley and I first met.

Shirley was beautiful. Her strawberry blonde, wavy hair would reflect the sunlight in the prettiest way, she had deep brown eyes that would light up whenever she talked about something she liked, and her skin was smooth and fair as porcelain. On the last day of summer practice I asked her if she wanted to get something to eat with me. I was terrified that she would say no, but she said yes. We went to a burger place near the school, and we sat there for hours eating and talking until the restaurant closed. After that, we walked back to school and I waited with her until her mom showed up. We talked the whole time, and we never ran out of things to say. Before she went home for the night, she gave me her phone number, and I called her every day until school started. Two weeks into our freshman year we started going steady.

We were definitely a stereotypical couple: the football player and the cheerleader. It got even worse later in high school because I made quarterback of the football team, and Shirley was the cheerleading captain. In senior Who's Who, I was most popular boy and she was most popular girl. We got teased a lot about the clichéd perfectness of our relationship, but it's not really something either of us could help. When something is right it's just right, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. I was sure that I was going to marry her after we graduated from college, but then things went terribly wrong.

Shirley and I had both planned to go to the University of Texas. They had given her a cheerleading scholarship, and I had a scholarship to play football. Everything looked like it was going to work out, but then one night my parents sat me down and told me that they had looked over the expenses for college, and even with my scholarship they wouldn't be able to afford it. I was heartbroken. College had always been my dream, but suddenly that didn't seem to matter. I was too concerned about what would happen to my relationship with Shirley to think about how I wouldn't get to go to college.

Shirley and I spent a long time talking about what to do. She offered to go to college in Tulsa or not go to college at all until I could afford it, but I wouldn't let her. She had been so excited about cheerleading at Texas, and she had even found a sorority that she wanted to join. She had to go. In the end, we decided to break up. It lasted two days. We got back together and decided to try a long-distance relationship. Texas was far away, so I would only get to see her during vacations, but we were going to keep in touch through phone calls and letters. Even though I knew that a lot of long-distance relationships failed in the end, I was convinced that ours wouldn't because we were so in love. Boy, was I wrong.

Shirley started college, and she was always busy with cheerleading practice, studying, and her sorority. I started working two full time jobs. I worked so much partly so that I could save up money so I could join Shirley at Texas the next year, and partly to keep my mind off how she wasn't in Tulsa with me. Because we were both so busy, we hardly had time to talk on the phone. We wrote letters to each other once a week though, so we were at least keeping in touch a little.

When Thanksgiving break came, Shirley came back to Tulsa. It was the first time I had seen her since the very end of August. We were inseparable for all of Thanksgiving break, which made me feel like our relationship was going to last. Shirley definitely still loved me, and I was still very much in love with her. And something that she said gave me even more hope for our future. She said that she wasn't doing well in her classes, and she was worried that she was going to flunk out of college and have to come home. I told her that everything would be ok, and that if she did come home I would marry her and take care of her.

Shirley made it through the first semester, but she lost her scholarship because of her grades. Her parents agreed to let her go back to Texas for the spring semester, but she had to bring her grades up. I almost hoped that she wouldn't so that she would come home. In early March, it looked like I was going to get my wish. Shirley had Ds or Fs in all of her classes, and she was constantly stressed because she was working as hard as she could and not making the grades to show it. I thought that she would definitely come home for good at the end of the semester, but then one day I got a phone call from her.

"Darry, I'm sorry. I love you. You know I love you. But we need to end this," she said. Those words still ring in my head all these years later.

I begged her to change her mind. I told her that I would walk all the way to Austin if I could just see her and make things right, but it wasn't going to work that way. She was pregnant, and the kid wasn't mine. Apparently, she had been upset about her grades and how badly she was doing at college, so she went to a party at one of the fraternity houses. She had way too much to drink, and this one guy kept hitting on her. She ended up sleeping with him. It was only meant to be a one-night stand. I wasn't even supposed to find out about it, but then she got pregnant. I said that I would take care of her and her baby even though it wasn't mine, but she said no. After what she had done, she felt like I was too good for her, and that I would be better off without her. I tried to tell her that I still loved her and that I didn't care what she had done, but she still wouldn't come back to me.

I was heartbroken. I stayed in bed sobbing for a week. Even now, two years later, things still remind me of her every now and then, and I start missing her again. I think that's why I haven't dated anyone even though Pony and Soda keep trying to get me to find a girlfriend. I'm still not over Shirley.

The worst part is that I still don't know what happened to her. I heard that she got married to the father of her baby, but that she miscarried. Apparently, the guy that she married is a jerk, but she hasn't divorced him. She hasn't gone back to school either. At least, I think that's what happened. I've heard a few things from some of our old high school friends, but I don't know if any of them are true. I wish I knew what had happened. It bugs me that I don't have any sense of closure.

Finding the pictures of Shirley had taken me out of the cleaning mood. I got up off my bed, went into the kitchen and grabbed the case of beer that Two-Bit had left in our fridge. I turned on the TV without even noticing what was on and started drinking.