There was only one way this could end up. At the ripe age of thirty, she had fulfilled every goal that she had set when she was just an angsty teenager, staring at the drab ceiling of her padded bedroom in Lawndale. She had published three successful novels, freelanced for all of the top magazines in the country, held front-page status for her national syndicated newspaper column for four years and even won a Pulitzer last year for an investigative piece she did for the Times about Darfur. Her dreams had pretty much all come true, and she should be the happiest girl (or at least her own version of that) in the world. Then again, there was still that one little unreachable dream that hadn't quite come to fruition.

Daria had managed to stay in touch with Jane since high school. Her friend had graduated from art school and gone on to work in small gallery in the Village to support her art passion. When she had finally convinced her boss to let her display a few paintings in a new artists' showcase, Jane had been picked out by one of the biggest art investors in New York. Three years later, she pulled down hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing what she loved most on her own terms. Daria had been by Jane's side when her paintings had been shown at the Whitney, beaming as proudly as the redhead could manage as they toasted with champagne at their mutual successes.

The two of them rarely went back to Lawndale these days. While most of Jane's family had moved on to some hippie commune near Berkeley, Daria's parents were still living a picturesque life in the suburb that had once seemed like a prison to her. Quinn was now the mother of five-year-old twins that were the spitting image of their mother and a bouncing two-year-old boy that acted just like their father, Jamie. Helen had finally retired from the firm following Jake's retirement a few years before, and the two of them spent their days golfing, gardening and playing with the grandkids. They wore their age well, much more calm and settled than they had been when Daria and Quinn were still at home. Daria sent her nieces and nephew age-appropriate gifts, mostly recommendations from Quinn relayed through her assistant in a succinct email or text message.

And even with all her successes, Daria hated a small part of herself for still being jealous of her sister. It wasn't that Daria wanted the life in the suburbs in the cookie-cutter house, with the J. Crew husband or the overly energetic kids. She just wanted her own version of that, maybe a musician husband and a smart-mouthed kid with his mother's ambition and his father's talent. And maybe, just maybe, she wanted that husband to be the gravelly voiced lead singer of a certain rock band that may or may not have started in her hometown and managed to rule the rock charts for the past five years. Not that she had any one in mind, you know; it was just a thought.

The only problem with that whole scenario was the same one that had plagued Daria since she was sixteen and first met Trent Lane. He was still a mystery to her after all these years, this unreachable enigma that seemed too hot to hold onto too tightly. She was a different person now, more confident that she could have ever imagined. However, all of that slid away whenever she even thought about Trent. He was her Kryptonite in many ways, and hearing his voice on the other end of the line was just as unsettling as it was years before when he would say something to her and only her in that same low tone.

It seemed that Trent was in the city for a few nights and was hoping to get together with Daria since his sister was in Paris at some kind of artists' retreat. He had made arrangements for drinks at an ultra hip restaurant that Daria had been to a few times. She knew that was the kind of place people went to be seen and was likely far from Trent's scene. Instead, she suggested a little dive bar a few blocks from her loft in Soho. He was a big enough star that the paparazzi were interested in his comings and goings, and Daria was well-known enough in the New York social scene that her dalliances were sometimes tracked in the Post. No one would notice them at her favorite neighborhood haunt.

She was dressed in a simple black sheath and Capri leggings when she spotted him already waiting for her at the bar. Her hair was loose and around her shoulders still, hanging in waves that glowed faintly in the dim mood lighting. She still had those trademark boots strapped to her little feet, though these came with a stiletto heal instead of the sturdy base of her teenage combats. Trent still looked as grungy as ever, with various holes in his ears and a shirt that looked like it had seen better days. His hair was a little more styled and definitely cleaner that it had been in his early twenties, but for all intents and purposes, he looked the same.

"Hey, Daria," he greeted her slowly as she approached, slipping from his stool to hug her limply.

Daria smiled self consciously as she returned the hug, still trying to decide how to deal with all this. She figured that she could beat around the bush or she could just dive right in. "Why did you ask me here, Trent?" she asked bravely, peering at him over the rims of her signature frames. Trent shifted uncomfortably on his stool, rubbing sheepishly at his beard in this feigned contemplation move that Daria had seen dozens of times. "I mean, I get that you want some company or whatever you told me on the phone, but why did you ask me here? You could have just picked up a girl in a bar. You certainly had enough company when I showed up."

Trent seemed taken aback by her uncharacteristically brazen approach to their conversation. "Daria," he drawled lazily, his voice letting on more than he intended and then nothing at the same time. She hated feeling the way that she did, uncomfortable in her own skin like she had in high school. It wasn't fair. She was supposed to be past this and over him. "Look, if it's about that night when you were in college…"

Daria held up her hand to stop him short. "I told you that we never needed to talk about that night," she replied automatically. She had imagined how this conversation would go a million times, and Trent had never brought up "that night" in a single one of her scenarios. She mostly just liked to pretend that it never happened. It hurt too much to think about how humiliated she felt the next morning. "I just want to know why you called me."

"You've been on my mind a lot," he said, digging his hands into his pockets. "Jane has kept me updated on everything. She said that you are doing pretty well for yourself, not that there was ever any doubt. She also told me that you saw Tom recently. How is he?"

She recoiled automatically at the mention of her ex-boyfriend. Tom had been a very important part of her teenage years and had been the only thing to ever create a real rift between Daria and her best friend. "Tom is fine," she told him curtly. She didn't want to talk about Tom with Trent. She didn't really want to talk about him with anyone. Sometimes she felt guilty for what she was doing. It wasn't right, but it somehow felt okay on those lonely nights when the city seemed so big. She had plenty of friends, but Tom was something else altogether. She couldn't explain it to herself and wasn't about to try to make Trent understand it. "He's here in the city, working for one of his family's subsidiaries."

"Guess he got over the bourgeois of working for his family," Trent muttered under his breath before taking a long sip of his beer. Daria played with her cocktail napkin, choosing to ignore his underhanded comment. It was no secret that Trent wasn't a big fan of Tom. Jane had confided in Daria about what Trent had said when she mentioned that the old blast from the past had reappeared in Daria's life. "It must be cozy, the two of you taking the social scene by storm."

"Careful, Trent, you almost sound like you care," Daria shot back. All the anxiety she felt earlier was gone. "You're dangerously close to coming off as jealous. After the last time we saw each other, I was pretty sure you didn't give a damn. I mean, that was your MO, right?"

"Daria," he warned her, taking another long and exaggerated drink of the pale ale. She met his dark eyes unwaveringly, not afraid to go toe to toe if that was the way he wanted to play this. She had given Trent something she would never be able to get back, and he had left her without a hug, a word, a note the next morning. "Look, you told me you were over it."

"You mean after you called me in the middle of the night drunk out of your mind a year after it happened? Of course I did, Trent, what else was I going to say? If you had been sober, you would probably have known that I was lying," she replied sarcastically. "Trent, you knew when it happened that it wasn't going to be okay to do what you did. You knew me. You knew that I couldn't have something like that happen and not have it mean something. You made promises that I really thought you were going to keep…but now I know you never had any intention of seeing any of them through."

He knew it would cost him a lot to admit anything, but there were things that she needed to hear. There were things he needed to say or he would never believe them himself. He had managed to bury this for a long time, and no one, not even Jane, knew any of it. "I was screwed up after Monique and I broke up again. I wanted anything – or anyone – to make the angst go away," he admitted. "You were so great that night. You just listened to me."

"I don't think I'd ever heard you string more than a few sentences together," she remembered. It had been one of those long conversations that started with small talk and ended with the type of secrets that changed lives. It had certainly altered hers. "If I was so great, how could you leave?"

"Because after, when you fell asleep, I knew what that meant, and it set of this overwhelming wave of panic. All the feelings I had, they were too real, Daria. I'd just had my heartbroken, and in those precious few hours, I knew you were on the brink of having that same power," he tried to explain to her. The words weren't coming out right. "I had to hurt you before you hurt me. I couldn't go through that again."

"So, having gone through that yourself, you thought the best solution was to do it to me first?" she asked him rhetorically. It was idiotic in true Trent sense and yet made total sense to her. It was still infuriating. "I'd never do that to you."

He looked down at him mostly empty glass and nodded silently. "I know that now." It was resolute and sad and broke Daria's heart all over again. "I know that you've moved on. I can accept that as long as I know you're happy. That's why I had to see you, Daria. I had to know that you were happy." He looked up at her then from behind her dark lashes. "You look good. You sound good. Everything I've read – I know you're good." He waited a beat before looking back down at the bar. "I just had to know."

Daria knew that she could let him go on believing that she was happy with Tom and leave here knowing that she won. She could build up this wall around her heart that had been there for years, one so thick that no one would ever get through it after Trent. She could go back to her work and her friends and pretend that it was enough. She could do all of that and maybe even feel okay with it most of the time. But the thing was, the thing that stopped her from doing all that, was that she couldn't ignore her heart.

"I'm not happy."

His eyes shot up and met hers immediately, looking confused for a second before softening as he finally came to understood. "You're not?"

"How could I be when I'm still missing you?"

He reached for her hand then, entwining her fingers with his knobby ones and squeezing tightly. It wasn't this grand romantic declaration. That would come later in the form of a very public debut of a song he wrote for her and performed in front of the entire world on the Grammys six months later. Instead, it was this very quiet acknowledgement that he'd screwed up and was sorry about it and was pretty much promising that it would never happen again if she would just love him back. Daria pressed the bridge of her glasses with her free hand and nodded slightly. It wasn't forever, but it was a start.