Disclaimer: Roswell, the characters, and the situations are owned by the WB. No infringement is intended.

Author's Note: This story is part of an evolving storyline that currently includes (in order): "Decisions," "Looking In," "Christmas Envy," "From Another Place," "Husbands and Fathers," "Claudia and Nicole," "Stars", "Going Home", "The Ethics Lesson", "Redefining Terms", "Beginnings", "First Date", "A Quality Heart", "In Every Ending", "Birth", "Rose Petals", "The Littlest Czechoslovakian", "Girls' Night In", "A Guy Thing", and "Joshua and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". More stories may be forthcoming.

* * * *

He couldn’t believe his eyes.

Then he told himself that he shouldn’t have been surprised. She had graduated at the top of their class in high school, after all; and her parents had gone to the best Ivy League schools in the country. Of course she would have ended up in Boston too. But he would have expected her to be up the river at Harvard, not at MIT--

"Tom!" Pete jabbed him in the ribs, interrupting his train of thought. "Tom, what’s with you? Snap out of it. We need to get a move on, man, or we’re gonna miss the Roadrunner cartoons before the movie."

He just kept staring at her, ignoring his best friend.

She was still the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She stood out in the crowd of students waiting to get into the lecture hall for student movie-night. No one else had her shy beauty, her unconscious grace, her unpretentious intelligence.

He hadn’t seen her in a couple of years, not since he left Roswell for Boston. Even before he left Roswell, he hadn’t seen her much. To be honest, he hadn’t really spent any time with her since they had broken up in their junior year of high school. He had felt too remorseful to look her in the eye, so he’d kept away.

If he really wanted to be honest, he had to admit that he had also kept away because he’d had no choice. Even if he had wanted to stay friends, he couldn’t have. Her overprotective family had closed ranks. Her cousin Nicole had threatened to break his kneecaps if he got within ten feet of her. And Nicole’s threat had been backed-up by Nicole’s boyfriend Jamie Valenti, the sheriff’s son. And then Nicole’s younger twin brothers, Stephen and Leo, had told him separately and together that they could and would beat the crap out of him if he did anything to hurt their cousin again.

He couldn’t blame them. If their roles had been reversed, he would have beaten himself up too.

He had screwed up badly with her ... had been a show-of-the-month jerk, in fact.

Maybe he could fix things though. Maybe seeing her now, today, was a sign. Maybe it was his chance to fix things.

It had been so long since their break-up. Maybe she would forgive him. Maybe she would give him another chance.

He really wanted another chance.

"--so, Tom, I don’t know what your problem is, but it’s totally getting on my nerves." Pete finished. It took a minute for Tom to realize that Pete had been speaking for a while, and that he had completely missed whatever it was that Pete had been saying. And, Tom realized with some consternation, Pete now sounded pretty annoyed.

Pete’s annoyance caused Tom to look away from her long enough to focus on his best friend instead. Which probably was a mistake because an image of a red-combed rooster with ruffled feathers popped into his mind as soon as he saw Pete’s face, which had turned red the way only a redheaded person’s face can turn red. He bit back a grin and tried to sound conciliatory. "I’m sorry, Pete. I got distracted for a minute. What did you say?"

Pete glared at him, clearly not fooled by his tone, and repeated himself slowly, enunciating every word through gritted teeth as if he thought Tom were mentally deficient: "I said, we should get in the line because we are going to miss the cartoons they show before the movie. I don’t want to miss the beginning."

But Tom even missed Pete’s repetition; his attention had already wandered back to the dark-haired girl.

Following Tom’s gaze to the object of his fascination, Pete rolled his eyes. "Why don’t you just go talk to her or something? Although I don’t know why you would want to. She’s probably from Harvard, and you know how Harvard girls are."

"Right," Tom said absently, thinking that she wasn’t just from Harvard. She was from home. She was a part of his past. At one time, he had thought she was a part of his future too.

Pete shoved him toward her. "You’re making me nauseous mooning over some girl you don’t even know. Go talk to her already."

Tom nodded but didn’t correct Pete’s assumption that he didn’t know her.

He walked toward her slowly, studying her, trying to think of what to say. It should be easy enough to start a conversation, he figured. They had dated once after all. Even if it felt like it had been lifetime ago.

As he worked his way through the crowd of students, he noticed that if anything she had grown more beautiful since high school. Her silky dark hair seemed to glisten in the lights of the Infinite Corridor. He watched her reach up to tuck her hair behind her slightly sticking-out ears, and he remembered how he used to tease her about that little nervous tic ... happier times when she had laughed up at him and teased him back about how he bit his lip when he was trying to avoid saying something.

Just when he was almost close enough to talk to her, he hesitated. His feet seemed leaden all of a sudden, and putting one foot in front of the other seemed impossible.

As he hesitated, he observed that she hadn’t gotten much taller since high school, and that her petite frame still made him think about nothing except keeping her safe and at his side. Which was a stupid, pointless thought, he admitted silently, given how things had turned out.

Just walk, he coached himself. Just walk. A little closer. There.

He touched her arm to get her attention.

She jumped a little in surprise, then turned around.

When she lifted her gaze to meet his, he was lost all over again. He was drowning in her eyes, as if there were no years between the last moment he had looked into their warm depths and this one. Her eyes were incredible. They were a peculiar, bottomless brown, a brown that shaded lighter or darker according to her moods. He had always thought that her eyes were so beautiful they seemed unearthly. Lost in her eyes, it occurred to him that they hadn’t changed at all over the years, except maybe to have gotten a little lonelier. But then she had always had the loneliest eyes he’d ever seen.

He wondered if she had ever opened up, ever told anyone why she was so lonely.

In all the time they had dated, she had never shared that with him. It was one of the few things that had bothered him about her, in fact. She was too closed, too private sometimes. He had felt shut out.

But then he had been immature. He had thought that he needed to know everything about her to be with her. He had wanted to possess her as much as she possessed him, body and heart and soul.

She had known better. She had recognized the truth of his infatuation long before he had. And so she had insisted that they take things slowly.

But it hadn’t been enough for him. He had been too afraid to lose her. He had been too afraid of the loneliness in her eyes, that loneliness which he thought meant that she would never feel the same ache in her chest that he felt in his.

He couldn’t understand why she seemed to push him away.

So she had tried to tell him that true love waits. That true love was what her parents had, and that she wouldn’t settle for anything less. She wanted to be sure.

He had pushed anyway, and she had pulled away.

And then one unusually rainy afternoon, especially unusual for a state like New Mexico, he had issued an ultimatum, and she had stared at him then left, running through the rain towards her house and the protection of her large family, forgetting her umbrella behind.

He still had her umbrella.

He had even brought her umbrella to Boston with him. His mother had wondered about why he included a flowered umbrella in his luggage along with his computer peripherals and his baseball bat and his basketball and his books. He didn’t even try to explain that he kept the umbrella as a talisman, as a reminder of how he’d screwed up the best thing in his life.

He hadn’t deserved her before. He probably didn’t deserve her now.

But he was older. He had grown up. He was more mature. He could try again.

If she would let him.

He told himself to stop staring at her, that dwelling on the past wasn’t getting him anywhere. Forgetting all the words that he might have said, he just smiled at her.

She smiled back tentatively.

And his chest felt tight all of a sudden, the way it had always done whenever he saw her slow, gorgeous smile. It had always felt like his heart seized up then started beating again really fast.

He took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. "Hey, Claudia. It’s been a while."

She nodded and looked up at him with her big, serious eyes.

He blinked so that he wouldn’t be tempted to drown in her eyes again, and was concentrating so hard on not drowning that he nearly missed her quiet greeting back. "Hey, Tom. How are you?"

That was when he gave up. If he didn’t drown in her eyes, he would drown in her voice. Her voice was like chocolate: dark but sweet, soft and low. He stifled a groan. Seeing her eyes, listening to her voice ... it was a classic Catch-22, lose-lose all the way. She was the only person in the world who could ever make him feel this unbalanced.

She smiled again, and he felt himself reverting to the callow teenage boy he’d been. What was it about Claudia Evans that turned him into a quivering mess of insecurities and awkwardnesses and hormones?

She was waiting for him to say something, he knew.

He pulled himself together and tried to think of what she’d asked. Of course, he remembered, she wanted to know how he was. "Fine," he said quickly. "I’m fine, good ... fine, in fact."

She smiled again, and he could have sworn her eyes were laughing, though not at him exactly. The laughter in her eyes was gentle, as if she found something in the situation inherently humorous but wasn’t quite willing to share her thoughts.

Besides, he thought, she would never laugh at him or anybody. It was simply not in her to intentionally hurt anyone. Even him, and he had done enough to deserve it. Claudia Evans could never be hurtful. It was one of the things he loved -- no, scratch that -- it was one of the things he *liked* most about her.

Interrupting his musing, she said in that quiet, serious way of hers, "That’s really good, Tom. I’m glad you’re fine." She looked at him a little oddly when he still said nothing, then started to turn away.

Suddenly he was desperate, searching his mind frantically for something to say that would keep her from turning away from him. For lack of something better, he said, "So, you’re here to see the movie?" And he could have hit himself.

Great, just great, he congratulated himself sarcastically. He could be so inane sometimes.

But at least she had stopped turning away.

She looked back at him and tilted her head. He noticed her lips twitching a little as if she were again trying not to laugh.

A friend of hers who he hadn’t even noticed standing behind her in the line, leaned into their conversation then and said in a dry, droll, very Harvard voice, "You know, Claud, it’s funny but I always thought that that’s what usually happens when you stand in line waiting to get in somewhere to watch a movie. You end up watching a movie."

And Tom blinked in surprise, not at the girl’s tone, but rather at what she’d said. Claudia hated being called "Claud," he remembered. She always had. In fact, the only people who ever called her anything but her full name were her little cousins, and he knew that she allowed them to call her "Claudi" because it was something special about herself that she saved just for them, so that they always knew that their relationship with her was special.

He looked into her eyes thoughtfully, too preoccupied with his memories and their implications to realize that for once he wasn’t his usual mess of hormones in her presence.

She returned his look with interest.

He knew that she could read the thoughts in his eyes. All of a sudden, it seemed crucially important that she realize that he still cared about her, that he remembered what she thought was important, that he still knew her.

The open concern in his eyes seemed to evoke indecision in hers. She seemed to be wrestling with herself about something. Even though he didn’t know what it was, Tom held his breath.

He kept holding his breath even though he was confused by what she did next.

She turned to her condescending friend and said, "I’m not really interested in seeing this movie anymore."

Turning back to him, she gave him another of her shy, gorgeous smiles. And he was even more confused.

"Are you interested in seeing this movie?" she asked.

Her question eradicated his confusion, like the rising sun burns off morning mist. He swallowed. She was letting him try again. She was giving him another chance.

He didn’t deserve her. He knew he didn’t. But there was no way in hell he was going to let this chance pass him by.

He shook his head in response to her question; he couldn’t even remember what the movie was. The movie seemed like the least important thing in the world at that moment.

He could barely stop his hand from trembling as he offered it to her. He was not sure she would trust him enough to take it.

She looked thoughtfully at his hand, then placed her much smaller hand in his.

And he exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he was still holding and led her outside the main group of buildings to the wide green expanse of Killian Court and beyond that grassy emptiness, towards the hushed rushing of the Charles River.

"Did you know," he asked a little later as they walked along the river, "that I still have your umbrella?"

She nodded and smiled at him, another of her slow, sweet smiles that lit up her eyes, almost but not quite dispelling the loneliness in their beautiful, unearthly depths.

And he basked in her smile and the look in her eyes, and promised himself that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

Author’s Note:

"The Girl With The Loneliest Eyes" is the title of a song by the British band, The House of Love, from their 1992 self-titled album. The song was a sort-of inspiration for this story. If you don’t know the song or the band, you may want to check them out. Guy Chadwick is a great unsung (pun intended) singer and songwriter. (Recently, he released a solo album, "Lazy, Soft, And Slow," which is absolutely brilliant. He also contributed his gorgeous voice to a Leonard Cohen tribute album some years ago; his version of "Who By Fire" is the best I’ve heard, including Cohen’s original.)

These are the words to "The Girl With The Loneliest Eyes":

The girl with the loneliest eyes
Is coming down the road
And I’m never coming back

Show me your eyes
Show me them wild
You’re caught in the climb
Of someone inside
How do you feel?
And why do you feel?
Hold on to love
It won’t let you down
The girl, and you’ll die in her hands,
Is coming on and on
And I’m never coming back
Show me your eyes
Show me them wild
You’re caught in the climb
Of someone inside
How do you feel?
And why do you feel?
Hold on to love
It won’t let you down
© Guy Chadwick, The House of Love, 1992

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