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PART FIVE: PETER MINION
I don't like you, but I love you. Seems that I'm always thinking of you. Though you treat me badly, I love you madly. You've really got a hold on me.

Peter got sick six years after they graduated.

Well, that was when he told them he was sick. When he was too sick to hide it anymore.

"There was something in your damned advice," he told Keith, a smirk on his face because he didn't know how to show anything else. "Even if I never wanted to hear it."

Watts' life was a consistent whirlwind, and it got more clouded with hospital visits, sitting by Keith at four in the morning, watching Peter, gaunt and way too skinny, asleep with tubes up his nose.

"Don't look so sorry for me," he said, almost disgusted with them, the night they found out. "I've lived my with no regrets, exactly the way I wanted to. It was only a matter of time before it caught up with me. Otherwise it would just be unfair. I was meant to live an extraordinary life - and I was meant to die young."

He did die young. Entirely too young, and even in death, he refused to let them mourn him.

His guitar was placed in his casket with him, and his band's one hit was blasted on the speakers, this David Bowie wannabe glam rock thing that had always made her laugh when she heard it.

There were a lot of people at the funeral. It was a zoo, but it didn't surprise Susan Watts, when she looked around and surveyed the bohemian revolution that seemed to follow Peter wherever he went.

It was fitting somehow.

A few minutes before the service ended, Susan found her way outside, stepping onto the cement staircase of Forest Lawn, taking in a deep breath, closing her eyes.

"Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to have a light, would you?"

Her brief moment was respite was shattered, when she turned and found Amanda Jones.

Her words got stuck in her throat, and in those seconds, she found herself cataloguing the differences - shorter hair, wrinkles around the corner of her eyes- before she found her voice.

"No, I quit years ago," she managed.

Amanda looked startled. Smoothing back one bang, she looked awkward, out of place, as she sheepishly waved the little stick in her hands. "You're a better woman than me." Shrugging, she thrust it back in her pocket, studying her more intently now, as if it she wasn't sure. "Watts? I didn't... I didn't recognize you from behind..."

"Oh..." Heart in her throat, Watts was shocked into politeness. Palming her hair, smoothing down one dark brown lock, she flashed a small smile. "It's... uh... brown now."

"I noticed."

All either could do was look now, staring at each other as if they were both seeing strangers, and somehow feeling obligated to keep the impromptu conversation going, Susan took a small step forward. "What are you... doing here?"

"Oh..." Amanda flushed, stepping back, maintaining the distance, shaking her head as if trying to pull herself from a trance. Susan glanced at her left hand. She bit her lip, taking in a shuddering breath when she found it bare. "A friend did a story on it. Peter and I kept in touch for a while. I did this show once, about one-hit wonders, and..."

"Yeah," Susan interrupted, nodding rapidly. Duh. "You're working for MTV now."

Amanda rubbed at her ear; a nervous fidget. "Yeah. Sorta. I'm freelance."

Susan had received a letter from her agent for that. They wanted to interview her about Peter. She had declined the invitation.

And there was nothing else to say.

Still, Susan couldn't bring herself to move, and she just stood there, looking at Amanda Jones.

Amanda just sighed, glancing back at the mortuary. "I just wanted to say bye to him. He was... he was... unique." Heart in her throat, Susan could only nod. Suddenly Amanda came to life, hands in her pockets. "Do you want to go lunch? I'd really like to go to lunch."

It was said fast and it threw her. She was pretty sure she stammered, and when she glanced helplessly back to the ceremony, Amanda finally seemed to come to her senses.

"Oh, my God. Was that disrespectful?"

"No... I just... my kid's in there and-"

"Your kid?"

Susan blew out her breath, smiled gently. "Yeah. My kid." The door burst open, and the crowds came out, cameras flashing, and people talking, laughing - because Peter would have hated silence, even at his own funeral. She kept her eyes on the door, and nodded when she spotted Keith. "There she is."

Amanda Jones looked stunned, and Susan wasn't sure if that was good or bad, as Keith held his squirming daughter in his arms, eyes on them both, before he came forward, placing Casey into her mother's arms.

"Amanda Jones."

"It's a name, not a title," Amanda said morosely. "And it's Amanda Jennings, now."

"You got married," Keith said.

"And divorced," she added, but her eyes were on her daughter. With a gentle hand, Amanda reached for the little girl, nearly touching her, before pulling back. "She's got your hair," she told Keith. Susan smiled, smoothing her fingers through the toddler's bangs, Casey kicking and gurgling in protest.

"This is Casey."

Amanda looked strangely affected, an odd smile quirking across her lips, as she straightened, voice clouded. "She's beautiful."

"She's a handful," Keith corrected.

"What's the hold up! Food's in like, twenty minutes!"

Susan rolled her eyes, shoving Casey into the arriving Duncan's arms. "It's always about food with you."

"Food, my dear, is the essence of life."

"Duncan?" Amanda breathed, and Duncan looked caught, face draining color slightly when he passed wild eyes at Keith and Watts.

"Crap," he said, shifting the weight of the baby. "I'm really not this respectable, I swear."

Susan blinked, taking in Amanda's surprise, and looking back at Duncan. Yeah... she could see how it could be a shock if someone hadn't seen Duncan since high school. The close shaven, polished man in the suit was a far cry from the leather coated hoodlum.

Then again, some could say the same about her.

"Oh, my God!" Amanda breathed. "Duncan!"

Susan grinned. "Duncan is Keith's... friend."

"That's right," Keith said, slapping an arm around the increasingly red Duncan. "We're 'friends'."

"Allright, allright," Duncan shifted. "It's not what it looks like," he said sheepishly to Amanda.

"Except it is," Susan remarked dryly.

And again, Amanda looked startled. "Wait... you and Keith are..."

"I'm not gay," Duncan said, too fast, beet red when Keith smacked a kiss against his lips.

"Shut up."

Fighting a smirk, Amanda only waved him off helplessly. "I'm not saying anything. I can't say ANYTHING."

"Wait..." Still holding Casey, Duncan looked as baffled as he had been in high school. "What does that mean?"

It was the last thing she expected to hear from Amanda Jones. Watts' smile fell immediately, and she stared hard at Amanda, the inflection, the implicit meaning of that sentence unmistakable. When Amanda just gave her another shy smile, she shook herself.

"Do you mind watching Casey?" she asked Keith, low and fast. "Amanda wants to go to lunch."

"Oh, sure..."

"Let's go," Watts instructed, palm on the small of Amanda's back.

It had been a long, long time.

She still didn't know if she wanted to kiss or kill Amanda Jones. But she was hungry.

--

"When I saw you and Keith and the baby, I just naturally assumed..." Opening the menu, Amanda was flushed.

Amused, Susan quirked an eyebrow. "What, that we both just magically went straight?" She smirked. "It's not that easy for some of us."

Amanda's eyes narrowed, smirk frozen before it became a smile. "It's never easy."

Right.

And back came the awkward silence.

It was almost fitting, Susan supposed. This was how Amanda and Watts had started, staring across at each other in an eighties rock bar, nothing to say.

Amanda cleared her throat, a nervous twitch she had never gotten over. "So, how did Casey, then... happen?"

"A cup," Susan remarked dryly, before Amanda blinked, and she smiled, shaking her head. "I was with someone. We wanted a baby - we broke up before Casey was due, and so... Keith and I decided to raise her together."

"Her mommy and daddy."

"Not your regular nuclear family, but the next best thing." Amanda nodded, took a sip of her coffee. "How about you? Any children?"

"Oh, no..." Amanda looked almost apologetic for that. "It's amazing really. I kept saying I would take the time, and before I knew it... there was no time."

"Yeah..." Susan took a chunk of bread, placed it in her mouth, and chewed. She remembered being eighteen, handing this woman a diamond earring and hoping the world would catch up in time.

And then time just passed them by.

"So, Keith is out, then? If he and Duncan are... committed?"

"Well..." Susan's mouth pulled into a smile, the memory amusing her despite herself. "Not so much as he came out, as he was OUTTED by his sister when she found him in bed with her boyfriend."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah... it was a little traumatic," she grinned, and suddenly Amanda snorted, reaching for the water.

"Oh my God," she said again.

"Yeah, it was a long time before we were welcome back at the Nelson table," Susan admitted. "Casey kinda changed that, though."

"She's beautiful," Amanda said. Susan refused to believe she heard anything but what was there. To think Amanda said things almost wistfully would put her in a place she fought for years to get out of.

And still... she couldn't help her next question. "So... divorced!"

"Yeah," Amanda mused, nodding patronizingly. "I spent a long time, trying to force myself to be with someone who I thought I should be with just because I thought it was easier."

Her heart caught in her throat. "And it’s not."

"The easy road is never easier," Amanda said, placing down her glass. "Just harder. And more miserable. And you end up alone. The things worth fighting for..." she nodded, lost in her thoughts. "The harder things. That's what I try to do now. What feels right. Even if everyone else think it's wrong."

It had been years, and Susan Watts hated herself when she found herself blinking back tears, fingers balling her napkin in her first, breath unsteady and heart giving a telltale thump.

"Got your earring," she said suddenly. "You shouldn't have given it back." Amanda studied her intently, looked away.

"I didn't deserve it."

"While you still had it, I still had hope."

Amanda's body stiffened, her eyes jerked and locked with hers, and fuck it all... Susan was eighteen again. Desperate and scared as hell, and hating the fact that she was just another person in love with Amanda Jones.

"Can I take you to dinner?"

It was straightforward, put out there.

Susan flushed, trying hard to laugh away her emotion. "Well, we're in the middle of lunch, so... I might be a little full-"

"Watts." Her words died in her throat the second Amanda slid fingers into her palm, smoothed over her wrist. It was an intimate touch, and it took her breath away. "I'd really like to take you to dinner."

Falling in love with Amanda Jones had been the scariest thing she had ever done. It had left her unprotected, naked and exposed, and no matter how much older Watts got, no one else had made her feel the same way.

That feeling made her want to say no.

"I just..." she sighed, glancing down at the white tablecloth."I don't know if I can do this again. We're not in high school anymore."

"And I'm glad." Amanda shrugged, but looked boldly determined, because when Amanda got something in her head, she did it. Watts had learned about that trait long ago. "We weren't ready in high school. Well, now I am. I don't want to lose you again, because I think you were the only person I ever really loved."

Watts had a thousand things working against her here. Amanda's bold determination, her brilliant smile, the shine in her eyes. The minute Amanda touched her, fingers sliding delicately over her skin, she knew it was a lost cause. She was just another minion in love with Amanda Jones.

The difference, she wondered, stupidly wondered, was that maybe Amanda Jones was finally in love with her.

"Okay," she breathed, pulling her arm away and cradling it into her lap, like it burnt. "Yes. You can me to dinner."

--

Susan was right, years ago. She and Amanda could never be friends.

She had been determined to take it slow. Rediscover friendship with Amanda Jones, find out who the woman was that had been the insecure cheerleader of before.

Instead, by nine that night, Amanda had pushed against her doorway and kissed the breath out of her, claiming her possession and her partnership with a whispered word and a hand against her belt.

Amanda wasn't the first woman she had ever kissed, certainly not the last, and still Susan found herself weakened, head swimming.

"Wait," she breathed, hands on her shoulders, trying desperately to ignore her beating heart. "I really think we should go slow."

In the moonlight, Amanda's eyes were like dark coals, fitting, Susan guessed - her stare burned.

"It's been more than fifteen years," Amanda breathed, mouth skimming along her cheek, her jaw, sending small tiny bolts of electricity down Watts' spine. "Don't you think we've gone slow enough?"

She couldn't fault her logic. She didn't want to. She was well into her thirties, and Watts felt like a teenager with no control when she sunk her mouth into Amanda's, fumbled for her doorknob, and stumbled inside.

--

It was almost absurdly easy, to pick up where they had left off, two scared teenagers who lived life as misfits, were now two secure, successful women who lived in Los Angeles.

Two months after their first date, she met Amanda's mother, a good woman who voted for George Bush, eyed her with impossibly wide eyes, and stuttered through her dinner. But she tried, and for that Amanda loved her, and for that, Watts tolerated her.

Amanda moved in a month after that, and sometimes, Watts thought it was fucking freaky, to wake up and discover Amanda Jones buried into the pillow beside her, sleeping like the dead.

She discovered something new, when Amanda moved in. Amanda snored.

Keith was over almost every day, and because of that, so was Duncan, who still couldn't believe that the four of them had 'gone queer'. Amanda still didn't admit to being gay. She said she was simply in love with a woman, and she had been tired of waiting for the world to catch up.

Casey had two mommies, a daddy and a step daddy, and Watts suddenly had what she had never imagined ever having.

A family.

--

"It's infected."

Bobby pins in her mouth, Susan could only roll her eyes, mumble around the pins, "It's not infected."

"It is too, infected!"

Spitting out the bobby pins, Watts pushed away from the sink and into the nursery, shoving Amanda away to look at her daughter's tiny ears. "Sweetie, it's just a little red."

Amanda bit the tip of her tongue, shifting her eyes from mother to baby. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I’m fucking sure-"

"Don’t cuss in front of the baby!"

Susan rolled her eyes, letting the prickle of irritation roll through her as she covered Casey's ears, and planted two kisses on Amanda's lips, punctuating each with, "Fuck. You."

"Bitch." Watts grinned, kissed her again, and moved back to the sink.

"I had my ears pierced when I was a year old. She's gonna be fine."

Amanda remained unconvinced, but the deed had been done, and Susan knew she thought it fitting too, that her daughter wore the infamous earrings that had been passed between the two of them like a hot potato.

"We have to hurry," she said, stepping away from the mirror and reaching for her jacket. "Keith's opening is at seven and he wants us there for the picture with the press - did you get her jacket?"

"Yeah, it's right here-" Amanda looked thoughtful, adjusting a black wispy scarf around her shoulders. "Know what I think?"

"Nope, but you're gonna tell me, aren't you?" she said, grunting as she pulled Casey into her arms, carefully moving her daughter's bangs away from her ears, letting the earrings gleam.

Amanda shot her a glare, but continued, "It makes sense."

"What?" she said distractedly.

"You, me... Keith. I mean, that we're this... family." She shrugged. "It was a love triangle when this all started. Kinda fitting it ended with the three of us."

Amanda had always been ridiculously sentimental. "You are so fucking cheesy," Watts said quickly, and then kissed her, before Amanda could huff. "What, this is destiny?"

"I think the three of us were meant to be. In a cosmic way. Why else would we keep finding each other years after high school? I mean if this were a movie, by all logic it should have ended with you and Keith, walking into the sunset. Like Pretty in Pink."

"Do not compare my life to a Hughes film," Watts snapped. "Though, that would be a wonderful story. We're late-" she said, pushing Amanda toward the door.

"Yes, but this is a different kind of wonderful," Amanda mused, letting herself get herded, grabbing the diaper bag almost by distraction. "It's... it's..."

"Some kind of wonderful?"

"There's a word for it," Amanda argued.

"Well when you think of it, let me know."

FIN

NOTES

Story lyrics are as follows:
Part 1: Maybe you may love me too. Oh my darling if you do, why haven't you told me - Linda Scott, I've Told Every Star

Part 2: I just decided to myself, I'd hide it to myself and never talk about it, and did not go and shout it when you walked into the room: I think I love you, David Cassidy, I think I Love You

Part 3: And like a rubber ball I come bouncing back to you - Bobby Vee, Rubber Ball

Part 4: The only girl I care about is gone away, looking for a brand new start. But little does she know that when she left that day, along with her she took my heart. - The Cascades, Rhythm of the Rain

Part 5: I don't like you, but I love you. Seems that I'm always thinking of you. Though you treat me badly, I love you madly. You've really got a hold on me. - The Miracles, You've Really Got a Hold on Me