Hey guys. This will be the last chapter for this story. Hope you enjoy.

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Several hours later, Alison hears more knocking on her door. The sound is obnoxious and incessant enough to wake her from her slumber. Picking up her phone to see the time, Alison groans loudly. Who the hell is at her door this late or early in the morning.

Alison is slow to get up and answer the door. After the earlier stuff that happened between her and Emily she doesn't want to see or talk to anyone. Especially at 2:45am when she's emotionally and physically drained but yet someone still has the guts to come over to her house and bother her.

It kind of infuriates her that someone else would be selfish enough to wake her for a conversation in the middle of the night that could likely wait until the morning to be had. She shakes her head at the thought though. She doesn't know who's out there and she'd rather one of her friends come to her at any time for an emergency then sit alone with it.

Now, if it isn't one of her friends waiting for her to open the door, that person is probably going to get the worst version of her and it's not going to be pretty. She might not be able to hold back her snarky attitude and sarcasm for anyone she doesn't have an adoration for.

Unlike when Emily came over during daylight hours, Alison doesn't pause the show on her tv. She's no longer watching Riverdale, so she leaves it playing because she has no energy left to give a damn about it anymore.

When Alison opens up her front door she feels like groaning. It's raining outside and her visitor does not look happy to be standing outside in the rain.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" The angry girl across from Alison says. "Are you going to let me in or what?" She asks impatiently.

Alison for her part doesn't roll her eyes, though she wants to. She steps aside and lets the other girl into her house. When both girls are safely in the house and not getting rained on Alison looks at the shivering girl with bewilderment. "What are you doing here CeCe?"

The girl in question gives Alison a disapproving look. "Now, is that any way to speak to your friend who came here out of concern for you?"

Alison swiftly fixes her with as much of a menacing glare as she can muster in her current state of emotional turmoil and heartbreak. "I won't ask you again. Why are you here?" she inquires sharply.

CeCe rolls her eyes this time. She hangs up her jacket while answering Alison. "I'm here because you haven't answered my fifty calls or texts and I got worried. You should be happy I showed up when I did though, because there was almost another unhappy visitor at your door. One you would have liked a lot less than me coming over to your place to make sure you didn't die or something."

"Maybe I would have been better off with whoever else was out there," Alison mumbles quietly under her breath.

CeCe scoffs loudly at hearing what she wasn't supposed to be able to hear come out of Alison's mouth. "You think your less than useless, idiot of an ex-girlfriend showing up here drunk would be better than me? I think not."

Alison groans loudly. She doesn't have time for any of this bullshit anymore. She's tired. So tired of everything at this point. She wants it to stop but highly doubts that it will, which makes her want to groan more at her crappy luck. "What did she want?"

CeCe shrugs nonchalantly as she plops down onto Alison's living room couch to watch some tv. CeCe scrunches her nose up at the show playing and grabs the remote to change the channel. "Honestly, I'm not really sure. She was mumbling a lot that I couldn't really understand but some of the few things that I did understand coming out of her mouth were that you're a bitch and she's going to make you pay for what you did. Whatever that means."

Alison plops down beside CeCe. She rests her head on her hand while carelessly watching the stations flick from one to another in quick succession. "It means she found out that I told her mom about all the things she's been doing in and outside of school."

The stations stop changing and it ends up on some cooking show. "Ouuu, you snitched on her to her mother? Damn. That's bold Ali. Wish I could have been there to see the look on her face when she got ambushed about everything by her mom. Priceless, I'm sure."

"I'm sure it was," Alison drawls out. She's completely uninterested in this conversation because now that she's awake, she's thinking back to Emily. She's thinking back to what happened and where she went wrong. What could she have done differently?

CeCe narrows her eyes at her blonde friend. It strikes her as weird that Alison isn't acting the way CeCe thought Alison would be acting when she finally put an end to all her ex related problems. Especially ones she's been ranting and dealing with for months at this point. "Why are you so down in the dumps? What's eating at you?"

"I don't really want to talk about it," Alison replies tiredly. It's been on her mind all night and she wants so badly to stop thinking about it. She wants to stop reliving it and talking about it won't keep it off her mind.

CeCe looks at Alison for a few long minutes. She studies her and the wheel in her brain starts to turn. It takes CeCe longer than she'd like it to for her to figure out what's wrong with Alison, but she still congratulates herself on figuring it out fairly quickly. "It's Emily, isn't it?" She questions with certainty.

Alison only sighs deeply in response to the question but CeCe takes the sigh as confirmation that she nailed it with her assumption of it being about Emily. "What happened? What did you do this time?" she asks.

"What did I do?" Alison questions incredulously. "Why would you assume that I did something to her when she could have done something to me?"

CeCe fixes her with an unimpressed look. "C'mon Ali. I love you but you don't have the best track record. In the past you were mostly the one causing the problems between the two of you with your carelessness and your lack of consideration for her feelings."

Alison rolls her eyes harshly at the other girl. She's annoyed with her best friend, but she knows that the other blonde speaks the truth. She just hates to admit that she'd been as awful as she was to everyone but especially to Emily. "Way to kick a girl when she's down."

CeCe bumps her shoulder into Alison's shoulder gently. When Alison and CeCe make eye contact, CeCe has a playful smile on her face. "If it makes you feel any better, I think you've come a long way in the last few years. You've been broken by someone else in a way that so hurtful to you that you vowed you'd never make someone else feel. You know what it's like to be mistreated by someone you trust and want to take care of. It's made you want to be a better partner for someone else out there when that time comes."

Alison looks away from CeCe for a few seconds. When their eyes meet again, Alison has tears in her blue eyes. "She doesn't…" Alison's voice cracks. She takes a deep steadying breath and tries again. "I opened up to her about why I was the way I was back then, and I told her how I feel about her, but she couldn't believe me. Not after all of the lies and chaos I put her through. She said she needed some time to think about it."

CeCe shoots closer to Alison on the couch. She rubs Alison's back in a way she hopes comforts the other girl. "Hey, I know that isn't what you wanted to happen but that isn't so bad. She'll come around."

The words only seem to make Alison cry harder. "You weren't there," she chokes out brokenly. "You didn't see her face. You didn't watch her cry as she recalled all of the things, I made her feel with my callous actions."

Alison wipes at the tears on her cheeks and neck, only for them to be replaced by more tears. "The things I did to her, I can't take those back. I have to live with them and the damage they've caused in our friendship. A friendship that could have been so much more than a friendship if I'd been strong enough to be myself and not push away the person I wanted most. She told me she was ashamed of who I used to be. I begged her not to leave me, but she did. There wasn't anything I could say to convince her that I was serious this time."

CeCe pulls her best friend into a tight hug and Alison lets herself cry into CeCe's chest. She doesn't know how long she cries for, but CeCe is there the entire time. Whispering words of comfort and holding her close. CeCe promises that everything will get better and that she'll be there the whole time and it makes Alison feel like she can handle it with the older girl there next to her.

It takes three long and tortuous months for Emily and Alison to have another conversation about their romantic feelings for each other and if anything will come from them. Throughout the three months, Alison learns that Alyssa got expelled from Rosewood High and both her mom and her have moved away. Alison does a double take when she passes by their house for the first time in weeks and sees a moving truck parked in the driveway. Things are a bit tense and awkward when Emily and Alison are together but with the help of Hanna, Spencer and Aria things between Alison and Emily calm down enough for them to almost hang out without huge moments of the elephant in the room.

Their friends don't really leave them alone together often and it feels good for everyone to be back together like they used to be but Alison can't help but want there to be more. Emily tries her hardest not to see Alison for who she used to be and she tries really hard to see if she can trust Alison again.

Emily does everything slowly. She gives her things to hold onto or she mentions small things to Alison and tells her not to say anything. Alison does as instructed and she doesn't even hint to any of the other girls that there's a secret of Emily's she knows that they don't. It gradually gives her some hope that maybe she and Alison can rebuild a foundation. It gives Emily hope that maybe the two of them can finally give a relationship between them the proper chance to become something more than platonic.

It isn't this profound or astonishing moment between them. It's just the two of them at Alison's locker. Emily meets her there and she smiles timidly. "I think you've proven that I can trust you so I'd really like to give the two of us a chance."

Alison looks up, surprised but a smile quickly breaks out onto her face. It's genuine and it takes up her whole face. "I'd love to finally give us a real shot."

"Before we do that," Emily interjects hesitantly. "I need to know that this is as serious for you as it is for me. I'm not asking you to be my girlfriend and I'm not saying that any of this will be easy but what I am saying is that I want to do this with you. We have this connection and I want to strengthen it and heal it while we move forward, together. I won't be seeing anyone else and I want to know that you'll put in the same effort as me. I want to know that you won't give up and pretend like nothing happened between us if things get tough."

Alison gently grabs Emily's face with both of her hands. She pulls Emily in for a short and sweet kiss on the lips in front of everyone standing in the halls. "I want this as much as you want it. I'm in this for the long run. I don't need to be your girlfriend right away but I want to make this work with you. I want to be there to reassure you that my old behaviors and ways of treating you are behind me. If we can do this together, we'll be able to make it through anything. You're the only person I want."

Emily grabs Alison's hand and she squeezes. "That's all I needed to hear. So, I guess this means that I get to take you out on a real date after all this time."

Alison smirks, "as long as you make it tonight."

Emily gasps in mock horror. "That soon? What if I'm busy?"

Alison raises an eyebrow. "Are you busy tonight?" She inquires curiously.

Emily shrugs, "I am," she responds simply before walking down the hall and towards the exit.

Alison follows closely after her. "Doing what?" Alison questions while absently wondering if she was too forward about their date being tonight.

"Taking my beautiful blonde best friend out on a very romantic evening."

Alison puts her hand over her chest in mock shock. "I never knew you liked Hanna."

Emily lets a loud laugh escape from deep within her chest. "I'll see you tonight?" she asks before they split off and find their cars in the school parking lot.

Alison nods her head. "I wouldn't miss it," she answers honestly.

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