.

"My mind drowns in the possibility of you and me."

Perry Poetry

She fits into his arms perfectly. She's never noticed how much before as he starts to sway with her to the song. She can hear the thud of his heart as she rests her head against his shoulder, it matches the way her own heart feels. Beating so hard, she can hear all the blood rushing to her ears. She has to suppress a contented sigh as a small voice, hardly audible asks "Has it been long enough yet?".

It surprises her a little and she instantly banishes the thought from her head. Freddie has always been one of the only things right in her life. She can't ruin it just because they're dancing in a way friends don't dance with each other and she's having feelings she's tried not to allow herself to entertain for a while now.

Except… you were meant for me thrums through her veins over and over again. Another voice, louder than the other one urges her to run. But she doesn't listen, she finishes up dancing with him. Allows her to help her into her jacket, and lets him walk her back to their apartment.

"Since they're going the same way," she says as he pulls her hair from her jacket, thinking she sounds like Audrey Hepburn but also very aware of how stupid she sounds.

When they get home, she wants to ask him inside or spend time talking to him in the hallway. Her heart is still hammering in her chest and there's a lump forming in her throat.

"Freddie…" she falters, she needs some time alone to compose herself. "I did have a good time tonight, despite everything that went wrong in the beginning."

Freddie smiles at her and she leans against the door because she's a little lightheaded. "Me too," he says.

She pauses and she starts to fumble around for her keys. "Do you want to come in?" she asks. "We can watch a movie… maybe share an ice cream sundae?"

He smiles at her, she doesn't know what it means, his smile. "Sure," he says.

She spends the rest of the weekend, agonizing over whether or not they should be something more. She spends the weekend trying to spend as much time with him as possible, not because she's trying to use him to figure out how she feels. She just wants to be around him. But she knows in the back of her mind, for right now, it can still only be friendship. If she lost him because something went wrong, she didn't know how she could live with it.

But there's another shift in their relationship. Tiny but noticeable maybe only to them. She tells herself she's okay with it, she's okay with only being his friend if it means she can keep him. Except she keeps thinking about it.

.

It's another one of those nights where she can't stop thinking about Freddie. She still doesn't think she loves him, she's trying not to. But her heart is traitorous and whispers you do, you do, you do over and over again. Except it's too late, he's with Sam now and she's not sure that she doesn't want him just because she can't have him anymore. Because he's not pining after her anymore. It would all be very Send in the Clowns of her. But…

But she's liked him for a long time now. Since he saved her life, since that night in the Groovy Smoothie when they danced. The feeling's been plucking at her heart. Growing every day but not enough that she couldn't keep it inside of her, so nobody - including herself - would get hurt. A good friend didn't do that kind of stuff. A good friend was happy for her friends when something good happened to them.

Although, it doesn't look that good from the outside looking in. She isn't even sure Sam likes Freddie that much. Not the way she does anyway. She hates that she even assumes such a thing about one of her best friends, and she does the best she can to support them. Puts her feelings on the back burner, tells her mind to shut up, and doesn't ever say anything to Freddie.

Even though whenever they're alone, just the two of them she wants to say something.

"Do you love her? Do you love her the way you loved me?"

She wants to know the answer more than anything but at the same time, she doesn't. She can live with the answer being no. She's already told herself no about him more times than she can count. Maybe hearing it from the boy of the object of her possible affection would make it stick.

But she doesn't say anything, she suffers in silence until things naturally fizzle out between her two friends. If she had feelings for him, telling him how she felt would just be tacky in the wake of a breakup. So, she doesn't say anything and it's back to business as usual for all of them.

She dates guys, all wrong for her, hoping she can find someone who's not Freddie. All at the same time, they get closer than ever.

.

"Is it too late for you to love me?" Freddie asks out of the blue.

Her heart skips a beat. Yes. "What?" she asks instead, almost hoping he'll ask her again, hoping he won't.

"Nothing!" Freddie answers quickly.

"D-did you just say?"

"No!"

Carly sighs inwardly.

Tell him.

Tell him!

But she couldn't because he wouldn't say it first. Well, he had said it first but he refused to say it again. She doesn't know how she can, she doesn't know if she wants to talk about it in the middle of the school day either. With everyone around.

Thankfully, she's saved by Sam interrupting them and she doesn't have to say anything.

.

She kisses Freddie before she goes to Italy. Hoping it'll settle whatever unresolved feelings she has for him. Hoping she can finally move on. Hoping that maybe it'll make him say something. He kisses her back and it's nice, she almost doesn't want to leave. She wonders what she would do if he asked her to stay. If she asked him to ask her to stay.

But he doesn't. She doesn't either.

She tells them she loves them before she leaves, looking directly at Freddie when she does. He says it back.

She doesn't feel peace.

.

She loves him in Italy, during their long conversations because she's homesick and so lonely. She misses having him right across the hall, she misses seeing him whenever she wants.

They make plans for him to come and visit, and she's almost sick with excitement. Nervous to see him again even though it's only been a month. She knows that she won't be able to hide how she feels on her face anymore. She wonders if he'll notice it.

They spend the first few days together, watching Italian movies and taking long walks together, reenacting scenes from old movies, and never shutting up. Her heart is so full, she doesn't think she can take it anymore than she can take trying to figure out if they should be together. If she should tell him that she does love him and she has for a long time.

When he looks at her over lattes and tiramisu, smiling at her in the way he only reserves for her, her heart sings I love you in all the languages she knows. Out of all the times she's thought this, it's the least ideal. She doesn't think she can take loving him while he's a continent away from her.

Although, in the back of her mind, she thinks if he asked her first… she would say yes. She would make it work until they could be back together.

When he had to leave suddenly because of a family emergency, she feels hollow inside, his absence leaves a bigger hole in her heart than she already had. She feels absolutely despondent without him, even more so than before.

She still sticks it out.

She owes it to her dad.

Her weary heart doesn't think it can take any more back and forth either. So she stays because of that too. But absence makes the heart grow fonder and fonder until he tells her that he met someone and she thinks her heart is going to shatter into a million pieces.

.

She starts a string of relationships but it's never love. Something always brings her back to Freddie, with so many words unspoken. But with a guarded heart too. She can't love him because she can't lose him.

So for once and for all, she decides she's not going to allow herself to be in love with him. She supports him through two marriages and two breakups. He sees her through a couple of breakups as well.

When he pretends to be her boyfriend after the whole mess with Wes and Beau, feelings she pushed down for a long time start to rear their head all over again. Of course, it's always when he has someone else in his life.

But for once in her life, she can't talk herself out of feeling the way she does. No matter what she does or says, the feelings stick. But she has to be happy that he's with Pearl, she has to be okay with it even after Pearl says she thinks they're in love with each other and he leaves her alone for three weeks. It's probably the longest they've gone without seeing, speaking to, or texting each other.

She feels like she's going crazy.

For the first time, he's the one who just wants to be friends. Or so he says. She resigns herself to the fact that maybe, just maybe it would have happened already if they were meant to be. But part of her thinks that maybe, just maybe it's always been the right person but the wrong time.

All she has to do is tell him.

She'll just have to find the words to do it. Because she's always had problems with finding the right words when it came to telling him how she felt.

The End

.

Author's Note:

I couldn't remember every single scene where she's thinking about possibly loving him. Sorry if your favorite got left out, but there's room to write more as I go through my rewatch of the OG. If you liked this, drop a review and let me know. I'll write more soon.