Written in 65 minutes.

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Harborview Towers: Hallway

Jason stepped up to the penthouse door, hesitating before twisting the knob. In the last forty-eight hours, he’d sat vigil over his dying sister, slept with Elizabeth, nearly broken up with his fiancee, patched up another fight with Sonny and Carly, and today…this afternoon…he’d stood in the studio, listening to Elizabeth rationalize all of this until she’d found a way to let him off the hook. To make everything he’d done to her okay, to make it sound almost like the right choice.

And it was…wasn’t it? What did that even mean—the right choice? Who decided what was right? The universe? Jason? He’d known that question once with a certainty that seemed almost naive and childlike after the accident. He did what he wanted and didn’t give a damn about anyone else.

Robin had showed him the value of caring about others, and loving Michael had taught Jason how to sacrifice his own needs for the needs of others. But sometimes Jason wondered if he’d taken it too far.

If he’d spent so much time shoving down what he wanted that he no longer knew how to recognize the feeling anymore?

He twisted the knob, stepped inside, and Courtney immediately popped off the sofa, her features creased with anxiety. “You came back.”

“You didn’t think I would?” Jason asked, dropping his keys on the desk.

“You said you were going to talk to Elizabeth,” she said. She looked pointedly at the window where the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon. “That was hours ago.”

“I had wait until she finished working,” Jason said, irritated with Courtney for pressing the subject and with himself for ever walking into Kelly’s and thinking that he could tell Elizabeth over the counter that he’d made a choice. He  hadn’t thought about her at all, Jason realized. Only himself, and wanting to be done with it.

A selfish act, and a reminder why he couldn’t act that way anymore. Acting on impulse only got you in trouble and hurt other people.

“Six hours?”

“After I talked to her—” After Elizabeth had looked at him those shattered eyes, silently begging him to make a different choice even when her mouth told him the opposite. What if she’d really said it? What if she’d actually begged him to stay?

He’d still be there, Jason thought, and man, that didn’t sit right with him. None of this did. He dragged a hand down his face. “After I talked to her, I needed a ride. Can that be enough? I told you I was sorry.” When she flinched, looked away, he sighed. He was the bad guy here. The man who’d proposed marriage, then slept with another woman. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “It just…it wasn’t a pleasant conversation.”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t be. I just thought maybe you’d see her, and you’d change your mind again. But you didn’t. That’s good.” She smiled, but it looked pained. “We’ll…we’ll work on things, right? We were unhappy for a little while, but we’ll just find that feeling again.”

“Right.” That was the plan. “Did you want to do something for dinner?”

“Oh, Carly came by. She wanted to have us over for dinner. An apology,” Courtney added. “For always dragging us into their fights. I think it’d be good. You know, all of us. A family night. Just us.”

“Just us,” Jason repeated. Just the family. “Sure. That’s fine.”

Kelly’s: Dining Room

Elizabeth stifled a yawn, then flipped the closed sign to open before returning to the counter. “You ready, DJ?”

“Ready for an hour of toast, bagels, and coffee,” the cook muttered. She could hear him scraping on the grill. “Real challenging work.”

“You’ll miss this quiet time when the rush starts,” Elizabeth said, leaning over the counter, smiling. “You always complain about the quiet time, the rush, and everything in between.  I’ve missed this, DJ.”

“We missed you, too, Lizzie. Not the same without you. You and me, the last of Ruby’s people. Once we go, who’s gonna keep this place going?”

He’d meant it as a compliment and she smiled at him, but man, she did not like the reminder of how long she’d been here. Kelly’s had been a quick job to pay off her debts when she’d moved here. She’d used all of her year’s allowance on a first-class, one way ticket. She smiled at the memory, moving to the counter to organize her sidework. What a crazy kid she’d been — never thinking ahead, figuring tomorrow would take care of itself.

What would she tell little annoying Lizzie Webber if she could talk to her younger self? The list was endless, but mostly she hoped she’d tell that love-starved girl that not all affection was real, and not to trust anyone who made you the center of their world.

The bell jingled, and Elizabeth raised her eyes to find Ric Lansing stepping into the diner, a broad smile stretching across his handsome face. Her hands stilled. It was the first time she’d seen her estranged husband in nearly a month, and she was hoping to keep it that way.

“The rumors are true. You’re back at Kelly’s.” Ric slid onto the stool, tipped over his cup. “You remember how I take it, don’t you?”

“I remember everything, Ric,” Elizabeth said, turning to the carafe and tipping it so that the hot liquid poured into the cup. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, coffee will do for now. I was sorry that you’d contacted the gallery and cancelled. You didn’t have to do it—”

“I didn’t have time to finish the paintings,” Elizabeth said flatly. “Recovering from a pulmonary embolism took time and money I didn’t really have.” She lifted her brows. “You know, the doctors don’t know what caused it. I didn’t have any of the risk factors.”

“Medicine, such a mystery.”

“A real mystery,” she said. She was cold, little icicles pricking at the surface of her skin. “They told me it could have been the birth control pills I was taking. But when I told them I wasn’t on any birth control, well, they were stumped.” Elizabeth set the carafe on the hot plate and looked at Ric who had the audacity to stare at her with that blank, curious stare. “We’re not friends, Ric. We’re not amicable exes. You can refuse to sign the papers all you want. No judge in their right mind is going to stall a divorce where I’m not taking anything from you.”

“You believed in me once, Elizabeth. Even in the face of everyone telling you differently—” Ric leaned in, his eyes earnest. Sincere. “You know me. Better than anyone—”

“I do know you better than anyone. Which is why all I want is to be done with you. Make it as difficult or as painful as you want. I don’t care. I don’t care why you did it, how you’re getting away with it— I just want you forget you ever existed—”

“But you won’t be able to forget me, Elizabeth, or what we shared. It was real—”

“A real nightmare that I am ending. I have ended it. Now drink your coffee and go.”

Corinthos & Morgan Warehouse: Office

Sonny paced the length of his office, stroking his chin. “You talked to Benny’s brother, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I made contact this morning. He’s up for taking over Benny’s spot,” Jason said. “I’ll set him up in the office, get him what he needs, and we won’t have to worry about that.”

“Good. I want to turn my attention where it belongs. Lorenzo Alcazar.” Sonny gritted his teeth. “He’s not making a single move I could call aggressive.”

“Just at the hotel, like a tourist.” Jason gripped the back of the desk hair. “He’s got the same layers covering him his brother did. The feds need his contacts with the arms operation, so our hands are tied on that.”

“But why is he still here? I didn’t kill his damn brother,” Sonny muttered. He rubbed his chest. “He’s waiting for something.”

Jason grimaced because he knew where this was going, and he didn’t want to deal with it. Two straight weeks of talking his partner off the ledge about Lorenzo Alcazar hadn’t changed anything. Sonny could and would let every little thing lead him astray, and Jason had to drag him back.

How many hours of his life had he lost to this debacle? Sometimes Jason missed not being in Port Charles. Walking around some foreign city where no one knew him. Where no one could call him. And lately —

Even before that night, even before all that was wrong with Emily, Jason had found himself wondering if he could just get on his bike and leave again. There was nothing holding him here other than Sonny’s family. And Emily.

And Elizabeth.

She’d always kept him tied to Port Charles — every time he left, he thought about her. What she’d say about the buildings he saw, and the museums he’d gone to. He’d had to work very hard to wrap her up, put her inside a box, and lock her away. She’d made it clear last year, Jason thought, that she didn’t want him.

And he’d suceeded. He’d put it away. He’d stopped thinking about her.

Until she’d sat next to him, and she’d started to cry, and he’d had to touch her and it had all come flooding back, and now he didn’t know how to turn it off again. How had he done it before?

“Jason?”

Jason blinked, looked at Sonny, cleared his throat. “What?”

“You tuned out.” Sonny frowned. “You never do that. You focus. That’s your talent. What’s going on? Did—did something happen with Emily? If you need to be at the hospital—”

“No. She’s still—she’s fine. Recovering. Restarting chemo in another week,” Jason said. “I’m fine. I just—I haven’t been sleeping well.” Not for days. Weeks. Months. Not since Carly had disappeared from the church yard.

“Yeah? What’s up? If it’s about Ric, believe me. I’m there.” Sonny grimaced. “I don’t know what the hell he pulled at the DA’s office — we had him dead to rights. Elizabeth, you know, she really came through. I didn’t know if she would—”

“She saw the panic room for herself,” Jason said, remembering that awful day when he’d gone to see her in the hospital, when she’d flatlined, and he’d thought she was dead. How angry she’d been when she thought Jason had killed Ric—how angry she’d been at him for months—and how furious he‘d been with her for not believing him in the first place. “She couldn’t talk herself out of it anymore,” he murmured. “She’s good at that. Talking in circles until she can accept whatever reality she’s trying to hold on to.”

Sonny studied him. “Yeah, I guess she did that enough with Lucky. You’d have to stay as long as she did. Made herself miserable. But she stood up. Gave that statement. And then Ric just…” He looked out the window over the dockyard. “Skated. Now he’s working for the law. None of it makes any damn sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. I know—I know he’s your brother—”

“Brother,” Sonny muttered. “He has my mother’s eyes. Shares her blood. That doesn’t make him my brother. It just makes him an abomination.” He looked at Jason. “Is that what’s eating at you? Now that we’re back in Port Charles. Now that Carly’s safe?”

Ric walking around free instead of being six feet under, it definitely bothered him. And it was easy to just nod, to take the excuse Sonny had handed him. Because, no, Ric’s continued relationship with oxygen hadn’t been particularly nagging at Jason, but now that Sonny had brought up the topic, it gave him somewhere to put his frustration.

“Yeah,” Jason said finally. “I don’t like it. For what he did to Carly. And whatever he did to Elizabeth,” he added as an afterthought. “I don’t know how she ended up in the hospital, but it was him.”

“Probably, yeah. She had a lot of medical issues as soon as they met. Christ.” Sonny dragged a hand down his face, then flexed his hand, almost as if he was missing the usual tumbler of liquor. “Well,  you know, what I don’t know, won’t hurt me.”

Jason lifted his brows at this quiet acquiescence. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it. And if it’s going to eat at you, you might as well handle it. But I don’t want to know,” Sonny told him.

He felt oddly guilty letting Sonny think Ric was the problem lurking in Jason’s head, but that was easier than telling Sonny, the same man who’d fired Jason over the relationship with Courtney, that he’d slept with Elizabeth.

Sonny would think he’d lost his mind, and Jason wasn’t really sure what side Sonny would fall on, and he wasn’t in a hurry to find out. Not when Sonny’s good days were starting to outnumber the bad. Maybe one day, when it was all behind them, Jason could talk to him about it. Sonny might even understand. He’d walked away from Brenda, hadn’t he? He knew what it meant to walk away from the woman you loved while she had tears in her eyes.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll get Bernie set up, and make sure we can get eyes on Alcazar. He’s waiting for something, and I don’t want to be the last to find out what.”

Kelly’s: Dining Room

Elizabeth emerged from the kitchen with a tray of orders, stopping for just a moment when she realized the last empty table in her section had been occupied by Courtney and Carly. The blondes were talking, and Michael was coloring at his chair, oblivious.

She took a deep breath, continued to her original destination, delivering to a trio of dockworkers, then pulled out her order pad and approached the table.

“Can I get you guys started with some drinks?” Elizabeth asked. Courtney looked up at her, then raised her hand, rested it on her chin. Her left hand, the diamond winking in the light.

“Mmm, I’m in the mood for a milkshake. Strawberry,” Courtney said. “Carly?”

“Oh, just iced tea for me. Dairy makes me—” Carly made a face. “I didn’t know you were back. Mama didn’t say.”

“Yeah, well, have to pay the bills. Divorce lawyers aren’t cheap.” Elizabeth scribbled their orders. “Anything for Michael?”

“Chocolate milk. And we’re ready to order,” Carly said, before reeling off her usual and something for Michael.

“I’ll have chili. Elizabeth, you need to settle a debate for us,” Courtney said. She straightened, let her hand drop to the table, but left it flat so that the ring was still visible. “Carly thinks an outdoor wedding in October is asking for trouble—”

“Without a backup,” Carly said. “Have a venue on standby—”

“But I think it would be romantic,” Courtney said, looking directly at Elizabeth. “For Jason and I to get married outside, on the anniversary of our first kiss. October 19. And I think it’s worth the risk, don’t you?”

Elizabeth tucked her pencil back in her apron. “I think Carly’s right. You should have something on standby. You’ve only had one fall in upstate New York. The storms off the lake are no joke.”

“See, when Elizabeth and I agree on something, you know it’s probably right. I don’t think we’ve agreed since—” Carly frowned. “Have we ever?”

“We agree that I make good brownies,” Elizabeth said softly, and the blonde hesitated. “I made them for you last year. When you were grieving. I’ll go put in your orders.”

She left the pair at the table, her heart pounding. She went behind the counter, ripped the order off her pad and slid across to DJ. She just needed a minute. Just one.

She wasn’t on the verge of years, Elizabeth was relieved to realize. Or even angry that the pair had come in to stake their claim. Courtney had obviously not told Carly anything — no way the blonde wouldn’t have said something. But she’d brought Carly to talk about the wedding, and she’d flashed her ring as if Elizabeth could forget.

It was just….sad. For all of them. Jason had made his choice, and Elizabeth knew that he’d made the only one he’d be able to live with. But she wondered if Jason knew what Courtney obviously did.

That making the choice to stay was only the first step. The easiest.

Now it came the hard part — actually staying. And meaning it. Being happy.

And while Elizabeth truly did wish Jason well — well, she wouldn’t be human if there wasn’t just the smallest piece of her soul rooting for failure. If she didn’t hope that Jason looked at the life he’d built with Courtney, and wonder…what could have been.

But she wouldn’t sit around and wait for him. She’d get on with her life — and her job.

“Order’s up,” DJ called, and Elizabeth got back to work.

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