Hold On Tight

[Three] Traded

Haley sighed, wrapping her arms around herself as she watched the city lights dance in the dark outside the window of her apartment. Behind her, her friends laughed freely with one another while Noah and Brayden got everything ready for her show later that night. It all seemed so crazy to her, that she had managed to survive in Dallas for five years. She had lived and loved Boston for so long that when she first left, she left as if she couldn't breathe – like she was constantly holding her breath, just waiting for the walls to close in on her and force her to submit defeat and run back to her home city with a tail between her legs, a certain brown-eyed boy be damned.

Staying would mess her up more than leaving ever did. Seeing him all over the city, hearing about his hook-ups. She was able to distance herself in Dallas. No one had cared about Tyler Seguin in Dallas.

She hadn't thought she could do it. Not when she first confirmed her acceptance to the University of Dallas – not when she boarded the plan after saying goodbye to parents and her brother – and definitely not when she entered her first, empty apartment. She had taken a chance, coming here. It was the farthest from Boston she was willing to go, and a place she felt her brother Dylan would be excited to visit, what with his love for the Dallas Stars hockey team.

She scoffed. The Dallas Stars. Of course, he would be traded here. Of all the freaking places that had hockey teams, it just had to be her brothers favorite and in the same city she had come to love.

Haley could still remember that call. The urge to run again. The panic that she would run into him at some bar her friends would drag her too. The pain at seeing him be happy with other girls.

Flashback – July 4, 2013

She laughed at Juliet's imitation of her boyfriend, Jake, who was trying to put out a fire that broke out on the grill, ruining all the food he had been trying to cook for their fourth of July celebration. It was the first one she wouldn't be spending in Boston, wanting to spend the whole summer in Dallas so that she could get used to it all before school started in August. Never mind the fact she was scared that if she went back to Boston so soon, she was scared she would never leave again – and that she didn't think she was strong enough for.

She didn't regret it. She had hit it off with two girls her during her May orientation at UD, Juliet and Bek, who were in her same graduate program. Bound together by the impending doom their English Master's courses and all of them being relatively new to the city, they became fast friends and eventually made plans for a backyard barbecue for the holiday – complete with food, beer, and fireworks. She had friends, something she was sure wouldn't happen for months, if at all. Friends she got along with, even more so than the ones she had in Boston, and ones she could see in her life for years to come. They made Dallas not so scary and they made it fun. And fun was something she needed.

"Jules, stop crackling over there and help me, dammit!" Jake yelledd in panic.

"You see who the men go to when there's trouble, girls? The women. Whoever thought that men were supposed to handle intense situations was obviously single." Juliet walked to the side of the grill, grabbing the fire extinguisher and sprayed the white foam over the flames.