"Bye!" Daphne waved as her roommate grabbed her duffel bag from her bed and headed for the door. "Have a good weekend."

"Are you sure you don't want to come home with me Daph? My mom is taking me on something of a pre-holiday shopping spree. It'll be fun! Maybe get your mind off that little fight you had with you know who." She said in a stage whisper as if to speak his name might be a sin.

"Thanks for the invite Pam, but I have to work Saturday. Plus I still have two exams next week. We can't all be as brilliant and exempt as you!" She teased. "Be careful."

"Will do! See you Monday." Daphne nodded and collapsed into her desk chair as her friend finally departed. It had been a really trying week and as much as she loved Pam, having their dorm room to herself for the weekend was going to be paradise.

Her big chem exam was coming up fast. It was scheduled for next Tuesday and she figured that she would be fine if she could go over three chapters a night until then. Tapping her pencil's eraser on the desk, she suddenly stopped reading and became enthralled at the fact that the pencil was bouncing off of the desk at each tap.

She laughed out loud as she realized her mind's wandering pattern. She was the self-proclaimed world's worst procrastinator and she was suddenly glad that she had decided to start the studying early. If a pencil was causing her such interest, there was no way that she was going to get anything done at the moment so she decided to check her email.

Pulling up her account finding nine new e-mails there. There were several forwards, which totally annoyed her since she absolutely despised forwards. A few of them were from her boyfriend, Anthony. All of the subject lines seemed to show that he wanted to talk to her and apologize for their latest fight. Skipping all of those, she quickly pointed and clicked her way into the email response that had been almost three weeks in coming.

From: jtaylor@pifa.edu

To: D_Chanders@ucla.edu

SUB: Re: Are you still alive?

Haha! YES! I am still alive! I know we haven't talked much lately and I'm really sorry. Things have just been so hectic around here. I got an A on that big project I was working on for Phillips. Jacob said that he was going to give Phillips a fat lip if he put down another one of his paintings just because it wasn't to his liking. *lol* That's just Jacob for you I guess. A giant bundle of creativity and attitude.

Daphne sighed. She had no idea what project Justin was talking about and she hadn't a clue as to who ‘Phillips' was. All she could do was speculate that it was one of his professors. Jacob, she faintly recalled being mentioned once before. Justin had called him a pompous asshole but it seemed as though he had gotten past that since they had spoken last. She shook her head and continued on.

Brian has been in a total mood lately. Gus turned three a couple of weeks ago and all he could do is moan (not that kind of moan you perv!) about how old he's getting. (Brian - not Gus! *lol*) I keep telling him that as long as he has me, I'll keep him feeling young. That seemed to do the trick and it got me some pretty hot sex that night too.

She paused and frowned. She had forgotten Gus's birthday. She scribbled a note on a nearby post-it note to buy a belated birthday card to send him. Three years since Gus had been born. Daphne looked at the calendar that was hanging precariously on the wall beside her desk. She shook her head in disbelief. It had already been three years! How the hell could it have gone by so fast? She hadn't even noticed.

That had been a very significant night for her as well. Gus's birth had marked a major change in her life as her life had once revolved around her best friend. After that night Justin had gone from being Daphne's best friend to being Brian's lover, wether Brian could admit it at the time or not. Not that she could or ever would begrudge Justin the love and happiness that he had found with Brian. She was extremely happy for him. Yet it still bothered her that his finding love had somehow meant that he had pushed her away, inch by painful inch.

Not liking the direction her thoughts were moving in, she pulled her right leg underneath her so that she was sitting back on it and read the last part of the email.

He's still torn on the moving in issue. I guess we'll put it off for a while longer. I'm fine with that for now. I mean, I stay there all the time anyway. I guess you are still going out with that Richard guy? He seems really cool from what you've said about him. Hope things are going well with that.

Well I must go. Brian needs to use his computer for a while and I have to get started on dinner. I love you and miss you!

Justin

BTW - Brian says hi! ;)

Richard? She had never dated a Richard. There had been a Ryan but he had been a blind date and she had been miserable the entire night. That had been before she started dating Anthony three months ago. It seemed as though Justin was a little behind on her love life.

Rereading the last part, she was confused by the whole subject of the ‘moving in issue'. She hadn't even known that they were considering it. Last she had heard was that Justin had finally gotten Brian to stop taking tricks home with him. That had been...she thought back...about four months ago.

She stared at the words in front of her until they went blurry with her tears. Their obvious lack of communication was making her heartsick. She was extremely tired of being the only one to initiate contact. Emails were always sent by her first and replied to some weeks later when he got around to it. Phone calls where few and far between since they were on opposite ends of the country. Letters where extremely rare since both of them figured email was easier, yet neither of them seemed to be doing that either. Cards were sent on birthdays and on some holidays. After two years of college, Daphne realized that they had gone from speaking every single day, to being lucky to talk once a month.

Where had the friendship that she had loved so very much gone? How had it been so easy to loose touch with the person that she had once considered her brother? Okay he had taken her virginity so...maybe not brother, but it was close enough.

Mentally she went through a checklist.

Had she done something to make him distance himself from her? No. She couldn't think of anything that she might have done. Although, maybe she hadn't kept up with his life enough. Maybe she hadn't been listening enough. She hadn't been concerned enough. She knew that none of that was true.

Had she said something to offend him? That time she had played along with one of the lesbians at the GLC just to be one of the ‘cool people'. Could that have offended him in some way? No. That had been long enough ago that she would have known if he thought badly of her because of it. Had she ever made some off-handed remark about his lifestyle that she hadn't even realized could be misconstrued as offensive? That didn't hold any water either. She and Justin had always been close enough to tell one another everything. He surely would have voiced his anger or disapproval, had he felt it.

Was it because she was straight? He was too into the Liberty Avenue scene to care about the straight girl that used to be his best friend? She just couldn't understand him and his new friends and his love for Brian and his partying? She thought long and hard on that before dismissing it as well. There was no way that Justin would be so close-minded as to blow her off for something like that. Although doubt over the issue still fluttered through her brain causing her stomach to clench with anger and sadness all at once.

Most likely it was simply part of growing up. In high school it's easy to say that you'll stay friends forever. It's simple to say that you will always keep in touch. Easy to say that you'll always love the other person. In high school you see that person every day. You have no life outside of those depressing brick buildings and it bonds people, tricking them and making them think that life might always be that way.

She had heard stories of lost friendships as a result of going off to college. Out of sight, out of mind. She remembered Terence Whitmore and Kelly Pickford had gone steady through three out of their four years at St. James. After a year at a local University, Terence had joined the army on a whim and Kelly had gotten pregnant by some fraternity guy she had met at a party.

It suddenly seemed to Daphne, that perhaps high school was an illusion. People could cling to one another all they wanted to but they were simply rats on a sinking ship. At the first chance they had they would bail.

College, however, was about growing up. Finding yourself.

A tear slid down her face and she smiled. Her lips trembling at the effort she put into it.

Justin had found himself long ago somewhere near the entrance to Babylon. Perhaps he was giving her room to find herself. To become her own person as she had allowed him to do.

She picked up the phone that was sitting on the edge of her desk. Dialing the numbers she knew by heart, she held her breath as the tones rang in her ear.

"Hello?" She heard a male voice answer.

"Hi." She whispered, nervously. She had no idea what he might say but she needed to hear his voice.

"Daph? Is that you?"

"Yeah."

"You okay? It sounds like you've been crying." She rolled her eyes playfully as if he could see her. Nothing ever got by him.

"Wanna come over and talk?"

"I'll be there in five." Anthony said quickly and hung up.

Daphne smiled sadly at the screen in front of her. Maybe she would call Justin tomorrow. Somehow she knew she wouldn't though. She would see him in a month when she went home for Christmas. But now...now she was there and she would get on with growing up. She would move on.