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"As much as I love you, I will not sit through and listen to Taylor Swift again," Percy said from the passenger's seat, and Annabeth let out a laugh.
"Yeah, okay, tell that to the way you just sang your heart out to her song two minutes ago," she retorted, glancing at her boyfriend before looking back at the road in front of her.
"Nuh-uh," he denied, shaking his head.
"You're secretly a Swiftie, just admit it, Jackson," she said to him.
"I will not say anything that can be held against me."
"Well, you could say my name?" She teased, and he stared at her, mouth hung agape at the comment. She glanced back at him and laughed, while he smiled widely, lightly shaking his head.
"Okay, keep it in your pants, Chase," he joked.
"...And since you're already there, could you get me some coffee on the way back?" Thalia says through the speakers of the car.
Annabeth blinks, realizing she's still sitting inside her car, outside her father's house, on a call with Thalia.
"Hey, Annabeth, you okay?" Thalia asks, but her mind is still elsewhere. She turns her head to look at the house and sees her father standing in front of it with a worried look on his face, probably wondering why she is still there when she said earlier that she was already leaving.
She smiles reassuringly at him, but she doesn't know if he is convinced that she is fine. Still, he waves goodbye at her, and she waves back before starting up her car and driving away.
"Annabeth?" Thalia calls, "Annabeth, you still there?"
"Huh?" Realization hits her. "Oh! Thalia, yeah, hey, what, uh, what were you saying?" She asks her friend.
Thalia lets out an exasperated sigh. "Were you not listening the entire time?" She questions.
"I... heard bits and pieces?" Annabeth answers hesitantly.
"Annabeth."
The blonde sighs. "I'm sorry, Thalia, I just..." she pauses, wondering if she should tell her about what she has been thinking about since coming back to New York. "Just... got lost in my own thoughts," she says instead.
"Are your thoughts somehow plagued by sea green eyes and jet black hair?" The older girl asks, and Annabeth doesn't respond, but she doesn't have to, because Thalia already knows her answer. "Annabeth, you gotta stop doing this to yourself," she tells her.
"I know, I just mi—"
"Miss him, yeah, I know. We all know you do," Thalia finished for her, and Annabeth immediately feels bad. Her friends are tired of hearing her talk about him, how much she misses him, and she knows it. The way Thalia just finished her sentence proves it, but what can she do? She can't just turn off her feelings, can she? No matter how much she wants to, she just can't.
It's been eleven months, a voice nags in her head. She should have been okay by now, should have been feeling better, but she isn't. Instead, she's driving through the suburbs after having just visited her family, with her heart still broken because she isn’t with him, because after eleven months she is still madly in love with him.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes, her voice small.
"You don't have to be," Thalia says, "We're all just worried about you, 'Beth. We thought it was okay for you to go back here in New York, but it seems like you aren't ready to be here. You're still not okay," she points out.
"I'm fine."
Even she doesn't believe her own words.
"I wish I could believe that," her friend tells her, while Annabeth stops the car, staring at the familiar street ahead of her. "But I've known you long enough to know that when you say 'fine', it means you're feeling like absolute shit right now," she finishes.
Annabeth chuckles at her words, and silence soon follows. She can almost see Thalia sitting on the couch, hand on her head as she worried about her friend. The image makes her feel worse.
"Thalia, really, it's... it's fine," Annabeth assures her, "I'll be fine," she adds, the words slipping out smoothly after having said the words a million times before, despite the truth being far from it.
"You've been saying that for the past eleven months, Annabeth. We hear you say it, but we don't see it."
Her heart beats fast as she looks at his street. She knows could have taken a different way back to Thalia's apartment— where she had been staying at since her return to New York— but she had been used to taking this road for years, and despite not having been there for eleven months, she is certain she knows the road even with her eyes closed.
She sighs deeply as she remembers the last time she had been there.
Her car was parked outside of the Jacksons' house. Both of them were silent, with her on the driver's seat, while he sat beside her on the passenger's seat. Their eyes were bloodshot after crying, having just calmed down from an argument.
"Percy..." she called.
"You're leaving," he said.
"This again?" She laughed dryly before leaning back on the backrest of her seat, "We just finished arguing about this and you're bringing it up again?"
"Because you are leaving!"
"This is a huge opportunity for me, Percy!" She fired back, and instead of making some sarcastic remark like he did earlier (which had led to their argument inside her car), he remained silent this time, looking down on his lap as he fiddled with his fingers.
"You think I don't know that?" He asked, his voice barely above a whisper, and her heart broke. "You're gonna go to San Francisco, be successful, while I'm still here in New York. You won't want me in your life anymore," he said, as if he'd been thinking about it for a long time already.
"Percy, I’m always going to want you in my life," she assured him, "and... and me moving to San Francisco doesn't mean we have to break up, right?" She asked desperately, as if she was more convincing herself than him, but he didn't say anything. “I could visit you here, or you could," she suggested, "Or... or you could move there with me?"
He gulped, and then shook his head. "I love my job here, I can't just leave it."
Not for me, she thought, but she realized she was doing the same thing, taking that job and being away from him. The only difference between them was that she still wanted to be with him, whereas for him, the moment she would leave New York, they were over.
"Then you have to understand why I have to take this job, too," she said.
He finally looked up again and faced her. She met his eyes, stormy gray against sea green. Her eyes held the emotions she couldn't put into words, but his were like the depths of the ocean— dark... cold, like a frozen, unrelenting sea that no longer gave her that warm and fuzzy feeling that she used to get whenever he looked at her.
He looked at her like someone had just ripped his heart out.
Like she just did.
"I'm happy for you," he croaked, and while he tried to be void of emotion, she could hear it in his voice— the sadness, the realization. He wanted to hate her, but he knew this was the best for her. He knew she had to do this, and he couldn't be selfish.
Percy Jackson could never be selfish, especially not when it came to Annabeth Chase.
"It doesn't have to end like this," she whispered, some last attempt to save their relationship, but he shook his head.
"Maybe it was always supposed to end like this," he said, and they remained silent for a moment, just looking at each other. Reality had set in for them, that this was it. After years of being together, this was where it ended— in her car, outside his house.
"I'm gonna go," he said to her.
"I'll call you."
"Please don't."
Her eyebrows rose. "What?"
"I... you're leaving, and... and I have to get used to not having you around anymore, and..." he paused, gulping, looking as if he was second guessing everything, but still, he continued. "And if you call, I'll just end up missing you, so please, unless you're coming back, or staying for good, don't call me, Annabeth," he finished.
She blinked, tears falling down her cheeks again, but she pursed her lips and nodded. "Okay."
He didn't say anything again, only opening the car door and stepping out. She watched as he closed the door and her heart broke into a million pieces.
"I love you," she whispered to nothing as she he walked away and didn't turn back.
She blinks again, and she was still alone in her car. Then, a thought comes to her mind.
Maybe it's because of the painful memory, maybe she is just being impulsive, or maybe she really just misses him too much, but she starts driving through the street with one goal in mind: to talk to Percy.
"Hey, Thalia?" She calls to her friend.
"Yeah?"
"Your coffee may be a bit late," she says.
"Why?"
"I gotta go do something," she replies as she slows down when everything starts becoming familiar around her.
She's close.
"Annabeth, what are you going to do?"
"I'll see you later," she says instead of answering.
"Annabeth—"
"Bye!"
She turns off the call and she stops in front of the familiar house. She notes how nothing has changed in the past eleven months, and she smiles bitterly as waves of memories came to her, all those years with him, being best friends, eventually getting together, their break up in her car, here, outside of his family’s house.
It all led her back here.
She takes a deep breath. This is it, she thinks. She can live her life not having him in it anymore, or she can do this one last ditch attempt to maybe have him back, to just see him again, maybe for the last time, or maybe not.
She steps out of her car and slowly walks towards the house, each step as heavy as the every beat of her heart. She thinks she might change her mind last minute, and she walks a bit faster after the thought. Maybe it is a bad idea, but she'll have to worry about it later, when she is already standing in front of him.
She reaches the front door, and she takes another deep breath. She extends her hand to knock on the door, but before she can get the chance to do it, the door swings open.
Her eyes widen as she stares up at him, stormy gray meeting sea green, just like it had always been.
She feels it— the warm feeling. She hears him take a sharp intake of breath, and she slowly smiles up at him.
"Hi.
"Hey," he breathes out.
Somehow, she thinks this might not be such a bad idea.