F O U R

JOSH HAD CHEATED on Hadley.

Josh had fucking cheated on Hadley and Dexter can't for the life of him figure out why on earth she's back with him now when he can't even figure out why she agreed to go out with that bastard in the first place eight months ago.

Dexter doesn't understand her, and for the first time in a very, very long time, he wants some time away from her.

Because he's pissed. And confused. And a little hurt, because how could Hadley choose to stay with Josh, when she so easily threw what she and Dexter had? How could she choose to stay with Josh, when she didn't think the good times she and Dexter had two years ago were worth saving?

How could she keep Josh and not him?

The thought stabs a knife into his chest, and now that it's planted there, he can't seem to pull it out, so it stays there like a giant fucking splinter struggling to dig its way into his bloodstream.

He feels almost betrayed, and he can't stop the waves of anger that follow immediately after.

The last time he felt like this was so long ago that he no longer knows what to make of his feelings. All he knows is that he doesn't want to be around her right now, and he finds himself thanking his lucky stars when Tito Robert asks Hadley to run some errands with Taylor.

"A big order just came up," he had announced, "and we need more supplies."

It's only when she leaves that he realizes how suffocated he's been feeling around her lately. It's like he's been holding his breath all this time, and only now that she has left the vicinity do his lungs finally settle back into their natural rhythm.

You're fine, he thinks to himself. You and Hadley are fine.

He just needs to cool off and get his mind off things for a moment or two. To remind himself why he chose to stay when she had already tried to kick him out of her life before, and to remember why he never once regretted his decision. He just needs to realign his thoughts and get rid of the confusion that's been plaguing him ever since the night they had sex, because honestly?

That night still confuses the fuck out of him.

With a shake of his head, he clears his thoughts and instead pours his concentration into his work.

That's the good thing about Dexter. It takes a lot to set him off, but not much to get him to calm down, and by the time the customers start rolling in, he's already back to his usual self, ringing them up over easy small talk, the kind that naturally happens once Dexter starts interacting with people.

He's just about to ask Hadley's mom if he can go ahead and have his break two hours later when he hears a customer say, "Excuse me."

Dexter's eyes snap to the direction of the voice.

A girl around his age idles next to the chocolate aisle. She's holding up a box of truffles, which she holds up for him to see. "I can't seem to find the price for this. How much is a box?"

She's a tourist. This is obvious enough from her accent, which is something he often picks up from people who come from the city. It's also in the way she dresses. People around here usually dress in simple tank tops and shorts when summer rolls around, but she's clad in what he can only call as pretty summer clothes.

Not that he's all that familiar with fashion. Tourists just have that air around them. Almost like an aura, he thinks, reminded of his mother.

"Three ninety nine," he tells her, offering a warm smile. "But frankly, I prefer the ones in the red box."

She raises an eyebrow and looks back at the aisle, picking up the red box with her free hand before turning back to him. "This one?"

"If you're into dark chocolate."

A look of genuine confusion crosses his face. She looks down at the boxes, eyes flicking from one to the other as she surveys the flavors available in each box. "I am. But I also like the flavors on this one."

Her eyebrows furrow even further. It's like she's genuinely distressed about it, and he can't stop himself from letting out a small laugh.

She glances up at him with a look of uncertainty.

"Hold on," he tells her. "Let me see what I can do."

He doesn't wait for her to reply before pushing himself off the counter to head to the kitchen.

"Tito?"

Hadley's father looks up from what he's doing. (Dexter can't really tell what he's working on, but it smells fantastic.)

"Hey yourself, Dex! Want to try some of this?"

He's quickly beginning to realize that Tito Robert likes to say this on an hourly basis, which of course works out really well for Dexter, but for now he politely declines.

"I was just wondering about something," he says instead, and proceeds to tell him about the customer waiting outside, as well as his suggestion for the situation.

He can't stop himself from wearing a proud grin when he finally slips out of the kitchen. He walks past the counter and heads straight towards the girl, who had now moved on to a different aisle, eyes skimming over the other candies on the rack. She looks up when she hears him approaching.

"Go ahead and choose whatever flavors you want, and tell me how many of each you'd like," he tells her. "I can go fix you up with a customized box of your own."

"Really?" The girl's face brightens considerably, very much like how his younger cousins react when he gives them candy or ice cream. Her eyes are wide and bright and her lips are pulled into a grin so wide it almost seems childlike. "Like, for real?"

Dexter coughs to hide a surprised laugh, unable to stop himself from finding her reaction amusing. "For real."

"No, no, no, wait. Hold on." She shakes her head. "You really don't have to go through so much trouble," she says, her face immediately shifting from giddy to hesitant, her brows furrowing, lips turning down and eyes dimming like someone had just turned off a light switch on them.

"It's really no trouble," he reassures her, and just like that, her smile is back.

Dexter can't help but look at her in fascination.

She wears her feelings like she doesn't care about having them out on display for everyone to see, letting her eyes convey what words can't and words fill out what her eyes hide. He can't tell if she does it deliberately, or if it's something she's oblivious about, but she seems to walk around like an open book, and he's almost intrigued enough to turn the pages.

"You've picked nearly all my favorites," Dexter tells her when she's done telling him what flavors she'd chosen.

"Well, you did coach me through the picking process," she points out.

Dexter smiles. "Right."

She goes back to the kitchen to stock a box with the flavors she'd chosen. When he comes back, she's already waiting by the counter, choosing from the bowl of lollipops in front of her.

"I don't suppose you have a favorite lollipop, too," she tells him.

"Cola," he quickly replies.

She fishes two of the cola-flavored lollipops and sets them on the counter. "I really am sorry for the trouble," she says, an apologetic expression taking over her face. And he means it when he says that it takes over her face, each feature shifting as her face rearranges herself into a painting of her remorse.

"It's fine," he tells her. "I might even convince my boss to add a box with those flavors on sale. We'd name it after you, if you want."

"Is this your way of asking for my name?"

"That depends," he replies. "Is it working?"

A slow smile grows on her face. "I'm Andy."

He mirrors it with ease. "I'm Dexter."

* * * * *

Being best friends with your ex-boyfriend comes with a lot of difficulties.

Hadley learned this the hard way.

For one, it meant that all their friends always expected them to get back together.

In fact, they wanted them to get back together, going out of their way to put them in situations where the two of them may suddenly decide to just "fucking kiss each other already."

Both she and Dexter found their efforts amusing.

In fact, it's probably this that made them act the way they do around each other now. It just happened naturally, as if by some unspoken agreement, but by the time they knew it, they'd already grown used to flirting with each other just to get a kick out of their friends' reactions.

It started with Winter Formal sophomore year, just a few weeks after they'd broken up.

"You, Madame, are absolutely stunning in that dress," he'd said, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips.

She scowled, snatching her hand back to tug at the collar of her beaded halter top dress. "I better be because this dress itches and I'm pretty sure it's giving me a rash."

"Just say the word and I'd gladly take it off for you."

Hadley nearly tripped, but she caught herself and immediately straightened up. She raised an eyebrow, one hand resting on her hip. "Take it off?"

"Well," he said, giving her a boyish smile that reminded her so much of how they were before things went awry, "we can't risk it giving you that rash."

Hadley fought the urge to return the smile. "We can't, can we?"

"Of course not. Besides," he added, eyes twinkling with mischief, "I bet you'd look even better without it. In fact, I know you do."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Sadie cut in before Hadley could reply, throwing her hands up in the air. "Have you or have you not broken up?"

She looked so frustrated that both Hadley and Dexter had to pause in surprise. They blinked back at her in silence, their other friends looking just as eager to hear their response, but when Hadley caught Dexter's eyes, the two of them just burst out laughing.

Their flirting frustrated their friends to no end but neither of them was ever actually bothered by it. After all, Hadley knew none of it meant anything anyway because of one simple fact: They're never getting back together.

That much has been established the moment they broke up and decided to be friends, and as long as Dexter's fine with that, then Hadley is too.

So she'd kept her feelings for him a secret all this time, and it's a secret she's promised to take to the grave with her.

She has no plans of ever acting on them—of risking what they have now for something that she herself had easily torn to shreds two years ago.

She's not going to put him through that again.

So she rolled up her feelings and put them in a bottle, casted them adrift again and again and again whenever they stubbornly find their way back to the shore. She'd throw them out a million times if she needed to, and she vowed she'd do anything it takes to eradicate them completely.

So when Josh walked into her life and came knocking on her guarded heart, she let him in.

Being with Josh was simple. If being with Dexter made her feel like she was caught in an impossibly difficult algebraic equation, then being with Josh felt like basic arithmetic. There was no analyzing required; no stack of scratch papers needed to find the solution.

Being with Josh was easy where being with Dexter was difficult: Josh is a lot like her.

He wasn't fireworks, not by a long shot, but Hadley never did understand all that hype about fireworks. All she knows is that she and Josh see the world in nearly the same light. They act the same way, like the same things and understood each other in ways that was different from how Dexter understood her, especially when it comes to the limits of their relationship.

Hadley finds comfort in that, so she let Josh in, thinking she'd be safe from any miscalculations because he, too, prefers keeping people at arm's length.

She was wrong.

She was too careless; too pliant, perhaps, and she made the mistake of letting her guard down.

And maybe she's making the same mistake now by getting back together with him. She's taken a shovel and started digging her own grave, heaving piles of dirt away to make a hole big enough for her to crawl into and escape from what she's held in her heart all this time.

Dexter doesn't know this, so she can't blame him for acting the way he did when she told him she'd gotten back with Josh. He'd taken a step back and stared at her with eyes that seemed both blank and scrutinizing, eyes that didn't hold the glimmer of amusement that she'd always, always found in them, and Hadley nearly wanted to tell him she was joking.

But she wasn't.

She braces herself for a confrontation once she and Taylor finish shopping, but when they finally pull up in front of the shop and Dexter steps out to help them haul the stuff they bought into the shop, he greets her with his usual warm smile.

"I'll take that," he says, taking one of the bags she was holding up. "Wouldn't want you straining yourself."

"Is this a sexist thing?" she asks, unable to stop her voice from rising. "Because you know how I feel about—"

"It's a friend thing," he says with an eye-roll. "As in, you-must-be-tired-from-running-errands-all-day-so-let-me-take-it-from-here thing."

Hadley eyes him suspiciously, but she lets him take the heavier bag and instead takes a smaller one from the car's trunk.

It doesn't take them too long to get everything in, and once they do, Hadley's mom comes out and offers to get refreshments for them from one of the nearby stores.

"I'll go," Dexter volunteers without thinking twice, and though her mom refuses at first, she eventually gives in and hands him a few bills.

"Beer for me!" Taylor yells, but is quickly shushed by Mom. He dodges the well-meaning slap she's about to give him and gives her a playful grin. "Ma, joke lang po."

Hadley rolls her eyes, certain her brother's only half kidding, but she pushes herself off the counter and says, "I'll go with Dexter."

He catches her gaze, one corner of his lips lifting into a smile. "I know you must miss me terribly," he tells her, pulling the door open, "but I won't be long, love."

She follows suit, unfazed, gathering her hair in a ponytail. "Just making sure you don't get lost and accidentally walk into a girl's pants on your way there."

Dexter laughs and shakes his head. "She's a possessive one, your daughter," he says to her parents. "Next thing I know, she'll be putting a leash on me."

"Hey, hey, hey. No BDSM with my sister," Taylor warns teasingly, and this time he isn't nearly fast enough to duck out of their mother's reach, who immediately launches into a lecture in rapid Tagalog.

Hadley watches in faint amusement but immediately turns back to Dexter. Despite his initial refusal for her to come along, he catches her eye and smiles, one hand holding the door open as he extends the other her way.

As soon as she's close enough, he wraps an arm around her waist and leads her out the shop. "God, I love your brother."

"Well," she says, "I heard he's single."

Dexter bumps her with his hip. "Smartass."

"I'm just saying."

He laughs, but it eventually dies down as they walk in step with each other. The silence settles on them, unassuming but obvious, and Hadley finds herself looking up to see a somber expression on his face.

"Are you mad?" she murmurs.

His grey-green eyes flick to hers, but he doesn't say anything right away. He takes a deep breath, looks away, and says, "Should I be?"

"I know how you feel about Josh."

He stops walking then, forcing her to do the same. He steps in front of her so that he can see her eye to eye.

"Hadley," he says, voice merely above a whisper. It holds no trace of the usual lightheartedness that always accompanies his words, so she holds her breath and keeps her eyes on him. "He cheated on you."

"He won't do it again," she says quietly.

He studies her face for a long time. She can see the worry in the way his eyes hold hers, careful and quiet, like he's afraid he'd miss something if he so much as blinks. She wishes she can see into his thoughts: how they're mapped out and how they change, how he sees her and how he feels.

He looks at her like he would be ready to pick her pieces up if she fell apart, or like he wouldn't even let her fall apart in the first place. He looks at her with so much love that she almost wants to fold herself into him and find her way back to where he'd kept her in his heart two years ago before she'd chosen to walk out of it, but she knows this is a different kind of love, and all she can do is stay there, forever at a standstill.

Finally, he lets out a breath and nods. "As long as you're happy," he tells her and tries a smile.

Hadley returns it with a grateful smile, hoping it would hide everything else she's feeling, because what Dexter will never know is that this is her picking up that bottle and throwing it out again, hoping, like always, for it to be swallowed up by the ocean and never come sailing back again.

Because truth be told?

Every time she picks it up, it becomes harder and harder to throw it out.