𝐎𝐂𝐄𝐀𝐍 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 ━ shawn hunter¹

12│WELL HAVE A GOOD TIME THEN. . .

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❛ ᴏᴄᴇᴀɴ ᴇʏᴇꜱ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴡᴇʟʟ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ
ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴛʜᴇɴ . . . ꒱


❝ SOME HEARTS UNDERSTAND
EACH OTHER EVEN IN SILENCE ❞

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Juliet was spending more time alone than ever.

With Shawn MIA, Cory and Topanga becoming more serious about their wedding and her relationship with Angela still rocky, there weren't a lot of people she could hang out with. She had Kendrick and Rachel, of course, but even their weekly lunches weren't something that she looked forward to that much.

Their two-year age gap made any commonalities between them scarce. The older pair often talked about things that she couldn't relate to or hadn't experienced yet: teachers in upper-level classes, finding full-time jobs, friends who were having children or even discussions about future homes they wanted to own. She mostly spent the time listening to them talk as she pushed her food around on her plate while she wished she was somewhere else. Even though she was practically an adult, the conversations made her feel terribly naïve and childish which wasn't the best feeling in the world.

She could feel the circle of her life growing smaller from the many things she'd used to in elementary and high school to just two: schoolwork and practice. While she knew it wasn't necessarily healthy, finding other ways to spend her time just seemed like it would take too much. . . effort. She didn't even have her Walkman to make things better; she'd given it to her best friend in the hopes that it would help him (she certainly didn't regret her decision and wouldn't take it back even if he gave it to her.)

So, Juliet continued to pass quietly in and out of her friend's lives while they hardly seemed to notice her easygoing front. Perhaps if they hadn't been caught up in their own lives, they might have noticed that her smiles weren't as genuine as they used to be. Perhaps if she'd pushed a little harder to spend time with her best friend, someone might have paid attention to the way her cheerful expression faltered as soon as no one was looking at her. Maybe, if she had spoken up, her friends might have taken it upon themselves to help her like she had for them.

(None of those things happened.)

🌎🌎🌎

It was now late January and the cold wind brushed against her face as she walked alone down the main strip of campus. The bare branches of the trees stood out starkly against the gray sky whose clouds blocked the sun. Leftover snow from almost a week ago piled on either side of the pathway, tainted dirty and brown from soil. It was a bleak and bitter day like many were during Philadelphia winters but Juliet found it fitting as it matched her mood quite well.

One of her hands were stuffed in her coat pocket and the other was occupied by her Violin. Her backpack hung lightly from her shoulders as she had dropped her books off in her dorm before she'd made the trek across campus. Her red hair blew into her face and she batted it away with her mittened hand irately. There were hardly any students out (understandably, because the weather was terrible) except for a few dark figures in the distance. Only— "Shawn?"

He'd come up suddenly from the opposite direction with his own hands buried deep in the pockets of his leather jacket. She noticed with a faint smile that he was wearing the headphones of her Walkman, meaning it was attached to him somewhere. Her heart gave the familiar, insistent tug at the sight of him and she felt her stomach swoop as he took the time to pause the music and lower the headphones. "Julie? What are you doing out?"