They ended the session early that night. Just the shred of a confrontation had left Fran uncomfortable and unable to focus, and after a couple more songs, she'd suggested they call it a night, and the others had agreed pretty quickly. Fran said goodbye to the others, her guitar slung in its case across her back, and once their figures had dwindled down to little sticks in the distance, blurred against the darkness, she'd started to walk.

Almost on a whim she headed west, walking slowly across the moonlit sand until she reached the cliffs. The sea was calmer now than when she'd been here last week after she'd last seen her mum, and the crossing over to the pebble beach on the other side not nearly as perilous. Fran eased her way over, the guitar on her back making her moves awkward, and finally dropped herself down onto the stones with a gentle crunch.

As she'd half-expected, she could see the figure in almost the same place she'd found him last time, sitting with his chin resting on his knees, legs curled against his chest. Rhodes didn't look at her as she crunched over to him.

"Hey, Fran."

"Hey," she said.

Neither of them said anything, letting the silence spill into the gap between them.

"I'm sorry," Fran said at last, twisting a coil of hair around her finger. "About earlier. I didn't know you two were–"

"It's alright," Rhodes said. "You couldn't have known."

"You don't have to talk about it," Fran said. "I just wanted to see if you were okay."

Rhodes didn't say anything for a second, still looking out across the sand and the inky ocean, stretching up to the horizon. "That's what I keep telling myself. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it." He tilted his head back, looking up at the sky, and sighed. "Maybe I won't feel like this if I let myself talk about it. I don't know anymore."

"So...why–" Fran broke off before she could finish the query; it felt a little too much like prying.

Rhodes leaned back on his hands. "You can ask if you want," he said, his voice deliberate and even. Fran felt a flicker of a blush on her face. "You want to know why we broke up."

"I mean – if you don't mind," Fran said, twisting her hands awkwardly.

He shrugged, quiet for a few seconds. "So, Darius got an offer to go to Oxford this year. Which is great, but he wasn't that excited when he got the offer, even though he was stressing about it for ages. And then he told me he was thinking about going to the same uni as me instead. As in, he was going to turn down the offer and everything."

"For real?"

"I mean, it was a little flattering, but I guess I didn't feel comfortable with him throwing away an opportunity like that for me. Which is what I said to him, and he agreed. But I don't think he was really convinced. You know when you get an idea and you just can't shake it?"

Fran nodded.

"And it was getting closer to deadline, and I didn't know what else to do. So I just started avoiding him," Rhodes said. "I guess I thought he'd get the hint and start avoiding me back. But he didn't. Finally I think he'd had enough of it, so he called me and asked me why I was ignoring him, and I panicked and told him I didn't want to see him again."

Fran glanced at him. "You said that?"

"More or less."

Fran didn't know what to say. "Wow."

"Yeah."

She buried her hands in the pebbles, squeezing the slick, smooths stones between her fingers. "Why don't you talk to him about it? Explain yourself?"

"I tried, but...I didn't really get very far. We kind of had a fight about it. I was still trying to justify myself, trying to persuade myself I was doing the right thing, and I think it came across like I was blaming him. And everything just got really messy."

"And you haven't spoken to him since?"

Rhodes shook his head. "I feel like...I just make my own problems. In the end, I just made everything worse."

"But don't you think you're making it worse by avoiding him?" Fran asked.

"I know," Rhodes said, absently fingering his curls. "But I mean...Darius was angry last time I spoke to him. He only gets angry when he's upset. I hated seeing him like that. I hate the idea of talking to him and seeing how I hurt him, and knowing that he's pissed off at me. Every time I think about trying to talk again I get scared that I'll make it worse, or he'll tell me he hates me or something. I don't think I could handle that."

He exhaled with a slow, breathless laugh. "Ash is right, I am a coward. But, I mean...we go to uni in a couple of months. He's going to Oxford; he got the grades and everything. I had to ask Joel about it. And I'll be in York, and...you know, they say long distance relationships never work out, and maybe he'll find a guy who won't screw with his feelings and forget about me. I think it's better this way, in the end. It's not a problem if you don't dwell on it, isn't that what you said?"

Fran stiffened. It sounded bad when he'd said it, but all of a sudden she could see that she hadn't been doing anything differently. Her plan had literally been to come to Seacombe to run from her problems. She'd spent the whole time here avoiding her mum as much as she could, until she left for uni, when it hopefully would work itself out, or become less of an issue.

"You shouldn't quote me," she said, shifting her weight uneasily. "I've been doing the same thing as you. And I-" she thought to the day earlier, of hiding from her mother in the charity store and feeling stressed and annoyed. "I don't really think it's working."

Rhodes tilted his head. "I know what you mean," he said. "But...even when you know it's not working, it's still easier, isn't it? It's easier to let it happen than fight it."

Fran frowned. "It's the only thing I know how to do, I guess."

"Yeah," Rhodes said,nodding gently. "Me too."    

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