Breakeven

"You pull me down; you fuck me up."

Reese was finding apartment searching a lot harder than she had anticipated for more than one reason.

The first would probably be the money issue. Once Reese left her house to go to college, she was generally on her own when it came to money. Her parents paid for her classes for her first year of schooling, but once she met Sean things changed. Reese wouldn't call herself spoiled, but Sean certainly introduced her to the finer things in life. He paid for almost everything, including the apartment they had shared. After he cheated Reese was more or less homeless in the city of Chicago and that was perhaps one of the only reasons she booked a flight back to Winnipeg. And now that she was living with Jonathan, it felt similar to her in the sense that he paid for a lot. Growing up Reese had always vowed to be independent, to never depend on a man for anything. But as she got older she found herself doing exactly that. Now, with only enough money to maybe cover the costs of living alone for a year Reese wasn't sure what to do.

Another one of the problems is one that came up somewhat unexpectedly. After actually finding a half decent apartment in Wicker Park she discovered that she was going to miss Jonathan. She was going to miss waking up because he struggled to keep quiet when he would come home late from road trips or wake up early for practices. She was going to miss him complaining about something, and how even when they both seemed to be completely relaxed he always had something to say. She was going to miss their talks; she had found that relating to Jon was easy and she always liked to give him a reality check or two. She was going to miss the fact that he was perpetually without a shirt whenever he was home. But most of all she was just going to miss the fact that he was always around. Yeah, he may have went away on road trips sometimes but for the most part Reese felt that he was never too far away from her. She liked the fact that if she wanted to she could just run into his room and wake him up to talk. She liked that he would sit and talk to her in the kitchen while she made dinner.

She wasn't sure what she was going to do without him.

"Are you sure this is the place?" Adam Burish asked as he stared out the window of Reese's "maybe apartment". Adam Burish had hurt his knee during a pre season game and therefore had to sit out for a good chuck of the season. He was slowly making his way back onto the ice but in the mean time he had become quite close with Reese.

"I think so," Reese stated as she did a slow spin as she stood in the living room, taking everything in.

"Tazer's place is so much nicer than this shit hole," Adam stated boldly.

"This place is not a shit hole!" Reese scolded him. "It's the best I could afford."

"You don't have to afford anything where you are now. I don't understand why you would want to move out of that beautiful apartment you're in now to move into this one bedroom 800 square foot place."

"It's bigger than that," she grumbled lowly.

"I just don't understand why you're in such a rush to move out," he explained. "You just moved in, what, a few weeks ago? Find a job, stay there a little longer, what's the rush?"

"I love Jonny, but sometimes I feel like he just doesn't want me there. Sometimes he just gets angry when I try to explain the whole Alexis thing or whatever...I dunno. I love living with him though, but I don't think he feels the same," she shrugged.

"He's just not used to having someone put him in his place like you do," Adam said.

"Huh?"

"He tells us everything, never underestimate locker room talk. It's more than about tits and beer and stuff like that," he smiled, making Reese laugh. "He tells us about the talks you have and all the things you say. And it's good that you tell him Alexis is a bitch and that he needs to get over him, because no one else does. He needs that and he knows it too, he just doesn't want to deal with it. He hates conflict," Adam shrugged. "But believe me, he wants you there. You take his mind off of her."

"Really?" She asked in a small voice.

"Yeah," Adam nodded. "And he really likes walking into the bathroom and seeing your tits too," he added with a wide grin. Reese smacked him arm on the arm and laughed at her bearded friend.

"You are such a jerk sometimes," she laughed as she walked out of the apartment.

"Yeah, but I'm a jerk who's always right!" Adam's voice got closer as he jogged after her and when he finally caught up to Reese, he gave her a noogie just because.

Later that night Reese and Jonathan were lounging in the living room, flipping through the TV channels trying to find something to watch when she decided to just ask him. She wasn't going to get anywhere if she just didn't ask him herself.

"Jon," she called quietly. He barely reacted as he continued to flip through the channels. "Jon?" She called again.

"Hm?" He asked, his ears perking up a bit.

"Do you want me to move?" She asked him flat out.

"What?" He inquired, turning his head so he was facing her.

"Do you want me to move? Because you know, I found a few places and Adam and I went to go look at them today and I think I really like a few. And I'm only moving because I feel like you want me to leave," she admitted sheepishly.

Jonathan watched as Reese nervously explained herself, her eyes darting around the room, a piece of her hair twirled around her index finger. He wondered what had made her so nervous. Had he? Was she really this nervous of what he was going to say? Jonathan wasn't sure that was exactly the case. He never felt like he intimidated her in any way; although he guessed his blowing up on her on occasion didn't exactly give her the best impression. But he also knew that Reese knew how Jonathan was.

He wanted her to stay, he was sure of that. But at the end of the day he wanted her to do what she wanted to do. She could stay as long as she needed too. And that wouldn't bother Jonathan one bit.

"Reese, I want you to do whatev-" Jonathan's words were cut off by a sudden frantic tapping on his front door. They both exchanged glances, their eyebrows furrowed, at this sound before Jonathan got up. Reese followed behind, lagging a bit. And when Jonathan finally opened the door, her jaw dropped straight down to the floor.

"He left me," her voice was laced with tears. Fake ones, Reese was sure of it.

Alexis Myers knew exactly how to fuck everything up.