A/N: This is set as if Elle decided to go back to California after all the night Callahan hit on her.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, hi, is Elle there?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Oh! Right. It’s Emmett. Emmett Forest.”

A giggle came from the other end as Margot smiled into the phone. “Of course. Um, let me see if she’s here…”

Margot held her hand over the receiver and ran up the stairs of the Delta Nu house, where Elle’s door was shut. She knocked once and turned the knob, glad to see Elle sitting at her vanity.

“Phone call for you.” Margot said, smirking as she walked out the door.

“Hello?”

“Elle?”

Elle sighed, closing her eyes. “Emmett.”

“So…I guess you got to California okay, then.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“It’s just, you never called, so…I was worried.”

“I…I’m sorry, Emmett. I just…didn’t think I could do it.”

“Do what?”

“Call you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because,” she started, tears forming, “I thought if I talked to you, I wouldn’t be able to stay away. I’d want to be on the next flight back to Boston. Everything else I could try and forget, but you…I would have come back if I talked to you right away.”

“Elle, you can come back. You deserve so much more than this.”

“Emmett, you know why I got that internship, and it wasn’t because of my legal skills. Obviously, I wasn’t cut out for it, and…this is where I’m supposed to be.”

“Elle-“

“I can’t. I’m sorry.” She hung up the phone quickly and broke down, tears spilling over.

Emmett held the receiver to his ear and heard the dial tone, his heart sinking. “Damnit, Elle.” He muttered, flopping back onto the couch.

XXX

“This is crazy. We can’t let her go on like this!”

Four pink-clad Delta Nus sat on the floor of Margot’s bedroom, door locked and shades drawn.

“She’s just so…empty.” Serena said, shaking her head, “we need to fix this.”

“But what are we supposed to do?” Pilar asked, giving a questioning look to Serena.

“Hey, don’t look at me. All I know is that she seriously needs to be happy again. It’s so depressing.”

“Wait!” Margot, Serena and Pilar turned to Kate, who was sitting on the rug across from them. “If she won’t go back to Harvard, we’ll bring Harvard to her!”

All four Delta Nus looked at each other, smiles growing on their faces.

“First step,” Margot said, picking up the phone and searching through caller ID, “Find his phone number.”

XXX

Two days later, Elle sat in her room, Bruiser curled up at the edge of her bed. She reached for her phone and dialed, slowly, the number she’d grown to memorize.

“Hello?”

“Emmett.” She breathed, pulling the phone closer. “I…I know that I said I couldn’t handle talking to you, but…I realized that not talking to you makes it much worse.”

“I’m glad, because I didn’t know how long I could go without talking to you.”

She managed a smile, then sighed. “God, I miss you. So much. I didn’t realize…how much time we spent together until I didn’t get to see you everyday.”

“I miss you, too, Elle. I’ve missed you since the second you shut the door to your dorm room that night.”

A silence filled the air, and he started again a second later, “Brooke won the trial. It was the daughter who shot him, though she was trying to kill Brooke, not her father.”

“Wow.” Elle said, her throat choking up again.

Another silence came, this time much more deafening, and Elle closed her eyes. Do it. You have to tell him before it’s too late.

She took a deep breath and blurted out, loudly, “I love you.”

“You…you what?” he asked, shock filling his voice.

“I love you. I love everything about you. But what good does that do me? You’re a thousand miles away! And I can’t do this anymore, I can’t be this far away from you. I know that I don’t deserve you and there are girls that would kill to get a guy like you, but I can’t help it. I’m in love with you.”

There was a silence, then a voice cut through it from behind her.

“Well, that’s good, because I love you, too.”

Elle’s jaw dropped. Emmett was standing in her doorway, cell phone in hand.

“Emmett!” she sprung up, startling Bruiser, and threw her arms around him, feeling him pull her close to him.

“God, did I miss you. You don’t even know.”

He held her tighter and wanted to stay this way forever. This, this moment, was all he needed. “I’ve loved you for so long.” He said, smiling as she pulled her arms tighter around him, as if afraid he’d disappear.

Elle lifted her head from his chest and smiled up at him through watery eyes. “I’m coming back,” she said, leaning closer to him, “I’m coming home with you.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He breathed, smiling back at her.

They kissed and it was more magical than either could have imagined, and they held on, afraid that if they let go, it would have all been a dream.

In the hallway, pressed up against the wall, four smiling Delta Nus did their handshake in silence.

It had ended and started the same way: a phone call, one from hundreds of miles away and one from right outside her door, but Elle didn’t care what it had taken them to get here, to this moment. They were together now, and that was what mattered.

“So,” she said as they pulled apart, pulling him to sit down next to her on the bed,”Tell me about that trial…”