What was it with the women in this town? He had come so close for falling for Karen Wexler, until she had ultimately crushed his hopes and dreams for the future by running back into the waiting arms of none other than Frank Scanlon. There was no way in hell that he was going through the pain of having his heart broken again, he silently vowed to himself. He continued to aimlessly walk down the pathway to stop at the wooden bridge. Looking down into the peaceful waters that flowed beneath the wooden bridge, he mused that his life was anything but peaceful. He stared up to view the star filled night sky wondering if he was destined to live his life completely and utterly alone. He sighed and spoke out loud to himself, "Who are you kidding Ramsey? Life never turns out the way that you hope it will. Every time you think things are actually going to go your way, someone or something always brings you back to the cold harsh reality that life just basically sucks."

"Talking to yourself Ramsey? You know, you really shouldn't do that, unless you want people to start thinking that you are totally losing your grip on reality," Eve's voice taunted him as she emerged from the shadows nearby.

"When have I ever gave a damn about what people think about me Lambert? I think that I'll skip your little unwelcome impromptu intursion upon my privacy this evening. If you don't mind, I would really like to be by myself, so why don't you just go back from where ever you came from and leave me alone," he continued to stare down at the moon's reflection upon the water, hoping that Eve would take his suggestion and go on her merry way. He was in no mood to put up with Eve's banter tonight.

"Oh, what's wrong, Chris? Are you throwing yourself a little pity party?" she sarcastically inquired.

"No, that's more your style, Ms. Drama Queen," he snidely remarked, realizing that he wasn't going to be rid of Eve's annoying presense anytime soon. "Ever since Ian left town, it seems like you have thrown one continuous pity party after another."

Eve came over to lean against the railing of the bridge alongside Chris, "I have done no such thing Christopher Ramsey. I'll have you know that I am doing just fine without Ian in my life since our divorce was final last month."

"Well, don't worry, what's it been three months since you had a man in your bed? I'm sure you'll find another man to burn through in no time, you always do," he commented dryly.

"Chris, I can't believe that you said that to me. It's hard to imagine that we used to be best friends at one time," she huffed, hurt by his callous remarks about her character.

"Some friend you are Eve," he pointed out to her, "the only time you're my best buddy is when you need something. Then when someone new comes along and catches your eye, off you go and leave me behind in the dust to be forgotten again until the next crisis arises within your life."

"You take that back right now Chris," she jerked at his arm so he would have to turn and face her with his accusations, "that is a bold face lie and you know it."

"Eve, I just call them like I see them and I most definately see through your actiions every single time. You run to me when your world comes crashing down upon you, but when things start to look up and get better, you are no where to be found. I'll not take back what I said to you because I meant every single solitary word of it," he vented out his anger and frustration upon her after all he had been through the past couple of days with Karen.

"What do you think I am doing here now? You know, I came out here to find you because I was actually worried about you Chris," she raised her voice at him feeling her anger overtake her as well. "I talked to Karen and she told me that she was going back to Frank and I thought..."

"You thought you would come here and rub it in that Karen chose Frank over me?" he spat out angrily at her, wrenching himself away from her tight hold upon his arm and started to walk away from her.

"No! I thought that you might need a friend tonight, someone to talk to," she followed him, determined that Chris would not end up getting the last word in on this confrontation between them that had sprung up out of nowhere. He was not going to think the worst of her when all she had been trying to do was help him.

Chris stopped midstep and turned back to face her, "Don't you dare feel sorry for me! I don't need anyone to hold my hand and tell me that everything will end up being all right. I'll get by, I always do."

"Chris," she softly spoke his name, trying to reach out to the friend that meant so much to her, hoping to get past his anger so that they could talk, "please don't walk away from me. I didn't come here tonight with the intentions of starting a fight with you."

He ran a hand through his hair and looked to his friend standing there staring at him with concern in her eyes, "All I need is to get away from everything for a little while. I've got to clear my mind and try to find some kind of peace within myself. I'm sorry Eve, I didn't mean to take out all of my frustrations on you tonight. You just caught me at a really bad time."

Eve shifted her feet around, "Well, I didn't exactly start off things the way that I should have either..."

"Lambert, you wouldn't be you, if you didn't rush headlong into something before you thought it through," he half teased her. For the first time tonight, he actually felt a small smile trying to sneak up on him as he thought of some of the escapades that he and Eve had managed to find themselves in over the years since they had met as interns at GH. "Look, I'll see you later when I get in a better mood."

She shook her head and grabbed him by the arm, "I don't think I have enough time in the world to wait on you planning to get into a better mood. You are not getting off that easy with me Ramsey. You are coming with me."

"Eve," he protested, putting a sudden halt to her movements, "I've already told you that I wanted to be alone tonight."

"No can do Ramsey, being alone is the last thing that you need to do tonight. I won't listen to any more objections that you may have on the subject. I refuse to take no for an answer," she continued up the hill dragging a very reluctant Chris along behind her. Chris sighed, knowing that it would do him little good to try and dissuade Eve when she put a plan of action out on the table. He would just have the make the best of if until she got aggravated with him and finally gave up on this latest mission of hers.

They made it up the trail to her SUV and she opened the passenger door for Chris motioning for him to climb in. Once they were both secure in her Surburban, he questioned her motives, "Seeing as that you are obviously going to ignore my earlier request to be left alone, where do you plan on taking me?"

"We are going some place where you can get away from it all Ramsey. Isn't that what you just told me that you needed to do?"

He raised a curious brow at her, "what exactly are you up to Eve?"

"You'll see," she evasively answered him as she started the ignition to her vehicle and they began to drive off into the night.

---

They rode in silence when Chris couldn't be drawn into any type of conversation by Eve's various attempts at small talk with him. Occasionally he would nod or say a simple yes or no to her questions until Eve finally gave up trying. He stared out the passenger window, silently brooding as his mind went back to the last conversation he had with Karen earlier on in the day.

"Chris, please understand, this is hard for me too," Karen had tried to make him listen to her reasons for wanting to go back to Frank.

"If this is so hard to do, they why are you doing this? I think that we could be great together."

"Chris, my heart is with Frank and if you'll be honest with yourself, you'll see that your heart really isn't with me either..."

"Yes, it is Karen," he adamantly stated.

"No, it's not Chris. You saw me as a way to forget your pain over not being with the one person that you really love," she gently reminded him. "The reason you have feelings for me is due to all of the time we have spent with one another these past few months. I don't want to hurt you Chris. You've showed me that there is a caring person underneath that gruff exterior you try to show to the world. Chris, I'm so glad that I took the time to see the wonderful man that you really are and I'm thankful that we have become such good friends."

"Friends? You know it was more than just friendship. Frank doesn't deserve you," Chris leaned over to her to touch her, "he will only break your heart again."

"He's told me that this fling with Gabby is over and done with," Karen surmised, "Chris, if we hadn't of been flirting with each other, Frank would have never given Gabby a second look anyway."

"Karen, please reconsider your decision," he took her hand and pressed a kiss upon it.

"Chris, I can't. I'm meant to be with Frank, we belong together. He's my soulmate, my other half..."

"I don't know what it is with you and Eve and your supposed soulmates," he shook his head, hating the fact that he was losing Karen to that jerk Frank Scanlon.

"There you said it," Karen countered back to him.

"Said what?" Chris asked, wondering what Karen had picked up on from his comment to her.

"You said her name," she smugly replied, giving Chris a knowing look.

"You've totally lost me now. What are you talking about?"

"Chris, you said you didn't know what is was about me and Eve and our soulmates. Can't you see that Eve is the one woman you will always be in love with? Right now you think that I'm the one who will make all of your dreams come true, but I'm not the one. Eve is your soulmate, you two just haven't made the connection with one another yet."

"The only thing I know is that you must be crazy. First, for wanting Frank Scanlon when you could have me and second, for thinking that I'm in love with Eve Lambert," Chris emphatically denied Karen's observation of their respected situations.

Karen shook her head and placed her hand over his heart, "I'm not crazy and deep down you know that I'm right about your feelings for Eve. Whether or not you'll admit it to me, you need to admit it to yourself."

"You're wrong Karen, I don't love Eve..."

"Do you think I can't see it in your eyes every time she walks into a room where you are at? Chris, you may have managed to fool everyone else into thinking that the only person you care about is yourself, but I can see the longing in your eyes for her. Ever since we started out as interns at GH, you always had a soft spot where Eve is concerned. Your whole demeanor changes when she is around," Karen patted his chest, "like it or not, Eve is the woman who has your heart, not me."

What was he going to do? He kept hearing Karen's words echoing in his head, barraging his thoughts with her assumptions about his feelings for Eve. Now here he was, going only god knows where, with the last person he should be around in his state of mind at the present time. How did he manage to get into these impossible situations? Being around Eve was not a good idea at all when he was feeling like this.

He never admitted to Karen that what she had said to him was right on the mark. How could Karen see what he had tried so hard to hide from everyone? Thank god Eve had no clue as to where his true feelings of his heart really belonged. He decided then and there that as soon as it was possible, he was going as far away from Port Charles as he could possibly get. He was not going to fall under Eve's hypnotic spell again and wind up miserable and alone once more when some new man eventually came into her life.

Thus having made up his mind, he turned back to catch Eve staring at him, "Chris, are you all right? You are quiet and you seem so far away."

"I told you earlier, I have a lot on my mind. I know you are used to me being the witty conversationlist that I am, but it's been an extremely long day," he answered her. "Eve, are we even remotely anywhere near the place you're planning on taking me to tonight?"

"As a matter of fact, we are," she smiled, pulling up into the driveway of her cabin and stopping the vehicle.

Chris took one look at where they were and his heart sunk. He grimly thought this had to be one of the last places on earth that he wanted to be at with Eve. Here he was at the cabin where last year she had turned down his proposal of marriage to him. He realized that he had done some lousy things in his life to some people along the way, but someone up there really must have it out for him to put him here with Eve tonight. Maybe this was just a bad dream, he hopefully told himself, and any moment now I'm going to wake up and see that this whole day never happened at all.

"Chris, are you getting out of the car or are you just going to sit there and sulk the rest of the night away?" Eve's voice broke through his thoughts, promptly shattering the illusion he had going on in his mind.

"Yeah, I'm coming," he muttered, shaking his head as he got out of the car, dreading going back into the place where Eve had smashed his heart into a million pieces that last time he had come here.

"Just the place I wanted to end up at tonight," Chris grumbled to Eve as they stepped into the darkened cabin.

"You don't have to sound so enthusiastic about being here with me. This is a great place to come and get away from everything," Eve tried to reason with him as she began to make her way around the room by turning on a few lights.

"Eve, I could think of a number of places I'd rather be at right now than here at your and Ian's little love shack," Chris sarcastically replied, perusing the cabin as the lights dispelled the darkness.

"Please don't remind me of my temporary insanity," Eve remarked, going back outside to her SUV and returning with a few bags of groceries in her arms. She placed the bags on the kitchen countertop, "You know you could make yourself useful and help me unload these groceries that I brought in."

"I have no intention of staying here tonight Eve. So with that in mind, I see no need to help you unload anything," Chris offered up to her from his position on the couch that he had plopped himself down upon.

"Unless you plan on walking back to Port Charles tonight, there's no way you're getting out of here. I suggest you suck it up and make the best of things because I'm not heading back home until late Sunday afternoon," Eve plainly told him in no uncertain terms.

Chris questioned her, "Where is Daniel? I can't believe you would go off and leave him with someone else for an entire weekend. That is just not like something you would do Lambert."

"If you must know, I had no other choice in the matter. In mine and Ian's divorce ruling, Ian gets one weekend per month to spend with Daniel and since Ian has moved out of state, I offered to let him stay at the apartment this weekend to visit with Daniel so that Danny wouldn't have to be placed in new surroundings without me being with him." Eve's eyes filled with tears while she bit her lower lip, trying not to cry at the prospect of being away from Daniel for such a long period of time. Ever since she had gotten back custody of her precious baby from the social services Eve had been with her child constantly when she wasn't at work at the hospital.

"So I see your motives weren't completely altruistic in bringing me here tonight. I knew there had to be something more than just wanting to help me out after Karen dumped me," Chris stated, getting up from the couch to enter into the kitchen area to begin to help Eve unload the groceries.

"Well, I knew I didn't want to stay at the apartment while Ian was there with Daniel. It would have been too awkward with the both of us being there and I'm not so selfish to see that Ian needs to spend some quality time with Daniel too. I thought that since I was coming up here that it might not be so lonely if I brought you up here with me," she explained, hoping Chris would understand her motives and quit giving her such a hard time about her decision to come to the cabin this weekend.

"Couldn't you of at least told me of your plans? I don't even have a change of clothes with me and let me tell you one thing, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing any of Ian's old clothes that you might have stashed around here." He handed her a few items to place into the refrigerator.

"Don't worry, I wouldn't subject you to Ian's atrocious tastes in clothing. I went by your apartment and took the liberty of packing you a bag. It's in the back of my Suburban," Eve informed him as a smile came across her features at the thought of Chris wearing anything of Ian's due to their vast differences in clothing choices.

"How did you manage to get into my apartment in the first place?"

"Did you forget that I used to live there with you? I still had one of your old spare keys Ramsey. By the way, I think the appropriate response should be, thank you Eve for thinking of me and being so thoughtful to bring some of my things for me," she half teased him seeing the incredulous look that he was giving her at the moment.

Chris shook his head, amazed at the audacity of Eve whisking him off to this godforsaken cabin out in the middle of nowhere without even consulting him and more so going by his apartment to actually pack him a bag of his things for the weekend. He sighed thinking that when this woman made up her mind about something, there was no limit to what she would do.

"Why are you shaking your head at me for?" Eve asked, trying to cajole him into a better mood. "Chris, if you will just lighten up a little bit, we can have a good time this weekend. You know, we could try to forget all of our troubles for a while and try to have some fun. Do you remember we used to have a lot of fun together with each other?"

"That seems like a lifetime ago," he reached into the last bag and pulled out a bottle of olives and held them up to the light. "Lambert, what did you bring these delicacies for?"

"Martinis, of course. Your drinks wouldn't be the same without them."

"If I recall correctly, all this cabin seemed to stock in the way of liquor was Irish whiskey," he teased her, feeling a more playful mood trying to emerge despite the grumpiness that had been prevalent with him for most of the evening. "The last time I was here on the premises there was no gin or vermouth to found anywhere."

"I threw all of the Irish whiskey out into the trash the last time I came up here. The days of Irish whiskey being stocked in this cabin are definitely over along with my spending time with Ian."

"Are you sure about that? I mean you might end up changing your mind about things later on down the road concerning Ian," Chris suggested as he raised a curious brow and glanced her way to see her reaction.

"I won't ever change my mind about Ian. We were too different from the start and I refused to see how totally wrong we were for each other," Eve frowned slightly as her thoughts turned back to the previous year she had spent being miserable with Ian and their turbulent short lived marriage.

"Eve, I didn't mean to bring up the subject of Ian," Chris said, seeing as to how her mood had darkened at the mention of her former husband, "I realize that things have been hard for you and Daniel these past few months. I know how difficult it is to adjust to someone not being around for you in your life anymore."

"Hey, it's okay. I'm just glad that Ian and I both realized that we made a huge mistake jumping into marriage. We thought we were doing the right thing at the time, at least we were able to get out of our marriage before things got worse and Daniel was more affected by all of our fighting and disagreements," Eve shrugged her shoulders and walked into the living room to sit down on the couch.

Chris came and sat down beside her, "Now I've got you in a mood as dreary as mine has been all evening."

Eve looked to Chris, the one friend that she could always be her true self with and gave him a small smile, "I guess you could make it up to me if you would whip us up a batch of your famous martini's."

"The things I'm willing to do for you Lambert," he grinned getting up and going back to the kitchen to mix them up a pitcher of martini's.

"Don't forget to bring the olives," she called out to him as he made their drinks.

Chris smiled to himself, thinking that maybe things would turn out better between them this weekend than he had previously thought when they had first arrived at the cabin. Having finished making their drinks, he returned to the living room bringing everything with him that they would need to have another martini night. He poured Eve a glass then fixed himself one also.

Eve smiled as she accepted the glass from Chris and took a sip, "Oh, this is so good."

"Of course they are, I fix one mean martini," he boasted after taking a sip of his own drink.

Eve leaned back against Chris and placed her feet upon the coffee table. Chris put one arm up behind her along the top of the couch so she could get comfortable next to him.

"A lot has happened to us both since our last martini night," Eve commented, finishing off her drink.

"You're not kidding," Chris replied, thinking back to the night that Eve had called him up when she was having problems with Ian earlier on in their relationship and she had come over to his apartment. "It's been a long time since the last time we got together like this and hung out with one another."

"Too long," she added and turned to look at his dark eyes to give him a half smile, "I've missed being around you Ramsey."

"We both had different paths to follow for a while, but here we are coming back to commiserate with one another once more," he drained his drink and leaned up to pour them both another drink.

"Let's make a toast," Eve suggested, after she received another drink from him.

"Looking back over today's events, I really don't have anything to toast about Lambert," Chris remarked, "this hasn't been one of my best days on record."

"At least we still have each other," she gave him a hopeful smile. "Why don't we toast to our friendship?"

"Okay, here's to our friendship," he lifted his glass to touch hers.

"To the best friend I've ever had in my entire life," Eve added.

"Me too," Chris agreed as they clinked their glasses then proceeded to drink.

Eve put down her glass on the table after she tossed that one off and Chris offered to give her a refill.

"No thanks," she shook her head, "I'm so tired that I think I could drift off to sleep right now."

"Wimping out on me all ready?" he asked curiously.

"Seeing as I pulled a double shift last night that the Chief Resident had me scheduled for, I'd say that I have done remarkably well with no sleep in the past forty or so hours," she gave him a look before laying her head against his shoulder.

"You didn't sleep any today after you got off from work?"

"I knew that I wouldn't get to see Daniel with Ian coming up this weekend and I couldn't bear for him to go to the nursery today while I slept since I would miss seeing him this weekend. I've stayed up for longer periods of time than this," she yawned and stretched out her legs on the couch.

"If you would have told me what was going on then I would have worked for you last night."

"And let everyone think that I get special treatment from you because we are buddies," she kidded him as she tried to stifle another yawn.

"Just close your eyes and try to get some rest. We'll talk later," Chris pulled her closer to him and placed an arm around her.

"You're sure?" Eve asked tiredly, "I can't let you think that I'm a wimp."

"I'm sure. You may be a lot of things, but being a wimp is definitely not one of them." Chris replied, enjoying her being this close to him and the ease at which they had fallen back into with one another despite the lack of time they had spent together over the last couple of months. The room grew quiet as he felt her fall asleep, snuggling against his body. Knowing that she was sound asleep, he gently pressed his lips to the top of her head, thankful that she had made him come here with her this weekend. After all of his protests to her about wanting to be left alone tonight, he really was grateful for the memory he would take with him of holding her like this in his arms and the special friendship they shared with one another after he was long gone from Port Charles.