Standard Disclaimer: You know the drill...

Here's a nice, angsty, non-crossover (save for a shout-out or two) Hannah Montana fic for your reading pleasure. Normally, I don't like to have this many ongoing projects at once, but this one was begging to be written. Enjoy!

Love Bites

By

James Doyle

Chapter One: Farewell, New York!

From the Memoirs of Lilly Truscott

I'd had it! I couldn't possibly stay another day in the crowded, polluted, foul-weathered armpit of Planet Earth that was New York City. College could go to hell. Work could go to hell. Extracurriculars could go to hell. And Oliver Oken, above all, could go to hell.

I stopped at the nearest drug store and bought a box of large trash bags. I then returned to my dorm room and began tossing my stuff indiscriminately into garbage bags, double-bagging the few that seemed to be getting too heavy. I started hauling bags to my car, two and three at a time (quite a feat for someone as petite as me.) The trunk filled up pretty quickly, and the back seat didn't take long, either. Surprisingly, I still had the presence of mind to only put a couple of bags in the front seat so I could still see my right side mirror.

I took another quick look around my dorm room. Only a few odds and ends remained, and I decided my roommate could keep them. I made a quick call to my bank to make sure I had money. It was student loan money that I'd probably have to repay in a hurry. It didn't matter; I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

As I got in my car, I took a look at my gas gauge. It read a little less than half a tank. It'd get me to PA, where gas prices would be a little more reasonable. I took one last look at the City University of New York before driving off, taking care to plot a route out of town that wouldn't take me anywhere near Juiliard. Half an hour later, I was cruising west across New Jersey on I-78, headed home. I wasn't sure where that was anymore, but I'd figure it out somewhere along the way.

The first two hours or so seemed to zip right by, and before I knew it, I found myself in Pennsylvania' s Lehigh Valley. I found the nearest gas station and fueled up. When I went inside to get some caffeine, I found that the bathrooms were actually usable, so I took a preemptive tinkle.

Once I got back on the road, the gentle hum of my engine and the faint rattling of my belongings faded into the background, and I found myself transported taking a trip down repressed memory lane.

It had been about three weeks before, shortly after the start of the semester, when this whole nightmare began. I hadn't gone home for winter break, and neither had Oliver. I thought this would give us some long-overdue quality time together. As I should've suspected, this didn't happen.

"Hey, Lilly-pop," greeted Oliver, meeting me at our usual place. "What's up?"

I returned his greeting with a chaste kiss.

"Sorry I've been so scarce lately," continued Oliver. "Rehearsals are back in full-swing already."

"Yeah, you and Greta must really busy," I snarked in reply.

"Lilly, I told you," defended Oliver. "There's nothing going on between me and Greta. She's just a colleague."

"Relax, Oliver," I assured him. "I believe you. This has nothing to do with her."

"What is it, then?" asked Oliver, obviously sensing what was coming next.

"Olive, I love you, and I don't blame you for not having any time for me," I continued. "You told me back when you got accepted to Juiliard that it would be demanding."

"Yeah, it is," granted Oliver. "But you came out here to support me in my dream. I owe you at least as much."

I leaned in and took his hand. "You don't owe me anything, Ollie-pop. It was my mistake thinking you'd have any time for me. It was selfish of me to ask you to try and juggle that with your dream."

Oliver's face turned white. "Tell me you're not saying what I think you're saying."

"I'm afraid I am," I said ruefully. "I love you, Oliver, but I need to do what's best for both of us. I need to let you go."

Oliver sat mute for a moment, then spoke. "I understand," agreed Oliver, "I'll always love you, but I think you're right."

"I'm not going anywhere," I assured him. "You've always been my best friend, and you always will be."

"I'm glad," replied Oliver. "So this isn't goodbye?"

"Nope," I said. "More like, 'See you around.'"

Oliver smiled as he left. "See you around, then."

For reasons I wouldn't understand until later, Oliver had taken it much better than I thought he would. I, on the other hand, had run out of control over my composure. As soon as he left, I burst into tears. Little did I know, I'd be shedding many more tears over him.

Before I knew it, I'd started crying again, and my contacts were beginning to mist up, obscuring my view of the road. I pulled over briefly and rummaged around for my purse. Once I'd found it, I put my contacts in their case and put on my glasses. Before getting back on the road, I decided I needed a distraction. I looked through the CDs in the sleeve on my visor, and found Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory and Limp Bizkit's Significant Other, both of which fit my mood. With the tunes blaring, I headed westward once again.

I-81 seemed to go on forever, a monotonous blur of driving and stopping for gas and use the little girls' room. I only realized I'd driven through five states when I-81 merged with I-40. I felt a certain sense of accomplishment, knowing this road would take me all the way to California. I didn't know if it was possible to drive the whole way in one shot, but I was hell-bent on trying.

I don't know why I chose that particular moment to notice, but it dawned on me then that I'd soon be driving through Knoxville, Tennessee. It was then I realized I hadn't been to that state since I'd gone to help Miley save her hometown. So, of course, I couldn't help but think back to the last time she and I spoke.

It had been the previous August, just before Oliver and I left for New York. Miley wasn't too happy about it.

"I cannot believe this," exclaimed Miley.

"What, that I want to support my boyfriend?" I argued.

"No," countered Miley. "That you'd give up a full scholarship to USC to go to CUNY."

"You sound just like my mother," I reviled.

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe she was right?"

"I'd have thought that you, of all people, would be more supportive," I argued. "I mean, Oliver and I have been dating for a year and a half, and we've been best friends our entire lives. Should I throw all that away over something as stupid as somebody else's opinion of where I should go to college?"

"So instead, you throw away our friendship," retorted Miley.

"You know it doesn't have to be that way," I pleaded. "You could go to CUNY, too. It'll be the three of us, just like it's always been. You don't have to go to Santa Barbara."

"You know as well as I do that I can't leave."

"Oh that's right," I sniped as I went into full bitch mode. "You have to stay in California because you just can't let go of Hannah Montana. You are such a diva!"

"I'm a diva?" defended Miley. "What about Smokin' Oken, who turned a spot in USC's musical theater program because he just had to go to Juiliard?"

"Yes, he does have to go to Juiliard! That's his dream."

"And Hannah Montana's my dream," argued Miley, whose anger turned quickly to sorrow. "I guess you've decided which of us is more important to you."

"Miley," I began to plead.

"Just go," dismissed Miley. "Have a nice life with your superstar boyfriend."

Tennessee is a very long state from east to west, and that sequence played through my head over and over, until I found myself dry-sobbing because I'd run out of tears. I realized I shouldn't have left when Miley told me to go. If I'd stayed and talked it out with her, I would've realized I was making the wrong choice. I could've let Oliver go while it was still relatively painless for everyone. I'd still have Miley as my best friend, and I wouldn't know what I knew now. Instead, I'd lost both of them, and now all I had left was some faint hope that I could make things right with my family.

My God, I thought to myself, What have I done?

I played through all of the CDs that I had close at hand until the only thing left was Radiohead. Was it Radiohead or Coldplay that we'd danced to so long ago? To this day, I still don't know. One thing I did know was that Oliver was on my mind again.

After our breakup at the Waverly Sub Station, Oliver went from scarce to MIA. I just thought he needed some cool off. But when I couldn't get a hold of him by either phone or e-mail, I started to worry. So I decided to pay him a personal visit. When I arrived at his dorm room, all I could hear was seventies soul music, blaring at max volume. I tried knocking, but of course, he couldn't hear me over that racket. I tried the doorknob, and as it turned out, the door was unlocked. When I saw what was going on inside, I swear my heart stopped for a good minute. I should've cried, or screamed, or made some kind of noise, but all I could do was run. And I kept running. By the time I'd recovered any sense of reality, I'd skipped about five stops on my normal subway route.

I missed class the next day, and didn't get anything out of the following day's classes. I didn't ever want to speak to Oliver again, so I still don't know what made me pick up when he called.

"What?" I demanded.

"Well, someone's in a pissy mood!" Oliver replied indignantly.

"Yeah, whatever," I said, not in the mood for his mind-games. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to say that you had a lot of brass barging on me and Greta," admonished Oliver.

"I had a lot of nerve?" I retorted. "You could've at least waited for the sheets to cool down before bringing that skank into the bed!"

"I don't have to justify myself to you," countered Oliver. "As I recall, you let me go."

"Well, you could've at least told me that you were seeing Greta so I had some idea of what I was walking into," I argued. "I mean, I was under the impression we were still friends."

Oliver scoffed. "Please! You know as well as I do that never works."

"You asshole!" I cursed.

"Whatever happened to 'donut?'" taunted Oliver.

"Oh, I am through mincing words with you. I left everything behind so I can support you, and you screw me over in every possible way, figuratively and literally."

"Well, I guess that was your bad," snarked Oliver. "In any case, stay away from me and Greta."

"Happy to oblige. Have a nice life," I retorted as I hung up the phone. I cried for the entire subway ride back to campus. After I got off, I walked past the drug store, which was when I decided to buy that box of garbage bags.

Replaying that whole scene in my head several times as I drove through Tennessee brought me to the first of three things I learned that night. The first thing I learned was that, while you can drive quite a ways on sheer adrenaline, eventually exhaustion catches up to you. I must've been driving for several miles in that semi-conscious state. The sound of a semi-truck horn brought me back to the here-and-now. I realized I was barely moving, even slowing down, even though my foot was still on the gas.

This brought me to my second realization: The dial on your dashboard that most people can't identify is called a tachometer, and when the needle approaches the red line at the far end of the dial (known, appropriately enough, as "redlining,") and your engine starts making a high-pitched whine, you're in big trouble. I knew what was going on had something to do with the transmission, but I was determined to keep moving. So I quickly flipped on my four-ways and tried the shifter in several different positions, and stomped on the gas pedal, cursing and wailing as I tried in vain to get the vehicle moving again.

Finally came the third realization: When you have this problem, whatever you do, stop driving! I realized this too late, and I had no choice but to pull over as I heard a loud bang, followed by smoke pouring out from under my hood. Parking gear didn't work, so I shifted into neutral and set the parking brake.

I still hadn't grasped that my car was down for the count, so tried starting it back up, more out of desperation than anything else. I kept pumping the gas and turning the starter in vain. Eventually, I gave up and contented myself with wailing and sobbing like there was no tomorrow, because as far as I was concerned at that moment, there was none. After a few minutes of this, sheer and utter exhaustion overtook me, and I passed out.

I don't know how long I'd been asleep, but I soon realized the folly of leaving my headlights on, as my battery had gone dead. I wondered why a passing trucker or other such Good Samaritan hadn't stopped to help me. But in a way, I was glad no one had noticed me. All alone at night on the Interstate in the middle of nowhere is no place for five-foot-three, hundred-pound girl to be all alone. I took my cell phone, the one remaining piece of technology that might actually help me, out of my purse. It had just enough juice left for one phone call, so I had to weigh carefully who I'd call.

My first thought was my mother. I dismissed that pretty quickly, because I wasn't quite ready to admit to her that this had all been the result of a series of monumental mistakes. My second thought was the State Police. I almost called them when I remember that I was driving a car titled in my mother's name with an expired registration. That would mean I'd have to face her wrath as well as any legal repercussions.

I ran through my speed-dial list, and every name that came up was of a bridge I'd burned over the last year. Only one name stood out that offered a faint glimmer of hope.

Jackson Stewart.

I hadn't heard much from Jackson since he'd decided to go back to Tennessee U, and of course my relationship with Miley was on the rocks. But as far as I knew, Jackson didn't have a beef with me. And he was right there in Tennessee. If anybody could help me, it would be him. I didn't hesitate for another minute to call him.

After about the third ring, I started to think of what I'd say to his voice-mail so he'd know how to find me. After the fourth ring, I started to worry that this wasn't his number anymore. Thankfully, neither of those scenarios happened. I could hear background noise as somebody picked up the phone.

"Dang flabbit," I heard Jackson curse in the background. The sound of his voice brought me more joy than anything I'd heard in a long time. "Yeah, what?" he said as finally managed to get the phone to his ear.

"Jackson!" I screamed, the pitch of my voice going through the ceiling the way it always does when I get excited. "It 's me!"

"Could you be more specific?" croaked Jackson, obviously not quite awake.

"It's Lilly Truscott," I clarified. "Look, I know it's late, and I know we haven't talked in awhile, and I know me and Miley..."

"Lilly," interrupted Jackson, who obviously had a better handle on the urgency of the situation than I had. "What's the problem?"

"I'm stuck on I-40. My car's dead, I don't have AAA, I don't where I'd go if I did. Is there any chance..."

"You want me to come get you," deduced Jackson. "Where are you?"

I realized then that I didn't know, but fortunately, there was an exit sign not a hundred yards in front of me.

"I-40 westbound, about two miles east of the exit for route 50," I informed him. "My phone's about to go dead."

"Okay, I should be there in about two hours," promised Jackson. "Do you have any way to keep warm until then?"

"Yeah, I have extra clothes."

"Good," said Jackson. "Put on a few extra layers. Turn your phone off; you might need it again for an emergency."

"I owe you bigtime," I said gratefully.

"Don't worry about it," said Jackson. "See you in a bit."

After I hung up the phone and put on whatever clothes I could reach without getting out of the car, I found myself with absolutely nothing to do but try and get some much-needed rest. As I started to nod off, I reflected on the fact that although my religious views weren't nearly as traditional or systematic as Miley's, we both believed in God, a God which I now thanked for bringing me to a place where the one friend I had left in the world could come rescue me.

End of Chapter One