I'm a sucker for angsty fictional boys and their angsty pasts. And Nate Ford fits into that perfectly. So, I write fic about his angsty past. I'm physically unable to prevent myself from being drawn to these boys and their angsty angsty-ness. Title and song excerpts from the Billy Joel song 'And So It Goes'.
In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
Nate Ford falls in love for the first time when he's 13 years old. Her name is Melody, and she's been his best friend for his entire life, because her apartment is right next to his, and they're moms take turns baby-sitting, Nate's mom on the weekends, and Melody's mom watching them during the week before she works the night shift at the hospital.
When they're seven they discover the door that leads to the roof, and they spend most of their time up there, sneaking off whenever they can to look at Boston, sprawling out in front of them. They'll sit and stare, legs kicked out in front of them, planning their futures around the imaginary identities they've assigned to the buildings they can see.
As they get older, Nate will bring his guitar with him, only because a piano won't fit up the stairs, and they'll stay up there until the sun stains the edge of the city red and the pinks and blues spread up and up and up until the colors become the stars they can't see. But Nate reads books on the constellations and the planets, and traces them with his finger as he strums on the open strings.
She'll rest her head on his stomach so she can feel his laugh, issuing from deep inside him as she retells story after story from their past. The two kids she tells about seem so much more fantastic and magical in her stories then Nate ever feels, so he hangs on to her every word and hopes that one day he'll be as interesting as Mel makes him sound.
Two weeks after her thirteenth birthday, Mel tells him she's moving. Her mom has got a new job in California, of all places, and they're leaving in two weeks. Nate wants to beg her to stay, to live on their rooftop with him and tell him stories about the boy he only vaguely recognizes as himself, to stay and be a part of that future they have all planned out among the red brick buildings in the distance and the stars they've created for themselves. But he doesn't. He just lets her go.
It's her last night in town, and her apartment is an overcrowded clutter of boxes that serve only as painful reminders to their impending separation, so they escape to the roof, but the sanctuary doesn't feel like comfort tonight. His fingers are clumsy against the strings and her stories hold none of their usual sparkle, and since there's no future to talk about, the buildings are just buildings and the stars are lost to the streetlights. So they sit in silence, her head on his shoulder because there's no laughter to feel tonight.
"I'm going to miss you," he says when the silence becomes too heavy to breathe and he has to say something or explode, and she nods against her shoulder.
"I'm going to miss you more," she says, and he can no longer tell if she's joking or if she means that, so he just stays silent. When she turns her head to look up at him, brown eyes big and wide and sad, he falls hard and fast and he can't stop it.
He touches his lips to hers, because he figures that's what he's supposed to do in this situation, and her hand comes up to touch his cheek lightly. Her eyes disappear as his close, and he wonders if hers do the same. It only lasts a few seconds before he pulls away, and sees that her eyes are closed. He already misses her.
She leaves early the next day, and he's still mostly asleep as he hugs her one last time and watches her carry one last box down the stairs, and then she's gone, and he leans against her door and whispers, "I love you." No one hears him, and he's glad.
Weeks pass and become months, and he still misses her, but soon he no longer falls asleep wishing for her stories. They're just memories now, faded photographs inside his head, hidden by soft sort of kisses and 'I love you's whispered to no one.
But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break.