"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for flying Thai Airways International," a faceless pilot with a thick accent said over the speaker. Ryan Howard raked his fingers through his dark locks anxiously. He had been on the airplane for nearly fifteen hours and was more than ready to get away from the sweaty man that had slept contently on his shoulder since a half-hour after they had departed from Bangkok. "The weather in New York City is a brisk twenty-seven degrees with a mostly cloudy sky. We hope that you enjoy your New Year!"

Ryan was grateful with the overweight man finally peeled himself from the seat and started to amble up the aisle without a second look back. He gathered his discarded magazines, novels, iPod and other stuff he had used to distract him over the long flight back to America. He had spent nearly two months in the foreign country, each day more miserable than the one before it. "Excuse me," he muttered to a pair of teenagers too wrapped up in each other to notice he was trying to get by. He recognized them as two of the kids that had been on the trip with him. With a sad shake of the head, he put the disaster of Thailand behind him and stepped off the plane and into the tunnel.

When he had agreed to act as a travel guide to a group of high school students to Thailand, he had looked at it as a way to escape Scranton. Yet again, he had told himself he was running away from the mundane life he had built in the Electric City. It had only taken him three months to backtrack an entire year of his life. Before he knew it, he was back in the annex making out with Kelly against her desk while Toby awkwardly tried to let his presence be known. He was back to trying to avoid Michael's awkward advances and having too many drinks at Poor Richard's and shutting down Jim's unjustified cockiness. He was back to everything he had hated when he had left for New York and everything he had missed once he had gotten there.

However, after about a week into being surrounded by vapid teenagers too shallow to understand the amazing opportunity they were being given to see the world, Ryan had begun to long for the comforts of home. He missed sparking up the occasional joint with his friends after a long night of partying. He missed calling Kelly in the middle of the night for an impromptu makeout session when he started to feel lonely. He missed talking to Kevin and Oscar about their fantasy football league and having his mother bring him buy one of those amazing gifts she would pick up for him when she shopped at Bergdorf's. They were stupid and small things to miss, but he missed the comfort of having them there. In Thailand, he only had his memories to keep him warm, and it could make for some long and chilly nights alone.

It was one night in Phuket when he was sitting beside the fire on the beach alone that he realized what he really missed about home. He didn't miss the parties or the meaningless gifts from his mother or the empty conversation with people he really didn't like much. He didn't miss the camera crew following him around or driving his car or anything else. He just missed her. He missed Kelly.

The night that he broke up with her, she had cried for nearly an hour after he left. He knew this because he sat on the steps outside her apartment the entire time, waiting for her to catch her breath long enough to stop sobbing. He had wept silently when she finally stopped, sad that it had taken her such a short time to get over a broken heart. He had also felt sad that he could break her heart again. She deserved more than that, she deserved more than him. He had always believed that but had never been selfless enough to make sure that she got it. He knew how to get what he wanted when it came to Kelly because he knew that she loved him without reservation or question.

It took two days for another travel guide to arrive and take his place. He still had several weeks left on his contract, but he didn't care. He had disappointed people all his life. His parents were always waxing poetic about some great opportunity he had managed to mess up. For a long time, his amazing corporate job in New York had topped that list. That was, until his mother had met Kelly for the first time. Now, every call, every email, every letter oozed with contempt over how he could walk away from such an amazing girl. As he walked out of the plane's tunnel and into the buzzing terminal, he couldn't help but wonder that same thing for himself.

Ryan glanced down at his watch and noted the time. He had less than fifteen minutes until the clock would strike midnight and the year would officially be 2009. Another year was behind him. Twelve months filled with the highs of living in New York and the lows of being publicly humiliated with his arrest that would forever be cemented on the World Wide Web thanks to YouTube. Twelve months filled with sleeping with nameless girls he met at bars and holding a beautiful Indian princess in his arms while he slept. Twelve months of driving to Scranton without her knowing just so that he could look up at her illuminated bedroom window. Twelve months of running from everything he didn't want to accept. Twelve months of being in love with her.

Once he had successfully navigated through customs, he tried to soothe his nerves well enough to find his way out to the lobby where travelers could meet up with their friends and families. For most of his life, Ryan had come back to the airport without anyone waiting for him. His parents had always been away on vacation when he would come back from boarding school during the holidays. Sure, there would be a chauffer there waiting for him, but it wasn't the same. In college, his friends had been too busy partying to collect him. He hadn't really travelled much since then. On the rare occasion he did head out of town, Kelly would always offer to pick him up but he would refuse. Picking up someone at the airport signaled a relationship, and they were definitely not in a relationship.

However, as his eyes met those familiar chocolate orbs across the crowded terminal, he couldn't help but be grateful that she had come. He hadn't been sure the entire time that she would show up, especially after how reluctant she had been when he'd asked her to meet him. She turned away and raked her hair through her silky tresses, the strands fanning over her tiny hand. Finally, she dared to look back at him and he would have sworn that he saw her breath catch. God, Ryan was really happy to be home.

"You came," he murmured as he came to Kelly, shortening the distance between them that had been so vast for so long. Kelly nodded silently as he dropped his luggage at his side and slipped his arms around her body and pulled her close to him. She was stiff as he hugged her, even more so when he buried his nose in her hair. "God, I missed this."

She pulled away from him, wrangling her hand out of his grasp to put some much-needed space between them. "You said you needed a ride," she shrugged as she started off toward the door. It killed Kelly to see Ryan. She hadn't wanted to come. Her sisters and her friends and everyone from work had told her that she shouldn't. She really hadn't planned on showing up, but when it came time to get ready, she had found herself behind the wheel of her car, driving more than two hours to meet him in New York. "Let's go. It's late. I don't want to be here at midnight."

Ryan looked down at his watch. It was five minutes until midnight. He only had five minutes to change the entire course of the next year. "Kel…"he murmured as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to him. "I was wrong. I shouldn't have left."

"No, you shouldn't have," she agreed curtly. "I just can't believe I fell for it again."

"I wanted to believe it too." Ryan had wanted to believe that he had gotten back with her for all the right reasons, but he'd known even then that it wasn't true. He just hated seeing her with anyone else. She belonged to him. Even if he wasn't ready to have her, no one else could either. "When I said that I shouldn't have left, I didn't just mean to go to Thailand."

"But you did, Ry," she said softly. She didn't trust her voice right now. She didn't trust much about herself right now. "You left me. Twice. For your stupid dreams. What about me? When do I get to be apart of those dreams? When do I get to be the dream?"

"Do you want to know my New Year's resolution?"

She looked at him as though he was crazy. "Are you kidding me?" she asked, sounding as skeptical and confused as that day at the office when he had broken up with her and asked for money.

"I resolve to spend my year with you."

"So not going to happen, Ryan Bailey Howard!"

"I resolve to spend my year being worthy of your love."

"Seriously, Ryan, stop."

"I resolve to spend my year making you believe I mean what I'm saying."

"Yeah, right, you never mean what you say."

"I resolve to spend my year loving you the way you love me."

"Loved, Ryan. I don't love you anymore."

"I resolve to spend my year convincing you to be my wife."

His last resolution is what stunned Kelly the most. In all the months that they were together, he had spent all his time trying to avoid the topic altogether. When she would bring it up, his eyes would immediately glaze over. He'd try to distract her with a shiny objection of his unaffection or smother her words with a kiss. Now, he was here, trying to give her everything he thought she wanted.

"Dammit, Ryan!" she shouted before stalking off. He watched her walk over to a window and look hollowly at the black sky. She spun around her on her patent pink pump with fire in her eyes. "You cannot just say these things to me! Not now! Not when you know what this means to me! It's not fair!"

Ryan couldn't help but recoil at every exclamation. "I love you, Kelly."

"I already told you that I don't love you anymore."

He shook his head sadly. "You promised after the pregnancy thing that you would never lie to me again."

"I'm not lying."

"Kel…"

"I'm not!" she insisted, stomping her foot like a child. "I'm not lying to you."

"You're right," Ryan agreed as he reached up to stroke her cheek. "You're lying to yourself."

She tore herself away from him again. "I am not lying. I. Don't. Love. You."

"Yes, you do," he corrected her gently. "I know what it's like to lie to yourself, Kel. I did it for a very long time. I always told myself that you didn't matter, that we didn't matter. We both know that we did. That you do. I love you, Kelly Kapoor. I love your two-hour conversations on the latest issue of InStyle and the post-it notes you leave on my bathroom mirror and the hairs I'm still finding on my sweaters and ridiculously difficult cocktails and lip-gloss kisses. I don't just love you. I am in love with you just like you are in love with me."

"No, I'm not," she repeated once again, pushing him away from her. Ryan grabbed her wrist and held her in place, causing her to struggle again. "I am not in love with you." She pushed against his chest again, this time harder, but Ryan only clung to her even tighter. "I don't! I don't! I don't!" Each adamant statement became less sure until finally, she was sobbing against his chest. Ryan wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly for a long time until the tears had started to subside. Somewhere in the distance, Ryan could hear travelers counting off the final ten seconds of the year. When the crowd reached the final second of 2008, he tilted her chin up and kissed her long and deeply. He was afraid to pull away because he couldn't hear her say again that she didn't love him. However, when they finally parted, he waited for the verdict to come in. "I don't want to love you, Ryan…." Her voice trailed off, shattering his heart into a million pieces, something he knew he deserved after he had fragmented hers so frequently over the years. "But I do."

"What?"

She leaned up on her tip toes and kissed him fully again. She grinned against his mouth as the cat calls of passing travelers filled the air around them. "I love you," she told him again before brushing a line of kisses over his cheek and across his bottom lip. "Don't mess this up."

"I won't," he promised. "I made a few resolutions, and you know how goal-oriented I am. I won't let you down."

"You better not," she giggled as he wrapped his arm around her and picked up his suitcase.

Kelly snuggled into Ryan's side and laid her head on his shoulder. It was a quiet walk to her car. The sky above was shining with a brilliant glitter of a million stars, far outshining the bright lights of New York in the distance. She wordlessly handed over her keys when they arrived to her vehicle so that he could stow his luggage in the trunk and drive them back to Scranton. He held the passenger door open for her before jogging over to slip behind the wheel. As he turned the key and the motor jumped to life, he leaned across the console to kiss her again. He knew he would never get tired of kissing her.

"Happy New Year, Ry."

"Happy New Year, Kel."

Fin.

Author's Note: This is dedicated to the lovely Cher for her wonderful friendship and mutual love of Ryan and Kelly. Happy New Year, Kids.