Need You Now

Summary: Based on the Lady Antebellum song "Need You Now." She is in her room wondering when her life stopped being the fairy tale she thought it was. He is drinking alone in a Toronto hotel, having burned all of his bridges before his stint in rehab. They both want answers, they both need someone to understand - and the person they each want to talk to most is just a phone call away. CrAsh.

1 A.M. My alarm clock's numerals flashed briefly as they switched, glowing bright red through the dim light in my room.

It was only an hour after midnight, and I was still in a terrible funk. My bed was so strewn with tissues that I, and my journal, had migrated to the floor. The only light in the room, aside from the alarm clock, was a candle in a glass jar on my bedside table. The light flickered, too small to have my mother charging in, lambasting me to turn off the light, but big enough to allow me to see the contents of the box I had in front of me.

A shoe box that once contained my favorite pair of boots was filled with photographs and knick-knacks, each containing a memory. I had begun to strew the contents of the both around me as I sat cross-legged on the floor, and had already gone through the photographs and memories from the most recent years of my life. Doing so had brought me lower than I had felt in a long, long time.

Earlier that week, Jimmy Brooks, the boy I had dated three times during my adolescence, had dumped me. He was tired of leaning on me, tired of using me as a crutch, and had met a girl at physio who was teaching him to be more independent. My fairy tale romance had imploded, and I was left wondering just who the hell I was.

I had been accepted into NYU, and Jimmy and I had planned on attending together as pre-law students. I was going to major in English, Jimmy in Political Science, and then we were going to apply to law schools together, eventually opening a firm together and riding off into the sunset in matching white Mercedes.

That dream seemed more and more ridiculous by the minute. Was it more Jimmy's dream than mine? Definitely. Had I gone along with it because I had convinced myself that it was the only way for me to keep him, especially after I had thwarted his dreams of rap stardom by deleting his track off of my song? Yes.

I felt a few more tears escape and I brushed them away slowly, my hand heavy. They were no longer for Jimmy; the pain of that breakup had only hurt for a few hours. I didn't love him as much as I had tried to convince myself I did. No, those tears were the realization I had come to over the past few hours, as I scattered pictures and patches and dried corsages over my room. The good memories were all in the past, and I was alone.

I hadn't talked to Ellie in a few weeks. She had her own shit to deal with. Paige and I hadn't been close since sophomore year. Marco and I were never really friends. Spinner was still an ass, and I still harbored a lot of resentment for Manny. Emma had gotten the same glossy overcoat that I did, leaving her activism behind in favor of curls and lip gloss. I saw myself echoed in her, forgetting and ignoring the things I once cared so fervently about, and so I couldn't hang out with her. I felt so ashamed, looking into that mirror.

I pulled another set of photographs out of the box. They were held together with a rubber band and covered with a sheet of white paper, as if the past-me wanted to hide their contents from view. When I removed the paper, I suddenly wished I hadn't.

Craig and I on the couch in Joey's garage, smiling as we fake wrestled. My black hair, still in its goth phase, was messier than his was, and he was attempting to smooth it. The expression on his face was tender and the one on mine was delighted. This picture was taken a few days before the Luau dance our freshman year at Degrassi, before his father had died and before we revealed to each other our feelings. It was so innocent, our happiness so pure and easy and unaffected.

A copy of the note Craig had taped to my locker sophomore year. It was so simple: "Meet me in the gym. - C." But it had led to the first time he had ever said he loved me, his words wrapped in a song. The lyrics to that song, which I had written down later that night, were paper-clipped to the note. It was so beautiful, so simple and melodic- but tainted with the memory of his tryst with Manny.

A few more tears escaped.

A picture from the car wash Downtown Sasquatch played at our junior year. Craig, playing his guitar, was looking at the person behind him, his face a picture of awe. The person behind him was me, sitting at my keyboard as I improvised a bridge to our song because Spinner had completely lost the beat and Marco was blinded by the sun. He looked astonished and happy, the look in his eyes blossoming from friendly to tender.

I began to sob quietly as I realized that this photograph documented the moment that Craig fell back in love with me after the debacle of our sophomore year. It was a painful reminder of how much he had cared for me after we had gotten back together, and how I had thrown it way to go to England.

I would never forgive myself for doing that. Ever since I had left to go to London, Craig had frequently intruded on my thoughts. I would remember his smell and his cologne as I passed TopShop on Oxford Street, his laugh when I hung out with Ali and his friends in the pub, his eyes when I was looking into Jimmy's. He would always cross my mind at the times when I was with other men. His memory was always the standard I compared Ali and Jimmy to.

They never measured up. And in the end, I was left without the man I had loved more than anything else in my life, whom I had given up for a subpar flings. I was really, really alone.

My Blackberry blinked as a new email was delivered into my inbox, and I reached for my phone. I was suddenly hit with an overwhelming temptation, one that I had been fighting ever since I Jimmy and I had broken up and I found myself single and free for the first time since I got back to Toronto.

My fingers itched. Craig was still on speed dial in my phone, even after I had my contacts transferred to the Blackberry. All I had to do was press the 'C' on the full keyboard, and it would connect to his number (if it was still the same), and I would hear his voice and everything would be okay. I'd be able to figure myself and my life out.

That was the fantasy, anyway. But the rational side of me had fought the temptation to contact him, reminding me continually that I had no right to expect another fairy tale ending to the mess I had made of my heart. I didn't deserve his love, not anymore.

I glanced at my alarm clock again. 1:15 AM.

My heart ached, my eyes swam, the tears fell. I pressed 'C.'

I had lost all control, and I needed him now.