SO, I've never written any kind of story before, but I felt strangely inspired after becoming addicted to Instant Star. I'm not sure if this is a prologue to a longer story or just a one-shot (well actually a two-shot because I wrote on for Jude that I want to publish soon).
Hope you enjoy it!
DISCLAIMER: Of course I don't own anything related to Instant Star including the characters. If I had it would have ended very differently. (And I only wish I owned Tommy Q!)
"We can agree on one thing. You cant fight fate with fate.
We had a good love, but its seen its last day.
When opportunity knocked you had to answer the call. Now those
clouds on that sunny day have all blown away.
So before you pack your things and go, theres one last
thing that I want you to know.
You can't find happiness if you wont let go.
****Learning To Let Go by Corey Crowder
Tommy sat completely still in the silent front seat of his blue Viper, his hands gripping the steering wheel, his head bowed so that his forehead rested against the crest of the wheel. The only indications that he wasn't asleep were the white knuckles of his hands as they held on with a death grip and the occasional tear that slid down his cheek, landing with silent splats on the faded blue denim stretched across his thighs.
It had been well over an hour since he looked across the lawn filled with fans and reporters to met Jude's eyes with a faint smile of regret and encouragement. He had watched her turn and climb into the limo. His last glimpse of her was the wind blowing her hair back as she rode down the street with her head and shoulders sticking through the limo's sunroof. He had watched until the limo was out of sight, then silently slipped back into his car, locked the doors, and bowed his head as the painful memories flooded in.
The fans and reporters had slowly drifted off now that their superstar was gone, his star. He assumed Jaime had gone home, and Sadie back into the house, but he didn't really know, or care for that matter. Nothing really mattered right now, except that Jude was gone.
As he sat there, motionless, images of their life together began flashing across the back of his eyelids, tumbling over each other in a random pattern of joy and sorrow. Every high and low and in between, muddled together in a mocking display that felt only like loss to Tommy. He was briefly reminded of Angie's death and struggled to remind himself that Jude was not dead and that this was not the same. But the grief felt the same, maybe because his love for Jude was that much stronger.
It was all there, all the firsts and lasts, the life changing events and the day to day. Their first meeting at G-Major, when he told her never to call him Lil Tommy Q again, the first time they worked on a song together, rewriting 24 Hours out on the docks. Seeing her on stage at the Vinyl Palace and knowing, as soon as she sang the first note, that she was the real deal, even better. Kissing her for the first time the night of her 16th birthday. Waking up with her in his arms for the first time, the night of her 17th and wishing like hell that Jamie and Speiderman weren't standing there when he did. And, of course, finally making love to her at the rehearsal space after waiting so long, and knowing that she had waited all those years for him and only him.
The bad memories were there too. Making her swear that their first kiss never happened. The jail in New Brunswick, the hotel room after Jude's 18th birthday party, telling her she was poison and to stay as far away from him as she could. But the last, most painful memory of all, the one that made him feel like his heart had been ripped out of his chest, was the way her voice cracked as she tearfully thanked him for holding her hand and then for letting her go.
The problem was, he didn't know how to let her go. He couldn't. That's why he was still sitting here in her driveway after everyone else was gone. He knew the minute he started his engine and put the car into reverse, it would be real. This would all be real. She would be gone and life would start to move on and the motion of it all would carry her farther and farther away from him. Maybe so far she would never come back. So he sat there, motionless, praying for this to all be a bad dream.
He hated this! He hated that Jude had left and how Jude had left and every possible thing about why Jude had left. Or more importantly, why she had left him behind. He hated it. It made feel sick, and yet somehow, he understood it. Worse yet, he knew she was right. That's why he had shown up today, to let her know he understood. Deep down, under all the pain and sadness, Tommy knew she had done the right thing. Hell, he admired her for it. It made him feel that swell of possessive pride he had often felt about Jude over the last 3 years, when he had watched her do what was right, instead of what was easy. Pride, followed by overwhelming loss and undeniable fear.
The fear was the worst part. Fear that the best thing that ever happened to him, the girl that got him the most and the one person who had always believed in him, was about to climb onto a plane, cross an ocean and never look back.
Every fiber of his being was screaming for him to go after her. Telling him to follow her and make her believe that she was wrong. Telling him that he could convince her to marry him. And he could do it too. Jude loved him, he didn't doubt that. She had loved him since she was fifteen years old and that was the problem. He could convince her to come back if he tried, but it would be wrong and selfish and mean and in the end it would shatter their relationship beyond repair. He loved her too much to hurt her that way and he needed her too much to risk it.
Tommy had lived a whole life before he met Jude. He may have been only twenty-two, but he had had fame and fortune, he had worked for and then lost a career, he had been married and divorced and he had loved and lost. Not to mention plenty of partying, mischief and tabloid fodder in between. And what had Jude had before she met him? A year and a half of High School and a few weeks on a TV singing contest, nothing less; nothing more.
He would wait for her, he had done it before. Maybe it would be easier this time. He had waited more than two years the first time around and it had been beautiful torture spending time with her. Watching her fall in and out of love, first with Shay, then Jaime, then Spiederman. All the while knowing she belonged with him. Qwest had caught it early on, maybe before Tommy had even realized it himself. He had called Tommy on it at Jude's sixteenth birthday party, and just hours after convincing Qwest that he wouldn't cross that line, Tommy had crossed it. He crossed it and the minute he did, he knew there was no crossing back.
That kiss in the rain had changed his life forever. It had shaken him to his core and scared the hell out of him. In that kiss he felt his world shift on it's axis and, from that moment on, nothing had ever been the same for him. Since then he had tried to date other woman and had even managed to care a little about Sadie. But in the back of his mind and the center of his heart, there was only Jude. He had tried to push her away a few times, maybe even scare her away, mostly out of fear of how much he loved her and how easily she could shatter him. But she had remained steadfast by his side, often as a partner and co-writer, occasionally as a lover and girlfriend, but mostly as a best friend. The best friend he'd ever had and the only person he had ever truly trusted. Even when the weren't together or were involved with other people, and no matter how mad they were at each other, he knew if the chips were down, Jude would always choose him. She would always put him first.
So now it was his turn to put her needs before his own. He would wait, as long as it took, until she came back to him. He would give her all the space she needed to figure out who she was and what she really wanted. When he had left for New Brunswick he had told her he needed to do it alone and when she hadn't understood that, and had followed him anyway, it had blown their love apart. Now she was asking the same of him and he couldn't pretend that he didn't understand. More importantly, he couldn't risk destroying their love for good. He had waited years the first time, and that was before he knew what her love really felt like. Now that he knew, he could wait forever. He just prayed that he wouldn't have to.
Please review; I honestly have no idea if this is any good or not. I sounded good to me at the time, but then again, so did my singing and I was way off base with that!
Bizzare sidenote: I named this chapter, then decided I wanted it to be a song title (like they did on the series). So before changing it, I searched Youtube for a song called Learning To Let Go(just in case there was one) and I found the most amazing, perfect, could have been written for this chapter, beautiful, sad Jommy song by Corey Crowder called (you guessed it) Learning To Let Go! You have to check it out, I swear it's what Tommy would have written after Jude left. I cried through the whole song.