A/N: Hey everyone, this is chapter 18 from Owen's pov, as I see it. Except that I haven't written the part where Annabel actually tells him about what happened, because this took me ages anyway and I thought it would make it too long! So I may write it as a second chapter, if some people read this. I would love to know what other Just Listen fans and Owen fans think of this, so please review if you have time ;-)

And also…happy bday to me! (if I get this up before midnight…I'm nearly there on UK time) Lol! I'm 19 today, so posting this up is my bday present to myself. (Yes, I obviously have nothing better to do on my birthday than write fanfiction…oh, the woes of being in love with a fictional character!)

Characters, dialogue, storyline etc belong to Sarah Dessen.

Please forgive the unoriginal title. I feel it is to the point, though ;)

All our secrets melt like ice, leaving only water…
Day so soon, hear all the traffic move. The sirens all fill this room till we both have to shout. From the road, watching the stars explode. You and I breathe so slow.

How strange the sound.

–'Gravity' by Bic Runga

As the last song of my show drew to a close I started to clear some of the CDs that were piled around my feet onto the space on the desk. I contemplated uneasily the clothes-shopping trip my mom had asked me to take Mallory on this afternoon. She would ramble on about fashion whether I chose to listen or not… I wished I could have a little help to keep me from going insane. As I picked up the Gogol Bordello and Sigur Ros CDs I looked out of the window to the left, where something yellowish had caught my peripheral vision. The yellow had disappeared from view but a car I recognised was parked next to mine in the mostly deserted lot. A sharp jolt ran through my stomach as I realised whose yellow top I must have seen, and in my head I saw clearly the girl who had been wearing it.

Why now? was my first bitter thought, but even so, I couldn't move my eyes from her as she made her way through the lobby. All the worry and the hurt and everything that I hadn't been able to deal with over the past couple of months- I had been keeping track of the time- was crashing down on me once again, throwing me into turmoil. I felt mad, and I let that overcome the emotion underneath it, the relief of having her so close to me again after all this time.

I waited for her to notice me, my arms crossed so that I wouldn't accidentally hug her with them or something; what my body wanted to do, not my head. But when she did see me I felt that jolt again, this time somewhere in my ribcage. I was still taken off guard by it, although I should have been adequately forewarned. I mean, I knew what she did to me…the effect she had. Well, what effect she had had, they way things had been. But you never give up hope do you? Even when it's been so bloody long.

I wondered for a moment if she would even come in. But she couldn't really walk away now could she? Now we'd made eye contact. I didn't know, and I hated that. I go crazy when I don't know where I stand, when I can do nothing but helplessly go along with some game I never wanted to play. I wouldn't have let her just leave, though. I'd go and run after her if I had to; there was no way I'd let her walk away from me again without explanation, after enduring two months of this kind of this painful confusion.

She pushed open the door, and I glared had her. I knew she was uncomfortable but this was one confrontation she was going to have to deal with.

'Hi' she said.

The first time I'd heard to her voice for a while. I tried to read her tone of voice; figure out what she was doing here… another game? 'Hey.' My reply was uninterested and dull, a moment too late for normal conversational timing.

Just then Rolly's voice came through the speakers, all happy and unconcerned as if it was normal to just pop round after two months of ignoring your friends. 'Annabel! Hey! What's going on?'

Christ! Seriously? I turned to glare at him too and he switched the mic off quitting his wave mid hand stroke. Clarke quit waving too. Jeeze. I hate to interrupt this impromptu shindig but everything's kind of hanging in the balance for me right now.

'What are you doing here?' I demanded Annabel.

'I need to talk to you.'

Hell yeah, you do. But there was still that reflexive echo in my thoughts, the ones more honest to my true feelings, which needed to know why she had been hurting- what was so bad she needed to hide.

Rolly and Clarke rushed out the booth then as if there was a trail of fire in their wake.

'We're, um, going to go ahead to the bacon' Rolly said to me hurriedly. 'See you there?' He gave Annabel a smile.

I nodded, although there was no way I would leave this until I had a full explanation.

'You okay?' Clarke asked Annabel.

'Yeah, I'm fine.'

Of course. Fine.

Clarke shot me a look as if warning me not to get mad at Annabel. I ignored her, turning away. Believe me it would never have been my intention to hurt Annabel's feelings. But the best laid plans and all that… nothing had panned out like I'd intended or wanted.

I began to pack up my stuff, focusing on wrapping my headphones carefully around my ipod. 'I don't have much time' I hinted, 'so if you've got something to say go ahead and say it.'

'Okay,' she said. 'It's – ' She bit her lip and that took me in a painful rush back to when I used to watch her do that all the time; when she was nervous of saying what she felt. She was unaware of it mostly I was sure. 'It's about this,' she continued.

I looked to see was she meant and was surprised to see she was holding a burnt CD. It was the make I used, and I wondered…

She cleared her throat. 'It was supposed to blow my mind? Remember?'

There are times when being honest is a pain in the ass, especially when you want to salvage your own feelings. 'Vaguely' I hedged, trying not to remember too clearly any of the CDs I made her.

'I listened to it last night. But I just wanted to be, um, sure I got it. Your intention, I mean.'

I was honestly confused, as I tried to figure out why she would listen to it, now, and what the hell she was on about. 'My intention.' I said flatly.

'Well, you know, there's a lot left up to interpretation. So I just wanted to make sure I really, you know, got it.'

I just started at her, waiting to see if she was going to explain further. Apparently not. Of course, music was all about interpretation. But that's why there was nothing to 'get,' exactly. So her reaction made me wonder if we were even having the same conversation. When was this going to get to the point? I held out my hand a little, indicating that she should hand me the CD. I hadn't written any tracklisting on it, and I pointed this out.

'Don't you remember what you put on it?' She asked.

'It was a long time ago.' I glanced at her pointedly. 'And I gave you a lot of CDs.'

There had been loads of tracklists, up in my head and on my ipod that I wanted to burn for her and it was hard to distinguish between them and reality.

'Ten' she informed me.

Okay, I did remember that.

'I listened to them all.'

Again I felt something in my stomach, slower now. She'd still been thinking of me then, some of the time at least. 'Really,' I just said, my voice non committal.

She nodded. 'Yeah. You told me you wanted me to before I put that one on.'

'Ah' I said slowly. 'So now you care about what I want.'

I waited, on edge for her response.

'I always cared about that.'

Her voice was so low and soft, it was hard for me to doubt her sincerity; even harder as I wanted to believe it so badly. That made it even more confusing as to why she'd done everything she did. We were obviously on different wavelengths here.

'Really? It's been kind of hard to tell, by the way you've been avoiding me for the past two months' I retorted.

I put the disc in the console. I needed to move my hands, or I'd start shaking with anger and God knows what other mixed up emotions I was feeling now.

'I figured that was what you wanted.'

'Why?' I pressed the play button. I heard her swallow, and I swallowed almost involuntarily too, like catching a yawn. So then there was just silence left in the space in between.

'You were the one who got out of the car in the parking lot that day and walked out. You'd had it with me.'

I almost shook my head. She'd got it so damn wrong. There was no way I'd had it with her; I hadn't been able to stop thinking about her, for God's sake! I'd given her a chance to explain. When she walked out, she gave me nothing. 'You ditched me at a club and wouldn't even tell me why,' I practically yelled. I tried to concentrate on the stupid controls, tried to breathe. 'I was pissed, Annabel.'

'Exactly. You were pissed. I'd let you down. I was not what you wanted me to be –'

She was talking crap. She'd never let me down. I'd never wanted to change her; I'd just hoped she would allow herself to be who she really was. ' – and so you just bolted,' I cut her off.' I tried to get my head round how things had gone so wrong over a misunderstanding, as I fiddled with the dial. (Had the music somehow been wiped off here or something? I wondered if she had a giant magnet in her bag…but no, magnets can't erase CDs. Where were the first few two tracks? Had she scratched it?) 'Disappeared. One argument, and you're out of there.' I had to speak over the static.

'What did you want me to do?' she asked.

'Tell me what was going on, for one. God, tell me something. It's like I said, I could have handled it.'

'Like you were handling my not saying anything? You were furious with me.'

'So what? I was entitled.' I glanced away from her at the console again. 'People get mad, Annabel. It's not the end of the world.'

'So I was supposed to just explain myself, and let you be mad at me, and then maybe you might have got over it –'

'I would have got over it,' I said, impatient.

'– or not' she said, returning my glares. 'Maybe it would have changed everything.'

I could hardly believe this. Everything had changed for me. So much. How could the other scenario have possibly been worse? 'That happened anyway!' I said. 'I mean, look at us now. At least if you'd told me what was going on, we could have dealt with it. As it was, you just left everything hanging, no resolution, nothing. Is that what you wanted? That I be gone for good, rather than just mad for a little while?' I had been so messed up over this. I'd thought I'd lost her.

'I didn't' she said. 'I didn't realize that was an option.' She looked a little stunned.

'Of course it was.'

I felt like sighing in exasperation as I looked up at the speaker above me. The static was starting to drown us both out, we were getting lost in the noise. 'Whatever it was, it couldn't have been that bad. All you had to do was be honest. Tell me what really happened.'

'It's not that easy.'

'Is this?' I asked desperately. 'Ignoring and avoiding each other, acting like we were never friends? Maybe for you. It's sucked for me. I don't like playing games.' Don't like was perhaps an understatement there. I'd be tearing my hair out if I'd had a little more to spare. I watched her expression change. I'd definitely got to her there.

'I don't like that either' she said slowly, a little through her teeth. 'But –'

'If it's so big that it's worth all of this,' I gestured, 'all this crap and weirdness that's happened since then, it's too big to keep inside. You know that.'

'No' Annabel replied, angry now, and throwing her arms up a little. 'You know that, Owen. Because you don't have problems with anger – yours or anyone else's. You just use all your little phrases, and everything you've learned, and you're always honest and you never regret a thing you say or how you act –'

Wrong, wrong. I'm still human. 'Yes, I do.' I regretted that it might have been my fault that she'd walked out on me.

' – and I'm not like that,' she interrupted my thoughts. 'I'm just not.'

'Then what are you like, Annabel? A liar, like you told me that first day? Come on. That was the biggest lie of all.' She was shaking to, like I had been; she was really pissed at me now, but at least I was getting a reaction. 'If you were a liar, you would have just lied to me,' I continued, speaking over the angry hissing of the static that seemed to be the audio representation of our moods. 'You would have just acted like everything was fine. But you didn't.'

'No' she said, shaking her head at my words.

No what? 'And don't tell me this is easy for me, because it's not.' My voice was nearly cracking. 'These last couple of months have sucked, not knowing what's going on with you.' That was the whole truth and nothing but. 'What is it, Annabel? What's so bad you can't even tell me?'

'You don't understand.' Her voice was hard. I could see her fists were clenched and her face was flushed.

'Then tell me, and maybe I will.' This is what it all came down to. This is what I needed to know before I boiled over and punched a wall or something. And seem as the walls here were all glass, not something I want to try. I pushed out a chair for her to sit on. 'And what' I added to my previous words, 'is going on with this CD? Where's the music? Why can't we hear anything?' I'd finally had it with this static.

'What?' she stuttered, seemingly shocked by this revelation. Hadn't she noticed there had been no music? I guess she was a little distracted.

I pressed the skip buttons, fruitlessly searching for something that faintly resembled music. 'Fuck' I swore to myself, as it was all the same. Why does nothing ever work?

'Isn't that the point' she said, confused, pulling my attention back to her again.

'What?' I said, wondering if she were talking in some female code or something I couldn't understand. 'What point?' Why would she think I would give her a blank CD? Bit of a crappy thing to give someone isn't it?

But she didn't explain the point. Instead she slumped down on the chair and for a moment I thought she might be sick again or faint or something. Any last vestiges of anger I might have had evaporated quickly. I slowly turned the volume down, focusing on her face. Her eyes were squeezed shut. I had the same prickling fear that had become somewhat familiar to me in these last weeks, the fear that there must be something really wrong, and the desperate need to just know it so that I could help her.

'Annabel?' I leant towards her, really worried now. Her hair had fallen partly over her face and I wanted brush it back behind her ear, to make her open her eyes and look at me. 'What is it?'

That was the question.

She opened her eyes and leaned forward, till her face was about a foot from mine. My next words caught in my throat as she repeated what I had once said to her.

'Don't think or judge. Just listen.'

And I did.