Pauley: Go listen to the song 'Nina' by Ed Sheeran at some point, it'll help this make sense!
It had been three days since he'd heard the news, and he'd not left his flat since.
People had come, friends, his agent, his brother, but not her. And he hadn't left. How could he? Everything out there reminded him of her.
He read through the letter again, his heart breaking once more. Tears welled in his blue eyes ("Like the ocean. Beautiful.") and he set the paper down, picking up the notepad that lay nearby. Flipping to a fresh page, he began to scribble almost violently, getting his feelings down on paper. ("Always so emotional." Her laugh rang through the small space before she kissed him. "Sometimes I question which one of us is the girl.")
Tears blurred his vision, but still he kept writing. This wasn't the first song he'd written about her, and he knew it wouldn't be the last, but this one, he knew already, would be the most honest. The one that told it all.
So he couldn't use her name.
He searched his brain as he read back through the lyrics he'd written and it struck him.
Nina.
His agent jumped upon the song, once Killian had performed it. 'Truly Inspiring' he'd called it, and Killian had to resist the need to roll his eyes. ("Always rolling them beautiful eyes. The world isn't that bad." She'd rolled her own eyes as she'd said it, laughing to herself.)
There was nothing inspirational about it, he was just being honest about her for the first time.
He refused to have anyone else record any part of this track. He did it all, the voice, the guitar, the drums. This was his pain, his story, his Nina. ("Do you ever call anyone by their name? It's not love, for heavens sake." She scolded, wagging her finger at him. He didn't even know her name, nicknames just came natural to him.) It didn't take them long to get it finished, it wasn't a complicated track. Just one that hurt him.
He refused to do an 'artsy' video for this song. Refused to have someone even attempt to play her, they'd never get her right. So it was just him. Him in locations that fit the song. Locations that made him think of her. The one that hurt the most was playing the guitar, sat on the swings. ("Y'know, I don't think it's possible for a guy to look anything but hot if he's holding a guitar." She smirked at him "Then again, there are exceptions to every rule." She was still laughing when the pillow he threw hit her in the face.)
It was interviews that he hated the most, however. Nosey reporters and presenters, poking and prying into his music, into his life.
"So Nina... Is she based on a real person?" He said nothing, staring down at his lap and attempting to regulate his breathing. ("I've never seen anyone lose their temper like you do. What did the wall ever do to you?" She was joking, naturally, as she brushed the plaster from the floor. "And you're paying for it." She added on, turning to smile at him. With that smile, he wasn't angry any more.)
"I don't want to talk about that track." Which naturally made everyone so much more interested.
Before he knew it, it had been a year since his song had come out. But still, no-one had let it go. Everyone wanted to know who Nina was really. ("Honestly, give the public a little slip and they all turn rabid." She shook her head as she folded the newspaper, turning to him with a sigh. "It's ridiculous.") But he never spoke about her, not to anyone. He preferred to pretend that she never existed, unless he was alone.
Alone, she was all he could think about.
He didn't want to open the new letter, not wanting to hear any new news. Surely they knew how he felt. Had they not deciphered the song? But he couldn't help himself, he had to look. ("It says here that human curiosity is one of the most dangerous things to us." She chuckled and set her psychology textbook down on her lap. "Never mind curiosity killed the cat, curiosity killed the person.") The news made him feel sick, his stomach revolting against what his eyes were seeing.
And for the first time since reading the original letter that final time, he cried over her.
Everyone had forgotten him, he was old news. He'd been in the business ten years and although he still released songs every so often, they didn't sell that well. He didn't mind really.
The only thing that kept cropping up from time to time was her. Was that song.
Who was Nina?
But he'd never told. He'd kept her to himself. ("Jealous, are we?" She sauntered towards him with a smirk, her hand gripping the front of his shirt before tugging him forward, not that she needed to exert much force. He always gravitated towards her. "Don't be. I'm with you.")
A knock on the door surprised him from his thoughts and he stood, stretching carefully as he made his way over, not bothering to look through the peephole as he swung the door open.
Everything crashed around him.
"Hello Killian." There she stood. There stood his Nina. There stood the mystery woman that everyone wanted to know about.
And beside her stood her husband, a little boy by his side, his eyes the same colour as hers.
He could only get one word past his lips.
"Emma."
("Are you always this articulate when you try to talk to women?")