A/N: This is a quickie. Read, review and then go to the link on my profile and do the same for my fictionpress story, please.
Why Goodbyes Never Seem to Happen Here
He's always been good at hellos. They are his specialty. Dropping in every now and again to stir up trouble and cause a wave in that perfect little Mayberry town. He likes the quick conversations just to make sure nothing drastic has happened since the last Tsunami he caused. He likes running. He was good at making an impression.
He likes hellos. It's the goodbyes he's always been a little iffy on.
He said it twice to one girl in particular.
The first was after she came to see him. He didn't say goodbye so she skipped school to make it happen. She missed him, he could tell. He didn't want to believe it and she was too timid and/or stubborn to admit it. They ate hotdogs and he taught her how to navigate a subway train. He showed her his favorite record store and then it was time to let her go. He prolonged the act. Once she was on the bus, he prolonged it even further asking her why she had come. Her answer was that he didn't say goodbye to her. Who is he to deny a pretty girl what she wants?
He said goodbye. So did she.
It didn't stick.
He was back by the end of the next week, kissing her--or rather her kissing him--at her mother's best friend's wedding. Then she was gone for the summer. Without a goodbye. She did say Welcome Home, though, so maybe she was opting for a hello. He couldn't tell after three months of zero contact from her.
It took months after her reappearance for them to get it right and half a year later for him to get it wrong. He failed her so he ran off in search of a man who never wanted him. The man who said hello to him while saying goodbye. The man who taught him the only thing he knew for certain. He saw her on the bus as he was trying to make his escape. She wasn't supposed to be there, he made sure of it before he bought the ticket but there she was sitting in the seat next to him wearing the same school uniform she wore that fateful day in New York.
He didn't say goodbye and neither did she. But the look she gave him as she exited the bus. . .that was worse than an actual goodbye. She knew what was happening; that this was the last time she'd see him. She didn't even try to stop him because by then she already knew that this was his thing and stopping him would just be cruel.
He said hello a few more times.
He said, "I'm leaving.". Not technically a goodbye.
He said, "Wait." Sort of a re-hello.
Most importantly he said, "I love you." Which was neither. It was an in-between. It was wait, don't go, let me; it was I do, but I can't.
But she didn't know what to make of it. She wasn't in his head anymore, how was she to know what he wanted her to think?
He said, "Come with me." It was a don't make me say goodbye to you, ever.
She said, "No." I've said it too many times, now it's your turn.
He was too good at leaving her, so she had to get good at being left. By then she was and she helped him do it.
It was a long time before he said hello again. She was a mess, all outside of the lines she used to love and he had finally learned to color on the page instead of the walls.
Her boyfriend had made it on to his Hit List for being the only person worse for her than he was himself. The boyfriend made her want to leave him, make her leave herself out in the rain while this strange woman took over her body for a while. The boyfriend was a jetsetter and a seasoned womanizer and she got even better at goodbyes than he taught her to be.
When he left that time, he knew that he didn't have much more in him. He couldn't say it yet, it wasn't time. But almost.
At least he did some good. She said goodbye to everything she had become and hello to everything was. For once, it was the right thing to do.
He sent her an invitation into his new life and for the first time since New York, she was the one coming to him.
She was there and he had finally mastered a few new words and everything was so close to being right. But, she had lost the ability to say goodbye. She wanted to, but the boyfriend had his hooks in her. He wasn't right for her, he did more to her than with her. He put no stock in their relationship, but she wasn't ready to let go of it.
When she was half way out the door he finally said it, "Goodbye, Rory."
But she couldn't do it.
It took years. And in between she graduated college, got a job and finally left the boyfriend. He wasn't her future. She traveled on the Obama campaign and by the end of it, she was ready to put down roots; moveable roots. She did a stint in Paris and wrote a few articles on business trips she made to Italy and England and China. She was successful and happy in her success.
But, she missed home. She said goodbye to everything East of the Atlantic. She got a job in Chicago and stayed there for two years.
She met a man who painted for a living. She got lost in the sort of love that leaves you breathless. The sort that's wild and unpredictable and exciting, but not real and deep. She got lost in cleansing her heart of all the stitches that she had put in it in the past.
When she broke up with him she broke up with the city. She had to say goodbye to the both of them.
Meanwhile, he was basking in the person he was now.
He had mastered hello and goodbye. He had a blonde for a few months, a brunette for a year, and redhead for half of that. He thought he sort of loved them all in a way. There was cleansing, and comfort, and friendship. He had wild, unpredictable love with them all.
They left their impressions on him and he did his part with them. He was regressing and progressing at the same time. Each kiss, every touch of the skin meant two very different things.
He hadn't forgotten any of the words he learned. He remembered to say goodbye to them all because he remembered what happened with the last girl he didn't do that with.
He fell in love with his company. He fell in love with his words. Words that weren't coming so easily anymore, a company that needed money.
He and his friends found a backer. One that said the goodbyes for him. He was given the opportunity to leave Philadelphia and leave his new and improved impression on another city. One that probably missed him.
The streets of New York always seemed to embrace him no matter how long he was away from them. Every morning when he left his apartment he was engulfed in sounds and sights. People from every state and every continent milled around him not caring who he was or what he has or has not done.
Every day was the same but so different. New York offered him so many new beginnings. So many chances.
She had her dream job, her dream apartment, good friends, and a much shorter commute to her mother than Chicago had given her. New York gave her everything she ever wanted.
Even on the days when everything she carried with her ended up covering the sidewalk, she couldn't have asked for more.
His shoulder had collided just perfectly with a body and before he could think, sheets of white were clouding his vision.
And then it was something else entirely. It was blue and brown and surprise!
"Hello," He said.
A slow smile spread across her face, "Hi."
And that was the beginning of that.