SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW
Summary: Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I'm getting old and I need something to rely on. One-shot.
Rating: R. For some swearing.
Pairing: Just read. You know I never give these away right away.
Inspiration: "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane. I basically followed the lyrics as a model, so yeah, go look at them if you want.
A/N: Blehhh. This was not originally intended to be posted, but I figured what the hell, tacked on a quick ending, and here it is. I had big plans for this one, but I think I rushed it too much by cramming it into a one-shot. It really lends more to a chapter story, but I don't feel inspired enough by the idea to push forward with that. I'm not crazy about the way it turned out, for some reason, but I hope it's just me and that you all like it.
Regarding reviews: Reviews make the world go round. Really. I saw it in the Bible. Wait. I made it up. But regardless, you'll be making my day if you do. Any kind of feedback or reactions at all. ;)
We were just two stupid kids. Two stupid kids who'd never been in love, two stupid kids who believed in things that lasted and made stupid long-term promises. We didn't know anything about real love, did we? Everything was so easy. We said what we felt exactly, we had no ties to each other. We thought what we had, the simple, beautiful thing we had could last forever.
My hand finally brushed across the exact thing it had been searching for—a worn old shoebox. I inched it out from under the bed, using one finger until its faded brown was exposed to the daylight that poured through my open window.
It'd been years since we'd last spoken. I wondered if she knew I was getting married in a few months. My fiancé was one of my clients, a beautiful up-and-coming actress who, at 26, was two years my senior. Rachel was sweet and quiet, kind of naïve for someone older than me. She didn't know much about being in the business, and joked that she needed a hard-ass like me to get around. She treated me well, I liked being around her. There was no doubting I was attracted to her; the sex was good but not mind-blowing, but you know what? My parents fought all the time, but they were passionate. Although I'd prefer not to think about it, they were so into each other at times that they completely shut out the rest of the world, including me, and the trouble with that was that they fought with the same passion in which with they loved. And when I was nineteen, they split up, and they hurt one another. So maybe I was better off having someone faithful and beautiful that I enjoyed the company of, than someone that I was completely out of control in love with. There's no mysterious psychological bullshit going on; nothing I'm unaware of. I know what happned. My parent's divorce had killed them, and killed me. Why would I ever want to put myself through that?
I removed the rubber band stretched around the center of the box, almost in slow motion, a little afraid of what I was going to find. The box hadn't been opened since I moved into the new apartment with Rachel. As I removed the lid, I let out a deep breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Why was I doing this? I didn't even know why I still had the box. It was a part of my past, of something I needed to let go of.
Maybe now I can look at it and let go. Yeah, right. I kept this part of my life confined to a small space; it wasn't who I was anymore, and so it had to be tucked away, away from everything Rachel and my life now. A messy pile of memorabilia lay in the box, looking out of place in the clean, contemporary bedroom with its white walls and white rug and white bed and curtains and furniture. And God, I fucking hate this room. I didn't even design it. Rachel called in a decorator.
Moments later, every picture, every paper, every single thing in the box was spread on the floor in front of me. Touching the white rug. My eyes were locked on the floor, mesmerized by the contact of the floor and the objects. The colorful, vibrant, laughing pictures of me and Lily, laughing, singing. Kissing. The endless lyrics, the CD case, the ticket stubs. Touching Rachel's white floor, littering it. Dirtying it. But…
It reminded me of something I used to know.
I was barely even fazed when Rachel came bursting through the door a few seconds later, excited from an interview she'd left for hours ago. I hadn't even heard her come in. She stopped dead in her tracks a few feet away from me. "Sweetie, what is all this stuff?"
She sounded far away. She was far away. I guess she spotted a picture of me and Lily kissing, because it was being waved in my face and the always-quiet Rachel was demanding to know "When was this taken? Who is that?"
I finally turned to look her in the face. She was bent over behind me; I was still on my knees, crouched before my past. With no regard for consequence, I told her flatly, "I need to go somewhere right now. I'll call you in a few hours." I grabbed at a flash of silver on the floor, and with that I was on my feet, hearing vague calls of, "What the hell is this? Who is she? We are not getting married until you explain this right now. Where are you going? Hello? You can't do this to me!" and feeling hands on my shoulders and back, but I was in such a daze. I had to go.
Three hours later, I was stepping out of my white BMW, so clean and wrong in the run-down, familiar lot. I found myself fumbling with the key I had grabbed off the floor and praying that it still worked, only to find that…the door was open.
Confused, I pushed at the door, half expecting to find it renovated and full of people. That or empty. But I was welcomed by dark only. I didn't even have to fumble for the light switch; I had memorized the whole layout of this place years ago.
Shock. It was…exactly the same. Nothing in it had changed; it even smelled like her familiar perfume. As soon as the scent hit me, my mind began recalling thousands of memories, flooding and rushing through my head at such a dizzying pace that I had to close my eyes for a moment and relax.
It felt so strange, that this shabby place was the place we used to love. This was the place I'd been fantasizing about for countless hours over the place six years. Rachel would have passed out if she knew places like this even existed. Died if she knew this place made me feel so home. The old walls; the single dim lightbulb hanging from the ceiling; the beat-up, overstuffed couch. I found myself walking over to the couch, fingering a dark stain. This was the couch where it began. The first place I'd ever really kissed her, the night we decided to be together no matter who was in our way. The stain was from beer she spilled the first time either of us had ever gotten drunk. God, I shared everything with her. We didn't always do everything right; we were always making mistakes and always making them together. We'd lie on this couch some nights and say nothing. Sometimes she read her lyrics to me, sometimes I recited those stupid quotes I used to memorize. And other times, we'd…
One memory hit me like the sudden striking of a piano key. The night before I left for college, the last night I'd seen her, we'd naturally gone to the station because it was our place…after we'd gotten together, the station fell apart and Ray and Robbie stopped coming there. Anyway, we'd been there for some time, and at one point she was lying on top of me, naked and breathing hard, and I felt our hearts beating fast together, strangely in perfect sync. Something washed over me and I swore that I would never feel this way about anybody else, and I promised her I would always come back to her. Some fucking promises.
"Hello? Who is…is that…Travis?!"
My head snapped back. I was so entranced with remembering my Lily and—Lily.
"Oh, my God!" she gasped. She raced up to me and wrapped her arms around me, burying her face into my chest, rambling on, "What are you doing here, oh, God, I saw a car outside and just something told me it had to be you, I was here doing work and I went to go get coffee and, nobody comes here, just me and, oh, it's so good to see you!" As soon as I found my arms pulling her closer, she pulled away from me, leaving her hands on my shoulders and mine barely touching her waist. "It's so good to see you," I breathed out, and she caught my eye for a moment, then broke out into a smile.
"God, you look like you're modeling for Armani," she laughed, gesturing to my crisp black suit, then dropping her hands to her sides. I smiled down at her. She was still wearing men's jeans, torn at the knees and faded, and a wifebeater, the kind she used to take from me. Her hair was tied back, a big white canvas big hung from her shoulder, covered with all the same pins she'd had in high school. Her smile suddenly faded. I glanced down at my suit, the stupid $700 shoes, remembered the intentionally styled look of my hair. I suddenly was embarassed. I looked around. She fit into this place. I had grown out.
"It's been six years, Trav. Six years. I can't believe we just never found each other again after high school. I mean, your parents split up and both moved, so you didn't come back here, it makes sense, but we never, like, visited? God, how'd that happen when we made those…?" She trailed off, looked down at the ground, no doubt noticing the damn shoes.
"We let it, I guess. Things change, you know. We were young and stupid." I stared at the top of her head, releasing my hands from her waist. "Sorry," I sighed, but then quickly changed my voice to a lighter tone. "You still look beautiful."
Her head snapped back up, eyes meeting mine. "Thanks, Trav." She chewed the inside of her cheek thoughtfully for a moment. Her eyes flickered back to the ground. "You've changed. A lot. How it is being a big-time producer?"
Before her question registered in my head, I was already blurting out, "I'm getting married to Rachel Coleman."
She nodded slowly, although I had completely ignored her question, continuing to stare at the ground, still showing no sign of emotion. "I read it in Us Weekly. I wasn't sure if it was true or not."
"I don't love her," I blurted out.
What? Her head shot up, her features twisted into a startled expression. "Um. You, you what?"
"Shit, Lily, God, I don't know what I'm doing," I confessed. The words were soft and my tone unrecognizable. Her expression only intensified.
"You know why I'm back here, Lil?" I dropped to the couch, and she, still shell-shocked, sat beside me. I continued in a fiercer tone, locking my eyes on hers. "I don't love her. She's the safest thing in the world, she loves me, she's faithful to me, and we won't fall apart like my parents did. I thought it was what I wanted. I have the best life in the world. I'm marrying Rachel Coleman, number 5 on's People 50 Most Beautiful this year, I live in a New York City loft, I'm at parties every night, premieres, I'm a top producer, I'm making all the money I could ever need. I hate every second of it, every penny, every beautiful woman, every pair of plastic boobs. Look at me. These fucking shoes? They were seven hundred dollars." I grabbed one of the shoes of my foot and hurled it at the door. It thudded hard and fell to the ground, and Lily, she stared at it, blinking.
She laughed nervously. "Um, Trav. You're a little young for a mid-life crisis."
I didn't laugh in return. She thought I wasn't serious. That this was a spur-of-the-moment thing. "Lily. This isn't just something I decided tonight, okay? I'm just confused," I confessed, bringing my hand to my face. "And the only thing I know is…you, and I just want to be back with you. Nothing's ever been like what we had."
Then she stopped. And changed. "Wait. What the fuck. You decide one night you hate your life and decide that maybe I'll still be around for you? Do I look like the kind of girl that sits and waits around? What makes you think I don't have a boyfriend, that I'm not married? Come to think of it, how'd you even know I still lived in Roscoe? And why'd you come here and not my house? How'd you know I'd be here? Not like you bothered to call and find out. You know, this was your fault. I called you in college. You could've come and visited me at Brown. Then you, you just stopped responding. You didn't want to talk to me anymore, you didn't come up to visit when I asked you to. You never called, it was always me. And now you're just gonna come back here in your fancy clothes with your fancy ass car and yell at me about your life and think that—"
"I cal—" Wait.
Something was wrong.
She was right.
"I didn't," I murmured, more to myself. The girl I'd loved. The girl I'd wanted to spend all my life with.
I didn't keep my promises.
"Lily, I," I started, but couldn't finish. Before I knew it, I, me, Travis Strong, the me that lived by my last name, was slouched back against the couch, holding my head in one hand. Utterly defeated. "I…I did this." How could I have blocked this out all these years?
Her voice softened. "Why didn't you call me? Why didn't you try to visit?"
I couldn't do this. I looked at her and rested my head into her shoulder, breathing in slowly. "You know who the most in love couple I ever saw was? My parents. They reminded me of us, when they weren't fighting." I looked up at her again, moving my hand to her cheek. She flinched a little bit, but didn't push it away.
"All the fighting, it made it not seem worth it. And now I don't know what could be worse than how I'm living. I'm so lost here. I'm just. I'm by myself in this, you know? I'm so tired of how my life is; God, I have nothing left from my past. Except this old box of all this stuff, this box I made with all these old things from you and me, and I was keeping it all hidden away, but I was still holding on to it. I just want to be back. You were the only thing that ever really made me happy and I pushed you away but Lily, I need you to get me back. That fucking box, those pictures, those memories, were the only thing I ever could rely on these past years, to bring me back to living again, but I'm gone now. The further and further I get away from the years I was with you, the harder it is to imagine ever getting it back."
I realized my hand had found hers and she wasn't pulling it away, and stopped just in case she wanted to say something. She didn't, for a moment, just stared at our clasped hands until she flicked her eyes up to look at me. Leaning in closer, she broke out into a grin. "You know, I really miss the corny as hell intellectual quotes. In all the years I've known you, you've never just outright explained a problem; you just used to leave me to intepret those stupid quotes that you lived your life through and figure out what was wrong. You've changed. But you know, it really doesn't matter, because quotes or not, the fact that you always know just the thing to say to keep me from getting pissed at you is still there."
I laughed. "Are you calling me a con artist?"
"You don't look like you anymore," she continued matter-of-factly, ignoring my question. "I was really put off by the hair, the clothes, the fact that you threw me out of your life…you never used to spend so much time trying to look good. Or did things just because you could, and I know for a fact you hate white cars because they're not practical, and the only reason I can think of for you buying that BMW out there is that it looks like money; white cars are high-maintenance. You never used to wonder if your life looked good to other people, but it always did."
"It hasn't felt good. Since you."
Close-lipped, she smiled, but it looked more like a smirk to me. "Are you going to marry Rachel?"
"I can't. Not after seeing you again," I admitted. It was true. I moved our hands to my chest, over my heart, letting her feel the rapid, quickening beat. "Do you feel that?"
Another smile, but this time her face flushed, and her eyes wide as she told me, point-blank, "Good. Then I'm not going to feel guilty when you kiss me."
Which is exactly what I intended to do.
And as I pressed my mouth to hers, I wasn't even overwhelmed by the sudden rush of emotion, like I thought I would be. I just wanted to keep kissing her, keep my mind in this place; I wanted simplicity and her. And maybe I was trying to block out any thoughts because I did have a woman waiting for me at home and a hundred thousand dollar wedding arranged to happen in a few months, but maybe it was because there was nothing else. Maybe she was the girl who had been waiting for me back at home all these years.