He had been the one.
Nick had been the one who had watched while she cried over the boys that had broken her heart time and time again. Nick had been the one who had watched while she got excited over the new boys that replaced the old ones, filling the hole that the last one had left. Nick had been the one who had watched while the vicious cycle continued and she sobbed into his shoulder about how she couldn't find a decent guy that care for her in the way she did for him.
Things just never worked out for Nick when it came to Miley. He had spent years wondering what he had to do and who he had to be to make her love him like she had when she was fourteen, but none of his solutions ever seemed to bring them closer. He always ended up the way he started – nursing a broken heart and wanting her more than he had before. She had moved on in the seven years that had passed since they were together, and it killed him to admit it.
He had seen her with enough guys to know that things never exactly worked out in her favour. They all only wanted one thing from her, and she gave it to them every single time, not even realising that they would be out the door the second they got what they were looking for from her.
"What's wrong with me?" she would sob as he cradled in her in his arms. "Why do they always leave me, Nicky? Am I that difficult a person to be around?"
He had no answer to her questions, or at least not an answer that she would like to hear. He knew exactly why they left, and it was less to do with her and more to do with the types of guys she brought back to her place. He had held her close and listened as she vowed to change herself, knowing fully well that she wouldn't change herself for the world, no matter how much she thought she needed to. It wasn't in her nature to do that for a guy.
A knock on the car window brings him from his thoughts, and he looks up to see his brother staring at him through the glass. Joe motions for him to unlock the car. He obligingly does so and Joe leaps in as quickly as he can.
"It's raining like a bitch today, huh?" he grumbles, staring out as the elements batter against Nick's windscreen.
"Did you give her the letter?" Nick asks immediately.
Joe nods solemnly. "She wants you to know that she's sorry it had to be this way."
Nick says nothing, preferring to stare silently at the church ahead of him. His heart is pounding against his chest as his thoughts fly back and forth like a ping-pong ball.
Bad analogy, he thinks. Ping-pong had always reminded him of Miley and the time they had spent getting to know each other again after all the pain and heartache of their bad break-up.
Joe nudges him nervously with his elbow. "Let's get going, man. This place isn't good for you. Not today." He glances back at the church and then back to his younger brother. "It's too late for this."
"How does she look?" His voice isn't any louder than a faint murmur, but it's impossible not to hear him in the silence of his Mustang, the only sound being the pitter-patter of the rain on the windscreen.
"As beautiful as you can imagine."
"Does she look happy?"
Joe hesitates. He can tell by the hesitation that it isn't going to be good news. He can tell that it's going to sting a little and he's not going to like his brother's answer, but he has to know whether he's going the right thing in letting her go. He has to be sure that, despite the weather not exactly co-operating with her idea of a dream wedding, she wants what he is giving to her; that none of this is a grave and heart-breaking mistake on both parts.
"She wanted you there, Nick."
He knows that she did, that she still does, but when he got that invitation in the mail all those weeks ago, he couldn't bring himself to go. He told her as much. What man wanted to watch the woman he was in love with marry another man? In his eyes, marriage was eternal and everlasting. He wasn't going to watch while his girl made a life-long commitment to someone as different and as unsuited to her as her fiancé.
"He asked me first," she had whispered when he told how much he had wanted to be the one she walked down the aisle to. His cries and shouts that he had loved her hadn't been enough when it came down to it, because someone else was the real man in the situation and he had asked her first at a time when getting married and settling down was as far back in Nick's mind as it could possibly be.
That had been the last night they had spoken to or seen one another. He had told her that he wouldn't be attending her wedding, no matter how much she begged, and she had told him that she no longer loved him in the way that he needed her to. As much as her confession had shattered him, he had left that night knowing that things between them had to change, and change they did. He couldn't be her human shield anymore when he couldn't have all of her, because what was what he needed. All of her. Not part of her affections or fractions of her attention, but all of her.
"It's time to let her go, buddy," Joe whispers, gripping his shoulder supportively.
So Nick reverses out of his parking space and drives out of the lot. He looks in the rear-view mirror and imagines them running from the church, a smile on her face and her white dress billowing behind her as she tries to escape the rain.
He can't help but hope that she sees his Mustang drive away from the church on her wedding day and comes to realise that she's lost him forever by marrying someone else. Maybe that way, she'll realise how much it broke him to sacrifice his own happiness in the way that he had for her.