So, this is a companion oneshot to If Things Were Different, though you don't really have to have read that – this oneshot is pretty self-explanatory. I wrote this a while ago, a few months after I posted If Things Were Different, and I've been holding onto it for a long time, not really sure whether I should upload it. Hopefully you all enjoy it. I never proofread this, so forgive me for any mistakes.
I should have stopped caring a long time ago. That song shouldn't affect me anymore. He shouldn't affect me anymore. But the sad truth is that it does. He does, and it's killing me. I should let it go – I know that. It is not realistic to hold onto something so unbelievably unattainable, and yet I do, because even when I was a scared teenager with no idea how to handle all of this, he gave me something so strong and stable to hold onto that even now, I can't let it go.
It's been nearly ten months since I heard that stupid song, and still, it's all I can think about. It's in my head in the shower, in the car, in meetings. I can hear it when I'm with my fiancé, when I'm with my family, but most all, I can hear it when I'm alone.
I told him all those months ago that, maybe if things were different, we could be together, and I guess that, in a way, things are different. I'm not as happy as I was then, even though I put on a show and act like I am. My career may be coming back, but my engagement is a disaster. Liam makes it clear that he's sick and tired of the changes I've made to both my appearance and my behavior, and I'm not exactly a big fan of the fact that the man I plan to marry would prefer to work on back-to-back movies than spend time with me.
I know it's not fair of me to do this to any of us, most of all Nick, but here I am on his doorstep in New York, trying to pluck up the courage to lift a finger and knock on his door.
Before I have the chance, I can hear footsteps around the corner, not to mention that unmistakable voice that makes my stomach somersault every time it reaches my ears, even though I know that it shouldn't.
Nick comes around the corner, talking casually on his cell phone with a paper bag full of groceries in his arms, but abruptly halts when he sees me outside his apartment.
"Hey, I'm going to have to call you back," he says quietly. Then, without waiting for a response from whoever he was talking to, hangs up and continues to stare at me from his position down the hall.
"Miley," he murmurs.
I twist my hands nervously and stare back at him, my mouth open but no words coming out. I don't really know what I had intended to say when I asked Demi for his address in New York and asked my driver to come straight here from my interview, but here I am.
"What are you doing in the city?"
I always loved that about Nick. He tries to breach a subject as sensitively as possible whilst remaining mature and controlled, edging around the issue carefully until he can find another way of asking what he wants so desperately to know.
"Promotion," I answer. "I don't know if you heard, but my song came out, and –"
"I heard it," he interrupts. He slowly approaches me and, slipping past me, puts his key into the lock of his apartment door. "I saw the video too. Can't say that it was unexpected, really. I know that you wanted to break away."
"It wasn't about breaking away."
"Wasn't it?"
I remain silent as he pushes the door open and drops the bag of groceries onto a table in his entryway. I guess that the video was about breaking away, but the fact that Nick still knows me well enough to know what to expect from me kills me a little bit inside. I understand that I was the one to break things off once and for all last fall, but things have changed since then.
"Aren't you going to come in?"
I follow him obediently into the apartment and, unable to help myself, look around. His line of guitars is no surprise, nor is the fact that he left the television on ESPN when he left. Sheet music is scattered across his coffee table and on top of the piano. His record collection fills an entire set of shelves in the corner of the expansive room, whilst his large golden retriever is curled on a cushion near the window.
He follows my gaze and smiles down at the sight of Elvis. "He usually stays with my parents when I'm in the city, but I've missed him, so I brought him back with me last time I visited."
I nod, but say nothing. What is there to say? We both know that I'm not here to talk about his dog.
"So … where's Liam?"
"Filming. As usual." I sit down on his couch and look away from him. "I heard some of your new material online. It's great, Nick. You've really matured."
"Have I topped your song yet?"
I know he is not talking about my own single, but rather the song he wrote for me. The fact that he found a gentle way to bring up our last face-to-face conversation makes my heart clench painfully inside my chest. He's so like the teenage boy I once knew, and yet so completely and utterly different at the same time.
"I still play it live a lot, you know," he says calmly, sitting down beside me. "I know that you made yourself clear before – nothing is going to happen right now. But I like to play it. I guess that, in some twisted way, I like to feel some sort of connection to you."
"Nick …"
"Let me get this out, okay?" He takes a deep breath and shakily continues. "You were right that day. I knew what it would come down to, but I sang that song anyway, because I wanted it to affect you. I know that it was selfish and careless and cruel, but I wanted to prove to myself that you still cared, because quite honestly, I missed you, and when you told me that you were engaged, it broke me. Then you told me that you liked the song, and this sick part of me loved it and I felt hope. For the first time in a long, long time, I was hopeful that things with you might work out. I understand that they can't, at least not now, but I just wanted you to know that you were right."
His words make me stop. He somehow managed to make me speechless, searching desperately for something to say like the lovesick thirteen year old I once was.
"Things have changed," I murmur simply.
"I know. You and Liam –"
"Haven't been right in months."
Nick freezes, watching me intently as though waiting for me to tell him that I'm joking.
"He's been filming for months on end. When he's actually filming in Los Angeles, he leaves the house at six in the morning and doesn't come home midnight, and then he just goes straight to bed. Ever since those stories about the Oscars and Cannes, I don't trust him, and he sure doesn't trust me. He hates my friends and my music and every other thing in my life."
He sits in silence at my words, his eyes now glued to his designer shoes. I notice his hand shaking in his lap, and his chest noticeably moves as he takes slow and steady breaths.
"Are you okay? Is your blood sugar low or something? Do you need me to –"
"I'm fine," he responds sharply. "I just am trying to figure out what I can possibly say to you without sounding like the jealous ex-boyfriend he already thinks I am." He snaps his eyes shut. "You know, for months, I've been waiting for you to call me and say that things are different, but I didn't expect to feel like this."
"Like what?"
He finally opens his eyes and turns to face me. "Guilty. Guilty for sitting here with someone else's girl."
"I thought I was your girl," I whisper.
His gaze drifts to my ring finger and the sparkling diamond sitting there. "I think your fiancé would have something to say about that statement, don't you?" He reaches out and covers my hand. "I think that, right now, you need to go away and find yourself. You need to distance yourself from him and me and every other influential factor in your life and find your own sound."
"I have found my sound."
"No, you haven't. You may think that you have, but the sound you have now is what you think everyone else wants. What you need is to find who you are before you jump into anything with anyone. That may sound corny, but it's what you need. I know that your new music is successful already, Mi, but that doesn't change the fact that it isn't who you are. The girl I knew only needed a guitar and her voice to create something beautiful."
"That wasn't me and you know that."
"I think the girl you were when you had your show was a lot more 'you' than you give her credit for."
My eyes well with tears as I look at him. I have spent years trying to pull away from that girl and have finally succeeded. I cut off my hair, I changed my style, I wrote new material that was worlds away from the fifteen-year-old girl who sang about her dead fish. I changed everything about myself, and it's still not good enough.
Nick seems to read my thoughts and shifts closer. "If you can look me in the eye and say that you've done everything you've done for yourself and only you, then I'll admit that I was wrong. But I know you, Mi, and you're a people pleaser. You've done everything to try and prove to everyone else that you can grow past that image when you never even needed to."
"You're wrong."
He moves away again and shrugs. "Maybe I am. But if I am, going away and taking time to find yourself won't really hurt, will it? After all, would you not just come back the same person you've become?" He leans back into the couch and turns his head to watch me. "I think that you're scared. Scared that everything you've done will have been for nothing."
"You know nothing."
He smiles sadly at me. "I know a lot more than you give me credit for."
I jump to my feet and make my way over to the door. "This conversation is ridiculous. I don't even know why I came here. What a waste of my damn time." I quickly spin around and point my finger at him, unable to control my anger at him. "You've hardly called at all in months, and yet you think that you have the right to tell me what I am and what I'm not? You don't even know me anymore! To think that I came here to tell you that things are different now. That ask if we could have one more shot if I finished things with Liam. But you do what you always do and you judge me and you push me until I walk out the damn door!"
"I'm not doing anything to push you out the door, Mi. You made it there right by yourself." Nick stands up and makes his way towards me. "If things really are different, you'll go away and come back to me. If not, I won't hold it against you. If you take some time to decide who and what you want and choose Liam, that's fine. It's completely your choice. But I will not allow you to come here and tell me that things have changed when you have no evidence that this is what you really want."
He's so close now that his cologne fills my nostrils and makes me feel like I'm drowning in him.
"You have no idea what you're talking about. Are my feelings not evidence enough?"
"You once said yourself that love isn't always enough."
I observe him and realize that he's right. This isn't me. I'm not the girl he fell in love with anymore, so how can I accept him to change everything and welcome me back with open arms just because I tell him that things have changed? He knows exactly what I need, and for once in my life, I'm going to take his advice.
"I'll do what you want, if only to prove you wrong," I say softly.
He smiles, a real smile that even now he rarely gives away. "I'll be waiting."
Six months later.
This place is so familiar that I'm not surprised that I make my way to the appointed meeting place with my eyes glued to the ground. It isn't until I bump into something hard that I look up and find myself face-to-face with an angel on earth.
"You grew your hair out," he says with a smile, his hand lifting to run his fingers through the locks of light brown hair, now brushing the nape of my neck.
"Nick," I breathe.
"I told you that I'd be waiting."
Then he leans down and plants his lips on mine, and for the first time in years, I finally feel like everything is as it should be.