Disclaimer: Still aren't mine…

Disclaimer: Still aren't mine…

Author's Note: I figured I had some explaining to do, and so this is for all 2 of the people who asked me to continue. It's taken me awhile to get around to writing this, I've been pretty busy and I couldn't seem to get it started. The first line sort of popped into my head and this is what came out.. review please? I'd like to know if anyone wants me to keep going.

Radio

Chapter 2

I really hope I don't have to get used to this feeling. I'm empty, really truly empty, for the first time since Angel died. I don't know what I'm doing with myself anymore. It's so.. god, I want to hate him, but I can't. I just want to despise him as much as humanly possible and use that to build up the barrier again, so when his new single comes on the radio I won't have to run and hide or face the tears. But I've learned it's not easy enough to go from love to hate. Falling out of love should be more difficult, I suppose, because it's easier to start loving than it is to let go.

I don't love Roger, I never did, I never will. I can think it but I know it's not true. I can write it but my hands start shaking so bad you can't even read the last part of the sentence. I try to say it and my voice cracks when I speak his name and I can't finish. He's not here and yet he's still making my life a living hell.. not by what he does, but by what he doesn't do. Still hasn't called. Hasn't written. I hate him for what he does to me, for how easily he makes me feel this insignificant. But then how can I still love him? And what do I love him for?

Everything. I love everything about him, the way he smiles, the way he used to play Musetta's Waltz over and over when he couldn't find his song, the way he argues… The way he gets jealous even though it's never over me, the way he sang to Mimi before she got sick again because if I hid in my room and closed my eyes I could almost pretend he was singing to me… It's pathetic. I'm pathetic, everything about me is, so I really don't know how I can still harbor these delusions that maybe someday he'll realize that I really am worth loving.. or calling. Or writing to.

God dammit, I just want to know that he's okay and if it's not too much to ask I would really like to know why! I think I deserve an explanation. I deserve something, that's for sure. I'm not sure what.. maybe a sign of life? I scare myself sometimes by thinking about what could be going on. He could be sick. Could be dying, and I don't know because no one ever comes around anymore.. there isn't anyone to come around because I'm the only one who can't move on. I want to, I just.. I can't, because I don't want to lose him. It sounds silly, but this place is all I have left of him. Even though it's empty, like me and like the promises and like the mail slot downstairs, and like my bank account because I'm never in the mood to film anymore. I'm falling apart, would anyone like to help me pick up the pieces?

I didn't think so.

He stayed for about a week after Mimi died. A record for him. Funerals always seem to send him packing.. Whenever something bad happens—a fight, a death, bad news from the doctor, whatever—I always end up holding my breath just waiting for him to take off, so it's never a surprise to come home to an empty loft and a note on the kitchen table. Only this time, it wasn't just a quickly scrawled "Dear Mark, went to Santa Fe" on a torn-off corner of the calendar. When I came back from filming in the park and trying to take my mind off of everything, four angry white envelopes were on the table waiting. One for Benny, one for Maureen and Joanne, one for Collins, and one for me.

Mine was short; no explanation, because I didn't need one, no mentions of anything that would make him hate me like I know he must. In fact, the exact opposite; he told me he loved me. Not the love that I want or that I think maybe I might need, just the normal, best friend brotherly love that we have always had. The loving each other part was normal in a way—we'd always been close—but it scared me, because I don't think either of us had ever spoken it out loud before, let alone written it down. He said he was going to Los Angeles, told me not to worry. Like words on a page were supposed to stop me or something..

Whatever happened to missing New York before you could unpack? To coming back to the loft and settling back in without saying a word, never mentioning the screaming match we had before he went running away?

We always fight before he leaves. And then he comes back, and we don't talk about it, and everything's alright again. Only this time he didn't come back, and so I don't know what the rules are. I don't know how it's supposed to work when he's in Los Angeles and I'm here and we can't talk, so we can't pretend that we didn't hurl insults at each other before he got in his car and drove off. I used to think he would come back, and then after that I would imagine he might come back, until I said something to Maureen one day and she yelled at me, told me to get over it and that Roger was gone for good this time. I know that now. But it was nice to pretend.

I don't hate him, I hate myself for what I can't do. It's been almost three years now, and I still can't send the letter. I can't make myself love him any less, and I can't move on.