"The sky was gold, it was rose, I was taking sips of it to my nose and I wish I could get back there, some place back there, smiling in the pictures you would take…and when the plane came in, she said she was crashing. The velvet, it rips in the city, we tripped on the urge to feel alive…now I'm struggling to survive…I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life."

Third Eye Blind, Semi-Charmed Life


Waking up was always brutal.

It was like the end of an amazing dream.

Reality breaks in, depressing, inadequate reality that was nothing compared to the fantasy wrapped up in a dream or in slipping away. It brought back obligations and money and pain.

And all she wanted to do was go back to sleep, go back to the place she'd just been, the blank darkness where she felt nothing.

Waking up was hard.

It was felt like she'd been asleep for years just to be woken up by the bright, harsh lights of reality. She didn't want to open her eyes. She didn't want to be reminded of her empty apartment or the trash covering her place or the pills she'd taken just to escape.

So she sat there, wherever she was in her apartment, eyes closed and hands shaking as she continued to come down from her high.

And then she heard footsteps.

Alarmed, her eyes fluttered open. The room around her was blurry and spinning for a moment when she first opened them. Then, as everything started to come into focus, she turned, looking behind the couch where she heard the footsteps.

Landon was standing in her kitchen.

Erin was confused. Slowly, groggily, she stood up from the couch, ignoring all the trash on her coffee table and kitchen counters, "Landon?"

He turned, "Hey, you're awake." He smiled.

"Yea…" Erin tilted her head, "Uh, how did you get in?"

Landon smirked and walked up to her, "You let me in." He paused when he saw the confused expression on her face, "Figures you wouldn't remember…you were…man, you were like delusional last night. I mean, so high you could barely remember your own name."

"But I only took some pills…"

"Yea, but you also drank a whole bottle of whiskey by yourself and that was before I even got here." He smiled, "But god, you were fun." He smiled and put his hands on her waist.

"So you slept over?" Erin said, not really reacting at his touch.

Landon nodded slowly, "Yea, I know we agreed no sleeping over, but I just thought-"

"You thought what?" Erin cut in, "That you would spend the night here and suddenly I would fall in love with you and we would get married, have kids and run off to the suburbs?" She asked sarcastically, "I already told you, Landon, we are not doing this to fall in love. I'm not your girlfriend. We're just two friends who hang out sometimes."

Landon was slightly hurt, "And have sex." He muttered.

"Sex doesn't mean anything."

Landon creased his eyebrows, "Yes it does. It's intimate…and you have to be comfortable with the other person and trust them." He said, "It makes you feel connected to the other person."

"I don't feel anything anymore."

Landon sighed, getting frustrated. He was already unstable because he was coming down for the high he'd gotten from taking some pills a few hours earlier, "Is this about that girl?"

Erin didn't say anything.

"Erin, when are you gonna stop feeling sorry for yourself and move on?" Landon asked, exasperatedly, "We all go through rough patches, but you're not even trying to get better. You never have fun…you're always sad, when are you gonna get over it?"

Erin shook her head, "You don't get it." She turned and started to walk over to the couch.

Landon followed her, "You're right. I don't get it. How can you be so devastated about this one girl? She wasn't your family…"

Erin whipped around at that, "She was family." She said, shaking her head.

"Whatever!" Landon exclaimed, his frustrations reaching an all-time high, "She's dead, alright? She's gone and there's nothing you can do about it! You need to move on." He said, shaking his head, "You're being a drag – and I don't have time to be dragging you around behind me." He headed for the door.

Erin didn't stop him.

Once he was gone, she walked out onto her back porch and looked down at the ground. It was cold, but she liked it. She felt groggy and the chill of the night air kind of woke her up. She looked up at the sky and then back down at the ground, "What happened?" She muttered.

She leaned over the railing, putting her head in her hands.

"Hey!"

She looked down.

There was a guy standing on the street. It looked like he was around 20, wearing a pair of glasses and had short brown hair. He looked like a college kid, dressed in a large sweater and some khaki pants. He was on a bike, but had stopped under her window. She was three floors up.

He smiled up at her.

"Keep your head up, alright?!" He called up to her as people on the street passed by, barely even lifting their heads, "It's gonna get better!" He pointed up at her, gave a smile and then lifted his headphones back to his ears and pedaled off.

Erin watched him go, picturing his bright, naïve smile as she looked down at the ground. She wished she could have smiled back, given him some kind of indication that what he said actually mattered, but she just couldn't.

How screwed up do you have to be to not be able to smile anymore?

Erin shook her head, the college kid's voice replaying in her mind as she turned and re-entered her apartment: Keep your head up, it's gonna get better. She thought. It seemed pretty bleak right now and if there was anything she knew, it was that whenever she thought she was hitting rock bottom, there was still another cliff for her to fall over.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

Erin walked over and saw that she numerous missed calls and messages.

2 missed calls from Bunny.

1 from Voight.

1 from Jay.

She scrolled through them, but didn't call any of them back. She clicked on her messages and looked through them.

Bunny: Haven't seen you in a while. Come by for a drink. Tell me about what happened.

Landon: Hey, I'm sorry about what I said. I didn't mean it. I was just high and frustrated. I'm sorry about your friend. Forgive me?

Voight: Hey, are you okay? Haven't heard from you in a few weeks.

The most recent text she'd received, though, was from Jay:

Hey Erin, I haven't heard from you. I'm really starting to worry about you. I hope you're not getting yourself into trouble. Can you please just send me a text back to let me know you're okay? We're all going crazy not knowing. Please…

Erin took in a deep breath, feeling sympathetic towards him. She typed back:

I'm okay.

And left it at that.

A few minutes after that, she slipped her jacket on and left her apartment, heading for her mom's bar. When she got there, it was pretty packed, but her mom spotted her walk in almost immediately, "Erin!" She called, waving her over.

Erin slowly made her way up to the bar.

"Where have you been, sweetie? It's been a few days since I've heard from you. What happened?" Bunny asked, more intrigued for the details than concerned for her safety. She raised her eyebrows in interest.

Erin cleared her throat, "I'm not completely sure. I woke up in someone's backyard and ended up having to walk through a house of stranger that I had apparently partied with." She shrugged, "I don't really know what happened."

Bunny nodded with a smirk, "But sounds like you had fun." She said, rubbing her, "That's what you need right now, after all you've been through you need to have some fun." She reached under the bar and pulled out a shot, setting it in front of Erin.

Erin looked down at it.

"Nadia would want you to have fun, Erin. You need to stop being so stressed. Just let go." Bunny urged her, nudging the shot even closer.

Erin felt sick to her stomach.

Bunny watched her, "If you want to keep feeling sorry for yourself, go ahead, but if you want to forget about it for a second then take the shot, it's simple." She shrugged.

Erin closed her eyes, considering it. She knew her mom wasn't right, but she didn't care anymore. All she really wanted to do was be able to think about something else other than Nadia and her death and how she was falling apart.

She downed the shot quickly, "Can I have another?"

Within the next few hours, she was drunk, not sloppy drunk and complete mess, but drunk enough to finally be out of it. Drunk enough for her to forget about her sorrows. She was finally drunk enough to forget. That was all she wanted: to be free of the grief that wouldn't stop pulling her under.

She didn't remember meeting the guy she was talking to, but he was cute and he was distracting her well enough for her to be interested.

"So what do you do?"

Erin considered telling him the truth. She could say that she was between jobs or that she'd quit her old job, but in the end, she decided to lie, "I'm a cop." She said with a smile, feeling the familiar pride that came with telling someone that.

"Really?"

Erin nodded, "CPD."

He smiled, "That's hot."

Erin opened her mouth to reply when she heard a voice come from behind her.

"Erin."

She didn't turn around. She knew who it was and she didn't want to look at him. She watched as the guy she was talking to looked up as the voice came closer.

"Erin, hey."

A hand touched her arm.

She turned, pulling her arm out of his hand, "Don't touch me." She snapped at him, annoyed that he was here, acting like he controlled her.

Jay stared down at her and she could tell that he was trying to keep the hurt look from spreading across his face. He glanced back at the guy behind her, "Sorry, I just…I wanted to talk to you."

The guy behind her, whose name she couldn't remember, stood up, "Actually, we were kind of in the middle of a conversation before you interrupted so if you wouldn't mind letting us continue…" He said with a shrug, a threatening look in his eye as he spoke calmly, but angrily.

Jay looked back at him, "Hey, step off, alright?" He said, unthreatened, "Erin, come on, why don't we go back to your place and talk or get some coffee or something?"

Bunny walked up behind him, "Detective Halstead, with all due respect, I think Erin is fine here. Correct me if I'm wrong here, sweetie, but she's working through some stuff and doesn't really want to talk with you right now."

Erin glanced at her mom and nodded slowly.

Jay shook his head, not even bothering to look at Bunny. He didn't take his eyes off of Erin, "Why do you let her talk for you now? A few months ago, you had convinced me that she'd been the definition of rock bottom and now you're just following in her footsteps like a lost puppy." He said, gesturing to the empty beer bottles on her table, "You're better than that."

"Don't talk to me like you know me." Erin replied, voice low.

The guy behind her stepped forward, "Hey, back off, man. She obviously doesn't want you here so leave before you get yourself into some trouble."

"Yea?" Jay stepped up, "What kind of trouble?"

The guy moved past Erin and shoved Jay, "You wanna find out, don't you?"

"Jay, stop. Just get out of here, I don't need your help." Erin said as she watched the tension between them grow.

Jay didn't back down. He shoved the guy back, "Yea, but maybe this guy needs to learn a lesson."

"Hey, I'm not the one she's telling to leave, man. She's wants to talk to me, not you." He added the last part quieter, but loud enough for Jay to hear him. "And I'm going to be the one going home with her tonight too, not you." He shrugged.

Jay shoved him harder that time, knocking him off balance and into Erin, who was standing by a table behind him. She fell into the table, which was knocked over at contact. Along with a few bottles, she hit the ground, but the guy he'd shoved caught himself before he fell, mumbled something about it not being worth it and headed for the door.

Jay, concerned, moved over to Erin and started to help her up, but she pulled her arm out of his grasp every time he tried to pull her up. She glared up at him, "I don't need your help." She said, once she finally got to her feet, "I didn't ask you to come here. I can take care of myself." She pushed past him and walked out of the bar.

Jay went to follow her, but Bunny stood in his way.

"She doesn't want your help, Jay. She has me and some new friends, we can take care of her. All you are doing is stirring up trouble. You coming in here, insulting me and trashing my bar, it doesn't help anyone." Bunny said, shaking her head.

Jay finally looked down at her, gaze hard and cold with disgust, "Don't misinterpret this. I want to be clear. No matter how calm I seem, know that I don't have any respect for you whatsoever. I think what you're doing is wrong. I think that you are a leech on Erin. You just suck the life out of her. And what you're doing to her now, it's so wrong that I can't even find words." He said calmly.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

Jay glared down at her, "Voight was right about you. You aren't Erin's mom, never were, never will be." He said coldly, "Now, get out of my way before I arrest you."

"For what?"

"I'm sure I can think of something."

Bunny glared at him for a few minutes longer and then slowly moved out of his way, allowing him to walk out of the bar. Once outside, he looked left to right, trying to figure out where Erin was. He spotted her across the street, walking out of a drug store, carrying a bag of chips and a soda.

Jay jogged across the street and fell in step with her as she walked down the sidewalk. "Hey, whatcha got there?"

Erin glanced down at the contents in her arms, "Chips and a soda. I'm drunk and hungry." She said with a shrug, "But I bet you don't really care about that, do you? So just go ahead..." She said, "Tell me why you're here, Jay."

"I came to see you." Jay said with a sigh, "It's been over a month, Erin and nothing, nothing except one text that tells me you're alive. I'm worried about you and I just wanted to see where your head is at." He said honestly.

Erin didn't look at him.

He stared at her.

"What?" She asked, turning to look at him, "Do you want me to say thank you? I didn't ask for you to come. I don't know why you're worried about me. So I quit. I did it for a reason and I'm standing by my decision."

Jay nodded, "I'm not asking you to thank me. Or to go back on your choices. I just want to talk to you…" He explained casually, "How are you holding up?"

Erin smirked, "Oh, so that's what you want." She smirked, "Didn't you hear? My mom and I decided to go into the drug dealing business together. See, we're smuggling some "H" across the Canadian border with the help of my new step-dad's parents." She said sarcastically, mocking him, "Yea, yea and yesterday, I needed some extra money so I put on my best dress and-"

"Stop." Jay said, shaking his head, not wanting to hear anymore.

Erin stopped walking when they reached the edge of Millennium Park. "What do you want me to say?" She asked, putting her arms out.

"I want you to tell me the truth." Jay said, "Why are you pushing me away?"

Erin took in a deep breath to keep from snapping at him, "I just want to be left alone." She said, looking up at him, "Why don't you get that? Why doesn't anyone get that?"

"Because I don't think it's what you really want." Jay said, staring down at her, "Everyone needs to know that people care about them sometimes. It's human nature and I just wanted to talk to you and let you know that I still care about you."

Erin nodded slowly and started walking into Millennium Park, obviously still fuming.

Jay followed, walking beside her. "Have you always liked it here?"

"Where?"

"This park?"

Erin shrugged and looked around, "Yea." She said vaguely, looking like she wanted to tell him why, but at the same time didn't want to give him the satisfaction of getting more than a one word answer from her.

Jay looked around at some of the plants, "Why?"

Erin was quiet for a moment and he thought she wasn't going to respond until he heard, "This is where Voight and I used to come to meet when I was his CI." She said, "And after he took me in, we would walk here sometimes and it kind of became this…sacred place for me."

"That's Navy Pier for me." Jay replied, "My dad used to take my brother and I there a lot when we were kids."

Erin nodded slowly and sat down on a bench that overlooked some of the gardens. She opened her chips and stared eating them, looking out over the park.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

And then Jay finally asked what he really wanted to ask, "What's going on with you, Erin?" He asked, "You can tell me. I'm not gonna go run to Voight or anybody, I'm your friend and I just want to make sure you're doing okay."

Erin didn't reply. She just reached to her left, throwing her bag of chips in a nearby trashcan. She didn't look at him, just concentrated on the garden ahead of them.

Jay didn't want to push her so he just waited, hoping maybe she'd open up.

A few minutes passed.

And then finally, "I miss her."

Jay looked at her, but she still wasn't looking at him. Her eyes moved over the garden. She took in a deep breath, "I don't know why I feel like this." She said blankly, shaking her head, "No matter how hard I try to get past it or to drown it out or forget, it's doesn't go away."

Jay watched her, his heart breaking.

She finally looked at him, eyes swimming and tears brimming at the edges of her eyes. But she refused to let them fall. She stared up at him, eyes pleading, begging him, "It's suffocating me, Jay."

He looked down at her, knowing that she wanted him to say something, but he just couldn't think of the right thing to say. He knew what she wanted to hear and he knew what the cliché response was, but that didn't seem like it was enough. So he said what he was thinking, "That's because you're letting it." He told her, "If you need help, ask for it."

Erin hesitated.

"It's okay to ask for help." Jay added, watching as she contemplated it, "You aren't invincible. And asking for help doesn't make you weak." He told her.

Erin shook her head, "It's not that…" She said, looking down at the ground like she wanted to tell him, but just couldn't bring herself to do it. She stood up abruptly, "I think I should go."

Jay stood up too and grabbed her arm before she could walk away, "Hey, stop doing that!" He protested, "Why won't you just let me help you? It's killing me to see you like this." He told her, not letting go of her arm.

Erin turned and her eyes flashed in a moment of anger, "It's not your job to look after me! This is my fight, not yours and even if you think you would be able to help, trust me, you wouldn't." She pulled away and started to leave.

"I don't get it." He said, shaking his head.

Erin turned back again, "Get what?!"

"I don't get why you're pushing away all the people that could possibly care about you." Jay replied, shaking his head, "It doesn't make sense. Aren't you lonely? Don't you want someone to be there for you? Because I could be."

Erin stared at him and took in a deep breath, "You want to know why?" She asked, "It's because I'm damaged. My life is so complicated and disturbed and overwhelming. And every time I try to be normal, someone ends up getting hurt. I wasn't meant for this life, Jay. I don't fit in to your world." She said, shaking her head, "That is why I'm pushing you away. Because I know that you'll get hurt."

"Erin, I don't care about that!" Jay exclaimed, "Don't you get that?! This is about you, not me. You said it yourself, this is your fight."

"It is my fight, but I don't want you to be collateral damage."

Jay shook his head, "How could I possibly be collateral damage in this? How could I get hurt by trying to help you?"

Erin stopped and shook her head, her voice clear and calm, "You think you can fix me. That's the problem. I'm unfixable and the more you try, the more you'll be disappointed."

"No one is unfixable."

Erin sighed, "I used to believe that."

"What changed your mind?"

Erin shook her head and shrugged, "I don't know." She looked at him, "I mean, look at me, every time I try to pick myself back up, I end up falling back into the same old habits…"

"That doesn't mean you're a lost cause."

Erin threw her hands up in frustration, "Then what does it mean, Jay?" She asked, "Because I've been trying for years and years to figure it out and I can't. I can't fit in to that perfect lifestyle, it's impossible."

"It's not perfect." Jay said, shaking his head, "Nothing is. Not you, not me, but that doesn't mean we're wrong or that we should give up trying. Why are you just rolling over and giving up?" He asked, "That's not who I thought you were."

"Well maybe you don't know me at all."

Jay raised his eyebrows, "But I do." He said, "I know you think of everyone else before yourself and I know you're a fighter." He shrugged, "And that's all I need to know."

She sighed.

"C'mon, Erin, just give me a chance." He said, walking up to her, seeing that she'd stopped walking. He ran his hands down her arms and took both her hands in his, "I just want to help you get through this…because I know you can." He said, "Just say okay."

Erin didn't say anything.

Jay took in a breath, "C'mon, don't make this hard." He said, shaking his head.

She walked up to him and for a split second, he thought she was going to say okay. But then she leaned in and wrapped her arms around his waist. Confused, he hugged her back, not completely sure what was happening with her. Maybe she was actually going to let him help her.

After a few moments, she pulled away. "Take care of yourself, Jay." She said before she turned and started to walk away.

And Jay, because he was tired of arguing and because he knew she wasn't going to budge, he let her go, an unsettling voice in the back of his head telling him he was never going to see her again.


"Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting."

J.M. Barrie


A/N: I'm really glad you all liked this story, the reviews on the first chapter were really great, thank you so much for reading and letting me know what you thought. Please stick around, there's still more to come. Thanks so much!