A/N: Thanks for the reviews! This chapter happens about four months after the first one. Enjoy and review please XOXO

It became a pattern. Olivia would go on a date with Edison and I would go out with Quinn soon after, the same night if I could manage. A movie, dinner, a dive bar, an arcade—anywhere that didn't make me think of Olivia. Quinn proved to be a surprisingly effective distraction. It wasn't healthy, over the right thing to do—it was really shitty, actually—but it was the best coping mechanism I had.

The thing I liked most about Quinn turned out to be the things that she wasn't. She wasn't Olivia. She wasn't anything like Olivia. She was almost her polar opposite. She had an easy, bubbly laugh, like a child. Olivia's laugh was lightning in a bottle, magnificent and rare and unforgettable. Quinn loved college basketball; Olivia was a college football fan. Quinn always agreed to disagree. Olivia never stopped until she proved her point. Quinn made me comfortably numb, almost happy sometimes. Olivia made me feel alive.

For a few months, we had an amazing time. Quinn brought me lunch at work and made me dinner at her apartment. She always wanted to take pictures and soon my Instagram feed was full of our smiling faces at carnivals and college baseball games and faculty mixers. I even started introducing her as my girlfriend. But beneath all the fluffy feelings and sweet words, my heart was missing. I liked her but she wasn't the one and she knew it. She told me to take everything as slowly as I needed, but her she grew restless with my lack of progress around the end of our third month together. Her smiles became smirks and she became more sarcastic than understanding when something brought Liv to mind—or worse, we saw her and Edison—and I lost all my mirth.

The last time we had sex, she was somewhere else. I was somewhere else too, but it was different when we both gone. It was empty and quiet and over much sooner than usual. When we were finished, she sat up and turned her back on me.

"Fitz…" she began.

"I know," I replied with a sigh. I turned to look at her. "I'm sorry. Honestly, I am. I should never have even gotten involved with you. It was a mistake, a selfish mistake."

"I knew I wasn't your first choice but…I figured time would fix everything." She was quiet while she got dressed. I was reminded of our first night together when she sat on the bed to put her shoes on. She looked at me, her hand on top of mine. "It's been 7 years, Fitz. You aren't gonna get over her. You should say something."

"I can't now. She's with him," I muttered. Olivia and Edison had been dating for four months—two weeks longer than Quinn and me—and they seemed to be having more luck than we were. I had taken the elevator with him more than once on my way to work, each time a little less awkward but a little more painful.

"People break up." She snorted. "We just did."

I gave a mirthless laugh. "What would a girl like her want with someone who can't even tell her they love her after 7 years?"

"Even the greatest heroes have flaws," she pointed out. "And what wouldn't any girl want with a guy like you? You're a prime catch and you don't even know it."

I smiled. She got up and went to pick up her purse off the chair next to the dresser. She stopped and picked up the picture of Olivia and me. She chuckled. "You even smile differently with her."

We made eye contact as she stood in the doorway. Everything was understood in that moment. We had both entered the relationship wanting something the other couldn't give.

"Goodbye, Fitz." I sat in the same spot for a long time after she left. I had given up a perfectly good girl for someone who didn't love me back. But I didn't even know that to be true. I didn't know what Olivia felt for me because I could never tell her what I felt for her. It was three little words, three syllables, eight letters…and I couldn't make my mouth say them.

When I finally got up, I got into the shower and stood under the water for what seemed like hours. When I got out, it was almost 3AM. I wondered if Liv was awake, or if Edison was there. I pulled on plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt then trudged across the hall. I knocked on the door gently so I didn't scare her. I frowned when Edison opened the door, squinting at me with sleepy eyes.

"Hey man; what's up?" he greeted in a groggy voice.

"Is Liv awake?" I asked. He was a nice enough guy but he was the last person I wanted to talk to at the moment. I hadn't been particularly upset when Quinn left but now I felt like everything was weighing on me. I guessed that it was Edison opening the door. Knowing that he had been in her bed, that he had been holding her, that he had made love to her, made me nauseas.

"I'll go get her," he replied, leaving me at the door. I walked in and sat on her couch then lay down. I wasn't sleepy, just tired. My body ached like someone had dropped the world on my shoulders without telling me. A photo of Liv and me, dressed as Johnny and Baby from Dirty Dancing, sat on the coffee table. I looked away from it, frowning.

"Fitz?" I sat up at the sound of her voice. She was wearing blue sweatpants, GU LACROSSE emblazoned on the leg, and a maroon tank top. I recognized the pants as mine. Edison stood in the doorway between the living room and her bedroom, looking at me look at her. He knew. He had to be blind or a complete moron not to know.

"Quinn's gone," I said. She sat on the couch next to me, holding out her arms for me. I lay my head on her lap, sighed, wished for Scotch. She raked her fingers through my curls.

"What happened?" she asked gently.

I couldn't tell the truth, at least not with Edison looming. I just told her, "We weren't going anywhere. So we cut our losses."

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

I sighed. "It's okay. It was going to happen sooner or later, so better now than after we had wasted years."

"I'm sorry," she repeated. I breathed in the smell of her on my old sweatpants. I had been thinner the year I got them and wouldn't have currently fit them, but they were gigantic on her, the waistband and legs rolled to make them fit.

"Me too," I muttered.

"Hey Liv, I'm gonna get out of here," Edison announced, coming back into the room fully dressed.

"You don't have to leave," she said, making no move to get up. Her hand was still in my hair, scratching my scalp gently. I felt smugly favored.

"Nah; you guys need to work this out and I feel like I'm in the way." Even I heard the edge in his voice. I looked at the digital clock on her cable box. 3:17AM.

She still didn't move, but she frowned at him. "Something wrong, Edison?"

"No," he answered too forcefully. "I just need to get to work early and I figured I'd have a better chance getting some sleep at my place."

"If that's how you feel," she said in a frightening even tone. I knew he didn't like me, but there was definitely something more to this exchange than him disapproving of our relationship. I suspected there would a shit storm at some point following this incident. "We'll talk tomorrow."

"Talk" meant Olivia was going to rip him a new asshole at the very least. He said goodnight then left. Olivia sighed when the door shut.

"He's such a drama queen," she groaned. "I like him a lot but he knows how to pluck a nerve like nobody else. And talk about needy! I can't."

"You don't do needy," I said with a smirk as I sat up. I couldn't listen to her talk about Edison, even if it was less than flattering. "Which, ironically, is exactly how I'm starting to feel. I'm gonna head home, Liv."

"That wasn't your fault, Fitz," she said, grabbing my hand and stopping me from getting off the couch.

"He doesn't like me. He thinks I'm in love with you." I didn't know why I felt the need to say it, but it was the truth. I looked at her.

She shrugged. "I don't think it's that personal. He thinks we're a little close. But that's his problem. You're my best friend in the world."

"Shit, I'm your only friend." She laughed as she reached for the remote on the coffee table.

"Well you're so needy, I don't really have time for anyone else," she joked.

We made "Electric Blue Bugaloo" margaritas, a recipe from our college days which involved blue Koolaid powder mix and Sprite because we couldn't afford margarita mix, and watched Behind the Music for a few hours. We got impressively sloshed as we drank from oversized novelty margarita glasses branded with PCB SPRING BREAK 2007—our first Spring Break trip together. She decided we needed cupcakes to get rid of our relationship blues, finishing off her fourth drink. She turned on Pandora Radio on her phone and danced around the kitchen to Katy Perry as she collected ingredients for champagne weeding cake cupcakes. I sat on the counter above her oven, watching her with tipsy amusement, my fifth margarita in hand. By the time she put the cupcakes in the oven, I was drunkenly close to saying those three little words. But I was very recently post-breakup and she was pre-fight, and she would have thought I was just wasted and babbling. I put my margarita down and sighed.

"Look at me. I'm 27 years old and drunk off Electric Blue Bugaloo margaritas at 6 in the morning. I'm wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt and plaid pants and I haven't been grunge in years. I've got no woman, no dog, and I can't even fix my own damn leaky bathroom faucet. My life's a mess." She stopped loading the dishwasher and looked at me with a smirk.

"I'm 25 and unmarried. My boyfriend asked me to kill a spider in the bathroom last night. I've got $100 in my checking account, and my mother e-mails me wedding announcements every week. 'Mess' is an understatement for my life." She finished my margarita then grinned at me. "But, I'll let you in on a secret."

"Please do." She was more gorgeous than I remembered as we made eye contact in that moment. My breath caught when she stepped between my legs and planted a sweet electric Blue Bugaloo kiss on my bottom lip.

"We're all a mess. Everyone in their 20's is. We've just gotta hold onto the thought that it's all gonna come together somehow, Fitz." I touched my lip to make sure the kiss had really happened. It was sticky with Koolaid mix. I licked it off. It would be the closest I ever came to tasting her.

"'We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at stars,'" I quoted.

"Wilde was a wise man," she replied. I loved that she loved my fascination with quotes. Quinn had found it novel at first then but it slowly began to annoy her. I couldn't help it. As a Literature professor, words were my life.

"He was a sassy drunk," I teased. She loved Oscar Wilde. I had bought her a first edition of The Importance of Being Earnest for her birthday the year before. She smirked at me.

"Oh, whatever," she replied. "Let's hope he was right though. If he wasn't, we're fucked."

We fell asleep around 7, stuffed with cupcakes and booze. She lay with her head on my chest on the couch. I waited until she was deeply asleep before I wrapped my arms around her sleeping body. Her breathing was so even, her small body wedged between mine and the back of the couch. I finally breathed the words aloud. She didn't stir. I finally fell asleep, hoping somewhere in that place between dreaming and awake, she had heard me.