He's sitting on his bedroom floor staring at that damn cardboard box and he feels like just about the world's biggest idiot. He almost feels even stupider than he'd felt the night before, when he'd had to dry his almost-twenty-one-year-old ass off after playing outside in the rain for nearly an hour.
Almost.
He's pathetic, that's what he is. It's pathetic that he's still so hopelessly in love with his ex and it's really pathetic that he's still kept all this stuff that he knows he should have gotten rid of so long ago. And he's tried to get rid of it, he's tried a million times. It's just that all the things in that stupid cardboard box smell just like her and they hold so many memories and make him feel so familiar and safe and happy and he can't bring himself to part with any of them. It's not often that he does this, takes the box out of his closet and spends time with its contents this way. But the idea of it not being there in the back of his closet every day just in case, of it being gone and out of his reach just like her...is unbearable.
He pulls all the items out one by one. Photo albums, handwritten letters, all the clothes she'd left at his house over the years that he'd never given back. The lyrics to a song she'd written for him and a bracelet he'd once found on his kitchen floor and had always meant to take back over to her but never had. Little stuffed animals she'd bought him and the seashells they'd collected on the beach. The necklace he'd picked out special for her just a day or two before the last time they'd broken up. He'd never gotten the chance to give it to her.
He doesn't know why looking through all of it makes him feel better, but it does (even though at the same time, it kind of makes him feel worse). He thinks that sometimes he feels a bit like he's only imagined everything, that none of it was ever real. He likes having these little concrete reminders, little mementos that no one can ever take away from him. It was real. He'd loved her and she'd loved him back just as much and they'd been together and happy and amazing and it had all been real, whether she likes it now or not.
He just stares down at the pile for a moment and then he reaches down and picks up a little teddy bear, smiling at it fondly. Miley'd given it to him before he left to go on tour, and she'd given it a kiss and told him that when he got lonely he could kiss the bear and imagine it was her. And he'd thought it was so silly and ridiculous and absolutely adorable and completely Miley.
As he sets the bear gently back down on the ground he suddenly feels more hollow than he has in a long time. He misses her so, so much more than he ever lets himself admit.
He sits there on the floor and reads through a few of their letters and breathes in her scent on that old striped tank top and feels like a huge creep, but the happiness all these old things give him is worth it. It makes him feel so warm and nostalgic and like everything, every problem he'll ever have is all going to work out just fine. It makes him feel like rain in the very best way, like one of those beautiful summer storms.
After what feels like a long while he glances up at the clock and then sighs and starts putting everything away again. He doesn't have all day to spend wrapped up in memories on his bedroom floor. He has to go get ready.
He's taking Olivia out to eat and to a movie, and he tells himself it's just because he wants to spend time with her but he knows it's mostly because he feels really, really bad for basically forgetting her existence last night and then for blowing her off so he could go play outside like a child. And also because he's kind of been hoping that if he just spends enough time with her he'll fall in love with her and forget all about Miley, and that would solve just about all of his problems.
He sighs, picking up that old teddy bear again and fiddling gently with its right ear, just to keep his hands busy. He knows he likes Olivia. He likes that she always laughs at his jokes and he likes the way her hair smells and he likes that thing she does with her teeth on his neck. But he knows there are things he doesn't like, too. Like how she's almost always too focused on her phone to give him her full attention, or how she's always telling him that he takes everything too seriously in a tone that makes him feel like a silly little boy. Or how she always seems a bit more interested in him when they're out in public being photographed than when they're alone, and he doesn't think she means to do that but it makes him feel a little sleazy and weird and like this whole thing between them is way too unnatural, too forced. Like he isn't feeling the things he's supposed to feel and like one of them is leading the other on, but he doesn't know which.
He sighs, running one finger over the little stuffed bear's face. He wants to be in love with Olivia. He even thinks that he could be in love with her, if he wasn't already in love with someone else. And he knows that things can never work out with Miley, not when they've already tried so many times and always failed, not when they're both supposed to have long moved on. And its confusing and frustrating and a million other things and he rears back to throw the teddy bear hard at the wall but finds himself unable to do it. Instead, he brings it up to his face and gives it a kiss.
And then he puts it back inside the box and puts the box back in its safe spot in the back of his closet, and then heads into the bathroom to get ready for his date. His date with Miss Universe, his beautiful girlfriend. He should be happy right now. He should be excited. He smiles at himself in the mirror but it doesn't reach his eyes.
He shaves and showers and goes through the motions, and at one point he holds his bottle of cologne in his hand and thinks it's really time he stops wearing this kind just because Miley had always told him way back when that she really loved it. Maybe when this bottle runs out he'll go see if he can find a new one, one he thinks Olivia will like.
When he steps outside to go pick her up for the movie it's bright and sunny out. He wishes it was raining. He thinks it would fit the moment a lot better.
He's been waiting for the doorbell all day but it still startles him. He can't believe this is actually happening, that they're going to hang out together after so long of nearly pretending they were strangers. He can't believe she'd honestly called him up and told him she wanted to hang out with him. He's still about forty-five percent sure that he has to be dreaming, or that there has to be some kind of awful catch to the whole thing. He takes a deep breath and wipes his sweaty hands on his pants and his heart is going bum-bum-bum in his ears and reminding him of rain and he opens the door and there she is.
She's wearing shorts and a sweatshirt and she's leaning against the door frame like she just does shit like this every day. "Hey," she says, with the smallest hint of a smile.
"Hey," he breathes back.
They just stare at each other for a few seconds and then he remembers that he's supposed to let her in and scrambles to open the door wider. She laughs lightly as she steps into the house, glancing around at everything. He'd done his best to tidy the place up, make everything look and smell nice and, more importantly, make sure nothing of Olivia's was out in the open. He wonders what it says about him that he hadn't felt even a bit guilty shoving her things into closets or under his bed or wherever he could find a spot because he had another girl coming over. And he doesn't even want to think about what it says about him that he'd told Olivia he was going to Texas to visit his familiy today.
He figures it wouldn't be that big of a deal if Miley found something of hers - probably a bit awkward but not the end of the world. It's not as if she doesn't know he has a girlfriend or is expecting otherwise. But for whatever reason it's not something he's willing to chance. He'd always thought that it would be incredibly satisfying to make Miley jealous, make her feel the way he's felt for years. But now that he's been presented with the opportunity he doesn't want her thinking that he has another girl over at his place all the time, that he's happy and in love or whatever she would think he was if she found a bunch of girly products in his bathroom or a bra on his bedroom floor (not that she should be going in there anyway, he thinks with a bit of a gulp).
"Nice place," Miley says after a moment, and he snaps to attention just before she turns to look at him.
"Thanks."
Silence.
For what feels like a long time they just look each other up and down, and he doesn't understand how she can be so different and yet so much the same. He wonders what it would be like to hold her without long hair tickling him, how it would feel to kiss the scars on her wrist and run his fingers over all her tattoos, to take in all the things that had changed since he'd last had her in his arms. Wonders if it would all feel familiar or new or something in between.
Before he can think much more about it there's a jingling of tags coming down the hallway and then his dog is all over her, trying to decide if she's familiar or not. He sniffs at her feet and then her knees and then promptly shoves his face into her crotch.
Damn lucky mutt, Nick thinks.
"Elvis," he hisses sharply, but she just laughs, bending down to pet the dog with a gentle smile.
"Hey, Boy," she coos, scratching Elvis behind the ears, "Remember me?"
He must because after a few more seconds of sniffing he nuzzles her face with his nose, and she laughs her perfect laugh and Nick doesn't mean to but he totally melts. He loves how much she loves animals and how gentle she's always been with them. Back when he'd used to imagine their life together they'd had twice as many dogs as they'd had kids, in a pretty suburban house he would have always looked so forward to coming home to.
She kisses the dog's head and then stands back up to look at Nick, blushing a little bit even though he doesn't know why and suddenly it's awkward again.
"So," he says after a long silence. "Uh, what do you wanna do?"
She rocks back and forth on her feet, as well as she can with Elvis still nuzzling at her heels, "I don't know. Just, uh, talk I guess."
That's kind of a terrifying thought, but he says okay anyway and leads her to the living room and they sit down on the couch probably a little closer together than they should. Elvis curls up on the floor a few feet away and Nick watches Miley as she tucks her feet up under her, looking around the room like she's nervous about something. She seems a little hesitant to relax back on the couch and he wonders if she's thinking about what he and another girl might have done on it recently.
"So what's up?" he asks her.
She looks at him for a while before she says anything, like she's thinking hard. "I miss you," she says finally, sighing as she says it, and that's so not what he was expecting that he almost can't reply.
"I miss you too," he murmurs finally, and it's the truest thing he's ever said.
He freezes as he feels her reach out to touch him. She runs her fingers across his forehead, brushing his hair back just a little, and her touch is so gentle and careful and he can't breathe and he feels so much like rain that he thinks he can hear it falling inside of him.
"I feel like I missed everything," she says after a few seconds, nearly whispering. Her fingers are still touching him lightly and he stays as still as he can, afraid that the slightest movement will make her back away. "I missed you growing up."
He focuses on breathing carefully in and out. "I know," he murmurs, "I missed you growing up too."
It hasn't even been ten minutes and he already knows this is heading in a direction it shouldn't, but he doesn't have the willpower to stop it and and he doesn't really want to, either. Bum-bum-bum goes his heart in his ears, sounding like a storm.
"Something I learned recently," she says after a while, finally lowering her hand, and he has to stop himself from making a sound of disapproval, "is that it really sucks to put a lot of time and effort into something and then find out it was never worth it in the first place."
He knows what she's talking about, but he doesn't know why. He stays quiet and just breathes, watching her try to gather her words.
"And I think," she goes on, struggling a bit, "Something that sucks even more is giving up on something...not putting enough time and effort into it, and then realizing too late that you should have, that it would have been worth it."
He knows what she's talking about now, too, and his breath hitches before he can stop it. He watches one corner of her mouth turn up into a sloppy half-grin.
"Really, really worth it," she says, almost whispering.
They stare at each other for a while and he doesn't realize that they're both leaning in until their noses are touching. Some kind of warning bell goes off in the back of his brain but he's way too foggy to make sense of it and he doesn't mean to kiss her, but he does.
Heaven. She tastes like heaven.
One of them gasps against the other's lips, but he can't tell which one. All he knows is that he's finally kissing Miley again and he still feels those sparks and he feels like a hurricane and he has to get closer to her, has to feel more of her. He doesn't realize he's leaning forward against her until he's fully on top of her on the couch, his hands holding her hips and hers in his hair, and she feels so tiny underneath him. He can hear his own heavy breath against her lips, mixing with the little noises she's making and the bum-bum-bum of his heart louder than ever. She tastes better than heaven.
He doesn't know how his hands end up under her sweatshirt but they do, and he's so surprised to feel the bare skin of her stomach that he feels his whole body stutter above her, hears his own sharp intake of breath against her mouth. He can feel her smiling against his lips as he lets his fingers explore her soft skin, and even though he's certainly touched her there before it feels like a brand new experience. He keeps his hands on her stomach, too afraid to let them wander, but when the tips of two fingers brush against the underwire of her bra both of them moan and she pulls his face as close to hers as she can get it. It doesn't feel close enough.
He doesn't know how long they stay like that but he knows it will never be long enough for him. He doesn't know how he can feel so good just kissing someone, how he can forget about every other person on the planet and believe it's just the two of them, all alone with all the time in the world. He presses his hips against hers and she makes a sound from deep in her throat that makes him groan, and when she nibbles gently on his bottom lip he almost screams it feels so good.
Good. Everything is so good. Her skin feels so good beneath his warm hands and her tongue feels so good twisting with his and she tastes and feels so good, so much better than anyone else he'd ever been with, so much better than -
Olivia.
Fuck.
His first thought is that he doesn't care, what's done is done now, but when he realizes he'd thought that he feels more disgusting and guilty than he ever has and no matter how much he doesn't want to he forces himself to pull away, resting his forehead against Miley's and pulling his hands out from under her sweatshirt. Her heavy breath against his lips almost makes him forget about Olivia all over again.
"I..." he mumbles, trying to catch his breath, "I have a..."
He can't get it out, but she knows what he means and she nods, first slowly and then vigorously, and he can't put a name to the expression on her face.
As he clumsily moves off of her and lets her sit up he wonders if his having a girlfriend is the only reason they'd stopped. Wonders how far they would have gone on his couch had he been single.
"We shouldn't have done that," she says, breathing hard. Her voice is high, panicked. He reaches out to stroke her hair back and she flinches before she melts into his touch.
"We shouldn't have," he agrees, and even though he doesn't mean to he adds, "But I'm glad we did."
She looks at him long and hard, and her eyes make him feel like a rainstorm. He hears her say me too even though she doesn't say it with words.
She still looks a little like a deer in headlights, like she doesn't know what to do. "I should go," she breathes, and that's the last thing he wants and he almost tells her she just got there but he doesn't want to scare her, doesn't want to feel like he's forcing her to stay. He nods very slowly, trying to tell her with his eyes that he wishes she wouldn't go.
Her eyes are a dull, pale blue and he thinks she looks a bit like a porcelain doll, beautiful and breakable.
"I should go," she repeats, more steady. He swears he hears rain falling as he walks her to the door. When they get there they just look at each other, neither one wanting to say goodbye just yet.
"Be really careful when you tell her," she blurts out suddenly, and he blinks.
"Huh?"
She swallows. "When...when you tell your girlfriend we kissed. I know you will, it's the type of guy you are. And..."
She's looking off to the side and she sounds like she's about to start crying, and he wishes he could reach out and take her in his arms but he doesn't know if that's what she wants.
"It really really sucks," she finally says, not looking at him, "when the guy who's supposed to be yours goes out and kisses some other girl. It's fucking awful and it's not something anyone should have to go through. So just...be careful with her. It's not her fault."
The guilt in her voice kills him. She finally looks back into his eyes and he slowly nods up and down. "Okay."
She tugs on the bottom of her sweatshirt. "I guess I really have to go."
He nods again, and before he really knows what he's doing he pulls her into a hug. She fits so perfectly against his chest and he breathes in her scent and lets himself drown in it, and he really doesn't mean to tell her that he loves her but he does, his voice gentle and just a breath above a whisper. They stay in their embrace for a moment longer and when she pulls away much too soon for his liking, she gives him a very small smile and says it back.
And then he opens the door and they step outside together, and he doesn't know if he's surprised or not to see that it's started raining. They say their goodbyes and then she heads down the driveway, and just before she gets in her car she looks back at him over her shoulder.
And she looks just like she did that day so long ago in so many ways, but in even more ways she looks entirely different, and the feeling is the same but different too and as he watches her drive off he feels like rain but not quite as empty as he'd felt that day, less like a thunderstorm and more like a light gentle drizzle.
He stays outside in the rain staring after her car until long after it's out of his sight.
The Texas heat is at its worst this time of year and his whole family is outside by the pool, laughing and fooling around and enjoying each others' company, and for the past thirty minutes he's been hiding from everyone in his parents' kitchen.
He knows his family doesn't mean to be so smothering, so suffocating. He knows they just want what's best for him and he knows they're just excited that he's finally found a girlfriend because he's been alone for a long time but he's just so, so tired of talking about it. He's tired of tell us what she's like and tell us again how you met and he's tired of feeling like his parents suddenly care more about his romantic life than they care about him as a person. And he knows that's probably a stupid way to feel but he can't help it, and his mother keeps smiling so big and all but begging him to bring Olivia home to meet her and he's supposed to do that within the next couple of weeks, and the thought of it makes him feel a bit sick because he doesn't want his mother getting attached, doesn't want her rushing things along and telling him over and over how happy she is because if or when he screws this whole relationship up he'll already be hurting enough people without his damn family being too involved.
He wonders how they would all feel if he knew what he'd done the day before.
After the fifth or sixth time his mother had gushed how pretty his new girlfriend was he'd started to feel a bit lightheaded and told them he was going to the bathroom, and then he'd all but sprinted to the house and collapsed at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He hates this. He hates that they won't shut up about it and he hates that they're probably out there right now talking about him still and he hates that he doesn't know how he feels or how he's supposed to feel and he hates that he still loves his ex-girlfriend and he really hates that he kissed his ex-girlfriend and he really really hates that he keeps finding himself wishing he'd never met Olivia in the first place.
He hears the back door opening and footsteps coming closer, but he keeps his eyes on the table even as someone sits down across from him. He guesses he's not the only one who's been hiding out from his overprotective mother for the past few weeks.
Danielle watches him for a moment, leaning against the table with her head resting in her hands and a lock of thick dark hair falling across her face, still damp from the pool. He keeps his eyes focused on the imaginary shapes he's been drawing on the table and hopes she'll get the hint he doesn't want to talk, and either she doesn't or she does and decides to ignore it because after a long moment of silence she chirps, "Are you okay?"
He raises his eyes to look at her and still she watches him, reaching up to tuck that wayward lock of hair behind her ear.
"Just dandy," he deadpans, not at all in the mood to be pleasant.
She tilts her head to the side ever so slightly, "Do you wanna talk about it?"
He blinks. "Not particularly."
She gives him a look and presses, "Are you sure?"
He takes a deep breath in and slowly blows it out, because honestly he kind of does want to talk about it but he really has no idea what to say or how to word it without sounding like a giant douche and finally he decides it would be much better to not say a word, and he opens his mouth to tell her yes he's sure and that maybe she should go find someone else to interrogate because he's really not in the mood to chat but instead he finds himself saying, "Do you think you could have been happy married to anyone else but Kevin?"
She recoils a bit as if that wasn't what she'd been expecting and it's not what he was expecting either, but he guesses now he just has to go with it.
"I don't know," she says finally, slowly, "Why do you ask?"
He sighs, running his hands roughly through his hair. He figures he'd feel better if he told someone but he's definitely not going to do it now, not at his parents' house and not to his brother's wife. He's pretty new at this whole cheating thing but he knows enough to realize this isn't the time to bring it up.
"I'm supposed to love Olivia," is what he finally says, looking up at the ceiling, "But I don't. And I'm trying to make myself love her but..." He swallows and takes a deep breath.
"I kind of think everyone has one person out there that they're meant to be with," he says eventually, speaking quickly, before he loses his nerve, "The one great love of their life. And they can be happy with other people and even love other people, but they'll never feel the way about anyone else as they do about that one person. And I...I'm trying really hard to be happy but I don't know how I'm supposed to do it when I remember how it felt to be with my one great love."
He closes his eyes, feeling more stupid than he thinks he ever has in his life, "And it's dumb of me to feel that way because I should already be way over it by now but I'm not and I keep trying to love other girls but I can't and I just feel like no matter how happy I could be with someone else I'll never be as happy as I used to be so why even bother and..."
He can't remember what he was trying to say and buries his head in his hands, and his face is hot to the touch and he knows it's bright red and he feels like a full-on thunderstorm. He stays like that for a minute, feeling Dani's eyes on him and focusing intently on the sound of the kitchen clock ticking. When he finally looks up his sister-in-law is staring at him as if she's never seen him before. For a few long seconds they just look at each other.
"I think," she finally says, slowly and carefully, like she's thinking hard about each word, "that if Kevin and I had never met, I could have had a perfectly nice life with some businessman back in New Jersey."
He blinks, watching her gently run her hand across her barely-there baby bump.
"But I think if we had met," she goes on, looking right into his eyes, "And I knew what it was like to love someone that way and then lose it, even if it took a hundred years...I'd never give up on trying to get it back."
They just look at each other for a few moments and then they hear the back door opening and his brother calling her name, and Nick watches they way her eyes sparkle a little when she hears his voice. She stands up and gives him one last pointed look, and then she reaches across the table and ruffles his hair the way people love to do because they know he hates it, and usually he'd roll his eyes and slap her hand away but this time he just laughs. He rests his head in his hands as he watches her go and wonders what his mom would say if he told her he didn't think he'd be bringing a new girl home for her to meet anytime soon after all.
His couch doesn't feel nearly as warm a few days later as he sits on it with the only girl he's supposed to be kissing snuggled up to his side, trying to feed him popcorn and leaving little kisses on his shoulder like nothing in the world is wrong. He feels guilty and gross and awful and he's so caught up in thought he doesn't even remember what movie is playing on the screen in front of them and he doesn't know how she isn't noticing how stiff he is and when he feels her lips press against his neck he jerks away and blurts out, "I have to tell you something."
She must catch the seriousness in his voice because she shifts away from him, looking at him with a bit of shock in her eyes and he feels like he just kicked a puppy. He turns off the movie, because he feels like this conversation needs to take place in the quiet (and also because he's desperately stalling for time) and when he looks back at her she's put the bowl of popcorn down on the coffee table and is leaning so far away from him she's practically falling off the end of the couch, looking at him warily.
For a long moment they just stare at each other while he tries to figure out what to say. He watches her carefully as she reaches up and tugs lightly on a lock of her own hair - some kind of nervous habit, he guesses. Everything is silent except for Elvis barking in the distance, greatly offended at being confined to the guest room. He always has to be locked up when Olivia is over because she insists she's afraid of him, probably because whenever he sees her he growls like he thinks he's some kind of wolf. Nick keeps trying to tell her the dog is all talk, but she doesn't believe him.
"I, uh..." He swallows hard, feeling like the most destructive type of storm. "You know about...about Miley, right? That, uh...that we were together for a while?"
Her scared eyes take on a hint of confusion. "Yeah, everyone knows that. But it was, like, years ago, right?"
He swallows again. "Um, yeah, a couple years now I guess."
She doesn't say anything so he struggles on, "Well...she came over a few days ago -"
"When?"
He gulps. "Remember when I told you I was going to go see my family in Texas?"
He can see in her face that she knows what's coming. When she mumbles out "yeah" it's so quiet he can hardly hear her.
Be careful with her. It's not her fault.
"Well, uh, I did go see them. But I...I left a day after I told you that I did. I didn't actually spend the night there. And, uh, the day before...Miley came over." His heart is so loud in his ears he can barely hear his own voice. He wonders if it's raining outside. "We hadn't really talked in a while and we wanted to just catch up. Talk and stuff."
Olivia has her arms wrapped around herself like a sad little self-hug, but her voice doesn't waver when she says: "If you just talked then why are you telling me about it?"
He struggles to swallow and breathes slowly, in and then out, and he forces himself to look her in the eye as he says, "We kissed."
He doesn't know if he was expecting her to cry or scream or what, but she doesn't move. Doesn't even blink.
"She kissed you?" she breathes out after a moment, "Or you kissed her?"
He knows what the right answer to that is but he's already done enough lying.
"We kissed each other," he says, keeping his voice as strong and steady as he can manage. "It was a completely mutual thing."
For a long time neither of them say anything, and he just listens to his dog barking and his heart's steady bum-bum-bum in his ears and he thinks he should really feel like rain right now, but he kind of doesn't.
"You kissed," she says slowly after a while, looking down at her hands. She brings her eyes back up to his and asks, "Is that all you did?"
He thinks about how his fingers had roamed Miley's bare skin beneath her sweatshirt, but they'd stayed low enough down that he doesn't think it qualifies as second base. For a second he thinks about telling her they'd said I love you to each other, but he knows that's not what she means and he doesn't even understand that enough to justify it so he nods his head and promises, "That's it."
She's looking at him like she's trying to stare right through him. "Do you regret it?" Her voice is so small.
He opens his mouth and tries to say what he damn well knows he should, but then he closes it again and he can see in her face that she gets it.
"I regret letting it happen while I was with someone else," he says very carefully, "Because that was really wrong and unfair to you. And I regret lying to you about her coming over because that was wrong too. But...I can't say that I regret kissing her."
She has her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them tightly. "You still love her, then," she says, more of a statement than a question. Her voice is surprisingly calm. "It wasn't just one of those caught-up-in-the-moment things."
He swallows hard, "It's just...she was my first love, you know? There's so much history between us. And I try not to but I still have really strong feelings for her and I don't know if those feelings are ever gonna go away."
Olivia tugs on her hair again, and she bites her lip and looks at him for a few seconds.
"What are we doing, then?" she says softly. He just stares at her.
"I don't know."
Elvis must have resigned himself to taking a nap on the guest bed because the house has gone totally silent. They just stare at each other for maybe seconds or maybe hours, he doesn't know, and then suddenly she's getting to her feet, so he stands up too and she says, almost silently, "Will you walk me to the door?"
He does. When they reach the doorway she reaches out and grabs his face with a lighter touch than usual and kisses his lips, and he tries to feel sparks but doesn't and then just as quickly as it started, it's over. She opens the door and steps outside into the bright sunlight and he follows her out and then leans back against the side of the house.
"Goodbye," he says, because it feels like the right thing to say. She looks at him like she almost wants to smile but can't quite do it.
"Bye, Nick."
She turns around and walks away and he watches how the breeze blows her long hair to the side as she starts down the driveway away from him. He wonders if maybe, in some other universe where things were almost the same but different, he might have fallen in love with her.
"I'm sorry," he calls to her after a moment, and he means it. The small, sad smile she gives him over her shoulder is way too familiar.
"Yeah," she says back, soft and wistful. "So am I."
This time he's the one who calls her.
"Miley," he breathes into the phone, in the same voice he uses when he reads a new song back to himself after he's finally gotten it perfect.
"Nick," she says back.
He swallows hard, not sure what to say. I broke up with my girlfriend seems a bit too forward, too obvious, but then he remembers the way Miley's voice had sounded telling him she loved him and he says, "I told her. And it's over."
He can tell that it's kind of what she was expecting but that she isn't sure how to respond.
"I'm sorry," she says, but she isn't, he can tell by her voice.
"Don't be."
He figures he must be pretty damn cocky, thinking just because he's single now he can call her up and she'll come running. But it's not like she hadn't made it clear she was interested and after so long of her ignoring him, of making him feel like it had never even been real...this time is going to be different. He can tell.
He can tell because he already feels so different, wrapped up in his trusty blanket and staring out his window at the beautiful rainfall outside. He doesn't feel lonely and empty like usual, he feels lighthearted and whole and almost the way he'd always felt when they used to watch the rain together all those years ago, when she used to snuggle up so close to him that he could feel every breath she took in and out but it never ever felt like it was close enough.
He swallows. "Come over."
He thinks he hears her breath hitch just a tiny bit. "I'll be right there."
He pulls the blanket tighter around himself and stares out at the raindrops falling on the driveway, and he wonders if this will be the last time he does this, sits in his little blanket cocoon and watches the rain this way all alone. He hopes that from now on she'll be around to do it with him.
When he sees her car pull up he flings the blanket to the ground and goes outside to meet her, and the rain is freezing cold against his skin and he feels so young, so alive. By the time she opens the door to her car he's right there beside it and he doesn't know which one leans in first but suddenly they're kissing hard and fast, pressed so close together that he doesn't think any raindrops are falling between them. By the time they pull away they're both soaked.
For a moment they just look at each other, and she looks different now than she had a few days ago. Her timid little smile is different, almost happier. Her eyes are brighter and bluer than he remembers and he thinks he can see forever in them.
"Dance with me," he breathes.
She smiles big like that's just what she was hoping he would say, and he takes her hands and for who knows how long the two of them spin and twirl and dance out in the rain, just like they had when they were years younger, but things are different now. In the past Nick had always been so caught up in her that he hardly felt the rain on his skin, but now he feels every drop, feels his hair sticking to him and his clothes weighing him down, and it makes him feel so human and young and imperfect and it reminds him that he's living and breathing and the two of them had made so many messes in their time together but he knows they have the rest of their lives to clean it all up.
He spins her around and steals as many kisses as he can and when they finally stop, both breathing heavy, every strand of her hair is stuck to her and the raindrops running down her cheeks look almost like tears but he knows they aren't, and he thinks she looks beautiful.
Her eyes are bright and sparkling and he must have a funny look on his face because she laughs a little, crinkling up her nose. And standing there with her in the middle of the pouring rain, he thinks he feels like sunshine.
They have so many things to talk about, so many things to work through. He already knows that trying again is going to be one of the hardest things either of them will ever have to do. And he already knows that it's going to be so, so worth it.
The look in her eyes makes him think she's thinking the same thing, and when she reaches up and pushes his wet curls back from where they're stuck to his face he melts into her touch and makes a little sound in the back of his throat that makes her grin. She strokes his cheek with her fingers so gently, as if she's afraid she might break him. The rain is still falling hard around them, making the most lovely noise against the pavement and soaking them both to the core, but Nick only feels warmth. There's so much they have to talk about.
"Let's go inside," she says, a smile tugging gently at her lips.
And they do.
This took a lot longer than I expected and I apologize. I hope it was worth the wait.