Disclaimer: I don't own Camp Rock.
A/N: This was more an exercise for myself – thinking through how the people from the three scenarios would feel after the fact. I'm posting it because I thought a few of you who liked the first bit might be interested. Or not. It is pretty depressing. If you look at this before June 5, 2009, please go to my profile and look at the note at the bottom. Thanks!
Mitchie didn't want to be one of those women. The women who became bitter and angry after their divorce. The women who never date because they no longer trust men. The women who put their children in the middle, who insult their ex-husband, who can't go to an event if the ex is going to be there. She would not be a woman whose gave up living when her marriage died. She was not going to let Shane control her like that.
But it wasn't easy.
Because he moved in with his mistress. And Mitchie was not okay with that woman spending time with her children.
Because he walked around playing the victim. And Mitchie didn't want to air her dirty laundry to the press.
Because when he cheated on her he destroyed her self-confidence and her faith in people. And Mitchie doesn't want to let anyone else have that power over her again.
But she did her best to smile and put on a brave front. She did her hair, put on a little extra make-up and made sure she looked put together when she went out. Most people thought she looked a little brittle, but the people who knew her best knew she wasn't brittle, she was broken.
Caitlyn spent most of her day wishing she was someone else. Not when she was with Henry; then she was perfectly happy being Henry's mother. But when she was alone and had to think about her life. Or when she was with Mitchie, who she could hardly recognize anymore. Or when she struggled to have a conversation with her husband, who once knew her so well he could finish her sentences. Or when she ran into old friends who asked her what she was doing and looked down their noses at her when she told them she stayed home with her son. Or when she was with Jason, who made her feel happy and safe. Because only her husband should make her feel that way, but he had given up trying.
Nothing had ever happened between them, but Jason was sweet and gentle and loving, and he looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Caitlyn was afraid that one day she would give in to the temptation. And that was someone she could not become. So she made sure that she never spent time with him without Henry or Nate or Mitchie around. And she tried to ignore the flashes of hurt she saw in his eyes as she became more and more distant with him. But she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't exactly admit that she didn't spend time with him anymore because she was so lonely she was afraid she might throw herself at him.
Caitlyn never wanted to hurt Jason, and she knew in reality she was doing him a favor. He could stay friends with Nate. He could find someone else to love who could love him back the way he deserved to be loved.
But Caitlyn really wished she didn't have to give up the only thing besides Henry that made her happy. She really wished she could be someone else.
Jason wasn't sure how his life had gotten to this point. He was in love with one woman and had a child with another, but neither of them was the woman currently in his bed. Jason had stopped drinking after he found out he was going to be a father, but somehow that hadn't fixed as many of his problems as he had hoped. He was still in love with his best friend's wife. He still had to beg his daughter's mother to be able to spend time with her. And he was still distracting himself with one-night stands. Now he was just sober enough to feel the full weight of his own misery.
There was nothing to dull the pain when Caitlyn stopped greeting him with a smile and a lingering hug. There was nothing to distract him on Christmas morning when he didn't get to see his daughter come downstairs for the first time to see what Santa brought her. And there was nothing to numb the regret when he woke up and realized he didn't know the name of the blonde in his bed.
He knew he had to do something, but he wasn't sure what. Obviously lying in bed wishing that the blonde was Caitlyn and that his daughter and Henry were sleeping down the hall and that they were all a happy family wasn't working. Almost anything would be better than what he was doing right now. He just needed to work up the strength to try something new.