Jake Ryan was already regretting his decision.
Fresh into a new relationship with Miley, he longed to have his old one back. Because Lily hadn't pretended to laugh at his jokes or not get annoyed when he bragged about himself. Lily had been real to him. Something that these days, Miley obviously was not being.
He could see it in her eyes. Her bright blue sparkling eyes that for so long had drawn him in, and now just sent him away into a cloud of self doubt and an analytical relationship. Because they no longer sparkled for him. He wasn't blind. He could see that something had changed in Miley.
She never kissed him anymore.
When they had first started going out, they couldn't stop kissing. Jake thought he would never tire of Miley's lips. But as it turned out, it was when they weren't kissing was the problem. They had nothing to talk about. And as time passed on and their relationship suffered more and more, Miley stopped kissing him altogether. Except for a goodnight or hello kiss, that was all Jake ever got.
It wasn't the physical part of the relationship (or lack thereof) that had thrown Jake for a number either. It was the lack of connection. He and Miley had basically one thing in common. They were both superstars. But outside of that? Zip. And the relationship just didn't work. He knew how annoyed Miley got everytime he threw one of his "diva like fits" (in Miley's words of course) and stole a measley water bottle from a stupid little girl.
But he couldn't help it. He didn't have a normal half of his life. He was Jake Ryan, television god all the time. And who could complain about being that?
That was another thing. Being with Miley had made him second guess all of his fame and success. He had started wondering if it wasn't all it was cracked up to be; something he had never thought about before.
Jake didn't like all these new negative feelings Miley put in him, and he longed to be with someone simpler. Someone he didn't have to work at, argue with just to try and find a deeper connection.
And that someone was sitting right next to him. Not on his left, Miley, but on his right, Lily.
He knew he had treated Lily like dirt from the beginning. Using her, just to get to Miley, his eyes on the prize the whole time, not realizing until it was too late that he had stolen her heart and thrown it in the trash. But Lily was a strong cookie, he had to admit, as corny as that sounded.
She never made a move on him. Never spoke of her jealousy or anger towards him, which he knew most definitely had to be locked down under those teeming green eyes.
Oh how Jake longed to go back in time, change the past and be sitting with Lily, and only Lily right now. It was all he could do not to turn to his right and apologize to her, cry out for her forgiveness and tell her how he had done wrong. He doubted it would matter all that much to Miley anyway. Besides, he saw how she looked at Oliver, and he knew. He knew how her heart secretly longed for the boy that had once idolized her. How she wished so badly that Oliver had loved her as Miley, not just Hannah. After all, it was Oliver Oken's name she had moaned in her sleep that fateful night they had spent under the stars, not Jake Ryan's.
Thinking of that night, he sighed. My how things had changed since then. It had been his first inkling of the problems they would face ahead, and he almost wished he would have made a big deal out of it, just to avoid everything they were dealing with now.
But alas, there he was, sitting between the girl who no longer loved him, and the girl he longed to love.