First and foremost, THIS STORY CONTAINS NO REAL PEOPLE. It does, however, contain characters from Hannah Montana. I don't own these characters.

I want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of you who leave wonderful and constructive reviews. It means the world. Hugs for everyone!!

Haha, and now onto Chapter 10. I gave you guys a kinda long one this time. Hope you enjoy it!

After Oliver had crashed their conversation, it took a while before Miley got Lilly cornered enough for her to try again. In that time, she had seriously considered not going through with it, but then she remembered the look on Lilly's face when she said something had happened to Joe, and how totally sincere and shamelessly desperate Joe had sounded on the phone. His annoyingly frequent calls asking for updates probably didn't hurt either…

Her chance came several days later when Oliver strolled out the door mumbling something about pizza rolls and she and Lilly were finally alone again. She wasn't sure how she should bring it up since they were in the middle of watching a movie, so she just plunged in headlong and went for it. "Joe's gonna be home in a week," she stated plainly.

Lilly rolled her eyes. "Wow, that was subtle."

Miley was slightly embarrassed but forged on. "Are you going to talk to him?"

"I don't know," Lilly said with a shrug. "I haven't thought that far ahead." It was partially true. Every time she found herself thinking about it, she tried to force her mind onto something else.

"Hmm," Miley answered, deep in thought. The whole conversation had started so tactlessly, so what hell… "Do you miss him, Lilly?"

"Does it matter?" she snapped. Her face softened when she noticed that Miley had recoiled back slightly. "I'm sorry. I just… Yes, I miss him. But that alone isn't a good reason to do… anything, I suppose. He was the one person that I was supposed to be able to trust to never hurt me, but he hurt me the most. And maybe the worst part is that I was stupid enough to let him. Over and over again. And I know you can't just wake up one morning and decide to stop caring about somebody, but god I wish I could. After all the shit that happened, I'd give anything to do that," Lilly finished quietly. Her eyes had started to tear up, but she was trying to hide it and stared blankly at the ground.

Miley was left with her mouth slightly agape. Excusing herself, she got up and walked down the hall to the bathroom. Stepping inside, she closed the door behind her and pulled out her cell phone.

"Hello?" Joe answered after only one ring. He must have been waiting for a call.

"I'm out."

"What?"

"I'm out," Miley repeated. "If you want to talk to her, I guess I can't stop you, but I'm done. I shouldn't have agreed to this."

"W-what did she say?" he stammered.

"She just wants to forget you, Joe, but she can't. If you had a heart, you'd let her," she said. Then the line was dead.

He slowly lowered the phone from his ear. He was shocked. "I've never fucked anything up this badly in my entire life," he murmured.

"What was that?" Kevin asked as he opened the door.

"Nothing," Joe said quietly as he got up to leave. "I'm going out."

Kevin grabbed his shoulder to stop him. "Joe," he said warningly, "we have a show tonight, not to mention that it's the middle of the day." Not this again, please…

"I know that, but I just have to get out of here. I'll be back on time. And I won't do anything stupid." He noticed the frown on his brother's face. "I promise," he added.

Kevin looked at him reluctantly. Finally, he let go of him and took a deep breath. "Okay. I trust you."

Joe nodded his thanks and left. When he got down to the lobby, he asked the front desk to call him a cab and sat down to wait for it. How was he going to fix this now? What if he couldn't?

"Sir?" Joe looked up, startled. It was the woman from the desk. "Your taxi's here."

"Thanks," he mumbled. He got up and moped out the rotating glass doors. Spotting his cab, he slid in the back seat.

"Where are you headed?" the driver asked.

It wasn't until the question was posed aloud that Joe realized he had no idea. He definitely had a bad habit of not thinking ahead. "Uh…" he hesitated. He wished he could go back to the diner where he had felt so alive and certain that it would be okay, but they were hundreds of miles from there by now. "MSP," he said with as much conviction as he could muster. He wasn't exactly sure what he was going to find at the airport; it was just the first thing he had thought of. The driver nodded and pulled into traffic. Joe leaned his head on the window and went back to his thoughts.

Just as they were pulling off the freeway, Joe noticed something. "Hey, can you just leave me off right up here?" he called up to the front.

The driver gave him a confused look in the rearview mirror. "Suit yourself," he said and pulled the car over.

"Thanks," Joe said quickly as he paid his fare and got out. He walked about half a block down the sidewalk until he reached a bench. He sat down and began inspecting his surroundings.

There really wasn't much around. He was alone there. There were no houses. A couple blocks down the street there was a building with lots of freight trucks parked around it, but other than that, there were no businesses. Behind him, though, lay a huge cemetery. He figured it must be a military cemetery with all the bright white headstones lined up in perfect rows. The whole scene looked pretty depressing, especially in the pale light of the cloudy day. For a moment, he actually had to fight back the urge to laugh at the whole thing. "I'm so pathetic…" But he could see the planes from there.

Out across a wide field of pavement was the airport's elaborate series of runways. Joe watched as minute after minute, planes took off and landed in their never-ending cycle. "This is kinda nice," he said to no one in particular. "I don't know why people kill themselves over this," he joked to himself. He remembered hearing somewhere that air traffic controllers had the highest suicide rate as an occupation.

He decided that it seemed like a novel thing, to watch the planes. It seemed like a silly, self-important activity that would be considered to have all kinds of faux deep meaning and significance. It seemed so… Kevin. Really, he just liked to space out and watch the pattern. Like putting an infant under a ceiling fan…

But at the moment, it was the best he could come up with. Usually he would have gone out to a club, made some friends for the night, bought everyone a couple rounds, and ultimately ended up back at his hotel room with a girl whose name he probably wouldn't remember. But he had promised Kevin he would behave himself, so there he sat.

The planes could only keep up their job for so long, and his mind eventually turned back to Lilly. Maybe he wouldn't get her back and he'd have to live the rest of his life knowing he only had himself to blame. And what Miley had said this morning… That couldn't happen though. There's always a way to fix it, right? If he could just tell her that he had learned his lesson… just like he had all the other times. No wonder she couldn't trust him anymore. She wouldn't like it, but he just needed to find a way to make her listen to him. And he at least deserved for her to know that he was sorry.

He reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone when one last horrifying thought popped up. If you truly, selflessly loved her, would you be doing this at all?

He did his best to push that away, then opened his phone and dialed his first speed dial. Lilly.

It rang once, twice, three times… And eventually went to voicemail.

"Hey, it's Lilly! Leave me a message and I'll call you back!" There was a pause, and somewhere in the background you could hear a faint "Ha!" followed by a "Hey! St--" before the loud beep signified that he was now being recorded.

He quickly hung up. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say yet, and if she was screening, as he assumed she was, his message had better be good.

He couldn't help but smile, though. It was so nice to hear her voice, even if it was only for two seconds on a cell phone. And she sounded so happy, on the verge of laughing through the whole thing.

He had been sitting right next to her when she'd recorded it, trying to mess her up and make her laugh. He snickered as he remembered that he was the "Ha!" as well as the reason for the following "Hey! St--" at the end. That was when he had grabbed her and started tickling her. She tried to be annoyed about it, complaining that her message made her sound dumb and it was all because of him, but he knew that she wasn't really mad. After all, she had never recorded a new one. He wondered for a moment if she realized that he was still in her voicemail message.

Meanwhile, the girls were at end of the movie they were watching. Just as the credits began to roll, "The Best of Both Worlds" began blaring. Miley gave Lilly a look as if to say, "Still?"

Lilly cracked a smile, but it quickly faded when she read the front screen of her cell phone. Joe Calling.

Miley noticed the frown on her friend's face. "What? What is it?"

"Um, nothing," Lilly said quickly as she hit a button to ignore the call.

Ooh, denied… Think he's gonna get through to her?

Okay, random brain teaser (cause I'm just a huge geek like that.) I based the setting of this chapter on a real U.S. city. It's pretty specific so you'd probably have to be from the area to recognize it, but does anyone know the city? Just curious.

Love you guys. Thanks for reading and reviewing! Peace out :o)

-Char

P.S. –SO I JUST RECEIVED MY FIRST FLAME. I've never gotten one before, on any of my stories, so that was kind of funny. I know now that this story is "retarded" and that I shouldn't write anything until I've read "real" stories, we have no sense of reality, oh, and we're apparently all losers. So yeah, just thought I'd pass that along. And it was left by an anonymous reviewer named "save the penguins" so it must be TRUE! ;)