I'm BACK! no really, this is amazing. I've gotten around to finishing this chapter and I really hope you all like it. I'm going to stop talking now.

I wish I could look in your eyes
And tell you how I feel
Right now inside
Baby I know that it's real
So real so real, so real
How I wish I could be with you
How I wish I could be with you right now

When it's time for me to leave
It's so hard to say good-bye
I never want to say good-bye
I never ever want to say good-bye

~Gift from Virgo - Beyonce~

Disclaim, disclaim, disclaim...

Is it human nature to shy away from certain opportunities when they present themselves in precarious situations? Or is that just me? I had the chance to save my relationship with Needy before Felix closed the door, thereby symbolically severing all my ties with her. Actually, thinking back on it I didn't exactly know what it was that I was going to say to her. All I knew was that I wanted to get as far away from Felix as possible, sign up for a witness protection program, live under a new alias, and pray that he never ever found me. Wishful thinking, and all this on top of Needy's resentment of me. I was losing friends and alienating people. Well, the people that I could alienate.

"That was weird," Felix said after closing the door. In spite of his height, he nuzzled into my neck by crouching as low as he could go. When I should have been clutching him closer, I found myself moving away from his grasp. I felt so disgusted with myself. He began trailing kisses along the column of my throat and I shivered—not out of pleasure but out of fear.

"Felix, stop," I whispered as calmly as I could without giving myself away by the quiver of my voice. I didn't want to have sex with him right after seeing Needy again. It made me feel like a common whore and that I was using sex as a means to escape. I was my own paying costumer. Last night had been a mistake. Instead of seeing Felix's body moving over me, I had tried to imagine that it was Needy pushing me closer to the cliff of ecstasy, her beautiful face replaced the sweaty, grunting face hovering my own.

"Hey sweetie," Felix purred suggestively. I realized that despite the long trip, he must have been so anxious to fuck me when he got home. With a glazed look in his eyes, he dropped his luggage in the hallway and sauntered his way over to me. I wrapped my arms across my chest, feeling extremely exposed and cold despite all the clothes I wore. I pretended that I didn't hear him and turned my back to him as I reviewed the nonexistent messages on the answering machine.

"There's no one baby," his hot breath was all over the back of my neck and I shut my eyes tightly, praying to God that I wouldn't have to go through sex with Felix knowing that my heart was breaking for Needy. I can put up a mask in front of thousands of people but I can't pretend to enjoy making love. The thought of a sweaty body grinding against my own challenged my more than accomplished gag reflex. The proximity is just too much to bear.

He pressed his body against my back and I felt the all-too familiar turgidity jutting just above my butt. One of his large hands clutched my left shoulder and the other one possessively snaked its way around my throat. That hand tilted my neck to the side for him to gain access to the juncture of my neck and collarbone: one of the erogenous zones of my body.

I felt my body betray me as goosebumps rose over my skin and my breathing pattern began to quicken. His mouth sucked on my skin and I winced at the pleasurable pain that spread over the skin of my throat. Quickly, he undressed me; it was obvious that this wasn't going to make it to the bedroom. Instead, he brought us over to the back of the couch and bent me over, roaming his hands over the frail canvas of my back.

I must have been moaning because his grip on my hips tightened considerably, but I didn't notice anything; I wasn't inside my body. Instead, I was sitting cross-legged on the armchair across from where Felix was about to spear into my body. I was watching my face as it contorted in treacherous pleasure of the ministrations of Felix's devilishly swift fingers.

Tears rolled down from my eyes but when I brought my hand to my cheek, I felt nothing. My mind was pouring out all the pain in my soul through invisible tears that I couldn't even shed. I continued to watch angrily as Felix grasped the side of my head to join my mouth with his. Our tongues tangled and my body was absorbing all the pleasure but I couldn't feel it. I was a ghost hovering over my rotting carcass, and I couldn't fathom why I just couldn't let go. I wanted to break free from the mortal restraints of my body but I was still connected to my life. There was no escaping fate; I still had my wretched life to continue.

Soon after, it was finally over. I warily stood up from the armchair and neared the two sweaty, panting bodies. My arms were shoulder-width apart, carrying my weight and Felix's. His face was buried into my nape and my head was thrown back. My lips were parted as air freely passed through it. I had my eyes closed. The scene was too familiar for me and I realized that I was back where I had started: Felix was still controlling my life and I was allowing him to.

Reluctantly, I placed my wispy fingers against my sweat-beaded forehead and before I even took a breath, I was back in the realm of reality, shuddering as aftershocks of pleasure ran through my body. Now with functioning tear ducts, I knew that at any moment I would burst into tears so I shoved the barely conscious Felix off my back and walked silently to the bathroom. There, I rinsed my sex-soaked thighs in the shower before collapsing against the wall.

How much pain was I in? More importantly, how much pain was Needy in? I suddenly felt selfish for wallowing in my own self-pity when I knew that she was suffering just as badly as I was or even worse. I folded my legs in front of me so that I could rest my face on my knees. My chin quivered but I refused to let myself shed any tears. The benefits of a strong shower spigot: there's no telling if tears are falling, and it's loud enough so that no one can hear you cry.

Almost instantly, his lips halted their movements. He sighed then let go of me before retreating to the kitchen. I followed him.

He was rummaging through the refrigerator when I propped onto the counter. I assumed that he was looking for a bottle of water but instead, he held a bottle of beer as he turned around to face me. I resisted the urge to scowl or cock my eyebrow at him; it was barely after twelve and already he was divulging himself into a beer fest.

"Want one?" Felix gestured his bottle to me and I put up a hand.

"I'll pass," I said it with a curve of my lips in the attempts of covering my grimace. He shrugged then sipped noisily from his beer while I watched in silence, absently twisting my fingers together.

"So, we never really got to talk last night," I started, "I wanted to ask you how your trip went."

He closed his eyes in satisfaction. "It was amazing, babe! The locals were surprisingly easy to negotiate with and we drew up preliminary plans with a big oil company. Did I mention before that the beaches there are so awesome?" He sounded so animated and I was genuinely glad that he had a great time there; I wondered why he had to come back.

"Uhm, where did you go again?" I felt a little guilty that I didn't so much as pay attention to him the whole week that he was gone.

"Victoria, Seychelles."

"Oh, I see."

"So what did you do while I was gone?" He nonchalantly took a swig from his bottle, but I knew him well enough to know that he was extremely curious about what I did during the past week—maybe even a little suspicious.

I shrugged; I had to do something to relieve the violent tremors quaking in my back as I remembered Needy's skin rubbing against mine.

"Nothing much. Girl stuff."

"Mmh. So you two spent a lot of time together?" He asked again. This time, he barely masked the distrust in his voice. Somehow I wanted to slap him but I quickly realized that he had every right to feel that way because now I loved another woman more than him. He should feel furious with me while I feel extremely remorseful and guilty. So why did I want to slap him?

"You're sounding oddly accusatory, Felix." I quirked an eyebrow at him as he raised his hands in his innocence.

"No, no. I'm just asking. There's just a different way—,"

"A different way, what?" My heart sped up quickly at the thought of getting caught. My palms felt sweaty.

"Just—in the way you two looked at each other when I arrived. Like you knew something I didn't." He cocked his head slightly to the side as he remembered the scene at the front door.

"Well, she's my best friend. We share things with each other. I hardly think that's a reason for you to feel jealous." I was glad I thought quickly enough to drum up that excuse. When he took another swig from his bottle, I knew that he'd moved on thinking about other things, and I let out a quiet breath of relief.

"Seychelles was really great,"

"Mhmm," I couldn't think of a more intelligent reply.

"I might bring you there, sometime. You know, for a little getaway?" He smiled sheepishly at me after a while, and I realized that he had truly wanted to work things out between us. My head hurt.

"That'd be cool. I guess we can work something out. When did you plan for us to leave?"

"In three or four weeks."

Shit. I didn't expect it to be that early. Probably, it would be for the better. If I was trying to move on from Needy, this might be good for me. Deep down inside though, I didn't want to leave at all. Parts of me were torn between making things right and letting go of all the foolishness in my life, but I knew that what I had with Needy was real, or had been real. The wounds were still too fresh.

"Don't you think that's going to be a little difficult for you? I mean, you just got back and I'm sure you have a lot of things you have to work out on here." I reasoned out. There had to be a way around this.

Felix took a swig from his beer and made a dismissive gesture with his free hand. "The rest of them can take care of it. I'll be here 'til then, anyway. Besides, there's something so much more important to work on than just business." He looked at me straight-on and I knew that he was being serious.

I sighed in defeat. This would probably be a good thing if I was to start anew. Felix and I had a good thing going on before I met Needy and it would be easy to pick things up from there. What we had was special too and I couldn't just throw it away so easily. Above and beyond that point, Felix needs me. He needed a woman to go home to, someone who can take care of him.

But did I need him? No, of course not. I was doing so well on my own before that it wouldn't be so hard to fall back into that rhythm of my own life again. In fact, the prospect of it sounded really tasteful and tempting. Because I couldn't have Needy in my life, everyone else paled in comparison.

-oOo-

My week had proceeded as usual. Felix had arrived on a Friday so we had the weekend to spend together. I was oddly surprised that he still remembered how to conduct a normal relationship. On Saturday, we stayed in and watched pay-per-view movies, ordered pizza in and just talked about what had happened when he left. As much as possible, I tried to leave Needy out which left me with very little stories to tell of my own. Felix, on the other hand, had many stories to tell many of which I couldn't totally understand because it was all business-centered. I encouraged him though because I knew that it made him happy when he saw me to be interested in his work. When night had fallen, we ordered Japanese and then remarkably, slept early.

This was the longest time I had ever spent with him and I realized that we had a lot of ground to recover to make up for what we had lost because of the distance between us. On Sunday, things were pretty quiet. We had slept in (actually, I had barely gotten any sleep that night, just trying to sift through the haze of my thoughts) and when we woke up, I made us breakfast burritos for brunch. He hadn't pressured me at all for morning sex, though he normally would have and the whole offbeat setting actually irked me. I realized that he had wanted to change but how far was he willing to go? If anything, Felix had what I liked to call a 'short-termed' mentality because new things that he likes to fit into his routines don't usually last for more than a week or so. He told me himself that it took thirty days for an activity to become a habit, but I didn't want to be anyone's habit. I was secretly hoping that this 'new leaf' was just part of his phase and that soon, we would eventually return to our own separate lifestyles.

"Are you excited for our trip?" Felix asked while we washed and put away the dishes and utensils we used for dinner. The question caught me off guard and I found myself truly contemplating on how to answer him. Having the opportunity to get away from the city and relax was truly tempting. I wasn't exactly stressed but thinking so much really does take a lot out of me every day. Just then I had a mental image of me lying on a chaise, lamenting my life's worth to an elderly man donning horn-rimmed glasses and holding up a clipboard, asking me the same, clichéd question. "And how do you feel about that?" Maybe I did need a therapist. At least then someone would be concerned about my feelings, even if I had to pay money for it.

"Jennifer? You with me here?" Felix looked at me expectantly while handing over a clean dish for me to stock away. I blinked out of my reverie and looked back at him. He was wearing a white undershirt and plaid bottoms. His chin was sporting a five o'clock shadow and tossed over his shoulder was a dishrag. I almost thought he looked kind of adorable.

"Yeah, yes I am. Excited, I mean." I replied as I took the dish from his extended hand. He seemed pleased with my answer because he smiled as he continued scrubbing away the weekend's worth of dishes in the sink. On that note, one of his decrees in his new routine involved forgoing the dishwasher and washing the dishes ourselves because he claimed it would be therapeutic. I had to hand it to him, he did his research.

"When we get there, we're going to check into a hotel by the beach. Well, all of the hotels there are by beaches, but we're going to check into the best one." As he soaped and rinsed, he droned on about his plans for our trip which gave me the liberty to escape to my thoughts.

I realized that I had felt more than empty that whole weekend was because I hadn't painted. I did it on a semi-regular basis and I felt so tired as if I was suffering from withdrawal. Maybe I was. Because I knew I had to, after Felix gets into bed early for work the next day, I would sneak into my sacred cavern of thoughts and give myself my own, much needed therapeutic session.

-oOo-

Appropriately dressed in denim shorts and a big, white shirt that was decrepit of its original hems and seams, I crept into my painting room. Once inside, I slowly shut the door but didn't bother switching the lights on just yet. The darkness didn't frighten me here because all at once, my senses were filled with familiar scents and textures. The air was unfailingly heavy and snug, holding me comfortably in my position against the door. Suffused into the humidity was the smell of old oils and spirits and aging paper. The alcohol-based paints and other harmful chemicals were dangerous to be around all the time, but it all felt so right to me even if it did bring out the things inside that I tried so desperately to keep hidden.

After sufficiently filling my head with the stale paint fumes, I extended my left arm against the wall, feeling for the light switch before finally turning the lights on. As usual, my surroundings looked exactly the way I had left it. I reined my hair in by braiding it over my shoulder and I walked over to my latest painting. For a while, I just stared at it, examining what else was missing. The gray and brown colors warred against each other in a passionate encapsulation and the personified hunter's pursuit of them was vividly red, balancing the clash of gray and brown.

"Wait…" I said to myself, discovering what might've been missing. I drifted my hand over the canvas and imagined Needy's face over the brown, and mine over the gray. How I pictured it in my mind looked perfect. That was the missing element. Almost immediately, I reached for the paint tubes and brushes that were discarded on the floor and began mixing colors onto my palette.

I cleared my mind of everything except the mental picture I had of my painting and touched my brush to the canvas.

-oOo-

My painting was finished and I felt as if my life was complete enough so that I could die. The canvas was still perched on its easel but I covered it with some sheets as extra protection. Needy's face and mine were too clear in the picture; the message was perfect: in the obscurity of our lives, there was just the two of us but with a persistent presence hanging over our future: Felix. The juxtaposition of the warm brown and gray colors against the fiery red was enough to symbolize our precarious situation that we could die at any moment by his hand, that we were never safe.

-oOo-

Time passed so quickly that I hadn't noticed a month go by since I last saw or spoke to Needy. Felix never showed that he knew how long it'd been, but I doubt he even realized it in the first place. By now, he probably forgot I even had a best friend. I applauded myself for making it this far but I attributed my endurance to the painting. Every night I would stop and stare at it, getting lost in my fantasies of being with Needy. That alone was enough.

During this time, I hadn't really left the house except to restock on supplies and the occasional date night with Felix. He was getting better and better at playing the boyfriend role and I just wanted to fucking kill him for it. He was making it a little bit less than easy to forget why I loved him; all the same, it was harder, almost impossible, to forget why I loved Needy.

"Felix, I'm going out for some coffee, 'kay?" I called over my shoulder as I grabbed my keys from the counter and slipped into my flip flops. The sun was just about to set on a Friday afternoon and although Felix should've been at work that day, he preferred to take Friday afternoons off to either work on some non-business projects or spend time with me.

"Okay, pick me up a cup? You know how I like it." He was in the living room with what looked like blue prints unrolled over the coffee table. I walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek.

"Searing hot, absolutely no foam, and with two extra shots of espresso."

"You know it, babe."

"Mmh. See you later." With that, I bolted for the door, somehow very eager to get outside. I almost didn't get to hear Felix call out "I love you!" to which I never replied anymore.

It didn't take me long to drive out into the local mall strip. There was a variety of coffee shops there but Felix and I always preferred Beanhopper's Coffee. It was where we first met. I strode over to the barista's counter and dictated how I wanted my coffee. After paying, it struck me that if people were so particular about how they preferred their coffee, then why didn't they make it themselves?

The barista handed two steaming cups of brew and I couldn't wait 'til it was cool enough for me to drink. I used my back to push the door open and when I spun around, I almost dropped the cups from my hands.

Making her way through the grocery store's automatic doors, Needy suddenly glanced up from where her eyes were previously scanning the contents of her shopping bag. It was as if she knew that I was standing ten feet away from her. Our eyes locked and my breath hitched in my throat. Neither of us moved except that Needy's lips parted slightly as if she couldn't believe I was still alive.

People were coming out of Beanhopper's so I had to step over to the side to let them through. When I looked back into Needy's direction, she slowly walked towards me and with every step she took, I felt myself melt more and more.

When she was right in front of me, we just continued to stare at each other. She still looked disbelieving while I probably looked shell-shocked and stupid holding the two coffees.

"No fucking way," she whispered under her breath as she reached out her fingers towards my cheek. Like an electric jolt, her touch sprang me back to life and I exhaled sharply as I smiled. This was real.

Carelessly, I dropped the cups behind me and vaguely heard the thick splatter of the coffee as it hit the ground. The people behind me yelped as they avoided the spilt beverages. I threw myself at Needy and wrapped my arms tightly around her neck, burying my face into her shoulder. She smelled just as I remember and she felt just as warm.

"Oh my God," my voice broke as tears began to well up in my eyes. Needy hugged me tighter.

We broke away enough to touch our foreheads together; we didn't care that we were in the middle of the walkway. The moment we held each other, we locked ourselves away in our own Terabithia.

"I love you," Needy said, her warm breath mingling with mine as it seeped through my parted lips. I closed my eyes and smiled. I waited too long to hear that being said to me by someone to whom I could reciprocate the same feelings and more. I brought my lips to hers, not to seal them in my kiss, but so that I could repeat those words and really have her feel them being said.

"I. Love. You." She sucked in my breath and caught my lips in a searing kiss that flooded through my frozen system and overwhelmed me with heat. I felt so insatiable for her that I moved my hand over her nape to bring her mouth and tongue closer to mine.

Several steamy kisses later, we reluctantly break away. Our eyes were still closed and we settled ourselves for nuzzling each other's noses instead. I was contented with just holding Needy in my arms until my thoughts drifted over a very dark place in my mind.

I gasped and jerked away. "Felix,"

"I need to see you again." Needy replied quickly while brushing tears away from my face; I hadn't realized that I was crying. I didn't want to leave her! But in some way, I didn't want Felix to find out that I was going to meet Needy again. I wouldn't be able to pretend that I loved him anymore. Not when I had Needy so close to me again. Who was I kidding when I thought that I could live without her in my life? She's the sun in my solar system; she keeps me together.

I had to think of a quick plan. "Next week. Same time. Same place." Needy visibly deflated as she realized that that was seven days from now. Could we handle it? Suddenly it was so clear in her eyes. Excitement bubbled up in her face, and it took me a millisecond to understand: she wanted us to run away together. My heart elated at the possibility of being with Needy, starting over in a different place, not having to worry about being hunt—the portrait. It was going to come true. We would run away together yet have Felix hunt us down wherever we went.

Closing my eyes, I bent my head and laced my fingers behind Needy's back as I fiddled with the ends of her hair. "He's going to find us," I whispered weakly. I couldn't find a way out of this.

"Then break up with him,"

My head shot up. "It's not that simple." A couple tears fell down my face as I looked away, unable to bear the intense emotions pervaded in Needy's eyes. There was so much love that she had to give.

"Needy, I have to go." I should give myself a pat on the back for being strong enough to be ripped into two after so many separations. Go, Jennifer.

"I'll see you next week, then."

I nodded and extricated myself from her arms but we both knew that we didn't want to let go. When she finally released me, I held her cheek in my hand and pushed my mouth to hers, unwilling and unable to actually verbalize the word 'goodbye'. I held my lips against hers, squeezed my eyes shut, then walked away.

Yes. It's time to review.