It was one of those things where both parties had meant to call, or to write but other things just kept filling up the time and by the time either's head hit the pillow they were too tired to write, or it was too late to call.

And so it was with Bright and Hannah. He really had planned on calling as soon as he got home, but he returned only to find that his mothers' condition was not as good as they had thought before he left. His mornings were filled with college work online, and his afternoons with appointments which he regularly drove her to, being that his father had to be at work. It wasn't that he didn't think about Hannah, it just ended up that she had last place in his priorities.

The same went for Hannah. She returned to normal life, post Bright visit and was struck with the harsh reality of her father's increasingly terrible illness. He didn't have that long to go, they didn't think. She had to spend every available minute with him, even if he was rarely responsive.

This particular night, she was sitting by his bedside, reading to him from his favorite book of Robert Frost poems. If he didn't really hear them, it didn't really matter. It gave her a confidence that she was repaying him for being the father that he had been until he couldn't be anymore. She was doing what she could. She read:

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could.
To where it bent in the undergrowth,

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,"

The phone rang and she looked up at it. Setting the book down on her lap, she answered it.

"Hannah?" A familiar voice on the other end asked.

"Yes." She answered, hoping for some reason that it wasn't who she knew it was.

"It's me. I'm sorry that I haven't called. I've just been really busy. Stuff with my mom has gotten complicated again and I need to be there for her. I just had a free moment, one of the first in like four weeks and I wanted to call you to assure you that I am still here. How are you?"

"I'm not doing the best Bright. The reality of everything with my Dad hit me after you left. They say he doesn't have a whole lot of time left. Listen, Bright. It seems like we both have a lot going on in our lives right now, I know I do. I think it might be better if we just stopped trying to take time out to call and talk about pointless things when all this is going on. I mean we are separated by like hundreds of miles; this is a little ridiculous at this point. Okay, so don't bother calling anymore."

As the words slipped from her lips she almost couldn't believe she was saying them, but she was convinced they were what had to be said.

She hung up the phone. She sat back down in the chair by her father's bed. He grabbed his hand.

"Daddy," she began to cry into the edge of the bed. He remained there, lying simply lifeless.

In an instant a sharp pain took over Bright's chest. Bright had been broken up with before, although truthfully he'd done most of the breaking up in his relationships, but that was like nothing he'd ever gone through before. The words were typical, but the way they were delivered, and the tone that accompanied them cut him as deep as anything ever had. Even finding out that his own mother could die sooner rather than later like he had always thought.

He couldn't believe that Hannah had just broken up with him. It's not like he had expected marriage or something, but he just didn't understand it. Why? What had he done but love her and support her? He thought for a moment. Usually he could pinpoint what stupid event had triggered a girl breaking up with him. He couldn't think of anything, other than not calling her for weeks. But that wasn't his fault, and he was sure she understood that since she seemed to be in the same boat.

He suddenly felt like a total girl. He wanted to talk to her, to figure this out, to talk to anyone, to understand this, to stop the griping pain from crushing his heart into a million pieces. But there was no one. Hannah was the only person he really talked to anymore. Ephram was unreachable on his little quest to find himself, and he wasn't gonna talk to Amy about it.

There was a knock on the door.

"Come in." He muttered, ignoring it and still holding the phone in his hand.

"Bright, I wanted to talk to you." Harold entered the room and closed the door.

"About what?" He looked up, attempting to look coolly distant but not crushed as he felt.

"About your mother, but what is going on with you now? I see something else." He sat down on his bed, which was faced the chair in which Bright was seated.

"Nothing," he replied looking down at the floor.

"Don't give me that crap Bright. I've been your father for nearly twenty years. I think I know you a little better than you give me credit for. What's going on?"

Bright looked up and sighed.

"You know, Hannah? How I've been I guess dating her since she left at the end of the school year?"

"Yes, what about her," he asked.

"Well, I called her tonight because it had been like ages since the last time I did that. With Mom and all I had gotten kind of wrapped up in that and hadn't gotten around to it. So I called her tonight to apologize and tell her that I was sorry and that I was still interested in being her boyfriend, still interested in being there for her."

"Well," Harold looked at his son.

"And, well she pretty much dumped me. She told me that there was no reason to try and keep our pointless relationship going over all those hundreds of miles when all this other crap, well, she didn't say crap, but stuff was going on around us in our own families."

"Oh, Bright, I'm sorry." Harold looked up at his son. "You're really broken up by this aren't you? I've never seen you act like this with a girl before."

"Yeah well, Hannah was, Hannah was, special. Different, something I never thought I'd find amazingly fun, interesting and attractive but now that she's gone it's like I am not sure how to exist without her."

"Yeah, I know how you feel believe it or not. That's how I felt when I thought I was gonna lose your mother. That's how you feel when you really,"

"I get it Dad. Thanks." Bright interrupted him.

"Of course you do." Harold replied. "Well, I can talk to you about your mother in the morning. Get some sleep." He added as he left the room, shutting the door behind him.

"Hannah, honey, how is that Brighton boy? You never talk about him anymore?" Her mother asked, looking up from her crosswords.

She sighed.

"We're really not talking anymore. We've both got too much going on, thought it was better to focus on family." She replied getting up and going upstairs to her room. Her mother seemed a bit worried but returned to her book.

Don't paint the silence black now save me,
don't leave it a day

He threw the phone down to the floor and smashed down hard onto his bed. He closed his eyes, hoping that the darkness would make all of this disappear. This is why he never got this close to a girl.

You got a right to stand or die so maybe
you take chances all the same

Hannah gently slipped under the covers of her bed and clicked off her lamp. In the darkness of her room, she pondered if what she had done was the right thing. She had to spend time with her family now, in her home.


Pain comes in stages
if we don't make it

It wasn't necessarily what he heart was telling her to do, but it was the sensible thing to do. Family was number one, Bright wasn't family and he wasn't dying. At this point that made him almost invisible to Hannah.

Nothing changes
Nothing changes
Nothing changes

A/N: I am just cranking these out, huh? lol. Lyrics in this one are by South and the song is called "Paint the Silence."