Author Note: I wrote a short story once and it ended up turning into a full length story so there is no telling where this story is going to end up, but for now it is a Naley Song Fic. I have always been a fan of Sheryl Crow and hadn't heard this song for a long time, but when I did it reminded me of Haley and Nathan. So I hope you like it and please,please,please review. I love to hear everyone's opinions, good or bad. I don't mind.
My Favorite Mistake
"I woke up and called this morning
The tone of your voice was a warning
That you don't care for me anymore
I made up the bed we sleep in
I looked at the clock when you creep in
It's 6 a.m. and I'm alone
Did you know when you go
It's the perfect ending
To the bad day I been used to spending
When you go all I know is
You're my favorite mistake
Your friends are sorry for me
They watch you pretend to adore me
But I'm no fool to this game
Now here comes your secret lover
She'd be unlike any other
Until your guilt goes up in flame
You're my favorite mistake
Well maybe nothin' lasts forever
Even when you stay together
I don't need forever after
It's your laughter won't let me go
So I'm holding on this way
Did you know, could you tell
You were the only one
That I ever loved
Now everything's so wrong
Did you see me walking by?
Did it ever make you cry?
You're my favorite mistake
You're my favorite mistake
You're my favorite mistake"
Eleven. It had been eleven minutes since I had last looked at the clock, eleven hours since I had last seen him, and eleven months since we had met. I should have known we wouldn't, he couldn't make it to a year.
Staring at the clock, I watched the seven turn to an eight andblinked at the numbers. Five fifty eight in the morning and I still hadn't heard from him. The late nights and early mornings were really wearing on me.
Night after night and morning after morning I would lay her in our bed waiting for his return, wondering, hoping that he would slide into bed with me. And he usually did. Once in bed, he would run his hands down my arm and whisper into my ears, "Love you". Part of me would smirk at his every night statement knowing that if he really did love me he wouldn't continue to come home at unruly hours every night.
Glancing back over at the clock and then at the cracked door, I smirked at myself thinking that if I knew what was right I would leave, right now, and never come back. I knew I didn't deserve this but it didn't matter, I loved him.
He was my first love, as cliché as it may sound. Well, my first if you don't count Tommy Parker, my first boyfriend, in the third grade. Everyday he would pick a flower at recess and give it to me telling me that "I was more beautiful than this dandelion". Looking back on it now, he gave me a weed everyday for five months and I still thought he hung the moon. But whatever, I was seven I didn't know any better.
Here I am nearly eleven years later and knowing that I am a smart girl and for once in my life I should make smart choices. Lying in my bed, I go back to playing the part of the dumb, naïve girl who believes that everything will change and that in 'just a second' he will come running through that door, hug me and tell me that he is sorry for all the nights I have spent alone.
I squeeze my eyes tight and open them slowly hoping that I will wake up from this nightmare and go back to being unknown. Back to being the girl whose name no one knows, back to being Lucas Scott's best friend, back before I made the biggest mistake of my life.
Sure, he was handsome. Sure, he was the star basketball player. And sure, every girl who came within fifty feet of him wanted to do what they thought I was doing. They thought I was the girl who tamed the wild beast. They thought that at night we would cuddle up next to each other under our duvet down comforter and whisper sweet nothings into each others ears.
Man, were they wrong. There I was the epitome of the married teenage cliché lying on top of the covers staring at the ceiling fan counting how many times it has spun in the last five minutes. Five minutes, it was now six o two and I sighed.
School began in less than two hours and I hoped that no matter where he was and who he was with he would remember he had a chemistry test today.
I rolled off the bed and let my feet dangle toward the floor. Glancing into the mirror above the dresser, I ran my fingers through my hair. I felt as if I was five seconds away from a complete mental breakdown. Before I let myself fall into the pity pool I was making for myself, the phone rang.
"Hello?" I answered, sounding half-groggy and half-totally aggravated with the situation I was in.
"Hales?" The way he said my name made me cringe. His voice caressed it, cradling it making it sound so soft and smooth. Maybe he was hoping that I would be feeling lenient as I had every night before.
I never asked and never complained. He thought that it was no big deal and that I didn't mind. Either that or he was even more naïve than I was and he thought that I didn't know.
Saying nothing into the receiver, I waited for him. "Hales? You there?"
"Always. Unlike some people."
"Come on Haley. We had a late night. The game lasted tons longer than I expected and we had the party a Tim's and I drank way too much and I couldn't find anyone to take me home..."
Starting to make our bed, my bed, I said, "So tell me, when did you start thinking of this excuse? When you met up with her or when you left the house or... wait, probably when you found out I wasn't coming to the game?"
"It's not like that."
"Well, please, enlighten me. What is it like, Nathan? Because right now it is 'like' you are having a lot of fun anywhere and everywhere but where I am."
"That is not true and it pisses me off that you would even say that."
"Want to know what pisses me off, honey? What pisses me off, if you are even telling me the truth, is that you didn't even call to tell me where you were."
"My cell phone is at home and..."
I stopped paying attention to his lies and threw the pillows onto the bed. I ran my hands over the soft, velvet lining of the pillows. As I walked into the kitchen I noticed that his cell phone was not on the charger. Another lie.
"Nathan, I don't have the slightest idea what you just said other than the fact that lied to me about the cell phone. It is not on the charger and there is no place in the universe where you would even think about going without your cell phone especially a party." I sighed into the phone and felt another breakdown coming on.
The other end of the phone was silent. I closed my eyes and shook my head knowing that the silence was the death of our relationship.
"Just tell me one thing." I managed to say through the tears that were beginning to fall rapidly from my brown eyes. The silence remained and I apprehensively continued, "Did you think that I wouldn't find out?"
"Haley don't do this to yourself."
I scoffed at him, "Nathan I didn't do this to myself, you did it to me."
He sighed and said, "I never meant to hurt you."
"Famous last words, huh?" I leaned against the refrigerator in our kitchen, "If you didn't mean to hurt me then you wouldn't have done it."
"It just happened."
"No Nathan, stubbing your toe, 'just happens'. Forgetting to put the toilet seat down, 'just happens'. Cheating on your wife of under a year doesn't 'just happen'."
"I don't know what to say other than I'm sorry."
"Ya know if this was the first time I had been sitting home alone all night wondering where you were, or who you were with, or what you were doing I might consider accepting your apology..."
"But not this time."
"Oh you know me so well Nathan Scott. You know me so well." I said, every word dripping with sarcasm.
I hung up the phone and expected him to call back, but he didn't. I expected him to come through the door of our apartment and beg me to come back to him, be he didn't and the part of me that still loved him felt completely different from the part of me who despised his every move.
My raging emotions were talking over my already perplexed thought process. I wanted to cry. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream, and part of me ...was tired. And that part of me walked over to the couch, sat down, took a deep breath, and sighed feeling alone.
But that was okay, sometimes alone is better than miserable.
Author Note: So what do you think? Tell me please!