Spoilers: After cattle incident and snippets of S2 episodes
Disclaimer: I wish I owned the characters. Especially Eric...drool Ahem. blinks Did I say that outloud?
Pairings: Caitlin and Eric
Author's notes:Okay Okay! It's here. Yeesh. I didn't know people were going to hound me. :P hehehe. Actually I think I enjoyed that part :D

Chapter Forty Five

"You've certainly been quiet since you got back from Christmas break," Lane said, treading softly. "You okay?"

Great. Just great. "Great," Caitlin breathed, as she unpacked her clothes. "Had a good Christmas."

"I bet y'all did," Maisy chirped happily, as she stuck her head around the corner. "With that handsome Jake on your arm, who wouldn't?" She rolled her eyes and wagged her eyebrows. "He is just the finest young man I've eva set my eyes upon."

"A little crush there, Maisy?" Lane sighed, shaking her head. She planted herself onto Caitlin's bed. "I, on the other hand, had a miserable Christmas, if anyone wants to know."

Caitlin didn't know what she did to make her room 'gab central', but she wished she hadn't. She couldn't expect any less, as her roommates certainly always seemed interested in her love life. "Like I said, it was fine." She hoped they would take the hint.

Maisy settled herself down beside Lane, who was shooing the redhead's attempts to play with her roommate's hair.

Obviously not.

"So, did you see...him?" Maisy asked, eyes averted.

"If you're talking about Eric," she said stiffly. "Then yeah."

"Did you give him a piece of your mind?" Lane asked bluntly.

Caitlin remembered the hopeful feeling that hovered in her stomach as she walked away from Eric. Part of her had thought she saw a glimmer of recognition, a moment where Eric finally realized how much she cared; but all of that was forsaken when she heard the roar of the car engine. "He knows how I feel," she stated, slowly putting her clothes on hangers.

"You're bein' awfully mysterious," Maisy said suspiciously. "Are you sure y'all aren't leavin' the details out?"

Caitlin stared at her roommate over her shoulder, who seemed to be waiting expectantly. She didn't say a word. After a long minute, Maisy got the point.

"So it's a new start, you coming back from Montana, right?" asked her other roommate.

"I guess." Caitlin really had no ties now. Nothing to hold her back. She was in New York, her family several states away. "Time to move on," she whispered. "Nothing holding me back."

"That's the spirit," Maisy exclaimed, bouncing on the bed. "In fact, I know a couple of guys who..." Lane elbowed her in the side, as she glared at the redhead.

The only thought that came to mind was that painful kiss back at High River. Caitlin knew there wouldn't be a 'someone' for a long time. It would take a whole lot of effort just to concentrate on her studies. All she had right now was her photography. There wouldn't be room anything else.

>>>

"I can't believe you're sitting her telling me how it 'was for the best'?" Griffin exclaimed irritably. "That's such a bunch of bull crap!"

"It was," Eric nodded, knowing that if he said it enough times it would be true, "really."

"Then how come you haven't even looked at another girl since you've been back?" Griffin raised a skeptical brow. "If you were all gung ho sure that dumping Caitlin was the right thing to do, then you shouldn't have a problem getting back into the dating game," he challenged his best friend. "But you haven't. In fact I've seen you turn down several of the cheerleaders and a couple of the debate team."

Eric raised a brow. "Debate team?"

"Hey," Griffin shrugged his shoulders, "I had no stereotypical category to put the normies in."

"Yeah well," he sighed. "Maybe I'm just weighing my options." Of course that was a lie. He had nothing else on his mind than Caitlin since they left High River. It was crazy. The harder he tried to stop thinking about her, the more she was there.

"Liar."

"Shut up."

"Why don't you just call her?" Griffin offered. "I know she'll hang up on you the first hundred times, but after that, she'll get to the point of just biting your head off."

"Oh won't that just be a barrel of laughs," Eric scoffed. "No thanks. I think I'll keep my head."

"You know that if you don't, everything will just get worse."

"Worse? What are you talking about?"

"There's only so much a team can take, when one of their players aren't pulling their weight."

Eric was totally lost. He had no idea what Griffin was talking about. "I haven't even played this season yet."

"Yes," Griffin nodded awkwardly. "But when you do, do you think your coach is going to like how distracted you are on the field? I mean, it's your typical classic sports movie dilemma."

"Okay, you're losing it," Eric groaned, pushing him over. "Don't you have a computer lab to fiddle with or something?"

"I'm just saying..."

"You're just saying that I belong with Caitlin and we're high school sweethearts that should end up with that happily ever after," he interrupted. "Well I'm here to tell you that isn't us. We broke up. With reason. So stop pushing so hard Griff, because it's hard enough as it is not trying to believe that I was a complete jerkoff for dumping her in the first place. It's hard enough believing that I screwed up the one thing that I wanted more than anything."

Griffin sat there speechless. There was nothing he could say. Helplessly watching his best friend sitting beside him wholly miserable sucked. And there really wasn't anything he could do about it.

>>>

The deafening high pitched ring of the phone startled her from her sleep. Caitlin groaned as she briefly glanced up at her alarm clock. 4 a.m.. Whoever it was, was on crack. Throwing a pillow over her head, she prayed the ringing would stop, or one of her roommates would pick it up. It was probably for them anyways.

The ringing continued.

Obviously her roommates slept like the dead. Groggily, she pulled herself up and flung her body across her bed and fumbled for the cordless phone on the floor. "Who is it?" she said grumpily. "And it better not be some stupid telemarketer because I will find out where you live and hunt you down."

After listening for a minute, there was no answer. Impatient and completely lacking in sleep, Caitlin growled, "Who is this?" She could hear 'someone', but they were not raising their voice to speak. Rubbing her eyes, she sat in her bed staring at the phone. "If you're not going to talk, I'm hanging up on you," she warned, placing the phone to her ear again. "Hello?"

Oh for pete's sake. This was the stupidest thing ever. She didn't even know why she was still on the phone. "I'm hanging up now..."

>>>>>>

"I'm hanging up now..."

Eric leaned back against the wall with the receiver resting against his ear. He couldn't sleep. Everytime he closed his eyes he saw her face. So he had phoned her. He had no idea what he wanted to say...He just wanted to hear her voice.

Suddenly he heard the click of the receiver. She had hung up on him.

He had deserved it. As he stood in the pitchblack darkness of the hallway of his dormitory, Eric knew he deserved nothing less. He had made a mistake. There weren't words to describe how big a mistake he had made. But he couldn't think of a way to fix it.

He wasn't Shakespeare...he wasn't even close. How would he find the words to tell Caitlin how badly he screwed up? He finally realized when he was unpacking that he brought all of this upon himself. All of this time he had been telling Caitlin this would never work. He didn't believe that Caitlin would want him once she met the guys out there.

Out there were guys who had traveled the world. They had seen and experienced so much more than he had. They were interested in the things that she was. This is what he kept telling himself, when all the while, Caitlin was trying to tell him that she didn't want that.

He had been so sure. He had been so right. And now where was he?

He had been right, but it cost him her.

So what was the point in being right? when he lost the person he had fallen in love with?