Yeah, I know I said it was going to be a one-shot, but then I was trying to write a third installation and I realized I was basically just re-stating the first two from another perspective and that it would be more fitting to write a second chapter instead. So let's call this a two-shot, if there is such a thing, and leave it at that. The characters and all that fun stuff aren't mine, and neither is the song, though it is incredibly beautiful in its entirety. I tied in another character to this one who will be showing up in Downfall, so you had better get your ass over to my profile and read that one as well, or else you won't catch it! Okay, yeah...enjoy!

He had expected it would take him awhile to say it.

After all, he had only uttered those words to a girl once before, the results of which were not something he wished to replicate. It was childish of him, yes, to linger on something that had happened so many years ago, to let old doubts impede what could possibly be a great relationship with a great girl. But still the memories had nagged at him, bringing up old scenes of heartbreak that played back in his mind like a movie he wanted badly to forget. The tense uncertainty, the screaming hormones, the stumbling lips, and most vividly all those motherfucking regrets. He had enough regrets in his eighteen years to last a man a lifetime, and he didn't want this second chance at a relationship to be added to the ranks. She sure as hell wanted him to say it though, that much was blatantly obvious. He pretended not to notice the way in which her eyes would spark and breath would hitch in nervous anticipation whenever she thought the moment could be near, but even via a long distance phone call he knew it was there. Still, whenever he opened his mouth to tell her what she so wanted to hear, the words would catch in his throat before he could give them utterance. And secretly, sometimes when he was on the phone with Marco and heard a female voice in the background, his own breathing would speed up and stomach would twist while his gay friend handed the phone over. Then when his girlfriend came on the line that familiar twinge of regret would grab hold of him and he tried to act like he was happy to hear her.

And then sometimes, the voice coming though the phone didn't belong to a brunette and the regret was even stronger.

But the pangs made him feel guilty, so he went the good boyfriend route. Bought the tickets, picked her up from the airport, drove her around the city...and fucked her admit the squalor of his lonely musician bachelor pad.

It's with a dreamlike surrealism that he remembers the events that had transpired after that. Violent, wracking sobs woke him to find a girl whose beautiful face was contorted with a heartbreaking display of tears and fury and hurt. In apologetic confusion he had asked her what was wrong, and when she relayed his admission through gasps of breath, his heart stopped. Vehemently he had tried to deny it, attempting desperately to convince the both of them that it had been an honest mistake, but in the end assuring neither. The words he had found so difficult to say then flooded from his mouth, as if by volume they could somehow make up for the lack of sincerity with which they were delivered. But it had all been in vain. He had watched her from his window while her petite silhouette hailed a cab, refusing his offer to pay for a hotel room and opting instead to catch the red-eye back to Toronto. Standing there, with so much more separating them than just the thin sheet of dirty glass he pressed his forehead up against, he though that he might have loved her. Maybe given a different time, a different situation, maybe he had loved her, but whatever might have been there before was painfully and obviously absent now.

Because his subconscious had forced those troublesome feelings he had tried to pin down as friendship to the forefront and shown them as what they really were. It had stripped away the layers of untruths he had guarded himself with, and lain this fragile, naked, raw thing called love before him. And the concept scared him shitless.

Of course, there was the small fact that she was thousands of miles away, that he hadn't seen her since his brief visit at graduation, hadn't shared one of those rare and precious phone calls with her since she left for university, and in all honesty probably hadn't said her name aloud until that fateful night. And that he had ruined any chance for a romance when he wrote her off as "just a friend" back at that wedding. The look on her face when he had hold her he was "flattered," God, he had been so stupid. Chalk up yet another regret for the boy with the brown hair.

So he did the only thing he could so, threw himself into his music, the only thing that had ever always made sense to him. He played old songs about girls and feeling he didn't have anymore, and wrote new ones he knew would never see the light of a recording studio. The only person besides himself to hear them was the new roommate the label had sent over, a marketing intern who pretty much kept to himself. The guy listened half-heartedly from the doorway, or the couch, his feedback pretty much always consisting of a "nice dude" or one of those tough guy nods that had always pissed her off to no end. He never inquired as to the song's meanings, and in turn their writer never offered to divulge them. For two people living together, they really knew nothing about each other. The one similarly between the both of them seemed to be that they both hailed from Canada, which according to the label was why they stuck them together. Because all Canadians were friends of course, an excellent use of logic on their part. The guy let on once that he had been an economics major up north, but as to why he had left school he hadn't been to keen on sharing. Being as he didn't really care, his roommate hadn't pressed the issue. But all in all, he seemed nice enough.

Soon though, the musician had other things to occupy his thoughts. A tour was about to roll-out, and as one of the promising new artists he would be included. At first there had been some disagreement been his manager and the record exec's, since he had just begun to cut his first record, and the tour would put him far behind schedule on getting the tracks laid down. For a few breathless days he had waited to hear to the final decision, and when he had finally gotten the go-ahead he felt deliciously relieved, as though he finally exhaled a breath he hadn't known he had been holding. Finally he could pour his soul into something other than thinking himself to death and into what he loved to do, playing loud music for loud crowds. Depressing bedrooms would soon be replaced by smoky clubs filled with people who would half-listen to his words and scream and sing and flail their arms about to his melodies. An addicting adrenaline rush from the high of absolute chaos would claim hold of his very being and push out any thoughts other than that single moment stage until his mind wasn't consumed with red hair and hidden smiles and drumstick calloused hands.

Not that that was on his mind when he had to put in double time at the studio to make the big guys happy a few days before the start of the tour, as he sat in the recording booth and sang love songs to a roomful of stern-looking men. Not that he ever closed his eyes when the headphones covered his ears and thought about what it would be like to have her on the other side of that glass. And the producer's certainly never told him he sang with a palatable passion when this happened...because it didn't. He just sang sometimes better than others, and no, he didn't realize his eyes had been closed on that last track, the one he had landed in one take. No, never.

And he certainly never smiled to himself in his sleep, opening his mouth slightly and letting the words roll off his tongue.

"I love you too, Ellie."

So picture me drowning, pretending I'm happy,

We end up regretting the things...we don't try

-"Caldecott Tunnel" Something Corporate