I own none of the characters of October Road of the song Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum
Picture perfect memories scattered all around the floor.
Reaching for the phone 'cause I can't fight it anymore.
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind?
For me it happens all the time.
[Chorus:]
It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now.
Said I wouldn't call but I've lost all control and I need you now.
And I don't know how I can do without.
I just need you now.
Another shot of whiskey, can't stop looking at the door.
Wishing you'd come sweeping in the way you did before.
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind?
For me it happens all the time.
[Chorus:]
It's a quarter after one, I'm a little drunk and I need you now.
Said I wouldn't call but I've lost all control and I need you now.
And I don't know how I can do without.
I just need you now.
Oh whoa
Yes I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all.
[Chorus:]
It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now.
And I said I wouldn't call but I'm a little drunk and I need you now.
Well I don't know how I can do without.
I just need you now
I just need you now.
Oh baby I need you now
Two years ago Janet Meadows was happier than she had been in her entire life. One year ago, she was still happy but she was beginning to question certain things in her life. Seven months ago she was really questioning the state of her life and six months ago she made a huge change in her life and has not been happy since.
"How on earth did you manage to get a reservation?" Janet asked her boyfriend in awe. He had just pulled into a brand new Italian restaurant where reservations were scheduled out six weeks in advance.
"We put the windows in so they gave Nick and I reservations. I think he and Hannah are coming tomorrow." Eddie Latekka, Janet's boyfriend explained.
"Well I appreciate it because I know how much you hate these fancy suit and tie restaurants" Eddie parked his truck, turned it off and turned to face his girlfriend.
"I do hate this but you don't so I will sacrifice so we can have a special night." He leaned over and kissed her softly.
Walking into the restaurant, Janet's heart was pounding. This was it. Tonight she was going to get engaged. She and Eddie had been dating for a year and a half. Eddie "moved in" with her when they hit the nine month mark meaning his clothes and a few other things were at her house. He never got around to changing his address officially but it wasn't a big deal. If anything important ever came for him, Phil would call and inform him. There was a small part of Janet that wished Eddie would make it official; she would feel more secure that way but in the end it really didn't matter because she knew every night, he was coming home to her and their bed.
Once they hit their one year anniversary and Eddie didn't pop the question during the very romantic weekend he planned for the two of them and Janet was really disappointed so she began to drop hints. Over the next six months there were a few times she thought he got the message. For example, on Valentines Day they spent a romantic evening at home and when he gave her the gift he bought for her it came in a small ring size box but it turns out the box contained earrings not an engagement ring. The few times she really questioned him about getting married he blew her off and changed the subject. Now they have been dating for a year and a half and Janet was convinced that tonight was the night. He did say that they were going to have a special night.
Throughout dinner, Janet kept looking for signs that Eddie was going to propose. She checked the wine glass before she drank it to see if the ring was inside the glass. When her dinner plate arrived she anxiously held her breath as the waiter lifted the cover off of the plate but there was no ring inside. The one time Eddie got up to use the bathroom, Janet waited for him to return and fall to one knee but he didn't. When she went to the bathroom, she hoped that he would be down on one knee when she returned but he was still seated. When dessert was brought out, she carefully picked through her cake, hoping to find a ring but there was none.
The dinner was a bust as far as Janet was concerned and Eddie seemed oblivious to her agitation. He just continued talking, holding her hand and stealing occasional kisses. When they got home Janet was still hoping that he had something up his sleeve, like a ring, but he didn't. He walked in the door, slipped his shoes and suit jacket off; loosened his tie and popped a squat on the couch, stretched his feet out in front of him and turned on the television. When Janet saw that, she lost it.
"Is that it?" Eddie looked at her in confusion.
"Huh?"
"Is there anything else you have planned?"
"Uhh no."
"You said that we were going to have a special evening." Tears had filled her eyes.
"I thought we did." Eddie pulled his feet off of the coffee table in front of him and sat up.
"Dammit Eddie, I thought you were going to propose."
"What? Why would you think that?"
"Oh I don't know. Maybe because you promised me a special evening."
"Just because I said a special evening didn't mean a proposal."
"Yeah. I got that." Sighing, Janet sat next to Eddie and took his hand in hers. "Why Eddie?" She asked tearfully.
"Why what?"
"Why haven't you proposed yet?" Tears were falling down her cheeks and Eddie's heart broke for her.
"Janet…I…"
"Don't you want to marry me?" Eddie was silent. He didn't want to answer her question. "Eddie, do you want to marry me?"
"No Janet I don't." He finally admitted. Janet pulled her hand away like she had been burnt.
"Don't you…don't you love me?" She cried. "I thought you loved me. I thought we had a good thing."
"We do have a great thing and I do love you." He did love her. He has never loved anyone like he loved her. Eddie reached out but she pulled away.
"I don't understand."
"Janet everything is great just as it is. Why change it? I don't need a piece of paper to know how I feel about you."
"No Eddie. Everything is not great. We have been together for almost two years. I love you so much and I want to get married. I want to be your wife."
"I'm sorry honey but I don't want to get married."
"You knew, before we even started dating that I wanted to get married. You could have told me this when we started getting serious. You should have told me." She accused even though now that she thought about it, she saw the signs. "I've just wasted a year and a half of my life."
"It wasn't a waste Janet. We have been and are happy so why change things?"
"How much of a change would it be Eddie? We already live together. The only things that would change would be a ring on your finger and you would refer to me as your wife instead of girlfriend. Not a lot of change." Janet snapped through her tears. She was angry and heartbroken.
"Why does anything have to change? Like you said, we are already living together, sharing everything and we're happy. What difference would it make if we are married?"
"The difference Eddie would be that you would be my husband and I would be your wife. We would be committed to each other for the rest of our lives."
"I'm already committed to you. I don't need a wedding for that."
"Bullshit." She called him out. "If you are so committed why haven't you "officially" moved in here? Why if anyone looks you up, they would see your address is on Gelson and not here. If you were so committed to me and this relationship why do you still have stuff at Phil's? Why doesn't your mail come here?"
"Come on Janet. I do live here. I just never got around to making it official publicly. It was official between us and I thought that was what mattered."
"You are so full of crap." Everything was perfectly clear to Janet. "You are so scared of commitment that you made sure that if things got to serious that you would have somewhere to go."
"Not true Janet." Eddie snapped.
"Prove it."
"How?"
"Marry me Eddie." As Eddie stared at the woman in front of him, tears filled his eyes.
"I love you Janet. I love you so much but I don't want to get married." His tears fell as he spoke those words because he knew how much he was hurting her.
"I understand." She leaned over, kissed his cheek and disappeared into the bedroom.
Eddie thought that was the end of the fight. He figured she would be mad for a couple of days and then she would get over it and their relationship would return to normal so he was surprised when she returned to the living room twenty minutes later and tossed a duffel bag on his lap.
"What's this?"
"I want you to go." She told him calmly. In fact, she was very calm.
"Go where?"
"Go back to Phil's. Go to Nick and Hannah's. I don't care. I just want you to go."
"For tonight? For a couple of nights?" His heart began to pound with anxiety.
"No. I want you to leave for good."
"What? Why?"
"I want to be someone's wife. I wanted to be your wife but you don't want that and I will not put that dream aside because you don't want it. I will not be one of those women who will just wait and wait for something that probably won't happen. I need to find someone who loves me and wants to marry me and I can't do that with you in my life."
"But I love you Janet." He cried.
"Not enough to marry me."
"Janet…please…I…"
"Eddie, there is nothing left to say. I want you to leave." He looked at her with tears rolling down his face. He wanted to be able to tell her what she wanted to hear but he couldn't make himself do it so slowly he stood and walked over to her. "I work until close tomorrow night so you can come over then and pick up the rest of your stuff. Make sure you leave your key on the table." She told him with a shaking voice.
"Please, reconsider." He whispered, reaching out to cup her cheek.
"If you will then I will." The look on his face told her he wouldn't. "I won't call you."
"I wish you would."
"I can't." Eddie smiled sadly in understanding then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers for one final kiss that left them both breathless.
"I love you Janet and I hope you can find someone who can give you what I can't. You deserve that."
"I love you too." She responded with as much dignity as she could muster at that minute. Eddie reluctantly pulled away, grabbed the bag and walked away from the best relationship of his life while Janet stood in the middle of the living room and cried softly.
That was six months ago and Janet had tried her best to move on but that was easier said than done. Eddie was the first significant, meaningful relationship that she had ever had and he was perfect except for the not marrying her part so it was very hard to find someone comparable to him and she knew that she had to stop comparing other men that she dated to Eddie or else she would have defeated the whole purpose in breaking up with Eddie; she would be unmarried and alone.
As promised, she did not call him which was very difficult. For a year and a half, whenever anything happened in her life or just in general she would call or text him and during the first few weeks after their breakup she had to physically stop herself from picking up her phone. To help with that situation she deleted his number out of her cell phone but that didn't matter. She still had his number memorized.
Seeing him out on the town, in places that they frequented together was the hardest part of the entire breakup. It took a few weeks before he returned to Sully's and when he did it took everything Janet had not to run over to him. Instead she smiled at him and went back to work. Later when he came up to order a beer, they were pleasant but Janet longed for more. The first time she saw him out with another woman made her heart ache but again, she smiled pleasantly as she handed him and his date their beers. It was after all what she wanted.
Today was or would have been their two year anniversary and Janet was missing Eddie more than normal. She longed for him. She ached for him more so than she normally did and the fact that she was sitting in the middle of her living room floor, surrounded by pictures of the two of them during happier times while drinking wine straight from the bottle wasn't helping the situation. She was feeling empty inside and she needed to feel something, even if it was hurt; she needed Eddie and she needed him now.
Glancing at the clock she saw it was a quarter after one. It was a Saturday night and she knew he was awake or at least she hoped he was. Before she came to her senses and changed her mind, she picked up the phone and dialed his number from heart.
Eddie Latekka was sitting in his room, on his bed leaning against the wall staring at the door, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a shot glass in the other wishing his ex-girlfriend would come sweeping in the way she did before. Every time she walked into his bedroom her face radiated happiness and her blue eyes were always full of love. Just her presence in his room made it a brighter and it was a place he wanted to be. Since they broke up he hated being in his bedroom without her. It had turned into a dark, depressing place.
Their break up had been really hard on him. He loved her so much and the day he walked out of her house and life after she told him to was the worst day of his life. He could have stopped it but he didn't. All she wanted was a promise from him to marry her and he couldn't give that to her and he had regretted it every day since but he didn't know if he could agree to what she wanted. Like she said, he knew before they started dating that one day she wanted to get married and he hoped that being with her would change his heart but in the end it didn't happen.
Eddie has never seen marriage as a good thing. Most of his friends, parents and members of his family were divorced. His older brother was only married for two years before he was divorced. His parents divorced when he was ten. He remembered the years prior to their divorce all they did was fight and not so quietly. He was actually thankful for the divorce because he thought the fighting would stop but it didn't. Every time his parents were in the vicinity of each other, they fought which made Eddie's school activities rough; either both of his parents went and fought the entire time, embarrassing him or only one of the showed up and blamed the other for missing it and even to this day, they still fought with each other, making Eddie and his brother's life miserable. For example when Eddie's brother Geoff got married, his parents fought over everything almost ruined poor Geoff's wedding.
Since Eddie grew up in the middle of a crappy marriage and so far he has never seen a successful one as far as he was concerned, marriage never worked. His parents each had been living with a significant other for years and never got married and his parents were happier than they had ever been so in Eddie's opinion, marriage just ruined relationships and he didn't want to risk ruining his relationship with Janet but it turns out he did.
He wanted to tell her why he couldn't marry her; he wanted to make her understand that it wasn't her but he couldn't make himself do it. He was a private person and even though he told Janet practically everything he couldn't bring himself to tell her that one thing and keeping that one secret from her cost him the best relationship of his life.
He knew that Janet wanted to move on and find someone; the perfect guy to marry her and as much as he hated the thought of Janet with someone else, he wanted her to find that man so she could be happy. That's all her wanted for her or that's what his brain was telling him but the first time he saw her out with another man; a man that wasn't him putting his arm around her; touching her his heart told him that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to be the man who was touching her and holding her but he knew he wasn't the man who could give her what she desired the most so it was very hard to watch her with someone else but he suffered through it because it was what she wanted.
The reason he was sitting at home feeling depressed indulging in a bottle of whiskey was because it was the day they would have been together for two years. He missed her everyday but today was worse. He couldn't get her out of his mind. He wanted to see her and all day long he looked for her but never saw her. He spent the evening at Sully's hoping she was working but she wasn't so then he hoped that she would be there on a date just so he could see her but she never showed so now he was drowning his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey.
He debated with himself on whether or not to call her. She swore she wouldn't call and he swore to himself he wouldn't call because if he did it would make things so much worse for him but at this moment he didn't care. He needed to hear her voice. Giving in he picked his cell phone up off of the bed and that's when he noticed that he had a voicemail. Someone must have called during a bathroom break.
"Hi Eddie it's me." Eddie's heart began to pound when he heard Janet's voice. "It's a quarter after one; I'm all alone and a little bit drunk. I swore I wouldn't call but I need you now." He could hear the tears in her voice. "I miss you so much and I feel so empty right now. I know that seeing you will only hurt me but right now, I would rather feel hurt than the emptiness that I am feeling now." And suddenly the call ended. In minutes Eddie had his shoes on and was walking over to Janet's.
The second the door opened Eddie's heart went into overdrive. His ex-girlfriend looked amazing. Her eyes were red from crying, her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, her face was flushed because she had been drinking and her blue eyes were dark with arousal; Eddie thought she looked beautiful. Before he could utter a word Janet reached out, grabbed his shirt, yanked him into the house and pressed her lips to his in a passionate kiss. When they broke for air, they looked into each other's eyes for an instant before crashing back together and this time Eddie managed to shut the front door with his foot. Without breaking the kiss Janet led them back to her bedroom.
"How drunk are you?" Eddie asked when they made it to her bedroom. He didn't want to take advantage and sleep with her if she was blitzed.
"Drunk enough to want this but sober enough to know exactly what I am doing." She answered, pulling his tee-shirt over his head.
"Are you sure about this?" His hands were slowly pushing her shirt up.
"No I'm not but I want it. I need you Eddie. Now would you please shut up already?"
Eddie had no argument left in him, especially as her hands were unbuckling his belt. He wanted this as much as she did. Their clothes were quickly off of their bodies and on the floor and they fell into bed.
"God, I've missed you." He groaned as he surged into her and Janet moaned in response.
They made love hungrily. They couldn't get enough of each other. Their hands and lips were everywhere, making up for lost time. They lost themselves in each other and the moment and for the time being they were the only two people in the world and everything was exactly how it ought to be.
"I needed that." Janet mumbled as she settled in bed. She and Eddie were lying side by side on their backs but not touching.
"I've missed you so much Janet."
"I've missed you too."
"So where does this leave us?"
"I have no idea." She turned to face Eddie, her eyes full of tears. "God, I love you. I have tried to move on but I have had no success because the other men; they aren't you but I want, I want so badly to be married and you don't want that and I don't know what to do." She sobbed.
Eddie couldn't stand to see the heartbreak on her face. He rolled over, wrapped an arm around her waist. He knew she needed an explanation besides his simple "I don't want to" so he poured his heart out to her; telling her the story of his parent's awful marriage and divorce and explaining to her that he didn't want to ruin their relationship with marriage.
Janet was silent for a few minutes and then she simply replied "Did you ever think that maybe we could be the couple that proves your "marriage ruins relationships" theory wrong?" She lifted her head, kissed his lips, rolled away from him and was asleep within minutes. After watching her sleep for an hour, Eddie climbed out of bed, dressed and left with a lot on his mind.
Two days later Janet was surprised when she walked out of Sully's at two thirty in the morning after she closed to find Eddie standing next to her jeep. They had not spoken since the night they made love. Janet wasn't quite sure where she stood and what she wanted so she had nothing new to say and Eddie spent the past two days working things out with himself.
"Hi." She said slowly.
"Hi yourself." They stood in uncomfortable silence for two very long minutes. Eddie had something to say but wasn't quite sure how to get it out.
"Did you need something?"
"Yeah." Again, Janet waited but he didn't say anything.
"Well?"
"Janet I love you and I have never felt this way about anyone ever before. I can't be without you. I need you." A shocked Janet watched as Eddie fell to one knee and pulled out a ring. "Janet my fear has held me back and hurt you and I'm sorry for that. Let's be the couple that proves me wrong. Let's get married and grow even closer and more in love than further apart. Janet will you marry me?"
"I have been thinking that I can deal with just being with you without marriage." After their night of passion she realized that she didn't want to be without him and was in the process of talking herself into being just his girlfriend; it was better than not having him at all.
"No baby. You shouldn't settle."
"I don't want you to do something you don't want to. It's not worth it because in the end you will resent me and we will fall apart."
"I was scared Janet. I was terrified that if we married than I would lose you. I'm not scared anymore. I know that we can make it. I know that we will be happy." Janet began to cry.
"I…I…have waited so long for this."
"So what do you say? My knee is killing me."
"Are you sure?"
"I've never been surer of anything so I'm going to ask you again. Will you marry me Janet Meadows?"
"Yes Eddie I will." With a huge, gorgeous smile, Eddie stood, wrapped his arms around Janet and kissed her with all the love that he had for her.
"I love you Janet." Eddie whispered after they pulled apart and he slid the ring on her finger. Thankfully Janet had parked, like she always did when she closed next to a parking lot light so she could see her ring.
"It's beautiful." She told him tearfully.
"You really like it?"
"I really do."
"Look, I talked to Sully and he can manage the bar without you for the next week."
"Why would he do that?"
"Because if you are interested, I would like to go to Vegas and get married tomorrow." Janet's mouth fell open in shock.
"Are you serious?"
"Dead serious."
"Why? Are you afraid you will change your mind?"
"I'm not changing my mind. "
"Then why the rush?"
"Because you have waited long enough." Eddie told her tenderly. Janet had just stopped crying and hearing those words filled her eyes with tears. She wrapped her arms around her fiancé's neck.
"Let's go pack."