Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I've been so busy that I'm not sure if this is entirely up to par. Drama's not my genre.
I didn't invent these characters.
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Fast Forward
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"The infamous Craig Manning," the man, in his late twenties and wearing a moderately-priced dress shirt and pants, said, extending his hand for a shake. His nametag read "Kirk" and then "Manager."
Rubber Soul Records was an independent chain around Toronto, with enough locations and business to be relatively inexpensive, but enough "indie cred" for Craig to not feel he'd handed over the entirety of his soul to this just-above-minimum-wage job his own manager had lined up for him.
"Now, I'm gonna be straight with you, because that's just the guy I am," Kirk said with a salesman's grin, "You've basically got the job. This interview is just a formality thing - just to make sure you're not some kind of creep. You come highly recommended, though, buddy!" With this, Kirk punched Craig playfully on the shoulder, as if this had been a hilarious joke and not just a statement that was pretty much true.
Craig chuckled nervously, "Yeah, well, I can't do the 'musician thing' full time - not right now, anyway."
"Well, I just have a couple mandatory questions," Kirk started, looking down at a clipboard," can you work weekends?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"Ever been convicted of a felony?"
Craig smiled, "Nope."
In keeping with the buddy-buddy routine he'd set up earlier, Kirk went in for another shoulder punch, which Craig dodged somewhat annoyed, silently praying his new job wouldn't allow for much one-on-one manager time. "Didn't think so, old sport. Now, any problems we should know about? Are you a smoker? A drinker? Any history of drug use or shoplifting?"
With all his might, Craig tried to restrain himself from making any faces. Instead, he shook his head dismissively from side to side. "I'm way too serious about my music for that stuff."
Kirk made a mark on his clipboard, as Craig's insides twisted into a variety of balloon animals. Did he buy it? "That just leaves one more thing," Kirk said, his voice ominous. Surely his manager wouldn't have told this man about rehab... In an instant, Kirk's voice regained its over-friendliness: "We need to get you fitted for your very own grey and red polo!"
Breathing a sigh of relief, Craig pasted a smile on his face and followed Kirk out of the room, praying he'd look good in a polyester blend.
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Ellie Nash most certainly was not telling Jesse.
The morning following Craig's arrival was a Saturday and, luckily for her, one that found her live-in boyfriend leaving mid-morning for a weekend-long trek to Newfoundland, where he and his "buddies" would camp, fish, drink, and bond in the kind of male way they both understood that she'd never understand. Her brain was already screaming out apologies for what she was free to do a matter of hours later as an SUV containing a few of Jesse's friends pulled up to their apartment. While he kissed her goodbye, it was all she could do to keep herself from confessing everything - that she definitely still had feelings for this silly highschool infatuation; that she'd waited for two years for him to show some interest in her and the fact that he finally was hadn't left her mind from the moment she stepped off his front porch; that she'd thought of Craig during the sloppy, half-asleep sex they'd had that morning; that it'd felt better than it had for months, and probably for that very reason.
She watched as the vehicle pulled out of its parking space and into the road, waiting for Jesse's hand to protrude from the passengers' side window, waving her goodbye. It didn't happen.
Ellie sighed as she sunk into an armchair, trying to figure out how to mentally justify this lack of gesture for any mistakes she might make that night.
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Phone in hand, Craig clenched his teeth angrily as he attempted to juggle the insertion of his left leg into his favorite pair of corduroys and his frustration with the Toronto Cab Company, who seemed unable to process a request for a cab to pick him up in front of his house ten minutes from then. "Marco!" he shouted, for what seemed like the tenth time, "I need to borrow your razor! ... No, I wasn't talking to you," he barked angrily into the phone, "I said Marco, my room- oh, your name is Marco, too? Well that's... that's... hey, I need a cab in ten - FIVE minutes at the corner of Fifth and Elm. Can you do that? Can you - Marco! I need your razor! I said I'd pick her up in - No, I am not talking to you!"
It was safe to say the pressures of getting ready for what he'd decided was the biggest date in his life was really getting to Craig. Training had run for two hours longer than he'd expected, when Kirk had gotten into an entirely one-sided debate as to whether Justin Timberlake was truly better off without NSYNC ("I know he's winning Grammys, but "Tearin' Up My Heart" was just such a good song!"), leaving Craig a mere twenty minutes to scrub the last signs of rehab off his body and render himself presentable enough to lead Ellie astray.
Once he had procured his roommate's razor, things began to pick up speed and after carefully selecting the kind of eccentric vintage-ish blazer for which he thought Ellie would go and a few splashes of cologne, he found himself running down the front steps to the awaiting cab, to scattered cries of "Good luck!" from his housemates.
He'd been too nervous to call her today, so Marco had been in charge of arranging a rendezvous time and also the one who wrote Ellie's new address on the slip of paper that Craig handed hopefully to the cabbie, having no idea what he'd do if there was any confusion.
The ride there was mercifully short - it hadn't been the kind of big adjustment Craig expected, for Ellie'd moved a mere three-quarters of a mile away from her previous residence. And to Craig's ebullient surprise, the door of the relatively huge brownstone opened almost instantaneously with the cab's stop and the thin figure of Ellie Nash stepped out into the twilight. He was ecstatic to find her dressed for the occasion: her slim figure set off perfectly by a florally patterned violet sundress. The calm, coy smile on her face masking the torrent of mixed emotions washing over her mind. As he scrambled out of the car to hold the door for her, he couldn't stop himself from mouthing a near-silent "wow."
"I heard that," she said flirtatiously. Looking over a pale shoulder at him, a radiant smile on her face, the twilight sun catching her red hair and lighting it afire against the cab's yellow backdrop, Craig couldn't help but notice that she was perfect in that moment. The kind of perfection he could write a song about... Chords, verses, and bridges were spinning around his head until her voice brought him back to an all-too-great reality. "Craig? Are we leaving or what?"
"I'm sorry," he apologized, stepping back into the taxi. Cheesy line after cheesy line spun through his head until he had no idea which to pick, "You just knocked me off my feet back there for a second," sealing the deal, he pulled back his cheeks into an idiot's grin.
Ellie broke into giggles. "You can just stop acting like that right now, Mister. Do I look like the kind of girl who would fall for a line like that?"
He rolled his eyes playfully before leaning in closer to her, strategically maneuvering his hand atop hers in the middle of the cab's backseat. "I've got a perfect night planned for us. You're gonna be begging me to change my mind about saying the 'only one date' thing..."
"I'll believe that when I see it," she countered, wishing her heart was truly into this hard-to-get charade.
A short time later, the cab pulled up in front of Harold's, the go-to restaurant for Toronto teenagers with middling incomes. Both parties had been on several dates there prior (though none together) and, as Craig had hoped, treading in familiar territory comforted Ellie, telling her that maybe what she was doing was not entirely wrong.
Their table was a small one, albeit a table by the window with a romantic view of the sidestreet on which Harold's was located. Little lights were strung overhead, creating an atmosphere that brought the already-present sparkle in Craig's eye out a little more than usual. "You look so happy," she commented.
"Look at us!" Craig laughed, taking in the moment, "I am happy."
Dinner stretched over about an hour and a half. Ellie's pasta was overcooked and the waiter brought Craig French fries instead of a baked potato, but minute problems aside, it was the kind of dinner that left them hungry for more - of each other, that is. Their food had been decidedly mediocre.
"I heard they got a new head chef," Ellie explained as the pair exited the restaurant, after being asked by their waiter to vacate their table following their sitting for fifteen minutes following the delivery of their check, lost in conversation.
Not bothering to hail another cab, they began to walk slowly down the sidewalk, finding common ground by trashing a restaurant that had once been one of their favorites.
Craig shook his head comically, "I don't see why that would be the case - why would they fire someone good and hire an incompetent idiot? I mean, there is clearly a difference between French fries and baked potatoes..."
As he trailed off, the sound of his voice was replaced by a somewhat uncomfortable silence. They had arrived in Sherwood Park, a vast, shady expanse of land where they had spent many of Craig's pre-rockstar days playing Frisbee and debating everything from the lyrical content of The Decemberists to the philosophies of Sartre. It seemed only natural that their bodies should come to rest on the grassy side of a hill, overlooking a small stream.
"Everything is different since you left," she said simply, though with a smile. She'd spent the last few hours assuring him of this and, perhaps assuring herself - she had grown and her life had changed. She was no longer that girl who chucked a drumstick at Manny Santos's head as a punishment for wearing a lower-cut top than she did and she wasn't going to rearrange her life so she could wait around for Craig to grow up. The latter was repeated several times throughout the evening. Craig could sense her discomfort.
"Mmm," he nodded, surveying the landscape of the park. Even that had changed - some new playground equipment was in the process of being built where a grove of dogwood trees once grew. "But I don't think I mind. Things can't stay the same way forever." His body was leaning in toward hers now and their hands were overlapping on the warm ground, begging for her to discard her better judgment and respond.
"I'm ready to go home now," she said suddenly, her shoulders and voice stiff. "Do you think we could get a cab?"
Pulling himself to his feet, Craig nodded solemnly. And the night had gone so well! He thought to himself. This is going to be tougher than I thought...
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In the cab, he didn't try to put his hand on her knee or his arm around her shoulder.
They didn't speak.
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Ellie's mind was reeling as the cab came to a stop in front of the apartment she shared with Jesse. The apartment she shared with her wonderful, perfect, handsome, overbearing, sloppy, unromantic - she stopped herself. There was nothing wrong with Jesse. Not much, anyway. But from the moment Craig had muscled his way back into her life, she had been mentally thumbing through thousands of files, sizing up the man she was sharing her life with against her high school crush who'd broken her heart time and time again. She'd been scouring her memory for mistakes Jesse'd made, for times he'd slipped up - for reasons she could throw all her warm, safe feelings to the wind and take a chance on Craig.
To her surprise, Craig ignored the cold shoulder she'd been giving him and opened her car door dutifully, before walking her to the apartment complex door.
She had all but shut the door behind her when his voice finally broke the silence that had fallen over them nearly half an hour ago. "Elle?" She turned. "Elle, I just wanted to say that - that despite everything I'm so glad I've had you in my life. And I'd give anything in the world to keep you there."
Ellie stared into his face for a moment. He smiled lopsidedly, somehow simultaneously shrugging the moment off and projecting his sincerity: as if to say "that is how I feel." And moving with the quickness of a cat, she caught him as he turned around and kissed him more passionately than she thought possible for a cynic such as herself.
Roving hands and tousled hair prolonged the kiss, which quickly turned into the kind of make out session that would make passerby blush, but years upon years of repressed feelings were being poured out, and neither party really cared who saw.
"I should go," Craig said, finally, breathlessly, after a few minutes.
With a little laugh, Ellie gave his hand a squeeze. "No, you shouldn't," she paused. "Come upstairs. Jesse won't be home until tomorrow night."
Without a second thought, Craig allowed himself to be led by the hand through the door and up the stairs, thanking his lucky stars for whatever he'd said to allow this to happen.
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