a/n: Reason why this story is rated M; There will be implied scenes throughout the story. References towards alcohol, drugs, etc. Profanity will be used in the story, but very minimal. Enjoy (:

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Twenty One

Chapter Three

Surprise

It was now three days shy of Miley's 21st birthday. She walked out of her Calculus class along with her best friend, Demi. "So, what are you planning to do on the big day?" Demi asked with a big grin as she hugged the books in her arms. She knew about the promise that Nick and Miley made when they were 15. Of course she knew, it was all Miley would talk about for the past two weeks.

"I don't know anymore." Miley said glumly. She was looking forward to spending the night with Nick, like he had promised, but something had popped up and he told her he had to cancel the night before when they were talking on webcam. Miley knew it must have been important because Nick rarely bailed out on plans and truth was, she kind of knew something would pop up.

Nick was currently schooling in Boston University and she was here in UCLA, she still was a little fuzzy on why Nick had chosen to go to college so far away. Not being able to see him daily, tore her up inside, but she managed being able to see him when he came down to see his dad on holidays.

Miley sighed inwardly and looked over at Demi sadly, "Nick had to cancel." She told her as they continued walking to their dormitory.

"Awh, Miles. I'm sorry." Demi told her friend sympathetically as they entered the elevator. She pressed the floor they were headed to and turned to Miley. "I'm pretty sure you and Nick could work this out and do a late birthday thing or something." She suggested, hoping it would make Miley feel a bit better.

Miley just sighed again, "I don't think so. We're in the middle of finals right now and he's probably busy studying or something… Or maybe he has a girlfriend and needs to spend time with her." Miley thought sadly as her mind filled with the thoughts of Nick having his arms wrapped around another girl.

"Miles." Demi said, snapping the brunette out of her thoughts. "If Nick had a girlfriend, don't you think he would've ran that by you by now? To see if you approved of her?" She asked.

"Yeah, but what if he had one and decided to hide it from me? He doesn't have to tell me every little detail about him, Dem." Miley thought.

"Okay, you need to stop talking." Demi laughed dryly, knowing about the massive crush that Miley had on Nick. "You're his best friend, he wouldn't do that and you know it, so stop saying that." She said, unlocking the door to their dorm.

"I guess you're right." Miley sighed, walking into their dorm room.

"Of course I am. I always am." Demi said cockily as she placed her book bag onto her bed, earning a pillow to the head from Miley. "Was that really necessary?" She asked, glaring over to the girl that was standing there, trying to look innocent.

"Of course." Miley laughed as she dropped her purse onto the floor. "You deserved it too."

Demi stuck her tongue out and rolled her eyes, "You need to grow up, Miles." She said.

"I need to grow up?" Miley gasped.

"I just said that." Demi giggled, pointing out the obvious. "No need to repeat it." She took the rubber band out of her hair and fluffed it a little.

"You're the one who just stuck your tongue out at me and you're telling me to grow up. Are you listening to yourself Miss Lovato?" Miley asked, crossing her arms.

"Need I remind you where I got that from?" Demi asked, arching up her eyebrow at Miley.

"Touché." Miley said, unfolding her arms and sat onto her bed cross-legged. "Did you know that means to touch in French?" She shrugged and suddenly her thoughts were filled with Nick again. She looks over at Demi, who's going through her pajamas drawer. "Do you think Nick's busy right now?" She asked as she played with a piece of her hair, waiting for Demi to turn around.

"Hmm, I don't know. Check. That boy is always online, so yeah, probably." Demi laughed, getting up and walking into the bathroom.

Miley rolled her eyes playfully, "You have issues!" Miley called out.

"Look who's talking!" Demi called back, making Miley laugh. She grabbed her laptop off of the side table, turning it on. She tapped her leg impatiently as she waited for the software to start up. As soon as she saw her homepage; she clicked onto AIM and waited as it signed her in. She saw Nick signed in and turned her webcam on and opened a new IM.

"Hey best friend! :D" Miley typed in quickly, waiting for him to reply and turn his webcam on.

Soon on the corner of her screen, she saw Nick's face appear onto the screen.

"Hey Mi." Nick said softly with a smile.

"Hey Nick." She smiled back at him.

"What are you doing?" He asked, his attention more focused to something in his room then on her.

Miley tried not to let it get to her as she saw another person's hair. "Oh, uhm nothing. I just got out of class and now Demi's in the bathroom. You know her." She joked.

"Haha. Tell her I said hi whenever she comes out." Nick said, turning to look at the person seated on his bed.

"Oh, who's there with you?" Miley asked curiously, trying not to let the sound of her jealousy come through in her voice. Of course she was jealous, there was another girl sitting in the middle of Nick's room and she couldn't do anything about it because she knew he didn't like her like that and he was over 3,000 miles away.

"Oh, you don't know her." Nick replied smoothly, looking back to the screen. "Uhm, Mi. I need to go do something." He said, motioning behind him. "I'll talk to you later." He signed out quickly before she had a chance to reply back to him.

Miley shut her laptop off sadly as Demi walked out of the bathroom, dressed in her pajamas. "What's wrong, Mi?" She asked, taking a seat next to Miley.

"I just talked to Nick." Miley said quietly.

"That's great. Did he say hi?" Demi asked and Miley nodded. "I don't get it then." She said confused, "Why are you so sad? You're usually like super happy after you get off from talking to him."

"I was." Miley sighed. "But he had to go do something."

"Okay? What's wrong with that?" Demi asked, thinking Miley was going a bit overboard with the way her emotions were going. "I don't see a problem with him going to do something, Miles."

"He had a girl in his room, Dems. They're probably dating or something." Miley said sadly.

"You don't know that. They could be science partners for all we know." Demi said.

Miley shrugged again, trying to hold in all the hurt that she was feeling at the moment. "He wouldn't tell me who she was." She whispered. "All he said was that I didn't know her and that he had to go do something and signed off. What if... what if they're like sleeping with each other?" She asked quietly, turning to look at Demi, tears starting to cascade down her cheeks.

"Oh, Mi." Demi pulled her into a tight hug, letting Miley break down into her arms again. It seemed like a routine nowadays as Nick started to not call her back as much as he used to a few weeks away. It was eating Miley silently on the inside and even though she was in the denial, Demi noticed and it wasn't a good effect on her. "You can't jump to conclusions because you don't know what's really happening." She whispered into Miley's ear.

"I k-know, but I don't get why he didn't just introduce her to me. It just makes me feel like something's going on." Miley pulled away from the hug as Demi handed her a tissue. She grabbed it and wiped her runny nose.

Demi pushed Miley's hair behind her ear. "Maybe you should tell him how you feel."

"I can't. He doesn't feel the same way and it's just going to make everything weird between us and I don't want that to happen." Miley said softly, wiping her nose again.

"Yes, but what if he does like you back?" Demi asked. "Then, it would be perfect." She smiled a thin-lipped smile.

Miley shook her head again, "I'm not going to risk it, Dem."

Demi sighed, "But I just hate seeing you like this. It's not good for you to be like this Mi. Always being in denial, then breaking down a few days later. You never seem as happy as you used to be when I met you Freshman year." She said softly.

"I promise this won't happen again." Miley said.

"I know you're going to break it. You told me that a few months ago, then I heard you crying one night, but I kept my mouth shut about talking about it. I never knew a guy could make a girl feel like this, Mi, but apparently Nick succeeds. I'm not trying to make it sound like a bad thing, but you're just making yourself break more and more every time and I'm just trying to look out for you." Demi replied, rubbing Miley's back softly.

Miley brought her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them before setting her chin on top of them. "You want to know something?" She asked.

"What?" Demi asked quietly.

"I was planning on telling him how I felt when he came down for my birthday, but I guess he has more important things to do, then celebrate my 21st birthday with me." Miley said, her eyes sliding shut as more tears formed at the corners of her eyes. "And it just hurts more because he told me he would come through with this promise and he reminded me almost everyday when we were in high school and now college came and all of a sudden he has to break it."

Not knowing what else to say, Demi just continued to rub Miley's back soothingly, hoping that she would calm down and fall asleep.

TwentyOneTwentyOneTwentyOne

"Do you think it's a good idea?" Nick asked as he sat down next to the girl on his bed. He had been a nervous wreck for the past few weeks and he was having a hard time keeping his surprise from Miley. He soon befriended a dark-haired girl in his Physics class and before he knew it, they instantly bonded and now they were seated on his bed.

"Of course, she'll never know that you had this planned." The girl smiled. "It's perfect Nick, she'll definitely love it." She just stared at the nervous guy in front of her and giggled lightly. It was easy to read when he would be like this, just becoming friends a few weeks ago, they had practically became like brother and sister.

"You sure?" Nick asked again.

The girl giggled again at the look on Nick's face, "Yes Nick, I'm positive. You were always the one to over think something you were going to do." She nudged him a little and smiled. "I'm excited for you."

"I just hope she'll like it." Nick said nervously as he continued to play with the object in his hands. "This is a really big leap in the relationship that I have with her and I'm scared."

"Like, I said 5 times before. She'll love it." The girl reassured him. "You need to stop worrying your curly little head about it, Nick."

"Thanks Miki, for helping me plan this out." Nick smiled over at her. "It really means a lot to me."

"It's no problem, it was a pleasure to help, really." The girl draped her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

Nick hugged her back tightly. "I hope Miley doesn't think anything's up. She saw that you were in the room, but I didn't really make it seem like you were." He said, getting a little queasy at the thought of Miley thinking that something was going on between him and his sister.

"I don't think so. From what you tell me, Miley doesn't get like that. Nick, seriously. Stop overreacting." Mikayla laughed. "Everything's going to go perfectly as planned. You just need to stop acting like this or you'll ruin it." Nick's eyes went wide. "I was kidding, Nick, don't make me slap you." She said, getting serious and a little annoyed with how Nick was reacting.

"Sorry. Just a bad habit." Nick mumbled before chuckling a little. "I'll try to stop." He sighed.

"Mhm, I noticed." Mikayla laughed. "How about you put it away before you lose it and we go get a bite to eat. I need to go back to my dorm and study." She pointed in her mouth and pretended to gag.

Nick laughed, placing the object back into his sock drawer to keep safe until later on. "It's not that bad. I know you'll pass finals." He told her as they walked out the door.

"Easy for you to say Mr. Straight A's." Mikayla sighed. "I have a B average and if I fail this, it's going to bring me down to a C and I really can't afford that right now. My dad said he'd get me a new car, but if I get a low grade bye-bye car." She pouted sadly.

"I do not have straight A's. Did you forget about the B I got on the Trig test?" Nick asked and Mikayla rolled her eyes at him. "And you just need to study. If you do plenty of that, you'll ace it. I'm sure." He told her confidently. "You'll get that car and then you'll have to drive me around because I was right." He laughed as he held the door open for her.

"If you say so Mr. Straight A's." She said as they entered the coffee shop.

"I don't really like that nickname." Nick said, taking a seat.

Mikayla slid in next to him looked over at him. "Well, like the one Miley gave you when you were younger, you're stuck with it." She smiled.

Nick just shook his head and chuckled at the girl next to him before turning his attention back to the menu in his hand. "What do you want? My treat." He told her as his eyes rolled up and down the menu.

"Oh, no. You are not paying for my food, Nick. Really, it's okay. I have a job, I can pay." Mikayla told him.

"Come on, Miki, please. It's the least I can do for all that you've put up for the past few weeks and helping me pick the thing out for Miley. Please." Nick looked over at her, jutting his bottom lip a little.

"Oh God. You act just like my little cousin." Mikayla sighed, defeated. "And like always, I give in to him. Fine Nick, you can pay for my food, but this is the last time. Got it?" She asked.

"Yes, got it. Now, what do you want?" Nick chuckled as he and Mikayla brought their attention back to the menus in their hand.

"Hmm, I think I'm going to order a cinnamon funnel cake. Want to share it with me?" Mikayla asked, setting the menu down. "And iced coffee."

"Sounds good to me." Nick said, setting his menu down as well.

TwentyOneTwentyOneTwentyOne

Miley sat there on her bed all alone in her dorm room after convincing Demi that she should go out with her boyfriend before finals got in the way of their schedules. She had been sitting there for the past hour now, just staring at the blank television screen trying to think of an excuse to why a girl was in Nick's room.

She knew that Demi would probably scold her if she saw her like this when she got back, but she just couldn't help, but let this get to her. She sighed before pushing herself off of her bed and towards the closet. She reached up and brought down a brightly colored box; she took the lid off and held something in her hands.

It was a picture of her and Nick, on the last day of their senior year. Big wide grins plastered on the duo's faces. She could remember clearly that it was one of the happiest moments of her life. Miley saw a tear drop onto the photo and she quickly wiped her eyes before more fell onto the photograph and ruined it. She just sat there, going through all the memories that they had stored in that box and sighed when she came to a letter than she didn't dare send to Nick.

She had written this letter the first day that they were separated, she was still here in LA and he was up in Boston. She sat down on day and just wrote out her true feelings onto a piece of paper, telling herself that she'd mail it to him one day, but never got the guts to. She sealed it in a white envelope and placed it in the box, where it had been hiding for the past 2 years and a half.

She ripped it open gently and took the piece of paper out and read it over slowly, sighing to herself again. "What am I doing to myself?" She got up and walked to where the window was. She sat at the sill and just looked outside, smiling when she saw Demi and her boyfriend down at the courtyard. Then, she frowned when she thought about how Demi was so lucky to have such a wonderful guy to love her, while she had no one to tell her that they loved her. She cursed herself silently for feeling sorry for herself.

"I'm pathetic." Miley muttered to herself. "Really pathetic." She sighed, getting up slowly from her seat. She walked over to the trash can by her bed and ripped up the letter, tearing it up to small scraps of paper before dumping the pieces of paper into the bin. She just stared at the papery mess in the plastic bag before sitting down on her bed.

a/n: What do you think Nick's surprise is? Hate it? Like it? Love it? Review please. Tell me what your favorite part was. (: Mean ones are wanted as well, I want to see what I can improve on if you criticize the chapter haha. :D Working on another new story... watch out.