The air was stifling and sticky, too uncomfortable to be bearable even at 3 a.m. Outside the hotel window, Dillon could hear the first seagulls starting to stir, their calls echoing in the still air. It was a long, sleepless night for him with his mind still reeling from the voicemail she'd left for him the previous afternoon. He'd wanted to call her back immediately and had even attempted to dial her number a few times. However, a slight hesitation remained somewhere in his body that kept him from making a real connection.
There were a lot of decisions to be made, but for the moment, Dillon didn't want any part in it. He wanted to pretend that nothing else existed except himself and Lulu .He wanted to forget that they had a past or even a present. He wanted to believe that he could go home and that everything would be like it had always been. He wanted to ignore the fact that he knew it wouldn't. He wanted to skip the part where either of them was hurting. He wanted to give her all of his heart.
Still, wanting something was not the same as having it. Wanting is not enough to make things happen. In order to have some of those things, he would have to pretend that his life was something that it wasn't. He had a past with Lulu, and it was something that he couldn't just forget. It was good, it was bad, but in the end, it still mattered. His marriage to Georgie, the first night in the boathouse, the conversation he overheard between Lulu and his mother, the abortion, the anger afterward – it was all apart of their journey together. As much as he hated much of it, he knew that they had to go through it to bring them to where they were. And he knew that they were almost there.
The other things, they were the moments he wanted to remember forever. There was the way she laughed after they'd made love the first night, telling him how it hadn't been what she thought. He remembered the witty banter they'd exchanged after Tracey had caught them the second time. A genuinely happy smile as she walked down the aisle at her parents' wedding and how she'd light up every time he walked into the room. These were the things that explained how happy she had made him, but they weren't necessarily the things that meant the most.
Rather, the times when he had been so angry that he could almost hate her were the times that counted above the rest for Dillon. He realized during those moments that if he could love her then, he would always love her. At the Halloween party when she'd gotten drunk and told him the truth about her mother, he had wanted to kill her. Those first weeks after the abortion made Dillon feel like their pain was for nothing and she was wasting her life away. It was hard to be angry at someone and want to save them at the same time. Instead of fighting for her – for them – he had reverted back to a love he'd held onto for far too long. Being with Georgie was easier than fighting for Lulu, and looking back, Dillon knew that would always be his biggest regret.
He had done those things after finding out that Lulu had lied, but even that couldn't change how he had felt. He had lashed out in the aftermath of the abortion, understandable by most standards. He had fought with her, yelled at her and criticized. Basically, he had done anything he could to push her away because he knew that he shouldn't love her. Yet, all the anger in the world couldn't stifle the inevitable.
All spring, he had tried to fight for Lulu. Once he had finally woken up to realize how much he cared about her, it was almost too late. When she was taken hostage in the Metrocourt, he had realized then and there just how deeply he felt. It was almost like the world had stopped. Only when Lulu was brought on the stretcher did it start to spin again. He would spend the next few months trying to make her see what was now so clear to him. Sure, he was a few months behind her feelings, but he knew that it wasn't too late. It was never too late.
Unfortunately, she had been dedicated to not falling in love again. He knew that she still cared for him, she would tell him that much. Their connection wavered somewhat as she became more wrapped up in the mystery and dealing with her family. Spinelli seemed to replace him as her most trusted confidant, but Dillon knew that he still had a place. Lulu wanted to push him away because she was scared. She was afraid of getting hurt and of holding Dillon back. She never wanted to have someone care for her out of obligation. Dillon's only obligation was to his heart.
And that was when Ned had offered him the job. It was his dream job, and everyone around him knew it – especially Lulu. What they didn't know, what she didn't know, was that he had been fighting for months to regain the connection they'd had. He couldn't forgive up on it – the choice wasn't that simple. She was more than a friend to him, she was everything. The lies about Logan would never be enough to push him away, no matter how hard she tried. The only thing that could ever get Dillon to leave was when she lied and said that she couldn't fall in love with him again.
The best relationships are based on friendship and trust, and we already have those going for us. I know that you've been burned. I know that and I know that you're scared to take a risk again, and I also know that that's partially my fault. I know you're taking time to get over it. I'm willing to wait. We are great together, we do have fun, we can talk about anything. We have been through friendship to relationship to back. You are amazing to me and I want to be with you, and look at you. I just -- I think that a small part of you wants it, too. You're just not opening up.
Forgiving Lulu after that had been just another step in what was proving to be a long journey. She had deserved to hear those words long before he could say them. The truth was that he had forgiven her as soon as she had even asked for it. Dillon had been selfish to deny her the simple decency to let her know that. He was doing it now by staying away so long. She had done everything in her power to give him what she thought he wanted. Now, it was his turn to do the same thing in return.
Rolling over, he grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand and settled onto his back. Tucking his left hand behind his head, he squinted at the dimly lit digits and dialed her number. Dillon held his breath as he waited for her sleepy voice to fill his ear. A moment later, he exhaled softly when he heard her incoherent hello. He didn't want to give her the chance to say much. This call had a mission.
"It's Friday night," he told her, listening for a moment to her soft breath. He had missed the comfortable silence that had always existed between them. "In less than two hours, she will be here. We have fallen into this domestic routine, and in the strangest way, I couldn't be happier. Last week, I called her from the video store to tell her that our movie nights were my new favorite thing. She told Elizabeth the same thing about riding around in my car. I don't know what this, but I know that I'm happy. I didn't expect it, but I'm glad this happened."
Dillon waited a beat before continuing. "I wrote that last summer, just before I overheard you talking to my mom in the sitting room. It's scrawled on the back of a receipt from Kelly's. I did it while I was waiting for you to get home from work. For the past year, I've kept it folded in my wallet between a ticket stub from the first movie I ever saw and a photograph of my grandmother. I pulled it out last night after I got your voicemail. It made me you miss you even more, which I didn't think was possible. I don't know why I'm calling. I don't know why I haven't before. I just miss you, Lu."
He could tell that she was crying on the other end of the line. She had managed to stay quiet during his short rant, something he knew was difficult for her. Now that he was finally giving her the chance to say something, there were no words. There was only silence, and that was the loneliest sound in the world. "Please say something, Lu," he implored, his voice wavering with desperation. "I don't care if you tell me that you hate me or to go to hell. Just talk to me. I need you to talk to me."
"Come home," she said finally. Her dialogue sounded cautious, as though she feared walking a very fine line between having and losing him. "For the past month, that is the only thing I have wanted to tell you. There are a thousand other things to say, but I don't want to do it this way. I want to tell you everything to your face. I want you to be able to look into my eyes and know that I mean it. I want to see your reaction so that I can finally understand. When you left Port Charles, you took away my opportunity to do that."
"I know," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. "I made a choice for you, for us, without really thinking about how it would affect anyone, even me. It seemed easier to run away, Lu. Part of me thought that if I could show you how much you needed me, maybe you would quit pushing away. Another part of me thought that maybe this was what it was going to take to get over you. Now I know that there is no getting over you."
"Dillon, I don't want to miss you anymore," she confessed. "I am tired of being sad and lonely. It's driving everyone around me crazy, but I can't see past anything but you. I'll do anything that will bring me close to you. It's stupid how much less I miss you when I'm doing something as simple as driving your car. But as much as all that hurts, I wonder what it's like for you. At least I have my family and friends around. I can go to the places where we were together. I can touch and hold things that are yours. It's not much, I guess, but it's all I have and that's more than you've got."
Dillon looked back at the journal entry scrawled on the back of the slip of paper, a relic from two cups of coffee he'd shared with her. "Every time I close my eyes, I'm home again," he retorted. "I can play the movie of our relationship in my mind any time I want. I can fast forward through the parts where we didn't get a long and rewind so that I don't miss anything. I can hit stop when it gets too hard to remember something and press pause when I don't want to forget. You're always with me, Lu, even when you're not."