Jason and I had been sitting anxiously in the kitchen for an hour. We'd sent Nate to the store when we realized that we didn't have any yellow apples. Lexi could probably live off of yellow apples – but she hated red and green ones. We wanted her to have everything she could possibly want. We were trying to act natural, but we had no idea how to even do that. We'd been waiting for Lexi to wake up, so we could see how she was doing. It was 11am, which was way later than she ever slept, but the doctor had warned us that the pain medications she was taking might have that effect. The fact that we didn't get her home from the hospital until six o'clock in the morning probably had something to do with it, too. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't slept at all. I'd been sitting in my room, trying to think of everything I could possibly do to help make this better.

Nate ran into the kitchen with a huge stack of papers and dropped them on the table. I picked one up and glanced at it – tabloids. On the cover was a picture of me and Lexi, taken a couple weeks ago when we'd gone grocery shopping. It amazed me that people really cared about that stuff. Oh my God, rock stars have to eat?! Fascinating! Lexi was in the gossip magazines practically as much as I was. Probably because we're always together, I guess. Apparently, she was becoming quite the little fashion icon herself. She'd always had her own style.

Anyways, across the picture, in huge letters, it read: "Shane Gray's girlfriend: RAPED".

"How do they know she's my girlfriend?" I asked, not really expecting an answer.

I got one anyways, from Jason, who had one of the copies flipped open to the article. "There are obviously some nurses who can overlook patient confidentiality if the price is right. Look, they know that there were two police officers there, that she has two broken ribs, that you were crying in the waiting room, that Caitlyn was there, too…"

"Well, I bought them all," Nate interrupted. "So at least if she goes to our grocery store, she won't see them."

"No, she'll just see them on the kitchen table," Jason pointed out. "Where the hell are you going to hide these?"

"Don't hide them anywhere," Lexi smiled, walking into the kitchen. "I've already checked Perez this morning."

Lexi loved Perez Hilton. She always kept us up to date on all of the bizarre rumors going around about us. I introduced them about a year ago, and they were actually pretty good friends, so I was kind of annoyed that he would write about what had happened to her, but I guess that's his job. He was probably a lot more sensitive about it than other bloggers were going to be, at least.

"You don't have to protect me, guys. I knew it would get out. That's just the price I pay for putting up with you three…"

She winced in pain as she tried to reach for a coffee mug on a high shelf. I raced towards her and led her to one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

"Will you just take it easy? The doctor said…"

"Two weeks, blah blah blah," she interrupted me as I made her sit down. She hated doing nothing.

I poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her before I sat down next to her. She looked at me pitifully.

"What the hell am I supposed to do for two weeks?"

I was excited to reveal phase one of my 'make you forget this ever happened' plan. "I'm glad you asked. I went to Blockbuster this morning and rented every movie Julia Roberts has ever been in, and it will take us probably a week to watch them all, right?"

She grinned. Julia Roberts was her favorite actress of all time, even when we were little. I swear to God, the week that Hook came out on VHS was the longest of my life. She made me watch it three times a day. In a row. Seriously. "Even My Best Friend's Wedding?"

I lied. That was the longest week of my life. It was her favorite movie, which I would never watch with her. It was so cheesy, I couldn't even handle it.

"No," I replied, and she gave me a pouty look. "I bought that one."

She smiled happily and kissed me, which of course incited whistles and cat calls from Nate and Jason, but I didn't care. At least for that moment, she was happy, and that's the only thing that was important to me.

"We'll leave you two alone…" Nate said suggestively. "But let us know if you need anything…"

I waved them off, not breaking the kiss. I never wanted to. Then we never had to go back to reality, to what had happened. Then maybe she'd never have to be sad.

"Come on," I whispered, helping her up and leading her into the living room to the couch. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she smiled.

"Do you want to, um…talk, or something?" I asked nervously. The doctor said it would be good to encourage her to talk about what had happened. "I mean…do you want to tell me about last night?"

"No, not really," she said simply. She took a sip of her coffee and glanced at the Julia Roberts DVDs I had piled up on the coffee table. "Which one do you want to watch first? There's so many to choose from…"

"Alexa, I want you to tell me what happened. Please."

"How about chronologically? We'll start with her earliest and work up to Fireflies in the Garden. And then we can go see Duplicity at the theater! Or maybe we could go to the premiere! It's the older ones I haven't seen, anyways. So that means we'll start with Satisfaction…" she thought aloud.

She totally ignored my serious voice. I even used her full name! I didn't really know what to think about that. She had flat-out said 'no,' she didn't want to talk to me about something. She'd never kept something from me before. Ever. And this was kind of a big thing.

I didn't want to know, but at the same time, I did. It would be hard to hear, and I never wanted to imagine her going through anything bad, but I kind of felt like I needed to hear it. I needed to know exactly what she had gone through because, in a way, I felt like part of me had gone through it, too. She was a part of me. A huge part of me. She always had been. And I could help her better if I knew what had happened.

She started to stand up to put the disk in the DVD player, so I gave up my attempt to talk about it for now and took the DVD from her so she would sit down.

"I know you hate it, but for the next two weeks, you're going to have to learn how to let me take care of you for a change, okay?" I told her once I had started the movie and sat down next to her again.

She curled up next to me and rested her head on my chest. I put a blanket over both of us and put my arm around her. "I guess maybe I could get used to that…"

I kissed the top of her head and pressed the 'play' button on the remote control. "Good, because you don't actually have a choice."

A/N: Lame filler chapter, I know, sorry. I'll post the next chapter tomorrow to make up for it.