I walked down the hall to Lexi's room. We were going to the premiere of Duplicity, as the finale of our Julia Roberts movie marathon. I couldn't say I was sad to see it end. Lexi had been freaking out all day about what she should wear when she met Julia.

She was sitting on the floor, leaning against her bed, with her knees curled up to her chest and her forehead on her knees. I knocked on the doorframe to let her know I was there and she looked up at me quickly. She looked weird. Scared? Sad? I couldn't tell. It kinda scared me.

"Oh, hey sweetie, you ready to go?" she asked me, her best fake smile painted across her face.

I could tell it was fake. I knew her. She wasn't the kind of girl to keep anything bottled up inside. She wore her heart on her sleeve. The only other time she had been like this was when her dad left. She seemed fine for months. She had everyone fooled, except for me. And then on her birthday, he didn't come see her. He didn't even call, or send a damn card. She didn't get out of bed for three days. She just cried and cried.

I knew what she was doing. I just hadn't wanted to see it.

"We're not going, Alexa," I told her. "Not until we talk."

She stood up and sat on her bed, smiling at me sweetly. "What do you want to talk about?"

I was obviously going to have to be blunt about this. All of my beating around the bush tactics clearly hadn't done shit to make this situation better over the past month. "About when you got raped."

Lexi's face fell, for a second, but then she covered it up with another fake smile. "Shane, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm fine? I'm fine! Don't I look fine?"

"No, you don't look fine. And you won't feel fine until you talk about it. You know I'm right, Lexi. We're not leaving this room until you talk to me."

She smirked a little, but I could tell that she was uncomfortable. "The premiere is starting soon. We're going to be late! Let's talk after, okay?"

So she can pretend she's really tired when we get back and go right to sleep? Yeah right. I think she was forgetting who she was dealing with.

"Alexa…"

"Could you hand me my purse, sweetie?"

I sighed and reached for the straps of the bag, but I guess I missed and knocked it over. The contents spilled onto the floor.

"Sorry…" I started, crouching down to pick her stuff up.

"No!" Lexi practically lunged towards it, but I saw exactly what she was trying to hide from me and beat her to it.

I picked up the small bag and looked at it, shocked. I wasn't into that kind of stuff, but come on, I was a rock star. I'd been to enough parties where people were doing it. I knew what I was looking at.

"Is this cocaine?" I asked her, but I already knew the answer.

She knew I knew, too. She just stared at me with a horrified look on her face.

"What the hell are you doing with this, Alexa?"

She didn't answer. I hadn't really expected her to, I guess, but I didn't know what else to say, either. If I was just her best friend, she would have told me about this, I think. If I was just her best friend, she would be able to talk to me. But she didn't want to talk to her boyfriend about being raped. I guess I understood that, but it was kind of a shock. She had always told me everything, and now she felt like she had to keep things from me because I was her boyfriend. She wouldn't have anything like this in her purse if it hadn't been for the rape. The doctor had told me that some people look towards drugs, alcohol, cutting, or whatever after this kind of trauma, because they don't know how else to deal with it. But I said no, not Lexi. She'd never do anything like that.

She needed a friend. She needed her best friend. She needed to be able to talk to someone. That was the only way this was going to get better. I stood up, but kept my eyes on the bag in my hand. I couldn't look at her. If I did, she would see that I was trying my hardest not to cry.

"Alexa...I think you need your best friend right now, more than you need a boyfriend."

I glanced up at her a little, and her expression honestly broke my heart. I couldn't believe I was doing this.

"Are you breaking up with me?" she asked, a little angrily.

"It's not like I…"

"What do you want me to say, Shane?" she all but screamed at me. "Do you want me to tell you about how I can't breathe when I hear someone walk up behind me, even if I knowit's you? Or how I can actually feel him on top of me, even in my dreams? Is that what you want to hear?"

"I want to hear the truth. If that's the truth, then yes, that's what I want to hear," I told her.

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough to get away from him. I'm sorry I was walking in the dark. I'm sorry you have to think about your girlfriend getting fucked by some other guy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry being with me isn't like you hoped it would be. I'm sorry you're disappointed in us. I'm sorry…"

"Whoa, Lexi, stop," I said. I put my hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "Why are you sorry? None of that is your fault. I don't think that about you, and I'm not disappointed in our relationship. But you're so busy worrying about how I'm dealing with this, you're not dealing with it yourself. All I want is you, Lex, you know that…but I want you to be better. And if I have to just be your friend for awhile so you can get better, then…"

"Don't touch me."

Her voice was harsh. Harsher than she's ever been towards me. It honestly scared me to see her glaring at me like that.

I took my hands off of her shoulders. "If I have to just be your…"

"Get out."

"Lexi, don't…" I started.

"GET OUT!" she screamed at me.

She'd never looked at me like that before. She'd been angry at me plenty of times, sure, but that was resentment. That was hate. I knew she wasn't going to be happy, but I thought she would understand. I thought she would understand that it would just be temporary. I thought she would open up. I thought this would make things better.

I never would have left, usually. I would have stayed and made her talk to me. But that look…it scared me. I didn't know how to respond. So I turned around and walked down the hall to my room, trying to fight back the tears.

A/N: I'm going to be really busy until probably Sunday, so I don't know if I'll get a chance to finish/upload the next chapter until then…don't hate.