"I'm only up when you're not down, don't wanna fly if you're still on the ground…it's like no matter what I do…well you drive me crazy half the time, the other half I'm only trying to let you know that what I feel is true…and I'm only me…who I wanna be…I'm only me when I'm with you…"
I strummed my guitar absentmindedly. I guess one good thing comes out of feeling like shit – songs just come to me. I'd rather have to work at it and not feel like this, though. But I did the right thing for Lexi, though. At least, I think so. I hope so. I want her to be able to talk to me. Still, at the moment, I honestly wasn't sure she was ever going to talk to me again. Maybe I had made a mistake. A really huge mistake. The biggest mistake of my life, probably.
I glanced up and saw her standing in my doorway. I wondered how long she'd been standing there. I had recognized the sad look in her eyes before, but it was even worse now. I'd never seen someone look that miserable in my entire life. I just wanted to be able to make it all go away.
"Hey," I said quietly.
"Shane…" she started, but she wouldn't make eye contact with me. "You…we are the only thing that makes me believe that things are going to be okay again someday. Don't take that away from me. Please."
"Lex, you know that I love you and that I want to be with you. But if you can't talk to me anymore because I'm your boyfriend…"
"I wouldn't want to talk to you about this even if we were just friends, Shane. I don't want to talk about it at all. Talking about it…it would make it real. It would mean that it isn't all just a bad dream," she explained.
It was weird to hear her admit that, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.
"But it is real, and it's not going to get better until you deal with it," I told her. "I need you to talk to me. Or if you really can't, talk to somebody else. But you have to talk to somebody about this. Otherwise…I can't be with you if I know you're just putting on a huge act so that I feel okay about this. I can't be with you if you're lying to me."
She nodded. "Okay. I'll talk to someone."
I picked up the bag of white powder from my nightstand. "And you can't do this shit, Alexa. Zoning out doesn't make it go away. I don't know what you were thinking. This isn't you at all. You're really scaring me."
"I know," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
I set my guitar down on my bed and walked over to her. I took her hands and kissed her forehead. "Stop apologizing and tell me what's going on with you."
Lexi closed her eyes for a few minutes, so I just waited for her to say something. I knew what she was doing – she was planning what she was going to say, so that maybe she wouldn't cry when she said it. She finally looked up at me and I knew she wasn't going to be able to keep from crying.
"I…" she started. "He…"
Her whole body started shaking and she crumbled into a heap on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. It broke my heart, but at the same time, I was glad she was finally getting it all off her chest. It should have happened a long time ago. I sat down on the floor next to her and put my arms around her. We must have stayed that way for ten or fifteen minutes. She just kept crying.
"It's okay, baby. Everything is going to be okay," I whispered. "He can't hurt you anymore. I'm not going to let him or anybody else hurt you like this again."
And once she finally started talking, she didn't stop. She told me everything. And even though most of it sucked to hear, and some of it even made me cry, I knew that I was starting to get her back.
A/N: Sorry that was short, but I wrote a little and planned to come back to it later, but now that I've moved on to a completely different part of the story, I'm not really in the zone to write this part. But I have the next couple chapters written! And I know how it's going to end, I think.