September 2008

That fall, Miley found somebody new; somebody who was willing to treat her the way she needed to be treated. Nick shouldn't have cared when he found out. He had Selena, a girl who absolutely worshipped the ground he walked on, and he had insisted that she had made him happier than Miley ever had. But he heard the news about Miley, and it was like everything about him changed. He began to push Selena away, and he started to bring Miley into conversations to try and find out more about what was going on with her. He shouldn't have cared, but he did. More than anything.

"You're friends with Miley, right?" he asked one day when we were writing together.

"As in your ex Miley? Not really, no," I answered.

"What do you know about her and this guy she's dating?"

"Not a lot." I looked at him. "Like I said, we're not friends."

He sighed and stared down at his guitar. "I heard that he's like twenty. That's got to be illegal, right? I mean, she's sixteen!"

I smiled softly at him and shook my head. "If I didn't know better, I would say that you're jealous, Nicholas."

"I am not jealous. I have Selena."

I said nothing.

Even then, I should have seen the signs, all of which pointed to the fact that he still would have given anything to have her back. I should have known when he said that he wasn't jealous that all he really wanted to do was end things with Selena, find Miley and fix everything that had gone wrong between them that previous year on tour. But I didn't. I didn't pick up on it at the awards shows we attended before when he stared daggers at any guy Miley was speaking to, and I didn't pick up on it when he lied to my face.

He had written mountains of songs for this one girl, and they were all amazing. I should have realised that guys like Nick only write songs as good as that for somebody they love. And he loved her. He still loves her. He will always love her.

"So, you know nothing about this guy?"

"Nope."

"Can't you ask Selena?"

"She's your girlfriend."

He paused. "You know what she'll think if I ask about Miley."

I caught him searching Miley on Google and on gossip sites on multiple occasions after that writing session, trying to find out what was happening with her and Justin. It was driving him crazy. The rumours about sex and him basically living in her family's home were killing him, and there was nothing that I could do to reassure him that it was probably just the media exaggerating - mainly because I couldn't guarantee that until long after the damage had been done. I couldn't break up Miley and Justin, and I couldn't stop him from using the internet as a method of breaking his own heart. Her relationship was everywhere, and it killed him to know every detail without actually being able to speak to her.

Selena had noticed that he was distancing himself from her, but she didn't do anything. She didn't confront him, and she didn't ask anyone else but me about what was going on. Part of me thinks that Selena always knew what was bothering him, but she chose to overlook it, because that's just the kind of person she is. She isn't confrontational, and if she loves a guy, she will do anything to keep him, even if that means suffering in silence.

"Nick's been quiet lately, right?" she asked one night at my house.

"I guess so," I answered carefully.

"Do you know what's bothering him?"

I remained silent, knowing that Nick's secrets were not mine to tell. If he wanted to tell Selena what was going on with him, that was his job, not mine.

As the situation worsened, I became Nick's confidant. He told me everything that was bothering him; his mistakes and his heartache over the girl he had left slip away like sand through his fingertips. I wanted to help him, but what could I do? There was nothing on earth that someone like me, someone who hardly even knew Miley, could do to bring them together again.

He had been annoyed that summer when she spoke publicly about their relationship. He had always wanted it to be a secret between them, and it had hurt him to know that everyone was talking about something so personal and so private, but Nick can't bear grudges, especially when it comes to Miley. Perhaps that was why he so willingly held onto her, even when she had found someone else.

He practically breathed music that fall. He shot out new songs like there was no tomorrow, and they just kept on pouring out of him. It didn't take a genius to see that he had written them about his torn feelings between Miley and Selena. I noticed, but once again, I didn't comment. As usual, it wasn't my place.

That was another time when I could have done something but I didn't. I should have warned him that it was time to man up and confess his feelings to the one that really mattered. What good was confiding in me if the person that was most important in the situation didn't even know how he felt? I should have told him that things were just going to go downhill if he continued to bottle things up and act like his relationship with Selena was peachy. Everyone spent their time walking on eggshells and skirting around the issues, because Selena didn't want to lose Nick, and Nick wasn't ready to admit to anyone other than me that he still loved Miley. His brothers didn't even speak about the girl who had once held Nick's heart, and I didn't want to get in the middle. None of us knew how damaging our actions could be in the future, and I suppose we should have considered it. Maybe if we had, our lives now would have been so different.

Even in that darkness, their was something beautiful about their love story. His love for her from afar was like something from one of the great romance novels. His angst and his heartache aside, his love for Miley was so pure and so real that it's impossible to even begin to question it. Out of all the girls I have seen Nick with, none of them lit up his eyes quite like Miley did, even when she was breaking his heart from a distance.