'Cause Love Is A Selfish Thing

"What do you mean you're stuck in the elevator?" I asked. It was almost frantic but mostly unbelieving. How the hell could they be stuck in the elevator? And if they really were, how were they getting out?

"I mean if you come down to the fourth floor and pry the doors open, you will see all of us sitting here, somewhat between floors. Well, you'll see Colussy trying to force the doors open from this side as he freaks out. But the rest of us are just sitting here," Alex explained to me and just by the tone of his voice, I could tell he was shaking his head with laughter. "The idiots in maintenance couldn't get the doors open, so they're sending the fire department. We're getting rescued, Clarke. That's a dream of mine." He whispered this in excitement, sounding like a happy child.

"Don't listen to him!" I heard Jack scream in the background. "It's my dream, and he's stealing it!"

I chuckled at the both of them, wishing I could be there to witness all of it. "Please tell me Matt is recording all of this," I begged.

"Vinny is," Alex told me, reminding me that it was obvious that someone would be. "He made his video will not too long ago. Just so you know, I leave you everything. Tell my mom I love her and remember that I love you," he laughed, making a big joke out of the whole situation. "Oh! The firemen are here. Just in time since my phone's dying. I'll be up in a few minutes, darling."

We said goodbye to each other before hanging up, and I set my phone on the table with a chuckle to myself. Only my boys would get stuck in an elevator and most of them think it to be the greatest experience ever. I rolled onto the bed, settling my head on a pillow as I lay on my side and faced the door. Closing my eyes, I waited for Alex to walk in while silence enveloped the room. I was able to clearly hear the little beep signaling the door being unlocked and the handle clicking as it was turned. Alex entered the room only minutes after he had called me with their dilemma.

My eyes popped open to see him standing by the table I had dropped my phone on. He was pulling his denim jacket off, leaving his hoodie with the hood up. I took advantage of the fact that he wasn't looking at me and got up to pad over to him silently. He smirked when my arms wrapped around his torso from the side, holding me there with his own arms.

"Safe and sound," I whispered, my lips connecting with his for a second as he gazed down at me.

"Safe and sound," he repeated, the smirk growing ever so slightly. "You know, being in a near death situation, I was so scared I would never see your beautiful face again. And now that I have you in my arms… I kind of think we should do something a little promiscuous," he admitted, completely serious in all aspects.

My eyes snapped open much like they had in the dream. I was staring at an unfamiliar wall that was painted a cheery yellow while a foreign pillow lay beneath my head. The soft fabric of the pillowcase didn't permeate my nostrils with a well-known scent and that was all that really mattered. The lone sound of a cuckoo clock was filling what was an obviously empty house and reminded me of where I was. I remembered both seeing and hearing the clock every hour -and also half hour- on the hour in Hadley's living room while I stayed with her. I was at my best friend's because I had messed everything up by running away from the one boy that had been able to love me unconditionally. I was still here after two days because I was too afraid to go anywhere else or to see if maybe I had unreasonably been a coward through it all.

I sat up some, pushing myself against the hard surface of the backboard behind me. Rubbing my eyes, I let out a long yawn. Basic morning functions were good distractions. They kept me from actually thinking of how grateful I was for that clock waking me up. I knew if I would still be sleeping, that dream, that memory would have continued on. I didn't need it right now. It had been Halloween. That was the last night things had really been good. It was the last night we had made love and the last night we had spoken. I didn't want to remember it when I was trying to forget us. It was bad enough that he hadn't even tried to get a hold of me the entire three days I had been gone. It broke my heart a little more to feel like I had been proven right that he didn't care anymore.

An unstoppable sigh passed my lips at this. Getting over him was going to be impossible if I only focused on the pain in my chest. It was hard to forget it though when it was brought back to mind because I wasn't just imagining it. The pain was actually real and not just a figment of my overactive imagination. I ran a hand through my hair but it got caught halfway through thanks to all the knots that had formed in the days I had been ignoring a brush. Now I growled, too frustrated to deal with any of this right after waking up. Especially after that dream. I pushed from the bed, grabbing up the pajama pants I'd left on the floor the night before so I could step into them now as I went out into the hall. Just like I had expected, the house was completely empty and I made my way quietly to the kitchen. Until I reached the living room.

The front door opened suddenly and Hadley walked in, toting Daniel by the hand. With them, they brought a blast of cold air that swirled around my bare feet and almost had me wishing they hadn't come back. I kept my now freezing feet planted there so I didn't run back to the bed where bad thoughts dwelled. "Hey, baby doll!" my best friend exclaimed when she saw me between the couch and coffee table. She let the door shut quicker then since she could clearly see that I was freezing.

"Baby doll!" Daniel yelled, not even actually knowing why he was saying it as he struggled out of his coat. When he finally got the jacket off, he threw it on the floor at his feet and ran off to his room.

I smiled softly at his retreating figure before turning back to Hadley. "Hey," I finally responded, falling onto the couch behind me. She took a moment to take off her own jacket and picked the tiny one up from the floor to hang up before coming to sit next to me. I automatically laid my head on her shoulder, my lips set in a frown before I could stop them. I couldn't ward off the rest of the dream anymore, not now that someone was here to listen to me blubber on and on. Tears were welling in my eyes. "Why am I so stupid?" I asked her, feeling the lump in my throat grow big enough to hurt. It pressed against my vocal cords, attempting to find a tactic to get out.

She began to pet my hair, smoothing out the wild mess my few nights of rough sleep had caused. She didn't shush me and she didn't tell me not to cry. She knew me well enough to know that none of that would work at this point. "You're not stupid. Maybe just a bit irrational and unwilling to wait for answers," she assured me. She wasn't being condescending, just telling what she had observed over the several years we'd spent as friends.

I couldn't help but snort. She was right, that was true. But having it pointed out to me that I was slightly neurotic was always comical in its way. If I could just remember that fact, I could be saved a ton of trouble. Who was to say that I wasn't just blowing something small out of proportion? Thinking back, even I couldn't say exactly what drove me to the extreme of up and leaving without an actual word. But I could always be reminded that I hadn't heard from Alex this whole time, and reassure myself that maybe I was just in this situation. It felt like I was on a roller coaster with more dips than I had ever experienced, and it was starting to make me sick. I wanted a firm answer to what I believed and what was true, even if they didn't match up. At least it would only be two ends then.

I sat up, pushing myself to sit on the edge of the couch. I ran both hands through my hair with some difficulty and pushed it away from my face, pressing my elbows into my knees as I stared down at the floor. It took a few minutes, but the real life nausea subsided after a minute and I was able to breathe normally again. I hadn't even noticed my breaths had gotten shallow. "What am I going to do, Hadley?" I asked, still focusing on my purple painted toenails instead of looking up at her. "I can't just sit here in hopes that he'll come back to me once they're home. Do I even want him to come back?" This was the answer that I really needed, but she couldn't resolve it when I couldn't. I had to admit to myself that I was afraid of the future if he was the only one that was going to be in it. I was only twenty-two. Committing was starting to become a hugely alarming thing, even if I was antisocial with anyone else. "I can't just wait around your house until it's time for me to go back to work again. Hell, I really do not want to go back to that library," I told her, really just trying to think ahead so that maybe I wouldn't have to see anyone when they got back to town.

My best friend pulled one leg up onto the couch, tucking it underneath the other as she sat back down on the plump surface. I could tell that she was leaning back against the cushions, staring at me so she could try to understand what I was saying. "What are you going to do then? Get a different job?" she inquired once she had mulled my words over in her mind.

I shrugged with a deep sigh. My head still in my hands, I looked back at her. "I mean, I think that I should. I was a literature major, and I'm working at the Towson Public Library. That's kind of ridiculous. I took the first job I could just so I could come back home, and I didn't even look at other options. Hell, I only came back here because part of me thought that I wanted to be closer to the guys again," I ranted. Sure, I loved the boys more than anything and I had wanted to be near Alex even if we hadn't been together at the time. Now here I was, without him and with a job that I was dreading ever having to go back to.

"Why don't you go back to school?" she suggested after a moment. "The classes aren't so bad here. I kind of just breeze by since I'm used to everything being a bit harder. But you can get another degree, spend your time doing something you like." She pressed her lips together and gave a small smile that way, shrugging herself. I could tell she wasn't positive if this was a good suggestion or not.

"And still have nothing to do in this town," I pointed out. I straightened out from my bent position again. Rubbing both hands over my face, I tried to think of something, anything that wasn't this subject. I didn't want to talk about Alex anymore. I didn't want to think about my bad career choice when I could have had something much better if I hadn't been in such a melancholy state because of the last breakup. Last breakup. He and I had gone through too many for anyone's liking. "I don't know. I just woke up and I'm still tired. I feel horrible bumming off of you like this, but is there anything to eat? Or coffee. Coffee would solve a lot of things right now." I smiled simply thinking of the caffeine fix.

Hadley laughed lightly with a nod. She stood first, offering a hand to help me up. Once I was at my full height, she led me into the kitchen and poured me a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter. Together, we sat at the table, conversing about topics that I picked every time the previous one lapsed. I was never given the chance to think about everything that had been on my mind since I left the bus for the last time. But I knew it was still there, still sitting in the back of my mind like a terrible growth. I kept a smile on my face and, sitting here with my best friend and doing the kind of thing best friends were supposed to do, most of the time it was genuine. I couldn't be down forever, but I knew the option was going to be there for a very long time without something to take it away.

It had already been late when I had woken up, so the afternoon quickly took over. The two of us set to making dinner with me still in my pajamas and her fully dressed from whatever class she'd had today. Daniel came out after a while with many curious questions to everything, deeming them more important than sitting in the blanket fort we had built the day before. I had forgotten in the months I had been living on my own how great it must have been to be a small child with no care in the world. It made me feel good to get reacquainted with it, even if I knew I wouldn't truly be able to feel it again.

I wasn't paying much attention to the time when my phone rang. I was having a playful argument with Daniel about how Hadley's homemade macaroni and cheese would taste even better than the Phineas and Ferb-shaped boxed stuff he had at a friend's last week. He was insistent that nothing could be better than that. A vibrating started from the pocket of my pants as I giggled, making me jump some from the suddenness. I extracted the phone from the fabric, not really knowing who to be expecting. The screen flashed a picture of Jack making his usual rather inappropriate hand gestures, his name against a black background blocking the top of it. I answered and held it to my ear, ruffling the little boy's hair to tide him over until we could continue arguing.

"Hey, Barakat," I greeted a little mundanely. This was the first time any one of them had tried to get a hold of me. I wouldn't deny that I was angry with all of them by this point, not just Alex. As my other best friend, Jack should have been calling off the hook until he was sure that I was okay not only mentally, but physically as well.

"I can tell you're just bursting at the seams to speak to me," he responded sarcastically, obviously not happy with the way I was treating him. I didn't say anything. In my mind, he deserved anything he was feeling about this whole thing. "Can't you just talk to him?" he asked after a moment of silence, getting right to the point.

"Can't he just call me?" I nearly yelled, fighting the urge to add a few curse words into the short sentence. I was still well aware of the young boy in front of me. "If all you're going to do is try to convince me to make things better with him or to tell you what happened, you can just hang up now. Things aren't always my fault, even if I escalate them to that point. Maybe if he'd make the effort to make things better, you wouldn't be talking to me at this moment and asking me to talk to him," I ranted, my hand hovering over my eyes, ready at any second to press into them. I was always well aware that communication was a two-way road. I would always be more than happy to take my lane if I knew for a fact that the other lane was open and being traversed. Without that knowledge, I was at a standstill, idling on the side of a relationship and refusing to continue onwards until I saw the headlights of another car coming.

Jack sighed on the other end and I could almost hear it echoed here in the kitchen by Hadley. With how alike they were, I constantly questioned why they had never worked out. They were practically the same person sometimes. "The only time he comes out of his bunk is to play and put on a small show at meet and greets and to sign afterwards. I don't even know if he's drinking himself to death in there because he never leaves. I'm worried about him, and I'm worried about you," he expressed.

"But you sound like you're only worried about him," I unintentionally whispered. I wasn't going to be able to handle anymore of his comforting when it usually just involved him wanting to know all the details. "You convince him to call me. I don't care what he's doing or not doing. He can be a proper boy and convince me that everything wasn't as it seemed before I left," I told him. "I have to go, Jack. I guess I'll talk to or see you or whatever whenever you get home. Do as I said, and maybe it'll be sooner."

"Yeah, okay. I'll try. Bye, Clarke," he said, sounding beyond frustrated by what I had proposed.

I didn't even give him any departing words. I hung up right after his words met my ears, and set my phone screen-down on the table. I ran both hands roughly over my cheeks, attempting to calm myself down after I had been brought back to the brink of a breakdown. I didn't want to act this way around people that didn't need to see me as such. I didn't want to speak the way I just had in front of Daniel ever again. "Come here, buddy," I coaxed, and stood after lifting him up. I walked the two of us over to Hadley at the counter to see what she was currently working on. My head was swimming with thoughts again, the problem brought back to the forefront of it all. I wanted to get away from it, and I was contemplating just the way to do that.

My best friend smiled at her son and I, him resting on my hip. She focused back on the cutting board in front of her before she said anything. "Don't fret over whatever Jack said. As much as I love him, I don't think he knows how to find the right words to comfort you. Not when he knows his best friend since middle school is hurting just as much and he doesn't know who did what," she said, explaining how she saw things.

I just nodded. I didn't even know what I could say in return. There was way too much going on in my brain to even pick one thing to tell her, to assure her that I wasn't as angry with Jack as I let on. Who even really knew if that was how I felt. If I didn't know if I was truly pissed off at him, then no one else did. I sighed, completely forgetting that I had wanted to just move on with the evening. I paced back over to the table, keeping Daniel securely on my side while I reached down to grab my phone again.

"Hon, what are you doing?" my best friend wondered, coming over and taking the squirming child from my arms to set him on the floor. I hadn't even noticed he'd wanted down. I couldn't concentrate.

"Calling Jack back. I need Colussy's number," I replied, trying to work my phone with shaking fingers. "God, what am I saying? I have Colussy's number!" I rejoiced, quickly directing the screen to my contacts.

Hadley probably would have tried to pull my phone away if she would have known exactly what kind of mood I was in. But with being nearly hysterical one moment and then elated about something simple the next, she kept to herself. "Why do you need to talk to Colussy?" she questioned.

"I need to ask him how Pittsburgh is this time of year," I told her. "I think I finally figured out what I'm going to be doing so I don't have to go back to work."