Love Song - 8

I blinked and a tear fell onto my cheek. Then, with a gulp, I pulled away from Will's familiar arms.

"What?" He murmured, looking dazed as I placed my hands on his chest again and pushed him firmly but gently away. I tried to smile waveringly, for the camera's sake, but from Will's face, I wasn't doing too good a job.

"What's wrong?" he asked, his husky voice full of sorry tenderness. I looked up at him and felt the fissure in my heart split a little bit further. He was tearing at a barely healed wound, and that was bad.

Not saying anything, I just shook my head, causing the tips of my curls to brush his front. He grabbed a curl, wound it around his finger, pulled it gently and let it go. He used to love my hair.

Then he blinked and stepped back, seemingly remembering that we had a considerably large audience. "Let's go get that coffee."

I followed him to Starbucks in silence, pulled out the money and jerked my hand away when he attempted to stop me and pay himself. As long as I didn't look at him and he didn't touch me, I would be fine. As long as he stuck to the rules, he would remain my boss.

He ended up paying and I grabbed the drinks, balancing them easily on top of one another. He sighed and grabbed those from me, as well, groaning when I took half back and started walking briskly back.

No way was I going to let Will Carmichael back into my heart.

--Will--

So, so, so, so damn STUPID!

Why?! Why did I have to go and ruin everything by kissing her? Why?! To be fair, though, it wasn't all my fault - she shouldn't have looked so delectable and gone around putting her hands on other men when she was mine. Mine?

I resisted the urge to smack myself as I walked over to my giant, comfy office chair and collapsed in it. I loosened my tie and placed my face in my hands. She wasn't mine. How long was it going to take me to comprehend that? She wasn't mine. Not anymore. The world had called, and I had left her, and she had fended for herself and taken herself back, so she was alone.

So why could my head understand this and my heart not?

No matter what I said to try to correct myself, my heart wouldn't budge. Cryst-elle, Cryst-elle, Cryst-elle. It beat her name steadily, over and over, whispering it in my ears and forcing it on my lips like it couldn't help itself.

"Crystelle." I sighed, and it wasn't a sigh of exasperation or defeat; it was a sigh of utmost longing. Crystelle.

--Crystelle--

I was a wreck. With strained composure, I ran around our floor, delivering scalding coffees to everyone and leaving Will's with Roberta. No way was I going to see him now. Since I wouldn't go into his office, he couldn't tell me to do anything, so there was nothing for me to do.

I don't know what I was hoping for. I seriously don't. What was he doing, kissing me in front of so much paparazzi and so many of our co-workers? It would be everywhere, and everyone would be ... ugh.

Sara and mum would have an apoplexy. They had both hated Will for different reasons, mum's being that he was an untrustworthy, common ragamuffin and Sara's because he was so ignorant to her beauty that he basically took no notice of her when she tried to thrust herself upon him. This was in the early days, though, when Will and I were just very good friends and Sara and I both fancied him like mad.

Over time, Sara gave up on him and her opinion changed to match mums.

And now, after they left me to cry all the tears that fell after Will left me, they hated him with a passion that can only be described as sisterly and motherly concern. Although why mum ever bothered, I'll never know.

With a sigh that let a few tears escape, I pressed the button to open the elevator door and walked out. I was on the recording floor, but my brain barely registered that. I used to sing, but only a little bit. My mother said I should have taken singing lessons, because I honestly had the best voice she had ever heard, which was shockingly high praise coming from her.

Now, with tears running down my face, I wandered into the first empty room that had loads of recording equipment and smiled. What would it be like to stand there, behind the glass, and sing your heart out into that microphone, knowing that the sound you produced here would be broadcasted all over the world in a matter of a few short manufacturing days?

I smiled and glanced around me. There was no one around, and that was simply too tempting.

I had seen it on TV millions of time. Basically, I just pressed the big red button that said record, opened the door to the glass box, slipped the headphones on and sang into the microphone, right? Feeling a thrill of rebelliousness, I shut the recording studio door behind me and pressed the button.

Then, as quickly and as quietly as I could, I dashed into the glass room and slipped the headphone on. An unfamiliar melody was playing through the cushion headset. I waited, contemplating, before deciding to just sing what the music said to me.

"Who do you see when you close your eyes now?
'Cause I already learned that it's not me...
I'm just a phase that you've grown out of...
I'm just a lost boat out at sea...
Who would have ever thought our chapter would end?
Who would have ever thought our page would turn?
And I would learn...
You are the one for me...
And everywhere I am, I see...
Your face 'cause it is in my dreams...
Why can't my memories leave me be?
There's so much I can say,
But words seem to fail,

When I know that unrequited love is haunting me." I opened my eyes and straigtened my fists, which had squeezed themselves shut from emotion. The tears were even faster and harder now, and you could hear the sadness in my words.

Without another word, I pulled the headphones out and ran from the recording studio.

The ghost of my sadness was left behind as I resolved something. Will Carmichael was old news. He was my boss, my boss that I hated. It would no longer be a love hate relationship. It would be all hate.