"It's the only thing I can do at this point," I say, defending my decision to leave the promotional tour and let Nick off the hook of having to break up with me.
"It's not the only thing you can do, Ally. You can talk to him. You can explain the situation," she says, encouraging me to talk to Nick.
"Alissa, what's to explain? I fell in love with one of his best friends and lied about it," I say as a tear streams down my cheek, one of many that evening. "Nick doesn't want to talk to me."
"So, you're just going to throw away your relationship with him? Because you made a few mistakes?!" she asks, getting a bit frustrated with me.
"I don't have a choice, Alissa! The future of our relationship is not up to me. It's up to Nick. And I already know what his decision is. I'm not going to make it harder for him by begging for his forgiveness."
"But Ally -"
"Alissa, if it were Nick who had fallen in love with my best friend and had kissed her and lied about the whole thing, I would probably break up with him too." I pause and take a deep breath. "I'm getting what I deserve - I'm losing the love of my life."
Alissa looks at me with sadness in her eyes. "You don't deserve that, honey." She hugs me. "Nobody deserves that."
"Yeah well, I should go pack for my flight tomorrow, while Nick is out of the room." I had heard a door close in the hall about 5 minutes earlier and had looked out the peep whole to see Nick waiting for the elevator.
"I think you're doing the the wrong thing," Alissa says as I open the door to leave.
"I think I'm doing the only thing I can," I say as I leave her room to go to mine.
I'm walking down the hall to my and Nick's shared hotel room, tears falling from my eyes at a steady flow, when I hear AJ call me.
"Ally?"
I turn around and face him. "Yeah?"
He comes down the hall and wraps his arms around me. "It's gonna be OK, doll." He says comfortingly.
"No it's not," I cry. "You're not mad at me??"
"Nah." He pulls away slightly and looks at me. "Our lies were bound to come out eventually," he sighs. "Have you talked to Nick yet?"
"No, I saw him leave the room about five minutes ago and I was just about to go pack my suitcase. Have you talked to Carolyn yet?"
"No, I haven't seen her since she ran off after she heard us talking," he says, seeming sad. "What are you talking about, packing? You're leaving the tour?" he asks with surprise.
"Yeah, Nick's gonna break up with me anyway, I figured I'd make it easier on him," I say, as another tear falls down my face at the thought of not being with Nick anymore.
"Ally, you can't leave! You have to talk to him - "
I cut him off. "A.J, you know Nick as well as I do, he's not going to talk to me. I've got a flight tomorrow."
He pauses before speaking, not sure of what to say. He hugs me once again and inhales deeply. "Well kid, I'm sorry things ended this way. Hopefully we'll all work this out."
I nod. "I'm kinda all out of hope for the moment," I sigh. "I'll see you tomorrow before I leave, OK?" I say as I head down the hall to my room.
"Yeah," AJ says sadly, as he watches me walk down the hall.
I go inside the room and grab my suitcase from under the table and start hurriedly packing my things.
Just as I finish closing the suitcase, I hear the door open. I look up to see Nick coming in.
"Oh," I look at him and wipe the tears off my face. "I meant to be done before you got back." I look back down at my suitcase.
"I wanted to talk to you, anyway," he says, looking very angry and hurt. "So, you're leaving?" he asks, seeing the suitcase.
"Yeah. My flight leaves tomorrow. I'm staying in Alissa's room tonight," I say quietly.
He nods.
"You wanted to talk?" I ask, surprised.
"Yeah," he says quietly. He sits down on the bed across from me. "But I don't want to talk about what happened," he says rather coldly. "I don't want to hear your excuses for why you lied to me - I'm sure you have a million."
I stand there, quietly, trying not to cry, listening to what he has to say. I understand his coldness toward me but the pain it was causing me was unavoidable. Spending all your time with someone you love so much and then to have that person turn on you, and have all your happiness torn away in an instant is enough to make anyone get a lump in their throat.
"I just want to tell you a few things." He looks me right in the eyes, completely unaffected by my genuine sadness. "I fell completely in love with you, shortly after we met," he begins. "That's not something that's ever happened to me before. I trusted you. I thought you were the woman I was going to marry, the woman I was going to have a family with." He takes a deep breath. "But in the last few hours, I've found things out about you that I never thought you were capable of. You lied to me, straight to my face and you had somewhat of an affair with one of my former best friends... You may not have slept with him, but God knows that's what all this was leading up to."
"Nick, that's not true - " I interrupt, unable to stand there, hearing him say these things.
"I don't care what you have to say," he cuts me off, raising his voice slightly. "You know, it really sucks that I had to fall in love with you before I realized that you're just like every other girl I've ever met; you were just using me to get to something else, which in this case was AJ."
"Nick, please, that's not what happened at all - " I say, as tears fall from my eyes one after the other. "Please just let me explain..."
"No," he says, sure of his answer. "I don't want to hear your explanations," he says softly, finally showing sadness over his anger, as a single tear falls down his cheek.
"Fine," I say almost inaudibly as I pick up my suitcase and head toward the door.
"Wait," Nick says as I put my hand on the door nob.
I turn and look at him. He walks toward me and stops about 2 inches away. Another tear rolls down his cheek and he leans in to kiss me. We kiss passionately for a few seconds and then he pulls away. Both of our faces now covered in tears.
"I just wanted one last kiss," he says, looking right into my eyes.
I inhale sharply, fighting back the urge to just break down and sob.
I nod. "Well, I guess this is goodbye, Nick."
"Yeah," he sighs. "Goodbye Ally."