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do.”
    “Explain.”
    Awkward boy was back with a vengeance. “I hate feeling like I have to live up to some figment of perfection they have in their imagination.”
    “So, you can’t handle the pressure of being scrutinized. My next question is painfully obvious. Why would you go into the film industry if you hate having people treat you like eye candy?”
    “Truly, I have no idea how to answer that question. It was just an opportunity that fell into my lap, and it seemed foolish to throw it away.”
    “Yeah, I hear the money’s good, too.” I smiled in spite of myself.
    “It definitely helps. In truth, I’m quite a miser. If you saw the way I lived at home, you’d be really surprised.”
    “You know, I believe you. Enough about this conversation has surprised me into believing that I shouldn’t make snap judgments. Movie stars are people too.”
    He laughed again, then sighed regretfully.
    “Is something wrong?” I asked.
    “I actually have to go; I have a plane to catch.”
    I could swear he almost sounded like he wanted to keep talking to me, and I couldn’t stop a surprising feeling of loss from creeping into my stomach. Man, I was pathetic. I must really miss late-night phone conversations with a cute guy.
    “Well, how am I supposed to get my iPod?”
    “I really am sorry about that. I’m going to New York tonight, but I can have it sent to you sometime in the next few days.”
    “That’s fine. If you lose it, I’ll sue the hell out of you. Then I can quit my job and sip Mai-Tais along the Caribbean.”
    “You really are refreshingly irreverent,” he said with a chuckle.
    “And you really are incredibly surprising,” I admitted.
    “That’s a start. Goodnight Cris.”
    “Goodnight Tom.”
    A start?
    TWO
    “You need to understand that we are finished.”
    The frigid words cut at my soul with biting stabs. Eight sharpened daggers hell-bent on merciless destruction. The end of dreams, and the beginning of nightmares.
    “What are you talking about, Ryan?” My voice was steady and calm. I had already mastered the ability to talk my way out of uncomfortable situations. This false sense of control belied the screams building in my throat.
    “How much clearer can I be? Do you want me to say it, Cristina?”
    “I want you to tell me why.” Even in my nightmare, I looked refreshingly unruffled while witnessing the heart-stopping destruction of my carefully designed future.
    Frosty blue eyes glared at me. There was no warmth to be seen in their bleak wasteland.
    “There’s someone else.”
    Finally, my face showed some signs of understanding. It began at my eyes and rippled through my features with slow deliberation. Pain. More pain than I thought existed—pain outside the realm of physical reality. I would rather have felt thousands of small needles pricking my skin protractedly, one at a time. There was no music in this memory—only the silence of a death. When a soul screams its last, can anyone hear it?
    “Why?” My voice broke. Something suffocated my lungs slowly, as though I were drowning from inside out. I clasped my hands behind my back in an attempt to maintain my posture. I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me crumble like a beaten dog.
    “Why do I need a reason?”
    “When you destroy a dream, you have to have a reason,” I whispered.
    “You’re not the person I fell in love with. I will never be the person you want me to be.”
    I can change! I wanted to scream. I can be whatever you want me to be! The screams were held back unconsciously by my pride—a blessing I clung to months after the fact. Just don’t leave. My mouth refused to form the words that my heart ached to say.
    I wouldn’t beg. I wouldn’t be pathetic.
    “But I love you,” I said simply.
    “It’s not enough.”
    He looked at me with the blue eyes that had shared four years of laughter and tears . . . four years of successes and failures. Four years of love. Now they were the eyes of a