God, was Richie frustrating. He acted like she couldn't even talk to other people about the breakup. It had been messy, and annoying, and yes, sure, maybe it wasn't right of her to tell everyone the instant it happened. But he should not have been so upset that she was writing songs about it. It was only natural - he should've known, really, getting into a relationship with someone who made music for a living.

She was scared to make public appearances with how mad he was. Her fingers clicked on her laptop absent-mindedly, writing an email of all things to appease him. Not that it'd work, but it was worth extending the olive branch just in case, right? All the stuff going on with them was just making her think about him. And she didn't want to think about him.

Because then she remembered not the bad things that happened between them, but how happy she'd been. And remembering that was not the goal.

Especially since he'd remembered how to download apps so he could publicly make passive aggressive comments about her break-up songs. How immature could someone be, really? Richie was pushing the limit more and more as the days went on, and she didn't really know what to do about it.

She just wrote songs like all the legendary break-up songs she listened. She wrote to heal herself, never to hurt him. It was his fault, really, for taking it all so personally. She was only using what she was good at to cope with what had happened, nothing really serious. He should do that too - although yelling was his art, so she'd feel bad for whoever he channeled it out on. She remembered the days when that had been her. Whatever.

It would've all been fine, if he hadn't reacted so strongly. He'd made it so obvious with all his little comments on her videos, shading her on purpose to get a reaction from her audience. It was like a stupid elementary school breakup where all the kids on the playground picked a side, except she had millions of people who knew who she was, and her image was going down the drain. Worst part was that Richie didn't even care.

A message popped through her phone before she could click send on the email. She was really tired, and didn't want to talk to him, but the message was exactly the opposite of what she needed.

Richie (DO NOT TEXT BACK): I'm on my way to your place. 5 minutes. We need to talk."

She groaned. Audibly. She absolutely did not want to speak with Richie right now, but he was almost there, so what was she to do?

While she waited, she thought about him. About all the good stuff. The smiles, the laughs, the future plans that were all thrown out the window the second they'd broken up. Part of her hoped he was coming to get all of the old stuff that'd been here for months, but the other part hoped that he was here to fix what he'd broken, to put her pieces back together.

And sure enough, when she opened her front door to his knock and looked up at him, he just said, "This can't be how it goes, {{user}}. This can't be how it ends. We're too good for that."