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Post by Parker Blye on Aug 19, 2015 23:58:11 GMT
Parker Blye was a cad. He knew it. He'd known it from the start. He'd tried incredibly hard since returning and since running into Madison Walker again to prove that he was different. He'd shunned Olivia and been focusing on being the sort of person he hadn't been able to be ten years ago. And he liked Maddy, he truly did. There was so much that he admired about her and so much of her that made him want to strive to be a better man.
But in the two weeks he'd been away on business, he'd contemplated the fact that perhaps he was trying for an impossibility. While he didn't want to abandon the changes he'd made to his life in the recent decade, he also had been thinking about Olivia a lot. One of his oldest friends, one of the first women he'd ever cared about. He'd left New York City with the thought in his head that they were doomed from the start, that Olivia wasn't the sort to get invested and that she didn't understand his desire to get out of the city and make his own way. But after accusing her of never growing, he'd been surprised to realize he'd hurt her often - by leaving and by coming back and acting like he had no time for her.
So when he knocked on Madison's door, he already felt like a complete and utter cad, and he knew it was only about to get worse.
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Post by Madison Benson on Aug 20, 2015 0:15:31 GMT
Madison hadn't realized how attached to having him around that she had become until she had to say goodbye to him for two weeks. She had tried to send him messages and call him every now and then, but realizing that his business trip was probably full of networking and after-hours activities, she had refrained from pestering him too much. And so she tried to play it cool and wait for him to reach out to her instead, justifying that if he reached out first then it was fair game. She was regressing into a teenage girl, or at least that's what it had felt like. She tried to avoid the games of 'should I call?' or 'should I wait for him to call?', but she couldn't help gushing to Riley about how she was glad that they were both happy - Riley with Adam and Madison with Parker. She had tried to brush off the over-excitement with her friend, trying to convince both Riley and herself that she was cool with it, that she could hold it together for long enough to let him go on a business trip without her turning into one of those girls. They hadn't even been dating for long, she justified.
A knock on the door shook her out of her daydream and she got up to open it, setting her book down on the endtable beside her chair.
She was surprised to find Parker at the door but grinned at him, stepping aside to let him in, "Hi! How was your trip?"
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Post by Parker Blye on Aug 20, 2015 0:32:39 GMT
Parker hesitated before crossing into her home when she grinned at him and greeted him so brightly. He shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded. "Hi, Madison. My trip was all right, a few hiccups with the company but that's not important." He realized that he wasn't actually making eye contact with her and finally forced himself to man up as he stood awkwardly in her home. "I think that you and I should talk for a moment," he said slowly before cursing himself silently for using the 'we need to talk' cliche.
He took a breath, pacing the room for a moment and trying to convince himself to man up. While he was sure that she deserved better treatment than this, he also had always been a proponent of the fact that she deserved better than him as well. He couldn't drag this out really, and he shouldn't continue to lead her on if he wasn't 100% sure of his feelings towards her and towards Liv.
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Post by Madison Benson on Aug 20, 2015 0:41:48 GMT
He was acting oddly, she noted. Refusing to look at her, not smiling as he often seemed to, and most notably - he said that they needed to talk. "Okay..." she said slowly. Madison gestured to the couch and walked over to it to take a seat. She wasn't sure if what he was going to say next was going to be a good thing or a bad thing but she felt the butterflies rising up into her stomach. Taking a deep breath to try and keep them from creating too much anxiety, she curled her legs up underneath her and looked at him curiously. "What's going on?"
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Post by Parker Blye on Aug 20, 2015 1:04:19 GMT
Parker frowned, he sat down, but still felt on edge. Taking a deep breath. "Madison, I care about you quite a bit, but I don't think that we can go on seeing each other," he finally blurted out, wincing a bit. "And I'm sorry, Maddy, I'm so sorry." Looking at her, part of him wanted to reach out for her hand or do anything to try to lessen whatever hurt he was causing, but he felt that would only make it worse. Just like it would be patronizing to tell her she deserved more.
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Post by Madison Benson on Aug 20, 2015 1:16:46 GMT
She could feel the small smile drop completely from her lips. "Oh." Ten minutes ago she wouldn't have been expecting that this was the first thing that he would say to her on his return from his trip. Madison was confused - had she done something? Had he done something? She was almost afraid to ask herself if she thought he might have met someone else, or worse yet, if there had been someone else all along.
"I just -" she was struggling to find the right words to express what she was feeling at the moment. To somehow still maintain her composure when she felt like yelling at him for springing this on her, for hurting her feelings after he had done such a convincing job of getting her to believe he had become a different person. This was feeling strangely familiar. "I mean -" She sighed, afraid to ask why. "I guess I'm just sorry that you feel that way."
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Post by Parker Blye on Aug 20, 2015 1:28:54 GMT
Parker looked at Maddy and nodded. "I don't know how I can impress upon you that this has very little to do with you. Madison, I think you're wonderful and I'm...I'm sorry," he echoed again feeling like quite the idiot. He sat there in a moment, a very tense and silent moment. "I should go," he nodded. Again, he almost wanted to reach out for her and comfort her, but stopped himself. "I hope that you can forgive me one day. It would be more than I deserve, but I still hope for it." Standing, he took a step towards the door.
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Post by Madison Benson on Aug 20, 2015 1:37:39 GMT
She was barely even listening as he tried to explain that it had nothing to do with her. At this point she just wanted him to leave and give her enough time to wrap her head about what had happened, swallow the pit forming in her stomach, and fumble over the keys on her cell phone long enough to get a message over to Riley. Madison wanted him to stop apologizing and to stop calling her wonderful, but most of all she wanted him to take back the fact that he had asked for forgiveness.
"I think going might be a good idea," she nodded, letting him show himself back to the door. "I'm sorry," she added at the last minute, unsure if she meant because it had eventually ended up here or if it was because she had just now started worrying that she had never been enough.
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