"I've tried everything," I told Val as I collapsed on the sofa after work.

It was Saturday, and I'd been trying to reach Andrew for two weeks. Between work, talking to federal agents about my dad's case, and avoiding the paparazzi, exhaustion didn't even begin to describe how I felt. School was starting on January 30th, so I had less than two months to figure all of my shit out - including preparation for Danielle's trial - before going back.

"His number still disconnected?" Val asked.

I nodded, "Yup."

"Instagram?"

"Tried it," I replied.

She frowned, "Email? Twitter?"

"Don't have his email," I sighed, running a hand through my tangled hair. "And Twitter? Really? Do you know how many people tweet him every day? He'd never see it."

Val shrugged, "It saved us once. I figured it might pull through again."

I snorted, remembering how the social media network actually came in handy after 'the incident' with Danielle. If only life was that easy, right? I'd spent countless hours scrolling Twitter for mentions of Andrew, but nothing turned up. I set Google Alerts for his name - my inbox hit 4,000 emails in three days - and did absolutely anything I could think of.

Except one.

"I didn't follow him," I said slowly. "I don't think I actually tried sending him a tweet."

My roommate gaped at me, "Seriously? Why not?"

"I didn't know how!" I defended myself.

"You push the 'tweet' button! It's not fricking rocket science," Val said with a groan. "Geez, Cait, I thought you were some math genius."

Sticking my tongue out at her, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened Twitter. My account was absolutely dead - I had no profile picture (except the glorious egghead), no followers, no tweets, nothing. If I was going to reach him on Twitter, I'd need to try harder.

He hadn't tweeted since before the incident, but Val was right. I needed to try it, just to make sure I'd explored every avenue. If his phone was disconnected, that didn't necessarily mean he didn't have access to Twitter. He might have changed his number or something.

Still, the chances of him seeing one of my tweets was one in a million. Except, he had three million followers on Twitter.

Shit.

"This isn't going to work," I told Val, navigating to his profile as she directed me there after updating my profile picture.

"It might," she said, clicking the 'tweet' button for me. "Besides, all we need is for him or Jazmin to see it, right? She might monitor his Twitter account a little more closely."

I nodded, my thumbs hovering over the screen as I think about what to say to him. I've practiced countless speeches over the past two weeks, imagined what I would do or say if I saw him again, but none of it prepared me for this. Thousands of words, hundreds of thoughts, six months of regrets boiled down into 140 characters?

"You have to say more than that," Val said. "Besides, it's not like it was your fault. Danielle's the one who was a manipulative bitch."

I sighed, nodding my head as I typed out another tweet.

Val lifted an eyebrow, but I ignored her. I had no idea what to say to him other than an apology, and I wasn't about to pour my heart out on social media for the whole world to see. This was already terrifying enough, exposing myself like this, and my heartbeat was pounding in my chest as I stared down at the phone in my hand.

A notification popped up at the bottom of the screen, then another, and soon I had nine waiting for me. Wrinkling my forehead, I clicked the Notifications tab and saw that my tweets had been retweeted twice and favorited several times.

Both of them had added to my original tweet, and I realized that Val had done it. Retweeting my original tweets, her message was blank except for a single hashtag.

#CaitLovesLincoln

Within an hour, my tweet had received over a thousand retweets and several thousand likes. Val's had done the same. My phone was blowing up with notifications, once again, only this time they were overwhelmingly positive. News had rippled over the internet about Danielle's manipulation over the past few weeks, and it seemed that Andrew's fans were more than willing to cheer for a reconciliation between us.

By 4PM, I had gone from zero followers on Twitter to three thousand. #CaitLovesLincoln was trending in South Korea and Australia, and people were tweeting me messages of support from around the world. Skimming the messages, a few of them talked about his new movie, Rache. When I finally stopped scrolling, my eyes landed on one of them in particular.

"Oh my god," I mumbled to myself, my eyes growing wide. "Oh my god!"

That's how I found myself standing in a crowd outside Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan. Hundreds of fans were camped out in the cold, bundled in coats and scarves, with their homemade signs, paraphernalia, and smartphones at the ready. Most of them were teenage girls, all of them hoping to catch a glimpse of 'the Lincoln Shepherd,' as I heard them whispering, which made me feel all the more awkward for being here.

I just wanted to see him. I needed to see him.

Standing toward the back of the crowd, I shivered as I tried to get closer to the front. A black car pulled up, causing the crowd to erupt into a cacophony of shrieks that only grew louder when Alexis Van Heust, Andrew's ex-fiancé, stepped out with her current boyfriend Tom Hiddleston in tow. A whole slew of celebrities followed, ranging from Andrew's co-stars in Rache (Elizabeth Olsen, Viggo Mortensen, and Alia Bhatt) to Dylan O'Brien.

Needless to say, I ducked when I saw him. No one needed to relive the embarrassment of our last encounter.

Finally, just when I thought the dull roar of the crowd couldn't get any louder, yet another car pulled up, and Andrew stepped out. Impeccably dressed in a custom suit, much like the one he was wearing when we first met, my breath caught in my chest when I saw him.

He waved at the crowd, greeting all of his screaming fans with a warm smile, and my stomach twisted at the sight of it. I knew that I missed him. I had been doing everything I could to convince myself otherwise, to mask the fact, after Danielle blackmailed me and forced us apart, but now...now I was drowning in it.

I was so close to him now, separated by just over thirty feet and countless fans behind a metal barrier, but I'd never felt further away. All of the anxiety, all of the fear, all of the apologies I'd stored in my head over the past two weeks - hell, over the past six months - they weighed on the tip of my tongue like molten lava, and it took everything in me to prevent myself from running away in fear.

He stepped toward the crowd, signing posters and snapping photographs graciously with his fans, and the bodies around me shifted forward in response. Sucked into the movement, I couldn't do anything but let it push me forward toward the barrier. I maneuvered my way past groups of giggling girls, most of them taking videos of their almost-encounter with him, and dodged a few wild elbows.

But as hard as I tried, I couldn't get close enough.

Frantic, I tried walking parallel to him - searching the crowd ahead of us for an opening that would allow me to squeeze up to the barrier - but nothing appeared. There was no way forward, and - try as I might - I wouldn't be able to call out his name through all of this noise.

"OMG," I heard someone say as I crashed into her, both of us grasping the other's upper arms to prevent a tumble (and certain death) in the crowd.

A young blonde stared back at me, her mouth hanging wide open.

"Sorry," I muttered, dropping my hands and trying to squeeze past. "I'm sorry."

Fighting through the crowd to catch up with him, I stood on tip-toe to check how much of the barrier I had left. The edge met the building, where two security guards were posted, and Andrew was nearing it with every step which meant my time was running short.

That's when I heard it, a whisper behind me, and I whipped my head in that direction.

"That's Cait," I saw a brunette whisper to her friend frantically.

They both grinned when they saw me, simultaneously repeating it louder to the people around them.

"Cait," I heard rippling slowly through the crowd around me, punctuating the screams of those at the front. "It's her, she's here. Cait's here."

Less than five feet before the end of the barrier.

"Oh god," I whispered to myself. "Please, please just let me get there."

I tried to speed up, apologizing as I pushed people out of the way, but the wall of bodies near the barrier was as impenetrable as steel. None of them aware of what was going on behind them, they all kept their focus on Andrew as he continued down the line, greeting his fans.

An assistant tapped on his shoulder, causing him to turn away, and I watched as he nodded at the young man wearing an earpiece. I watched his lips move, forming an inaudible apology, as my heart sank to the floor.

I was close. So close. I could see the circles under his eyes, the rough texture of the stubble on his cheek, and the spot on his neck where he probably nicked himself shaving. His smile flashed bright white amidst the camera flashes, but I could see the sadness in his eyes through the cracks in his façade.

"Andrew!" I called out frantically, earning a few strange looks from the people around me. "Andrew!"

He didn't hear me.

Giving one last wave to the crowd, he turned toward the rest of the red carpet that led into the building. A tear rolled down my cheek as I watched him turn, as my opportunity slipped between my fingertips, and I bit back a sob.

A familiar looking woman walked up to him before he stepped into the building, looping her arm between his as she led him off to the side. I recognized her as Jazmin, his publicist, and I took a deep breath as I watched her show him something on the phone.

The world around me felt like it was crashing down. Cold air stung against my wet cheeks, my breathing heavy, and it seemed as if everything stopped around me. The crowd - still excited from their celebrity encounters - continued to push against the barrier, but I couldn't feel it.

I couldn't feel anything.

Just loss.

*deep breaths*

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