IT WAS ONLY for a little while. Dave would hardy be gone for very long the following week, but to Reagan, it marked the beginning of the end. Even though he was set to return to Los Angeles to cram in as much time as possible with her and Gracie before he was off to Europe to play the festival scene, it was the starting line that contrarily marked the finish.

She sat in a ball on the couch, her eyes glazed over as she stared at the television without gleaning anything entertainment, or even distraction from it. Truthfully, she was unable to pinpoint any certain emotion that was weighing on her the heaviest. They were all at war inside of her, scuffling for dominance.

She hadn't needed to fixate on any certain feeling to surmise that there was no point in stressing about what a bitch her life had turned out to be.

Richard had insisted on normalcy in the coming months. From the moment he'd been discharged from the hospital, still a little wobbly on his feet his head wrapped in gauze, he'd declared that his family was not allowed to break down over his Alzheimer's diagnosis. They were to go on, functioning in their day to day lives as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He didn't want it any other way.

That wasn't enough for Reagan. She was needed in Los Angeles for work, but that hadn't stopped her from booking multiple airline tickets in advance back to Seattle, where she'd make the drive into Olympia by rental car each time to see her father. She wanted, needed, as much time with him as possible before her forgot her.

He needed time with Gracie. Her summer would be spent jetting back and forth between Washington and California with her mom, seeing the grandfather that she couldn't fathom not knowing who she was one day.

Richard had accepted his diagnosis the way he'd accepted most things in life, with a sigh and shrug of his shoulders followed by a smile, though the one he'd worn leaving the hospital had held a trace of fear behind it. Reagan knew her dad was scared.

Her entire family was scared. The twins, who'd just turned fourteen, couldn't fully comprehend that they wouldn't have a lifetime with the father they'd grown up adoring. He'd be a stranger to them, likely by the time they would start reaching major milestones in their lives.

Robbie had endured the pain quietly, wedging himself between his two older sisters without contributing a word to their planned next steps. At twenty-three, he should have been enjoying life, freshly graduated from college and having just gotten his own apartment. He'd grown up so wonderfully and Reagan attributed plenty of his gentle personality to Richard, who'd been Robbie's keeper after she'd left home.

But Kate . . . thinking about Kate was a punch to the gut.

Before Reagan had left the hospital on that godforsaken night, Kate had pulled her aside, tears making her eyes shiny under the hallway's fluorescent lights. It was then that she'd told Reagan the news that no one else knew of yet — she was pregnant.

Reagan understood exactly why Kate had chosen that moment to tell her. Their world was falling apart and of course on top of that, Kate had been given a gift to celebrate that barely held up against the misery of knowing what was slated for Richard.

It was so much to digest at once. A countdown had begun ticking towards the moment that Richard would become a virtual stranger. Kate was going to have a baby. Kimberly, for perhaps the first time in her life, was catatonic and refusing to speak, not even to Reagan whom was surprised that her mother wasn't even mentally with it enough for a typical round of bickering.

Dave. Dave was still there with her, threaded around her soul, and the wall of all those ancient problems that they'd once had was looming over her, impossible to climb as it'd been upon its erection.

The only thing keeping her on her feet was Gracie. Gracie and the general sense of numbness that she'd slipped into, like someone was feeding her anesthesia through an invisible needle jammed into a vein. She felt physically incapable of screaming, crying, releasing all of the anguish that had poisoned her life. On the contrary, Reagan was gagged and bound by it, now accepting of the fact that her life just wasn't cut out for bliss. The one ray of sunshine that she had, Gracie, was not something she could afford to lose by acting like a stranger.

So she played her part. She tried to be strong, even though all she wanted was to curl up in a fetal position beneath her comforter for days on end.

The sound of the front door opening and closing didn't jar her. She continued to stare at the television, not even sure what she was supposed to be watching. Everything looked out of focus.

"Hey."

Dave's voice was quiet when he walked into the living room. Reagan turned her head, unsurprised to see him and unsurprised by the grocery bags he was gripping in both hands. Nothing could shake her out of the fog she was in.

"Hey," she said back.

He lifted the grocery bags by an inch. "I brought stuff over for dinner. Pasta and salad."

"Your mom's recipe?" The question left Reagan's mouth lifelessly, even though somewhere on the inside, she wanted to smile at the memory. She wanted to plunge her own two hands through her chest and dig until she found the proof that at one time, she'd been happy.

"No, my recipe," Dave said. He dropped a quick kiss to her head and instead of warming her, it stung.

"I'll start cooking," she said, beginning to untuck her legs.

"I'm cooking. You sit and relax." He caressed her face, one long stroke of his fingers from her cheekbone to her jaw, and Reagan swallowed. A part of her wanted to grab his hand, to keep it fixed there where she'd always feel him. He was disappearing though, even as he stood right in front of her. She was scared to close her eyes, wondering if when they opened again, he'd be completely vanished.

She watched as he went into the kitchen, listening as he pulled out the necessary pots and pans. It would be just them that night. Gracie was at a friend's house and though Dave usually had been coming over when she wasn't home, this time felt different. It had been different ever since Richard's diagnosis.

It was odd. Dave seemed just as scared as she was, though she was inclined to believe that it was over more than just an empathetic sadness for what was happening to her father. Reagan guessed that Dave thought she was disappearing too, evaporating into nothingness and leaving him powerless to stop it.

He'd been trying so hard and for that, she gave him all the credit in the world. He'd spent as much time as possible with her, tending to her and Gracie like a therapist, butler, and live-in nurse wrapped into one. He'd made no mention of his and Taylor's tentative demos or the upcoming festival circuit on his calendar. He'd slipped into a new role outside of the one Reagan was used to seeing him in, and despite the circumstances, it had tepidly worked as a numbing agent to her pain.

It was like she'd gotten a version of him back that the rest of the world didn't know. He was just Dave, her Dave, without the subsequent mark of acclaim hanging over him like a thin veil she couldn't reach him through.

The reality was that it wouldn't last. Soon enough, he'd be gone again, and Reagan would be caught in a similar web of turmoil that she'd found herself suspended by in early nineteen-ninety-eight. It was a web of heartbreak and loss, so large in size that it stole away every drop of joy that she'd ever known and left her with the impression that the world was shit and she would never be happy again.

And Dave wouldn't be there to help untangle her out of it.

It wasn't his responsibility and she knew that. But at the same time, she didn't want to endure another era of pain without him by her side. She didn't want to be alone, waiting months on end for his return. She didn't want to turn into someone she didn't recognize, much like she had after her miscarriage. She couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't.

And if she did . . . there was the possibility he'd leave her anyway. He would grow tired of her coldness just as he'd done before, sleeping with someone else just for a reprieve from it.

Their lives were so different and yet so intertwined. They'd blended together perfectly at the start, seemingly made for each other and now, Reagan saw them as separate entities. Oil and water, skimming the line where they met in the middle but nothing more.

She blinked and felt the heat of tears gathering in her eyes.

How could the world have been so cruel as to give her a soulmate, only to reveal that he wasn't her soulmate after all? At least not practically, and practicality meant everything when it came to her current needs.

She needed him there, with her. She wanted not one more day to go by that she'd spend questioning his loyalty or missing him so hard that it left her hollow and spent, like she'd raked herself over the coals mourning someone who wasn't even dead yet.

Starting to sob, Reagan got up off the couch and walked at a shuffled pace to the kitchen. She felt like a zombie in the way she moved, her hands shaking as she hugged herself and tried to navigate through blurred vision.

When Dave saw her standing in the entryway, her face red and twisted around soundless cries, he abandoned the marinara sauce he'd been getting ready to pour into a pan and shot to her side.

"Come here," he insisted, gently prying apart her arms so that he could pull her into his. "Reagan, baby, it's okay. It's okay."

Didn't he know that she couldn't stand to hear those two words when they were such a laughable lie? Nothing was okay. The concept of being okay didn't exist anymore.

"I don't know what to do," she stammered out, choking on every hitched sob that rose up in her throat. He didn't catch the double meaning behind what she'd said, continuing to shush her softly against his chest. He pulled away, just for a moment, to switch off the stove's burners before he led her back into the living room.

Reagan slumped against him as he sat them both down on the couch, rocking her back and forth and pressing his chin hard into the top of her head. He was holding her like it would be the last time he'd ever find her in his arms again and she questioned if he knew that their chances together had run out.

He must have. He couldn't have not known that they were barreling head-first towards something ultimate between them, a forever choice that couldn't be edited or gone back on.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I'm . . . I'm so fucking sorry, Reagan."

She curled her fingers into the cotton of his t-shirt, looking up at him with watery eyes. His own eyes were tight at the corners, glossy in an appearance that suggested he was close to crying, too. That made it harder for her, knowing that in his eyes, she saw a surrender.

Dave inclined his face to kiss her forehead, but she stopped him with a whispered request.

"Kiss me. Please."

It must have sounded strange, pathetic even, but he couldn't tell her no. He took his time curving one hand behind her neck and leading her mouth to his, never drawing his gaze from hers. When their lips touched, Reagan felt a hazy calm drape over like the comfort of a childhood blanket.

That particular kiss was a living memory of her feelings, each and every emotion that she'd had since she'd first met him. They came back slowly at first, much like the start of the kiss itself, but flooded her brain rapidly in gushing droves when Dave kissed her harder, more meaningfully, digging his fingers into the ridge of her spine.

She felt all of it, everything that her heart had harbored from every point on the timeline of their relationship. Behind her closed eyes, she saw him at twenty-one, tucking back his long tangled hair behind an ear and grinning slowly, sheepishly, at her. She saw him at that same age, mid-laugh as he nudged her playfully on Kurt's couch and shared a bowl of ramen noodles with her, relieved that she wasn't upset that it was the only edible food in the apartment.

She saw his face over a candlelit dinner, frightened and full of tentative hope when he'd told her that he loved her for the first time. She saw him beaming with pride after learning that his first child, their child, was going to be a girl and that they were going to call her Gracie. She saw him from the viewpoint of being cradled in his arms, his face destitute of all feeling except grief as she'd cried into his chest over the loss of Kurt.

Reagan wrenched her eyes tighter shut, desperate to visualize more of the cherished past, and tears squeezed out of them and rolled down her cheeks. She was urgent to keep him right where he was, kissing her and holding her like nothing else mattered in the world and that it was enough to simply kiss. It was enough for at least, just feeling his mouth on hers and summoning the best moments of their memories.

Dave laid her down without breaking the kiss, leaving no space between them as he pressed himself over her. She raised one leg up against his hip and he freed one of his hands, running it down her body and pausing to touch her breast, her stomach, her hip and her thigh. It was painfully sweet the way he touched her, expecting nothing more than the comfort of knowing he could do so while it was still acceptable.

Reagan lost track of time. It couldn't have been very long that they laid there kissing, but it went on forever for her, a wisp of happiness that flickered for longer than she expected. But like everything else laid to the wind, it vanished once she realized how cruel it was. It was unfair to feel him, to love him that way, when it would never be permanent.

She gently turned her face away, breathing in deeply to refill the supply of air she'd lost with her mouth on his. Dave leaned his head onto her chest directly over her heart and she wondered for a moment if he'd be able to hear the sound of it snapping in half, straight down the middle.

"Why'd you do that?" he breathed. His voice was soft though there was an anticipatory blankness to it. He was basking in the calm before the storm, well aware of what was about to happen. And yet he stayed calmly draped over her — an acceptance of fate.

"Do what?" She ran her fingers through his hair one last time, feeling more tears trickle from her eyes and down her temples.

One last time. One last time.

"Kiss me like you're trying to say goodbye."

He sat up, creating a gap between them that felt horribly metaphoric as to what was happening. There'd been no space between their bodies and now it was gone, replaced by a distance that could have only been a foot at the most, yet felt like miles.

She sat up too, fixing her eyes on his and knowing that he could see the little life that was left behind them.

"I don't know how to say goodbye to you anymore, Dave," she said. "I only know how to tell you that I'm not sure I can do this."

His jaw clenched, but he nodded with understanding. Whatever thinking that he'd been doing on his own had to led to this composed response, so vastly different compared to how he'd reacted the first time she'd told him it was over.

"I'm not good for you. Am I?"

He asked the question calmly, but the context of it made her want to cry harder. There was shards of a broken heart evident in the question and it didn't matter how gently he asked. The facade had dropped long enough for her to know that he was suffering all over again because of her choice.

"I would argue that it's me whose not good for you," she whispered. "I can't . . . adapt. I keep taking all these hits and every single one goes to show that I can't handle being a part of your life. I can't watch you leave again when I want you here. This shit with my dad, I don't want to be all alone for it."

Wordlessly, Dave nodded again. Several agonizing seconds passed before he was suddenly digging a hand into his pocket and pulling out something that he held between his pointer finger and thumb.

Reagan felt herself choke on a sob.

It was her wedding ring that he pinched between his guitar string-worn fingers. The same ring he'd given her all those years ago, the one she'd told him he could never replace.

"I kept it thinking I'd be able to put it on your finger again someday," he said, his voice hoarse. "I would have never gotten rid of it, but I believed you'd have it again. I've been carrying it around with me for a few weeks now, waiting to ask. I wanted to ask so badly."

"Dave," she whispered as her tears poured, turning him into a barely visible blur.

"Don't worry. I'm not . . . going to ask. I know how you feel. I know what I can and what I can't put you through. And I can't put you through this. Not with everything going on with your dad."

"If you're not asking, then why do you have it?"

"You know what I want, Reagan. I don't have to ask. I'm guessing I'm hoping that you'll . . . you'll ask me."

She stared at the ring, as pretty and dainty as it'd been since the day he gave it to her. It had always felt so solid on her finger, so right, and she'd never imagined the day that it wouldn't be there.

"Tell me what you want," he murmured. "I've always told you I'll give you anything. And fuck, I want it to be me so god damn badly, but . . . only you can decide that."

Reagan sucked her lips in and bit down on them. If she hadn't been so obviously in her living room, she would have felt like she was in a tunnel looking over her shoulder, watching the past grow tinier and tinier behind her. The future was dragging her, kicking and screaming, forward and she couldn't change it.

She closed her hand over his and covered the ring, lowering it away.

"I'm sorry," she wept, turning her face away as her entire body shook with her cries.

He was crying too, even though he tried to disguise it. She could hear every rattling breath that he took, teeming around the sobs that he was keeping confined to his chest. Trying to be strong.

"I wanted it to work," she began, suddenly desperate to make him understand. "I wish I didn't feel the way that I did. I tried to get over it, I tried. And I know I'm awful because I knew from the start that this would be your life. I always said you'd be famous, that you'd make it, and I know I'm a coward."

"You didn't know. I didn't even know."

"Things happened. I love you, I always will and I want to forget those things, I do. But they keep coming back. They scare me to death and it's driving me crazy, Dave."

He stared into his lap and Reagan pleadingly cupped her hand to his face, urging him to look at her.

"Maybe . . . maybe I need some time," she said anxiously. "Just give me some time to process everything that's happening and maybe we can work it out, we can wait and see how I feel down the line and-,"

"I want you now," he said, "and the longer we wait, I know it will just get worse for you. I can't change what's asked of me because you won't let me do that. And a part of me really loves you for not asking, but at the same time, I wish you would. I wish you'd ask me to give it all up."

"I can't do that. We'd be back in square one. I'd be having panic attacks over everything you'd lost out on, just because of me."

"So stubborn," he whispered. He tried to laugh when he said it, but the laugh turned into a hissing inhale that he sucked in to bite back his tears.

"I'm not stubborn. I just want you to be happy."

"I want you to be happy, too. That's exactly why I know I have to walk away. Don't I?"

"I'll never be completely happy without you. Never."

Dave raised their joined hands to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. She felt him pass the ring into her palm, the ridges of the diamond pressing into her skin.

"Keep it with you," he said quietly.

Reagan's mouth quivered. "I can't. I gave it back to you in the first place because I can't keep it."

"I'm asking you to keep it. I've looked at it every day since things ended and it's gonna' kill me to keep doing that after this. Please. Take it."

The last thing that she wanted to do was accept the ring back knowing that she'd be damned to the same punishment that he'd endured, looking at it with every passing day and compartmentalizing all the 'what-if's,' but she took it anyway. She squeezed it into her hand. If he'd done it, then it was only fair that she had to do it too.

"I love you," she said shakily. "Please tell me you know that I love you."

"I know. I love you, too."

Dave stood up and she felt anxiety convulse through her in a series of shock waves.

He was leaving. He was going to go and things would never be the same. They would never be alone like that again, trading I love you's and knowing that all they had to do was lean forward and they'd be kissing.

"Dave," she said, rushing to stand up next to him. She didn't get another word in before he took her face into his hands and kissed her.

It was another kiss that she wanted to last forever, even more so than the first one they'd shared that night. His mouth moved from her lips to her jaw, up to her cheeks and back down to her throat. She whimpered and clawed her hands between his shoulder blades, wanting to hold him closer than humanely possible.

He kept on, kissing every inch of her face and neck desperately, before his lips finally found hers again. They came to a rest around her upper lip, kissing softly. Once, twice, a third time. She tasted his breath, gulping it into her system and wishing that she could drown in it. It struck her that it would be the last time she'd know what it was like to taste him, to have him so close that she could feel his pulse through his t-shirt.

When he pulled away, he caressed his thumbs along her cheekbones, his voice thick as he spoke.

"If you ever need anything, you call me," he directed her. "It doesn't have to be about Gracie. I'll always be here for you. Whatever you need, you can ask me. Okay?"

She gripped his wrists, sobbing again. Their time was running thin. She could feel it. In mere minutes, her world was going to flip upside down forever and there'd be no more second chances, no more run-in's at hotels where they could disappear together.

"Okay?" he repeated, giving her a tiny shake by the shoulders. She bobbed her head.

"Okay."

"I . . . I have to go. Unless you want me to stay. But I really need to go."

She wanted to ask where he'd go, who he would turn to and why it couldn't be her, even if it was morbid for them to bemoan the final loss of their relationship together. He'd made it poignant that he'd had enough of being sad, swinging back and forth on the same pendulum with while her waiting for a miracle to make things better.

"I understand," she whispered.

"I love you, Reagan."

Dave dragged her close again, pressing his last kiss for her on her forehead. It only lasted several seconds before he pulled away and turned his back to her.

She felt nailed to the spot as she watched him walk away. Something inside of her screamed to stop him before it was too late, but she had nothing left to offer him. Nothing she could have said, not even her pleas, would have reversed time and made it nineteen-ninety again. That was a millennia ago, a better era of their lives when nothing had been tainted.

It was a small gift of relief that he didn't look back at her when he disappeared around the corner. She was left with the fading sound of his footsteps and the click of the front door and it was anticlimactic that after everything they'd share,  that that was how it ended. Footsteps and a door that opened and closed.

Reagan spun in place, gasping as she bent over with her arms soldered around her stomach. It didn't seem possible that saying goodbye again would have been worse than the first time, but it was. There was a finality to it that hit her with an indescribable weight, pinning her down and crushing her.

She saw the montage of what was to come and it made it worse. There wasn't a moment in that glimpse of her eventual life that she didn't envision herself loving him or chopping up her heart to pieces so that he'd always have a slice of it, even if he wasn't there.

But he'd always be there. He'd be on television, on the radio, in every store on every album that had the words 'Foo Fighters' stamped across it. She was and always had been living in his world and he'd miraculously cursed and blessed her with the experience of loving him.

"Wait," she suddenly mumbled to herself. "Wait."

Staggering on her feet, Reagan rushed to the front door and flung it open, running down the path to the driveway. She didn't know what she'd say or do if she managed to stop him. All she was certain of was needing one more minute, one more second with him that didn't yet set the precedent for how they'd be now that it was all over.

By the time she reached the end of the driveway, his taillights were turning down the street and disappearing.

I can't do this without you, she wanted to yell after him into the night. The horrible truth was that she couldn't do it with him either. Otherwise he would have still been there, his mouth on hers, his hands in her hair.

They still would have had a shot at being the way they'd once been, just Reagan and Dave. Even if they'd only pretended . . .

Reagan sank into a crouch on the pavement with her head in her hands and sobbed.