PAUL

John was staring at me from under his brow, above his glasses. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his black jacket, his shoulders raised, his feet planted side by side.

I looked back at him, holding the door with my left hand.

"....Hello?" I spoke, surprise raising my voice as if I were asking a question.

"'Ello, ol' mate, sorry to be barging in on you like this, but there is a matter I need to see to." His voice was jovial but the rest of him wasn't. He stood in place. His eyes looked worn. "Is the ol' lady 'ome?"

I shook my head. "Linda went to see a movie with Heather." I had been alone all day, sitting and doing nothing, thinking, and while this meeting was unexpected, it was not unwelcome.

John rocked back and forth on his heels, nodding for a bit too long. I stared at him, raising my eyebrows as he bit his lip and turned his face away from me, staring down the street.

Amused by his agitation, I waited for a beat before asking, "Would you like to come in, John?"

With that invitation being enough, John marched past me into my living room, giving me a "Thanks, you're a real mate," on the way. Blindsided, I shook my head and closed the door slowly. He sunk into the couch, facing the television, the back of his head facing me.

"D'you want a drink or somat?" I rubbed the back of my neck. "We have some wine, milk, apple juice-"

"I met with Pru today," he spoke, his hair swaying as he did so. When I didn't answer, he turned his head to the right and looked over his shoulder at me. "George set it up."

I slowly walked to the loveseat next to the couch. "He didn't tell me anything about that." I heard an unwanted bite in my voice, and tried to swallow it down. I placed my hands on my thighs and sat down, staring at John.

"I didn't want anyone to know about it," he said softly. "I didn't even know if I was goin'ta go through with it, or if she would." He looked down at his hands. "But I did, and she did, so it 'appened."

I waited for him to tell me more, but he didn't. "So what happened, then?" I coaxed him. "Did you two make up?"

"I don't... think so."

"What d'you mean, you don't think so?" I leaned forward, my elbows on my legs, my hands crossed. "Did she tell you why she didn't-"

"She did, though." He flashed his eyes, full of pain for a fleeting moment, to me and then back to his hands. "She wrote."

I blinked. And waited. But his lips were tight. "I don't underst-"

"It wasn't her fault, and it wasn't mine," he explained, coldly, as if reciting something meaningless from memory. "I wrote letters, she wrote letters, and we didn't get them from each other. So she thought I was to blame, and I thought she was." He shrugged. "That's it."

He furrowed his brows and bit the inside of his lip, making him look pensive, concentrated. I knew, however, that he was just trying to cover up his emotions, to keep the appearance of an impenetrable man.

"That's not- really it, is it?" I didn't know what to say. There was so much that needed to be said, but none of it was right.

John dipped his head down into his lap. "Hell if I know. I split again." He said the last sentence with such disgust, such contempt for himself, that I saw him fold even more into himself when he said it.

I looked around the room. Light flooded through the windows, all lamps were off. Our reflections in the black telly screen stared back at us. We both looked pitiful.

"Maybe you should go see her again," I offered. "Now that you both know what happened."

"And what? Apologize to her? Or wait for her to apologize to me? We didn't do anything worth apologizin' for!" He lifted his head up. His raised voice reverberated through the empty house.

"I wouldn't say that," I retorted with a hint of a smile. "You did run out on her twice already."

John considered that, staring dead ahead at the empty television screen.

"And since it wasn't your fault, or hers, this means you can both stop being angry with each other, right?" I felt some sort of hope swell in the pits of my stomach. "You can be-"

"What? What can we be, Macca?" His voice cracked with the pressure. "If it hadn't been for the bloody post system or whatever it was, we could have still-" He cut himself off, running his hand through his hair. He tried again, "I wouldn't have married Cyn, I wouldn't be w-" He stopped, and brooded in his silence.

He wouldn't have married Cynthia. He wouldn't have had Julian. He wouldn't have been with Yoko now. The weight of the situation finally hit me, but that optimism wasn't crushed.

"You can at least be friends, can't you?" I asked with trepidation. "On good terms?"

"I don't know. I don't know." He took off his glasses and wiped them repeatedly with his shirt, in rapid, jerking motions. "I love her."

He stopped, surprised by what he had just said. I froze, too. I didn't doubt it, but it was still strange to hear him say it.

He mulled over it, and suddenly continued, more assured now that he said the hardest thing to say. "Yeah, I love her. I do. But I'm with Yoko, and I love her, too. I can't just leave her."

I nodded sympathetically. "You don't have to leave her, you know. Prudence is probably upset that you cutout. Just go apologize, and tie up the ends. Don't leave her broken like that."

That was confirmation enough for him.  He stood up and made his way to the front door. I followed him, planting my hand on his back, reminding him he had a friend.

"Thanks, lad," he said while I opened the door for him. "Sorry I intruded like this."

I smiled. "Don't worry about it. I'll see you in the studio tomorrow?"

John nodded but with little certainty. "Sure thing." He walked out, but stopped before I closed the door. He turned around and stared at me.

"I do love Yoko, you know."

I nodded stiffly.

John laughed awkwardly. "Nearly every song we got is about love, and yet I can't be satisfied."

GEORGE

Prudence's arms hung limply around my shoulders. Her hair was flung around her. Her face, makeup smeared, was pressed up against my chest.

"I'm such a fool, aren't I? Crying over him."

"No you aren't."

"I am. Of course I am." A long deep sigh.

We were crumpled against the wall, where she had cried into my shirt for what seemed like hours. I tried to calm her myself, but in vain; she had to release all her pent-up frustration first. Only when exhaustion set in did her sobs die down.

We breathed together, our chests rising and falling in synchronal waves. I slowly rubbed her back, in smaller and smaller circles, until I would reach the middle, and then spiral out again.

"I wish there was someone to blame." A pause. "So I knew whether to get angry or to apologize. But this makes it so much harder."

"Do you want to be angry with him?"

"I don't... I don't want to be angry with anyone..." She repositioned herself, bringing both arms down, around her knees. She buried into my chest more. "What I really want is to be happy... maybe with John... but since I can't get that, I could have at least had the next best thing, which was to hate him." A chuckle, a shaky breath. "I'd rather hate him than chase him around while he's with someone else."

"That makes sense."

"No, it doesn't. None of this makes sense. Relationships don't get ruined because the bloody postman forgot to send our letters." She said this with utter lack of emotion, too weary to express the grief.

"Pru, it's alright. You're tired, try to sleep."

"Okay." Another pause. "You know, it's funny."

"Yeah? What is?"

"I'm not that far off from Clapton. My situation, I mean."

"How?" I felt my stomach tense.

"I'm in love with a taken man, and he's in love with a taken woman. We could have been pulled from the same tree."

Silence. "Yeah, you could've."

She must've heard a snap in my voice, because her head popped up too quickly. "Oh, George, I didn't mean to-"

"Shhhh, go to sleep. It's okay."

She laid her head down, too tired to hold it up. "It's just interesting, is all."

I continued to rub her back, circles getting smaller, smaller, smaller, then exploding outwards. When she fell asleep, I carried her to her bed, draped the folded cover over her, and left silently.

{{ So I'm just going to clarify something here for my readers.

I don't write for others, really. I don't write for some kind of feedback. I don't write because I want to be a writer, though that was my dream when I was little. Now it isn't.

I write for the sake of writing, for having something to do. And I write Beatles stories in particular because I like putting the Beatles in these conversations, in these situations, and seeing what they do and how they react.

That's why I don't put myself on any schedule (also because I procrastinate and wouldn't be able to keep up with it). I guess that's also kind of why my story really goes nowhere. I haven't thought of the plot in advance. I haven't planned the story before I began writing it. I just write whatever I feel like writing and then post it once I don't want to write anymore.

So I'm just telling you this to explain why this story takes so long to be updated and why a lot of the chapters tend to be a lot of talking with nothing going on. And I'm sorry if I disappoint or alienate some readers by writing this, but I honestly expect very little of this story and I guess that's how I approach it.

Not that I don't put time into it. I've actually spent quite some time on this small actionless chapter. It's just I'm not writing The Odyssey here. I'm a Beatles fanatic who gets bored often, so this is what I do.

That's it for that little vent :)

In other news, I want to see Paul McCartney in concert so bad so if he could please send me some free tickets that would be amazing :p

preferably front row with a personalized note and a VIP pass, perhaps a chance to go onstage...

Enjoy your day peeps and thanks for reading!

PEACE AND LOVE L***}}