Alright, Part 3 (final part) of my Huli FF! I know that it's been a মাস since the last one...truth be told, I wasn't actually going to finish this. But then I realized that I always leave things hanging, undone, and I found that I didn't want to do this anymore.
Well, I'm not sure if this really makes sense (I just wrote it in 2 hours), but please enjoy my Huli craziness anyways! :) See আপনি down below.
(P.S. If আপনি haven't read the other parts, আপনি can find Part 1 link and Part 2 link, but if আপনি prefer just পাঠ করা this, that's fine with me too)
(P.P.S. Look for the little shoutout to this spot near the end!! :D)
***
Lisa sat on her soft, warm couch, in her airy, spacious house, on a beautiful দিন in Los Angeles, California, and struggled against the desire to burst into tears.
She stared at the TV, which was playing a bland news broadcast, and tried to will the pain to go away. Presently, Lisa realized that her hands were numb. She glanced down and saw them gripping the carton of ice cream that she had grabbed blindly from the freezer the night before, desperate for some kind of immediate comfort. Now, the carton was empty. A lonely spoon clattered inside as Lisa brought it up to her face.
She never ate ice cream.
Lisa set the carton down on the coffee table, fell over sideways on the couch, and buried her face in a pillow. The overwhelming torrent of sobs that suddenly wracked through her body alarmed her, but after a while it began to feel good.
She had been an idiot.
All along, all through her life, Lisa had convinced herself that she was better off without love. But now, in the heat of the moment, in the midst of the passion, she realized how stupid she had been. She couldn't protect herself. Instead, she had ended up hurting the one person who now meant আরো to her than anyone else in the world.
As the sobs subsided, Lisa raised her face from the বালিশ and tried to channel the inner peace that her yoga instructor reminded her of in every one of their lessons. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe. In through the mouth, out through the nose, in through the mouth...
And then Lisa heard Hugh's voice.
The effect it had on her was astounding. She whipped her head around so fast she nearly fell off the sofa. Lisa looked around wildly, trying to find Hugh, suddenly desperate just to see his face again...
Then she realized that it was coming from the TV. Lisa blinked furiously, trying to clear the tears from her eyes. When they finally focused on the TV screen, she just barely caught a glimpse of Hugh's face before it flashed back to the news anchor.
"...So, if any of আপনি are interested in meeting Mr. Laurie and the other যশস্বী who will be attending the Save the Children benefit, আপনি can catch them outside the Kodak Theater at 8 o'clock tonight..."
Of course. In the confusion of everything that had happened the দিন before, Lisa's own whirlwind of emotions, she had forgotten about the Save the Children event. Immediately, she picked up her কালজামজাতীয় ফল and began to dial Charlie MacCormack's number. Lisa would just have to apologize, make up some quick excuse for why she suddenly couldn't attend...she couldn't ভালুক to face Hugh.
However, Lisa was in mid-dial when she realized that she was throwing what may have been her only chance away. She had already been stupid once before. She had probably already ruined everything, stopped anything that she might have had with Hugh before it had a chance to begin. But maybe, just maybe, Lisa still had a glimmer of hope...
She had nothing to lose now, after all.
***
"Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!" the crowd chanted. Hugh felt a dull flush warm his face, as it always did when thousands of people suddenly trained their eyes on him. Although a dark shadow still hung over his হৃদয় from the events of the দিন before, he forced a grin onto his face. He could wait until later, when no one was looking at him, to fully wallow in his own misery.
Smiling blandly, Hugh stood up and the mass of people in the huge, multi-tiered theater began whooping, cheering, chanting his name once again. As he walked slowly up to the stage, Hugh had to acknowledge the irony of the situation. Although he had a hard time wrapping his mind around it, all these people loved him, even though they only knew his face, they only knew the character that he played on television. And yet, there was one person who would never feel that way about him, even though she understood him like no one else ever could.
Hugh sighed. With an effort, he brushed the sadness to the very edges of his brain. He would deal with it later.
He was on the stage now. Hugh sat down on the bench, placed his hands gently on the keys, and without even thinking began to play. All the female members of the crowd screamed in unison. Hugh looked up and smiled. His ice-blue eyes exuded the misery of a thousand melancholy souls.
***
Lisa sprinted through the crowded streets, lights flashing, car horns blaring...her bare feet stung as they slapped against the gravelly pavement. In her haste, she had somehow forgotten to wear shoes. The black dress that she had hurriedly slipped into flapped around her thighs, and the shoulder strap kept falling off her shoulder. But Lisa continued on, until she reached the doors.
"Miss Edelstein?" the burly security guard asked, looking bewildered. Flustered, it took Lisa a moment to recognize him.
"Ah, Rick!" Lisa exclaimed. He had been at every Save the Children event so far, and had rescued her from a particularly nasty অনুরাগী encounter a while back. "I'm really sorry that I'm late, I had, um, well something came up...can আপনি still let me in?"
The truth was, it had taken quite a few hours for Lisa to work up the courage to go to the event. One side of her screamed at her to avoid it, and Hugh, at all costs, while the other yelled at her to get her গাধা of the পালঙ্ক and into her Lexus. When Lisa had finally made the decision to go, the event had already started.
"Well, Miss Edelstein," Rick began, staring pointedly at Lisa's bare feet, "I'm not sure if আপনি want to..."
"Please," Lisa pleaded. "It's really important."
The security guard looked dubious, but slowly opened the door for Lisa. She sprinted inside, then turned around quickly.
"Rick, thank আপনি so much. If this...well, if I...anyways, thank you," Lisa ব্যক্ত slightly breathlessly, then turned back around and ran off.
The other security guard, who had been standing on the other side of the door the whole time, stared at Rick.
"What are আপনি looking at me for?" Rick exclaimed. "She's normally...well, normal."
"Hollywood, I guess," the other guard said, shrugging. He glanced around, then cupped his hands around his mouth and lit a cigarette. The smoke unfurled slowly into the dusky evening air, as a silence suddenly hushed the crowd inside the theater.
***
"Mystery," Hugh began, his pining, soulful voice filling the crowd with memories of long হারিয়ে গেছে days. "All my life has been a mystery...You and I were never ever meant to be..." His voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat. Hugh bowed his head down, so the camera would not catch the humiliating tears that suddenly pricked at his eyes.
His হৃদয় full of longing, his soul full of heartbreak, Hugh kept on playing and singing. But suddenly, the walls that he had hastily built were knocked down দ্বারা the sheer force of his misery.
Lisa.
And he could not keep the tears from falling now, even as his fingers danced on the keys, even as his throat churned out the words and the melody. The thought that he would never be able to hold her the way that he truly wanted to, that her হৃদয় would never fill with the thought of him, that he was doomed to প্রণয় someone who could not possibly প্রণয় him back...
The crowd had not noticed his tears yet, but Hugh knew that they would eventually. In desperation, he glanced up from the piano.
And somehow, through the film of his tears, through the night that had fallen in his heart, he saw her.
At first Hugh thought that he was indeed hallucinating. It seemed like she had just appeared. Like he had summoned her just দ্বারা thinking about her.
But Lisa Edelstein stood there, her bare toes gripping the maroon carpet of the Kodak Theater, as waves of shocked whispers rippled out through the crowd.
Hugh stopped playing.
***
Lisa was terrified. She had burst through the doors, and immediately regretted it.
What am I doing?
It was crazy. After running through the streets of LA, trying desperately to be where she now was, standing there, with thousands of people's eyes trained on her, with Hugh's eyes enveloping her in their warm ocean of blue, Lisa suddenly wanted to run away. To hide.
She couldn't do this.
Lisa stared at the carpet, at her grimy bare feet, at her hands as they clenched and unclenched. The abrupt silence in the theater was deafening.
Then she glanced up at Hugh. Their eyes met. And as Lisa gazed at him, at his desperate expression, at the way that he leaned towards her even when she was so far away, as if an unbreakable bond connected them...she realized that this was all that mattered.
It was normal to be scared, to feel like the world was turning upside down. When আপনি fell in love, আপনি didn't slide into it, আপনি didn't ease yourself into it--you fell. And this dangerous, exhilarating feeling that made Lisa's হৃদয় beat faster, that made her go weak at the knees...maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Maybe there was something beautiful about a shot in the dark, about trusting someone enough to place your হৃদয় in their hands.
Maybe it was okay to love.
Lisa's face burst into a wide smile. It was ridiculous. She didn't know if Hugh still loved her after the horrible way in which she had rejected him, and she didn't know what would become of this big mess of things that they had made. But suddenly, this uncertainty didn't bother Lisa anymore. It was okay to be unsure, to not know...
Hugh stared back at Lisa, hardly believing it. She was there, she was grinning giddily up at him...no, he wouldn't let himself believe it. Then she took a step forward, and he couldn't help it.
Hugh smiled back, his eyes suddenly radiant with incredulous joy. He let out a strange noise from his throat, half laugh, half sob.
Lisa started walking towards the stage, her eyes still interlocked with Hugh's as both of them smiled like idiots. Suddenly, someone in the crowd wolf-whistled, and the rest burst into applause. Not many of them quite knew what had transpired in those few মিনিট since Lisa had arrived, but they cheered anyways. One teenage girl, sitting in the aisle আসন of the middle row on the ground floor, who had had a spectacular view of both Hugh's and Lisa's faces, and who was incidentally a member of several online communities through which she had gotten to know those two faces far too well, suffered a minor হৃদয় attack and fell, unconscious, to the ground.
But Lisa, oblivious to this tragic incident, walked on. She was almost to the stage when she found that she was no longer scared. Somewhere in the aisle of the theater, Lisa had shed the old ছদ্মবেশ of worry that had suffocated her for so long. She had finally come to terms with the fact that she could not predict the future, that she would not always be নিরাপদ from the pains of the world. But there was no use worrying, because all that mattered was the man whose ocean-blue eyes she held in her gaze as she stepped onto the stage.
All that mattered was the rush, the feel of his body enveloping hers as she stepped in to his arms.
All that mattered was the warm, steady, joyful beating of her হৃদয় as she buried her face in his chest.
All that mattered was how much she loved him, how much she wanted to stay in the safety of his arms, standing there, for the rest of their eternity.
All that mattered was now.
Well, I'm not sure if this really makes sense (I just wrote it in 2 hours), but please enjoy my Huli craziness anyways! :) See আপনি down below.
(P.S. If আপনি haven't read the other parts, আপনি can find Part 1 link and Part 2 link, but if আপনি prefer just পাঠ করা this, that's fine with me too)
(P.P.S. Look for the little shoutout to this spot near the end!! :D)
***
Lisa sat on her soft, warm couch, in her airy, spacious house, on a beautiful দিন in Los Angeles, California, and struggled against the desire to burst into tears.
She stared at the TV, which was playing a bland news broadcast, and tried to will the pain to go away. Presently, Lisa realized that her hands were numb. She glanced down and saw them gripping the carton of ice cream that she had grabbed blindly from the freezer the night before, desperate for some kind of immediate comfort. Now, the carton was empty. A lonely spoon clattered inside as Lisa brought it up to her face.
She never ate ice cream.
Lisa set the carton down on the coffee table, fell over sideways on the couch, and buried her face in a pillow. The overwhelming torrent of sobs that suddenly wracked through her body alarmed her, but after a while it began to feel good.
She had been an idiot.
All along, all through her life, Lisa had convinced herself that she was better off without love. But now, in the heat of the moment, in the midst of the passion, she realized how stupid she had been. She couldn't protect herself. Instead, she had ended up hurting the one person who now meant আরো to her than anyone else in the world.
As the sobs subsided, Lisa raised her face from the বালিশ and tried to channel the inner peace that her yoga instructor reminded her of in every one of their lessons. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe. In through the mouth, out through the nose, in through the mouth...
And then Lisa heard Hugh's voice.
The effect it had on her was astounding. She whipped her head around so fast she nearly fell off the sofa. Lisa looked around wildly, trying to find Hugh, suddenly desperate just to see his face again...
Then she realized that it was coming from the TV. Lisa blinked furiously, trying to clear the tears from her eyes. When they finally focused on the TV screen, she just barely caught a glimpse of Hugh's face before it flashed back to the news anchor.
"...So, if any of আপনি are interested in meeting Mr. Laurie and the other যশস্বী who will be attending the Save the Children benefit, আপনি can catch them outside the Kodak Theater at 8 o'clock tonight..."
Of course. In the confusion of everything that had happened the দিন before, Lisa's own whirlwind of emotions, she had forgotten about the Save the Children event. Immediately, she picked up her কালজামজাতীয় ফল and began to dial Charlie MacCormack's number. Lisa would just have to apologize, make up some quick excuse for why she suddenly couldn't attend...she couldn't ভালুক to face Hugh.
However, Lisa was in mid-dial when she realized that she was throwing what may have been her only chance away. She had already been stupid once before. She had probably already ruined everything, stopped anything that she might have had with Hugh before it had a chance to begin. But maybe, just maybe, Lisa still had a glimmer of hope...
She had nothing to lose now, after all.
***
"Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!" the crowd chanted. Hugh felt a dull flush warm his face, as it always did when thousands of people suddenly trained their eyes on him. Although a dark shadow still hung over his হৃদয় from the events of the দিন before, he forced a grin onto his face. He could wait until later, when no one was looking at him, to fully wallow in his own misery.
Smiling blandly, Hugh stood up and the mass of people in the huge, multi-tiered theater began whooping, cheering, chanting his name once again. As he walked slowly up to the stage, Hugh had to acknowledge the irony of the situation. Although he had a hard time wrapping his mind around it, all these people loved him, even though they only knew his face, they only knew the character that he played on television. And yet, there was one person who would never feel that way about him, even though she understood him like no one else ever could.
Hugh sighed. With an effort, he brushed the sadness to the very edges of his brain. He would deal with it later.
He was on the stage now. Hugh sat down on the bench, placed his hands gently on the keys, and without even thinking began to play. All the female members of the crowd screamed in unison. Hugh looked up and smiled. His ice-blue eyes exuded the misery of a thousand melancholy souls.
***
Lisa sprinted through the crowded streets, lights flashing, car horns blaring...her bare feet stung as they slapped against the gravelly pavement. In her haste, she had somehow forgotten to wear shoes. The black dress that she had hurriedly slipped into flapped around her thighs, and the shoulder strap kept falling off her shoulder. But Lisa continued on, until she reached the doors.
"Miss Edelstein?" the burly security guard asked, looking bewildered. Flustered, it took Lisa a moment to recognize him.
"Ah, Rick!" Lisa exclaimed. He had been at every Save the Children event so far, and had rescued her from a particularly nasty অনুরাগী encounter a while back. "I'm really sorry that I'm late, I had, um, well something came up...can আপনি still let me in?"
The truth was, it had taken quite a few hours for Lisa to work up the courage to go to the event. One side of her screamed at her to avoid it, and Hugh, at all costs, while the other yelled at her to get her গাধা of the পালঙ্ক and into her Lexus. When Lisa had finally made the decision to go, the event had already started.
"Well, Miss Edelstein," Rick began, staring pointedly at Lisa's bare feet, "I'm not sure if আপনি want to..."
"Please," Lisa pleaded. "It's really important."
The security guard looked dubious, but slowly opened the door for Lisa. She sprinted inside, then turned around quickly.
"Rick, thank আপনি so much. If this...well, if I...anyways, thank you," Lisa ব্যক্ত slightly breathlessly, then turned back around and ran off.
The other security guard, who had been standing on the other side of the door the whole time, stared at Rick.
"What are আপনি looking at me for?" Rick exclaimed. "She's normally...well, normal."
"Hollywood, I guess," the other guard said, shrugging. He glanced around, then cupped his hands around his mouth and lit a cigarette. The smoke unfurled slowly into the dusky evening air, as a silence suddenly hushed the crowd inside the theater.
***
"Mystery," Hugh began, his pining, soulful voice filling the crowd with memories of long হারিয়ে গেছে days. "All my life has been a mystery...You and I were never ever meant to be..." His voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat. Hugh bowed his head down, so the camera would not catch the humiliating tears that suddenly pricked at his eyes.
His হৃদয় full of longing, his soul full of heartbreak, Hugh kept on playing and singing. But suddenly, the walls that he had hastily built were knocked down দ্বারা the sheer force of his misery.
Lisa.
And he could not keep the tears from falling now, even as his fingers danced on the keys, even as his throat churned out the words and the melody. The thought that he would never be able to hold her the way that he truly wanted to, that her হৃদয় would never fill with the thought of him, that he was doomed to প্রণয় someone who could not possibly প্রণয় him back...
The crowd had not noticed his tears yet, but Hugh knew that they would eventually. In desperation, he glanced up from the piano.
And somehow, through the film of his tears, through the night that had fallen in his heart, he saw her.
At first Hugh thought that he was indeed hallucinating. It seemed like she had just appeared. Like he had summoned her just দ্বারা thinking about her.
But Lisa Edelstein stood there, her bare toes gripping the maroon carpet of the Kodak Theater, as waves of shocked whispers rippled out through the crowd.
Hugh stopped playing.
***
Lisa was terrified. She had burst through the doors, and immediately regretted it.
What am I doing?
It was crazy. After running through the streets of LA, trying desperately to be where she now was, standing there, with thousands of people's eyes trained on her, with Hugh's eyes enveloping her in their warm ocean of blue, Lisa suddenly wanted to run away. To hide.
She couldn't do this.
Lisa stared at the carpet, at her grimy bare feet, at her hands as they clenched and unclenched. The abrupt silence in the theater was deafening.
Then she glanced up at Hugh. Their eyes met. And as Lisa gazed at him, at his desperate expression, at the way that he leaned towards her even when she was so far away, as if an unbreakable bond connected them...she realized that this was all that mattered.
It was normal to be scared, to feel like the world was turning upside down. When আপনি fell in love, আপনি didn't slide into it, আপনি didn't ease yourself into it--you fell. And this dangerous, exhilarating feeling that made Lisa's হৃদয় beat faster, that made her go weak at the knees...maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Maybe there was something beautiful about a shot in the dark, about trusting someone enough to place your হৃদয় in their hands.
Maybe it was okay to love.
Lisa's face burst into a wide smile. It was ridiculous. She didn't know if Hugh still loved her after the horrible way in which she had rejected him, and she didn't know what would become of this big mess of things that they had made. But suddenly, this uncertainty didn't bother Lisa anymore. It was okay to be unsure, to not know...
Hugh stared back at Lisa, hardly believing it. She was there, she was grinning giddily up at him...no, he wouldn't let himself believe it. Then she took a step forward, and he couldn't help it.
Hugh smiled back, his eyes suddenly radiant with incredulous joy. He let out a strange noise from his throat, half laugh, half sob.
Lisa started walking towards the stage, her eyes still interlocked with Hugh's as both of them smiled like idiots. Suddenly, someone in the crowd wolf-whistled, and the rest burst into applause. Not many of them quite knew what had transpired in those few মিনিট since Lisa had arrived, but they cheered anyways. One teenage girl, sitting in the aisle আসন of the middle row on the ground floor, who had had a spectacular view of both Hugh's and Lisa's faces, and who was incidentally a member of several online communities through which she had gotten to know those two faces far too well, suffered a minor হৃদয় attack and fell, unconscious, to the ground.
But Lisa, oblivious to this tragic incident, walked on. She was almost to the stage when she found that she was no longer scared. Somewhere in the aisle of the theater, Lisa had shed the old ছদ্মবেশ of worry that had suffocated her for so long. She had finally come to terms with the fact that she could not predict the future, that she would not always be নিরাপদ from the pains of the world. But there was no use worrying, because all that mattered was the man whose ocean-blue eyes she held in her gaze as she stepped onto the stage.
All that mattered was the rush, the feel of his body enveloping hers as she stepped in to his arms.
All that mattered was the warm, steady, joyful beating of her হৃদয় as she buried her face in his chest.
All that mattered was how much she loved him, how much she wanted to stay in the safety of his arms, standing there, for the rest of their eternity.
All that mattered was now.