New Life Old Friends (Mae/Parker)

[tyler james haze]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: f9f9f9; border: #6d2b2c solid 10px; width: 450px; padding: 15 5 15 5px;] i've been waking all my life tagged Mae/Parker! words 678 muse merh notes poor tired boy credits template by irish! Exhaustion was probably the only word that could be used to describe the way Tyler felt these days. Since he'd come home, nothing had been easy. Moving to the trailer park in Addison had been the last thing that Tyler wanted for his family, but there were almost no jobs, and certainly none that would enable him to afford the mortgage payments. So the house foreclosed, and they moved to Addison. Since then, he'd taken a job at safeway... working the night shift from 10 PM to 6 AM, and he'd somehow managed to land himself a job at the stable, despite not knowing the first thing about horses during the day from 8 AM to 4 PM. That left an hour in the morning, and four hours in the evening to sleep... but unfortunately for him, his responsibilities weren't just with work. His grandmother had been forgetting things a lot lately... like cooking and cleaning or even picking Gracie up from school. Between work and playing parent to a seven year old and an eighty year old, he had nearly no time to rest and relax. He'd finally had a day off from Safeway, and had every intention of using the day to catch up on much needed sleep, but the bouncing seven year old was quick to remind him that he had promised to spend the day with her. So, with only two hours of sleep, he forced himself up and out of bed. By the time he'd showered and headed for the kitchen, Gracie had already prepared the only thing she knew how to prepare, bread and peanut butter, toasted, because if it wasn't toasted then it was lunch, not breakfast... at least according to her. He was too tired to argue, so he just went along with it. Gracie had gotten herself into a routine while he was gone, and who was he to change it now? After breakfast, he left a note for their grandmother that they were going out for a while and headed into town... walking, of course, since they no longer had a vehicle. It took an hour or so to get into town, and the ever exuberant child still had enough energy to be skipping on ahead of him. He barely had the energy to walk. He followed her from one place to the next as she darted in and out of shops, chattering on about the Christmas decorations and all of the pretty things that they put out just special for the Christmas season. All of which made Tyler feel rather guilty, knowing that she would love to have pretty things, but he just couldn't afford to get her them. It was pretty things or a roof over their head, and their priorities had to be kept straight. He had sort of lost track of where they were until Gracie suddenly stopped, grabbed his hand, and started dragging him towards the bakery. Normally, he would have protested, considering that giving sugar to a high energy kid was usually not a good idea, but today... he was just going to go along with it. They always had free samples, so aside from getting Gracie on a sugar high, he really had no reason to tell her no. As she bounded up to the front counter to get some samples, he sank down into a chair at a table tiredly. He really should have told her to let him sleep a few more hours and then they'd go, but he really couldn't say no to her. Gracie came skipping back to him, cookie in hand, and before she'd even sat at the table she let out an exuberant "Hi!" as the bell above the door jingled. She was a very social little butterfly, and loved to make friends out of everyone that she saw. Tyler, on the other hand, would rather just sink into the shadows in the corner and be left alone... but Gracie always got her way.

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[Parker Dylan Barclay]

[style=float: left; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/2s5zhgz.jpg); width:250px; height:400px;][style=width:250px; height:35px; background-color: 000000; margin-top: 340px; opacity: .6;][style=font-face:tahoma; color: #61A7C7; letter-spacing:-1px; font-size:10px; text-align: center; line-height: 12px;]TYLER[style=color:fafafa]outfit

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[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:8px; line-height:10px; letter-spacing:3px; color: #61A7C7; text-align:justify;]FORGET ME NOT, FORGET ME NOW. I'VE COME TOO FAR TO TURN AROUND. I'M HERE TONIGHT - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:10px; letter-spacing:0px; color: #6FB0D5; text-align:justify]Short hours of sleep and running around like a crazy person had become the norm for Parker ever since she had moved back to Texas. As soon as she had moved into her own apartment she hit the ground running. Finding her job at The Basement really had seemed to fall into her lap. It was weird how that happened sometimes. Not that she was complaining. It was good money and she even got to hang out with Nick there whenever he was the dj. Those were the best nights because she could usually convince him to give her a ride on his motorcycle so she saved gas in her car. Working till two at the earliest in the morning though and not getting to bed till three and then up at seven or eight really had taken away her sleep. Not like she wasn’t used to it. In high school she had lived on only 3-4 hours of sleep. What with riding and sneaking out at stupid hours of the night to see her friends or her boyfriend of the time. So sleep deprivation just seemed like an old friend to her.

Parker had to work that day, but she had errands to run between seeing Jimmy and actually going to work. She seemed especially tired today though. Parker wasn’t one to rely on coffee to wake her up, but there were the rare occasions when she needed the caffeinated beverage to perk her up. She figured she would swing by the Sugar Shack and get a coffee before running along to her next task. She wasn’t even sure what that next task was by this point. Her mind was a total jumble and she had no idea where she was going. She was sort of on autopilot to be honest. She wasn’t pulled out of it until she walked into the Sugar Shack and a high pitched hi was yelled in her direction. Parker forced herself to focus and look in the direction of the voice and couldn’t help but smile wide when she saw who the greeting came from.

Without much thought, Parker made her way over to the little girl and crouched to her level, giving her a big hug. ‘Hey Gracie!’ She hadn’t seen the little girl since Tyler had broken up with her and left for the military. It didn’t even occur to her who Gracie would be with until she pulled away and looked up. It was like a ghost from her past sitting there and she was at a loss for words. She stood up, flattening her shirt, and looking at Tyler for a second trying to gather her thoughts. Sure she had written him while he was gone and asked about him basically every day when he was MIA, but she hadn’t seen him since high school. ‘Hey,’ she said with less excitement and her voice barely above a whisper. What else did you say to your ex who you had feared for the longest while had been killed in war.

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[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:8px; line-height:10px; letter-spacing:3px; color: #61A7C7; text-align:justify;]- - - - - - - - - - - I'M NEVER GIVING UP. I'M NEVER GONNA LEAVE. IF YOU LIKE ME THEN SAY YOU LIKE ME

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[tyler james haze]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: f9f9f9; border: #6d2b2c solid 10px; width: 450px; padding: 15 5 15 5px;] i've been waking all my life tagged Mae/Parker! words 678 muse merh notes awkward credits template by irish! Tyler had every intention of paying no attention at all to the person that Gracie had said hi to. She said hello to everyone whether they knew her or not. For the most part they would just smile and keep walking, and he liked it that way. It wasn't that he wanted to be that way but he felt so much anxiety when approached by people that he didn't know he nearly had a panic attack and it was all he could do to maintain his wits and stay put. His military training was what gave him the ability to will his feet into remaining glued to the ground and not just leaving hastily, so in some sense he was grateful for it, but at the same time, if it weren't for the military, he wouldn't have this anxiety to begin with, so he really had a love hate relationship with it... mostly hate. It took him a moment to realize that the person Gracie said hello to had responded with her name and had actually approached, indicating that this person knew the little girl. In the time it took him to realize who it was and actually turn to look, she was standing up from the crouch she'd gone into in order to put her arms around the child. For a very brief second he couldn't place who she was, but then it hit him. He had been gone for over four years, and she had definitely matured since the last time he saw her... in a good way, of course. Parker... his ex-girlfriend... who he'd been an absolute asshole to at the end of their relationship. After he'd gone to the Army he tried to justify the way he'd treated her. His grandfather's passing had been hard on him, surely he'd had the right to lash out at someone, right? No matter how hard he'd tried to convince himself of that, he just couldn't make himself believe it. The guilt had only been worsened when he'd received letters from her. Aside from Gracie's hardly readable written in crayon with stick people drawings on the back letters with the occasional note from his grandmother included, she was the only one who wrote to him. He had no trouble writing to his sister and grandmother, but he'd never managed to send Parker anything in reply. He'd started, and sometimes even finished letters every time she wrote him, but he'd never been able to bring himself to send them. They started the same way every time... telling her he was well, that he rarely actually went out on missions, that the army had been kind to him thus far... and then it morphed into an apology for the way he'd treated her, the way things had ended, how he'd left without saying goodbye... and then he ended up burning it. None of it had seemed right. When he recognized her, he didn't know what to do. At first he wanted to hug her, but then he remembered how things had ended between them and how he'd not spoken to her in four years, and he was quite sure that she probably hated him for it. Her letters had been kind enough, but he was certain that she'd only written them out of a feeling of obligation, and you couldn't exactly send hate mail to someone who was risking their life to protect their country, now could you? He wasn't even sure if Parker knew about everything that had happened with his being missing and all that, but he wasn't even sure if she would care if she did know. "Hey..." He managed a get out, feeling ridiculous for not knowing what to say, "I... I got your letters." He added after a moment, just hoping to make some sort of attempt at sounding like a perfectly normal and well adjusted person. He considered making an excuse as to why he hadn't written back, but nothing short of "I didn't know how to apologize for being a dick to you" seemed an appropriate excuse, and he didn't particularly feel like saying those words aloud.

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[Parker Dylan Barclay]

[style=float: left; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/2s5zhgz.jpg); width:250px; height:400px;][style=width:250px; height:35px; background-color: 000000; margin-top: 340px; opacity: .6;][style=font-face:tahoma; color: #61A7C7; letter-spacing:-1px; font-size:10px; text-align: center; line-height: 12px;]TYLER[style=color:fafafa]outfit

[/url] WOO[/style][/style][/style]

[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:8px; line-height:10px; letter-spacing:3px; color: #61A7C7; text-align:justify;]FORGET ME NOT, FORGET ME NOW. I'VE COME TOO FAR TO TURN AROUND. I'M HERE TONIGHT - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:10px; letter-spacing:0px; color: #6FB0D5; text-align:justify]It worried Parker how long it took him to respond to her. He probably didn’t want to even talk to her. She was probably a bad reminder of what he went through his senior year of high school. But she was so glad she got to see him. Sure she knew that he was back. Sure she knew that he was safe. But it was different because she hadn’t seen him. It all could have been hearsay until that very moment. Because in that very moment she could physically go and hug him if she so chose. But she was sure that he wouldn’t want that. As much as a small part of her wanted to walk up to him and wrap her arms around him and cry because she was just so relieved that it hadn’t all been lies and he was in fact alive, she didn’t think that he would want that. He had never written her back all those years anyways. He probably didn’t write her back because he didn’t want her in his life and yet here she was standing in front of him.

‘Oh…I’m glad they didn’t get lost.’ Parker started nervously playing with her hair just looking at Tyler. In that moment her eyes were glued to him. No one else really existed. Even little Gracie who was holding onto her leg tightly didn’t even seem to exist to her. It was just Tyler. It was one of those weird movie moment tunnel vision things. But unlike in movies it wasn’t because she just found her one true love. No it was just because of the shock. She literally speechless. Parker had never been speechless in her entire life and yet here she was with zero things to a boy who she had dated for a long time. A boy who she hadn’t seen or heard from in four years. What did you say to a guy who the last time you actually talked to him he was being a total jerk? She understood why he had been that way at that time, but still she had no idea what to say.

She took a deep breath and moved to close the space between them. ‘I worried every day that you were MIA that you were dead.’ She wasn’t sure if he knew that she knew he had been MIA and a POW, but she had. And even thought she always tried to get a definite answer on what was going on, most of the time his grandmother couldn’t even remember that he was off at war. ‘I think…I think we should talk.’ There was a lot between them that needed to be cleared up and even though it was four years in the past, Parker still needed closure of some sort.

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[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:8px; line-height:10px; letter-spacing:3px; color: #61A7C7; text-align:justify;]- - - - - - - - - - - I'M NEVER GIVING UP. I'M NEVER GONNA LEAVE. IF YOU LIKE ME THEN SAY YOU LIKE ME

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[tyler james haze]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: f9f9f9; border: #6d2b2c solid 10px; width: 450px; padding: 15 5 15 5px;] i've been waking all my life tagged Mae/Parker! words 678 muse merh notes awkward credits template by irish! Tyler really didn't know how he should react to any of this new information. He knew Parker well enough that she didn't make him nervous the way that most people made him nervous. She made hin nervous in an entirely different way. He'd been closer with Parker than he'd ever been with anyone else. She had known him his whole life and probably knew him better than he even knew himself. He'd really had no secrets that he'd kept from her, though he didn't really have many secrets to begin with. Because of this, Parker made him nervous in that she knew someone who didn't exist anymore. She knew someone who was confident and unrestrained. She didn't know the person he was now. She probably didn't expect him to be exactly the same person that he had been four years ago, but how could she know what to expect? Surely she didn't think in a million years that he could become as withdrawn as he had. He was just a shadow of the person he had been and he didn't know what she expected him to be like. When she said she worried every day that he was dead he was suddenly even more uncertain than before. He hadn't thought she even knew. He just figured with them breaking up and him taking off to bootcamp without so much as a goodbye that she would have just stopped following his life... that she wouldn't have taken any interest in what happened to him. So many times during his time in that hell he thought of her and wondered how differently his life might have turned out if he would have treated her better, how if he'd not been such an ass to the point where he deserved the breakup he got that he might have found a way to make a "normal" job work. Everything would have been better that way. If he had stayed maybe he would have been able to get his grandmother the medical help she needed before her memory progressed to being this far gone. If he had stayed he would still be able to function in public. If he had stayed he wouldn't be working two jobs that were running him ragged. Everything would have been better. "I'm sorry," he said, though he wasn't sure if he was apologizing for everything that had happened with them or for her having worried about him, "I should have let you know I was back." Tyler really felt like this whole conversation was forced and uncomfortable. He knew he had things he wanted to say, and he was sure that she did too, but it felt like they were either afraid to say them or didn't know how to say them. At first when she moved closer and the space between them tightened, he felt a knot of nervousness swell within him. He tensed just slightly, but enough to make him feel a tiny bit anxious. For a moment all he could do was nod. The tension felt like it was reaching a boiling point, like at any second he was going to explode if he didn't say something, but words were failing him. "I'm sorry I didn't keep in contact with you I just..." He finally blurted out, "I didn't know what to say and... I didn't think you were to keen on hearing from me considering...everything." He felt better having said something, but at the same time worse, because he didn't know what else to say and he felt like that hadn't been enough. He felt that a lot lately, like what he did wasn't enough. It was disheartening, especially to someone who went through what he had, but in reality, he was doing as much as he could and that was more than enough.

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[Parker Dylan Barclay]

[style=float: left; background-image: url(http://i46.tinypic.com/2s5zhgz.jpg); width:250px; height:400px;][style=width:250px; height:35px; background-color: 000000; margin-top: 340px; opacity: .6;][style=font-face:tahoma; color: #61A7C7; letter-spacing:-1px; font-size:10px; text-align: center; line-height: 12px;]TYLER[style=color:fafafa]outfit

[/url] WOO[/style][/style][/style]

[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:8px; line-height:10px; letter-spacing:3px; color: #61A7C7; text-align:justify;]FORGET ME NOT, FORGET ME NOW. I'VE COME TOO FAR TO TURN AROUND. I'M HERE TONIGHT - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:10px; letter-spacing:0px; color: #6FB0D5; text-align:justify]Parker grinned back up at Nick. She really did like that it was only them. They were the dynamic duo. Nick and Parker. Parker and Nick. Their names always seemed paired together. They had been inseparable since they were little. She wouldn’t have it any other way either. ‘Good because if you were complaining I’d have to have Jimmy bite your pinky finger off.’ She laughed a bit, looking back up at him loving the small twinkle in his eye that always appeared there when he smiled at her. It was one of the things she loved about him. She didn’t know if that twinkle appeared for anyone else, but she liked to believe it was special just to her.

She leaned back over, petting Jimmy as she listened to him speak. She turned to him as he mentioned that Cherise wasn’t the one that he wanted. She was intrigued. She stopped bouncing and placed all of her attention on the male opposite of her. ‘Oh? And who is it that you want Mr. Barclay? Some exotic super model? Or maybe that girl who works at the Sugar Shack.’ Sure she was joking around, but it was mostly just to hide that she wished that she was that girl. She wished that she was the girl that Nick wanted to be with, but she knew that that wouldn’t happen. And no matter who he chose she would always just slap a smile on her face and be happy for him as long as he was happy.

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[style=font-family:tahoma; font-size:8px; line-height:10px; letter-spacing:3px; color: #61A7C7; text-align:justify;]- - - - - - - - - - - I'M NEVER GIVING UP. I'M NEVER GONNA LEAVE. IF YOU LIKE ME THEN SAY YOU LIKE ME

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