Categories > Original > Romance > I'll Be Your Favorite Song

3

by tjsparkles 0 reviews

Pride goeth before a fall...

Category: Romance - Rating: PG - Genres: Angst,Romance - Published: 2014-02-19 - 1102 words

0Unrated
A/N: Big ups to Bruno Mars and his song "When I Was Your Man" for breaking me out of the Hell known as writer's block. Hopefully this continues.

Peyton was quickly growing tired of waking up in bed alone, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to change that, so he swallowed his feelings and tried to pretend like he was completely fine with his current situation. Honestly, he could sit around all day long and assign blame, but the fact of the matter was that his situation was his fault. Tiffany hadn’t walked out on him; Peyton had forced her to leave. Now he was paying for his actions, which were a result of his foolish pride and stubbornness. He’d always been told that his pride and ego would be his downfall, and lo and behold, the predictions had come true. He felt like the world’s biggest idiot. In fact, Peyton was pretty sure that he’d hit rock bottom in his life.

Until he learned that Tiffany was seeing somebody else. Peyton had to admit that this news came as a bit of a shock, as they’d only split up six weeks ago, and he found himself green with jealousy and obsessively curious as to who this new man was. He and Tiffany shared most of the same friends, because that was how they’d been introduced, but if their friends knew Tiffany’s new boyfriend, they certainly hadn’t bothered to tell Peyton about it. Peyton wondered if that was due to the fact that they didn’t know the guy, or if they’d been sworn to secrecy by Tiffany. He wanted to go with the former, but in reality, it was probably the latter.

Peyton tried to keep himself as busy as possible so that he wasn’t consumed by thoughts of Tiffany and memories of their relationship every single second, but it was a struggle. He threw himself into work—luckily, having two jobs, one as a bouncer, and the other as a graphics designer for his friend’s company, meant that he didn’t really have time to mope during the day—and when he wasn’t at work, Peyton spent most of his time at Inner Circle, looking for forgiveness and acceptance at the bottom of a bottle, or glass, in his case. Peyton didn’t really care for beer. He knew that using alcohol as a way to deal with his problems would only turn out badly in the end, but right now, he just couldn’t be bothered to care.

Peyton was already avoiding the radio as much as possible. He’d heard one of his and Tiffany’s songs nearly three times an hour every day, and while it had been mildly tolerable at first, now it was just downright torture, and Peyton had no desire to continue torturing himself more than possible. He just didn’t want to deal with that kind of abuse if he could help it. And it wasn’t like he actually enjoyed listening to the radio, anyway. He was more of an underground, indie music kind of guy. He loathed mainstream music, and he never understood why so many people bought into it. It was shallow, inane, and pointless.

The more that Peyton thought about someone else kissing and touching Tiffany in an intimate manner, like he had not so long ago, the more furious he became. He realized that he really had no right at all to complain, but damn it, he couldn’t help it. Peyton had made a ton of mistakes, mistakes that he knew he couldn’t take back, but he still loved Tiffany. Truth be told, she was the only woman he had ever truly loved, and, as usual, he’d screwed it all up. The saying “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone” could not be more true at the current moment.

Peyton had never been the most romantic guy in the world, and now he regretted it. Tiffany wasn’t the kind of girl that expected to receive flowers, candy, and constant attention, but she was a girl, and she did enjoy affection and attention every now and then. She never explicitly stated it, but Peyton knew that it upset Tiffany when her birthday, their anniversary, or the holidays rolled around and Peyton put only the minimum effort into giving gifts, or even expressing how he felt. Tiffany also loved to go out and socialize on occasion, while Peyton hated it. He spent enough of his time around people at work; he didn’t want to do it on his off time as well. Rather than at least trying to compromise, however, Peyton had simply put his foot down and refused to talk about the subject ever again.

Tiffany had been more than understanding and patient with him, and Peyton had taken it for granted, because he’d always assumed that Tiffany wasn’t going anywhere. Of course she was going to move on—she deserved to. If Tiffany wasn’t happy in her relationship with Peyton and felt as though she was being neglected, it was only natural that she would seek out someone that would make her feel like a princess, which she deserved. Peyton wished that he had never uttered the harsh words and curses that plagued him nearly every night in his dreams. He wished that he could have just one more chance to tell Tiffany how he truly felt about her, but Peyton knew that it would do no good. He’d never get to clean up the destruction he’d caused.

As the days passed, clarity came with them, and Peyton realized that dwelling on what could have been wasn’t doing any good. He had finally accepted his fate, and now, the only thing he wished for was Tiffany’s happiness. He hoped that she was truly happy and in love with her new boyfriend, and Peyton hoped that the guy treated Tiffany the way she deserved, the way that Peyton never did. Initially, Peyton had blamed his lack of romanticism and his inability to be a good boyfriend on the fact that he’d never done so in his past relationships, but he knew that was no excuse.

He would learn to deal with the regret and anger. He had no other choice, and, if nothing else, this would be a lesson that Peyton would hopefully learn from. He had no intentions of making the same mistake twice.
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