A/N: Partially inspired by 'Get Gotten', by Ben Lee.

“Okay, so what’s it going to be?” I can’t believe I’m asking this question. I can’t believe I’m going on the offensive, after all these months of running. “I’ve talked to people, I’ve gathered the inner circle, and they all told me the exact same thing.”

She looks at me, curious, a half-smile hovering on her lips. “Ooh, yes. Tell me what they think, please.”

I glower. “They all think you are exactly, and from a few of them, I actually got a list of points why, what I need.”

“Wow.” That single word is laced with sarcasm. “Riveting.”

My eyes narrow even further. “Just listen to me, okay?”

She laughs. “I was just teasing. I’m interested.” I shoot her a disbelieving look, and she laughs again, in a manic kind of way. “I really, really am. Keep going.”

“They told me that being with you would just be trouble,” I say, pushing forward. “But I desperately want to be with you, and you’re so perfect, and maybe I need a little trouble. You know?”

Her eyebrow is cocked, imperiously. “I’m… trouble?”

She is, of course, the perennial good girl. The paragon of school girl virtue, in every sense of the phrase. The teachers love her. Student council member. Always does her homework. Top marks. Cute as a button with a smile that outshines the sun.

“Jesus Christ. Well…” I say, lamely. “No. But you’re trouble for me. And I need it. I need you.”

“How so?”

“Things are coming together for me,” I say, after a long pause. “Teachers finally like me, I’m finally on the student council, I finally have a life going. They’re sending back to America next year, for Christ’s sake! New York, Washington. That’s living my dream! But it’s all outshined by you, you know? It’s like… everything I do is outshined by you. Worse, everything I do is for your approval. It’s a crap way to live. But I love it.”

She nods slowly.

“So I need you.” I repeat.

She doesn’t look impressed.

I growl, and plunge my hand into my pocket, retrieving my pride and joy; a shiny, black eighty gig video iPod. I press the lower part of the wheel, the LCD lights up, I spin through the songs. I don’t have that many, only eight hundred or so, but it’s enough to find one that applies to this situation.

“What are you doing?” she asks, trying to read the song names as I scroll past, but they’re going too fast for her to make out. “What are you looking for?”

“I have songs that I can give to you, here. Now.” I say, still scrolling. “Songs that can prove what I need to say here.”

“Songs aren’t going to work.” She says. “I need your own words.”

“I can’t give them to you!” I cry, angry at her, and at myself. “I’m trying to win you over, for Christ’s sake! Why the hell won’t you just let me?”

She doesn’t budge, just looks at me.

“I want to get you,” I say, emphatically. “So why can’t I? Why do you keep pushing me? I have to know, because, quite frankly, it’s driving me insane! I have to keep pushing, because I have to know! And I…” I trail off, thinking I’ve said too much, driven her away, but she’s just looking at me, waiting for more. “I won’t stop until I get to the bottom.”

“You have one hell of an imagination,” she says, leaning forward.

“So you’re saying I’m imagining my feelings for you?”

“No.” she says, with a shrug. “You have dreams.”

“That’s true,” I grant. “I have huge dreams. Way too big, maybe.” I pause, and look away, and she watches me. “Just too big for this world I have at the moment…Oh, God.”

There I go, invoking another ‘holy’ name, just to get through to a girl, all because I can’t think of how to express myself.

“It’s just that I’m putting everything out there, for you.” Oh, crap. How tongue-tied was that?

It’s not that I’m not an articulate person. I’m articulate. I’m plenty articulate. In fact, I’m so articulate that I’m eloquent, lucid and coherent, as well. I’m a master wordsmith, most of the time. Former debater, now adjudicator. Fairly accomplished public speaker. Speech composer extraordinaire.

But this girl… she takes my breath away, and all my words with it.

I have words that have destroyed an opponent’s arguments, picked apart the most carefully constructed points of view with a stinging rebuttal. I have words that have built unbreakable cases, as strong and binding as the sun’s gravity. I have words that have knocked aside people like a bowling ball does tenpins, with no residual guilt. I have words that come to me when I’m about to sleep, and create long, involved speeches, like the one I’m trying to make now.

“I don’t think it’s a secret, anymore,” I say. “You know, you have to, because I told you myself. I’ve fallen. Like, I’ve fallen so badly for you. I fell off a mountain, you know? And now I’m plummeting, and I just can’t stop, until I hit the bottom of the canyon far below.”

Strike one for eloquence.

“No secret?” she asks.

“Well, everyone knows.” I shrug.

“I didn’t know,” she admits, shrugging back. “You say everyone knows, and you never once thought to tell me, did you?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I told you.”

“Just then, yeah. That’s actually the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Oh,” I say. “Oh. Well. It’s not a secret anymore. I’ve fallen.”

“I heard,” she says, and once more, I think I’ve overstepped my bounds. “You have more to say, I know, but I just have to say a couple of things first. Cool?”

I nod. “Cool.”

“You have these things that you do. You take something about me, and you wrap it up, and then you give it back to me, and for me it’s somehow better.” She says, keeping her tone even, choosing her words slowly and carefully, as though the survival of the world itself depends on the construction of her coming sentences. “You just… you do stuff, and the things you do just make things, I don’t know, better. Damn. Do you know what I mean?”

I hesitate. “Uh, no. Sorry.”

“Just keep doing that.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll try.”

She laughs. “Just stick with it, and don’t stop, because there’ll come a time when you actually can’t do it anymore, because you’ll have, as you say ‘hit the bottom of the canyon’. There’ll be no deeper for you to go. And if you say ‘that’s what she said’, I will murder you.”

She’s knows me too well, it seems. Despite all my words, I still love the old ‘that’s what she said’ line.

I nod, trying to think of a word, from all the multitudes I have stored up in me, to describe the way I feel about her. Love, adore, worship, venerate, idolise, revere; none of them work, none of them fit with the way I truly feel about her. Maybe there’s a word, or a phrase I can use. None come to mind.

Maybe, if I keep pushing, if I fight to the core, to the very foundation of my mind, I can remember it...

But there’s no chance to push deeper, because I’ve forgotten it, and I need to keep this conversation going.

There’s nothing more to say, so I just repeat myself for emphasis. “I want to get you,” I say. “So let me get you. Let me stop chasing you, and just catch you.”

“No,” she says.

I’m flabbergasted.

“I don’t want you to get me.” She says. “Not yet. I want to keep running, and I want you to chase me. Because once you catch me, you’re not going to let go, and I won’t want you to.”

I grin, slowly, unsure. “So you want me to get you?”

She nods, smiling still. “Just don’t stop until you get to the bottom.”