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"I can't believe I'm late! Oh geez..." I was rushing up the sidewalk to the teahouse. Since I lived so far from the city now, I had no way to ensure that traffic would cooperate, and today was no exception. The highway had been gridlocked because of three separate and unrelated traffic accidents.

I got up to the front door and pushed it inwards, but it wouldn't budge. "Oh, c'mon! I'm supposed to be in there!" I exclaimed. I could see that the place was packed, and I knew it would be hard to find my way in. I tried to shove the door open more, but apparently, the person blocking it was a jerk and refused to let me in. I sighed and let the door shut, then had a brainstorm. Maybe there was a back door, or a stage entrance! I gathered my things and rushed around to the other side.

I spotted the door I was looking for, standing wide open. I walked to the man blocking it, showing him my ID and smiling. He nodded, and without another word, I walked into the building. I could hear Tails singing some song on the piano, and it sounded like his voice was breaking. Maybe he was hitting puberty?

I sighed and headed towards the audience, looking for an easy way to slip into the crowd unnoticed and grab a seat. There seemed to be an empty seat right up front, so I rushed towards it and snatched it up without a second thought. I looked up towards the stage and watched Tails, his face hidden in the shadows that the lights cascaded from above him.

His song sounded so sad, and I was nearly crying. I knew exactly what he was singing about, and it would have been right to cry. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the stage, and watched as Sonic and some black bat thing readied instruments to play alongside Tails. The drums started first, and then a guitar solo as Sonic and the black thing played alongside Tails. It was a very emotional climax, and I stared as the song finally finished and the trio exited, stage right.

The place was quiet. I myself was quite shocked to find that Tails had sung such a stirring song. I rose to my feet in my seat and began clapping, and soon a few more people joined in. It wasn't long before I had the entire teahouse shaking with the ovation Tails was receiving.

It took a bit to calm the place down, and the announcer for the event stepped back up to the microphone on the stage. He looked a little flustered, as if he just recovered from two crying sessions. Who had performed before Tails?

I looked everywhere for Sonic, but he couldn't be seen. I thought perhaps he had run from me again, but I didn't know. He said he wanted me to be here tonight, and that he had a special presentation for me when he had completed his song. It wasn't like Sonic to be so secretive, at least not to me. I had gotten used to him running from me so much, and since he admitted that my constant nagging and the wish I had to be married to him was getting on his nerves, I had quit insisting so much.

The announcer surveyed the crowd, then cleared his throat and leaned into the microphone.

"It seems like this place is full of tear-jerkers tonight. That was some performance from Tails. Next up is Sonic the Hedgehog, who is playing a rock version of some popular country song. He requested that I not reveal the name of the song, so I won't." He cleared his throat again and smiled, bowing and backing out of the way as the curtain rose.

There sat Sonic on a wooden barstool, his blue electric guitar sitting in his lap. He had a microphone near him, and he tapped it a couple times to test for sound strength. Satisfied, he leaned into the microphone to give an intro.

"Hey. You all know me as Sonic, so there's no reason to give you a general introduction. This song is originally by a country group called Rascal Flatts, and I felt I could give one of their songs a nice rock sound. So... enjoy."

Sonic settled back, and I leaned forward, balling my hands into fists and placing my chin on them. There seemed to be something different about him... something foreign to his usual demeanor. He seemed to have shed the cocky attitude everyone knew him for, and had adopted this gentle tone instead. Personally, I liked it.

Sonic gave a couple strums on the guitar to warm the strings, and then silenced the ringing notes before starting the song with a nice power chord. He then leaned into the mic and began the song.

"_ I can take the rain on the roof of this empty house, that don't bother me." _

It was an interesting sound; I'd have to give him that. He was playing the electric guitar with a sense of professionalism and skill I hadn't thought him capable, and his singing voice was that of a rock singer with a country twang. It sounded like he was a countrified Eddie Van Halen. His eyes seemed to be searching the crowd, and for some reason I decided to hide my eyes so that if he did find me, our eyes wouldn't lock. Perhaps I thought that just looking into his eyes could interrupt his playing.

"_ I can take a few tears now and then and just let 'em out." _

Pfft. Right. I had never heard of Sonic crying. I had once believed that he had some accident in his earlier years of fighting tyranny that got rid of his ability to cry. Sometimes he didn't know how to empathize with anyone. Tears were impossible for that hedgehog.

"_ I'm not afraid to cry every once in a while even though goin' on with you gone still upsets me. There are days every now and again I pretend I'm okay, but that's not what gets me." _

Sonic seemed to be falling into a groove with this song... as if the lyrics were saying what he felt in his heart. In all my years of knowing him, from the first time I met him on Tiny Planet until now, I had never once heard him say what was truly on his mind or on his heart.

I'm not saying that admitting to me that he loves me and wants to marry me is hiding there. I have come to realize that perhaps I have been a little too forward with him sometimes, and that I scared him off.

I watched him from my front row seat, my hands placed on my knees, and for the first time in my life I would not have known what to say if he were to ask me how I was.

"_ What hurts the most, was being so close and having so much to say, and watching you walk away." _

I wondered to myself about what exactly he was singing. I knew that sometime tonight our friend Carbine was to be singing about heartbreak, and Tails' song had been about him mourning Cosmo, but I was lost on Sonic. Maybe he was singing about that Sally Acorn girl?

"_ And never knowin' what could've been, and not seeing that lovin' you is what I was trying to do." _

Yeah... he was singing about Sally. At one time, I was jealous of their relationship, but I had grown to accept it. It had come as a great shock to me to hear that the two of them had parted ways. A part of me was overjoyed, and I was thinking that now I could have Sonic all for myself, but another part of me was screaming that I was wrong, and that I should try to get them back together.

I continued to watch Sonic's performance, and as I gazed upon his movements, I felt a stirring within myself. A tear leaked from my right eye and started its journey down my cheek. I felt like crying. I didn't know why I was so upset, but I figured it had to be jealousy. Yeah, I was jealous that Sonic was singing about Sally and not me. I had moved away from the city to get away from him and give him the space he kept saying he so desperately needed.

"_ It's hard to deal with the pain of losing you everywhere I go, but I'm doing it... It's hard to force that smile when I see all those friends and I'm alone." _

Aw, poor Sonic... all of your friends are still there. At least... the ones you care about, anyway. Sometimes I felt like he never really cared for me, and that saving me was just part of his job. Sometimes I felt like saving me was a recreational sport for him, and he sat back and waited for the next capture so that he could do it again. I knew in my heart that I was dead wrong for thinking this way, but I couldn't help it, you know? I cared so deeply for him and he just brushed me to the side and ran off without another word.

"_ Still harder getting up, getting dressed, living with this regret. But I know if I could do it over..." _

If you could do it over you'd probably run before I got to you, I thought. I mentally scolded myself for that one.

"_ I would straight give away, show the words that I say in my heart, that I'd left unspoken." _

He seemed in so much pain singing this song. I watched him as his eyes closed and he dissolved into the singer role he was adopting. There was definitely more to this cocky blue hedgehog than I had ever realized.

Something was bothering me, though, and as I thought about it, I lowered my head and my gaze. If he was singing this song about Sally, then why the hell had he specifically asked me to be there?

I gazed up to him again, and instantly our eyes locked. He had been staring at my seat and now here we were, staring at each other. There were bits of tears in his eyes and he smiled at me.

"_ What hurts the most was being so close, and having so much to say, and watching you walk away. And never knowin' what could've been, and not seeing that loving you is what I was trying to do." _

That time I felt like he was singing to me. Both of my eyes began watering and I broke our gaze to look down away from the stage. Sonic went into a solo with his guitar and it sounded cool, especially with this current song being so much of a heartbreaker.

It was at this point in the song that the announcer came to my seat and asked that I accompany him to the stage. It was weird to have been asked in the middle of Sonic's performance to leave, but I acknowledged the man and followed him. We got up to the stage and I stood off to the back, behind the curtain somewhat, watching Sonic's back and listening to the last bit of his song from here.

"_ What hurts the most is being so close." _

This is where Sonic added his rock to the song. The words 'so close' were almost screamed into the mic in a metal or grunge kind of way. I couldn't see his face, but I knew his eyes were closed now.

"_ And having so much to say, and watching you walk away." _

Again, the return of the metal grunge, this time the victim being the word 'away.' I knew the original song, and though it was an interesting sound, the way Sonic was singing it definitely did it justice.

"_ And never knowin' what could've been... and not seeing that loving you, oohhhh oh ohhh, not seeing that loving you... is what I was trying to do. That's what I was trying to do." _

Sonic finished the song with a few more power chords, then took his guitar by the neck and stood. The audience began clapping, but Sonic held up his hands for silence. He adjusted the mic to his height, and then leaned into it once more.

"Thank you so much for listening. I would like to introduce, onto the stage, a miss Amy Rose."

I guess that was my cue for stepping out into the light, because the audience began clapping very loud. I stepped over to Sonic and whispered fiercely into his ear. "Sonic, what the hell are you doing?"

Sonic merely grinned and handed his guitar off to someone, probably that announcer guy. Then he turned back to me, his eyes sparkling. "Amy, I've never been good at speaking what's on my heart, you know that. It's taken me weeks to prepare what I want to say right now, but now I have forgotten it all. I guess I just have to wing it."

I admit my jaw fell open. If this... if this was what I thought it was... then that song...

"Amy Rose... from the minute I rescued you from Tiny Planet, I liked you. I know I ran away a lot, and didn't like to talk to you much about anything, but that was because I was trying to hide my feelings. I felt like I wasn't supposed to like you. But I've been thinking so much and now it seems logical, so..."

Sonic dropped to one knee, and instantly my hands covered my mouth. He pulled out a ring box from his quills, opened it and handed it to me, opened forward. Inside the box was the most beautiful ring I've ever seen in my life. It was a platinum ring, inset with a bit of some aqua gem that sparkled like Chaos.

"Amy Rose, will you marry me?"

Being who I was, I did what any other respectable woman would have done in my position. I fainted.