FicWad

Suddenly I felt like Lindsay Lohan. That is, her character from Mean Girls. I was standing at the start of a hallway, staring at a crowd of crazy teenagers going completely nuts as they waited in line. Though, in my mind, they were pulling out each other’s hair and punching each other’s boobs. Shaking my head, I realized the crowd was relatively calm, simply waiting in the meet and greet line.

“This should be fun,”

I turned around and gave a small smile to Patrick who was standing behind me with a cup of coffee, the steam still rising from the rim. He fixated his eyes on me at that moment and offered a similar meek grin.

“Hi Ѐlie,” he spoke low. “Holding up in this new world?”

I laughed. I never thought that when Pete offered me a job at Decaydance that a few short months after that I’d be on tour with Dirty and the rest of the gang overseas. Everything was going great; I was healing my heart with friends, rather than re-bounds. Though, when Pete took me aside halfway through tour and told me Cobra was joining it gave me heart-hiccups, I dealt with the change and surprisingly avoided Mr. Starship the two weeks it had been. I knew things would change though, when we got back to the US the following week. We were in Belgium for the last show of the Europe tour and I had never felt more out of place in my life before. For the most part, Patrick had been sick the last couple weeks, and in an effort to keep me company while the rest of the gang went out, he continued to fake his illness well past his actual recovery. He called it “hiding you from Gabriel”. I smiled at the thought again.

“A whole new world,” I joked. Patrick immediately caught the reference and laughed out loud. Peeking around the corner again, Patrick sighed.

“I don’t speak their language,”

“Neither do I,”

Patrick and I both turned as we heard Pete enter the small room where the meet and greet would take place. In that moment, their security had them sit at the table and Patrick waved me over.

“Since I’m barred from leaving, can you be a velvet cupcake and fetch me a,” he innocently smiled. “…velvet cupcake from the break room?”

I turned to see the screaming pack of girls again and nodded vigorously before leaving through the opposite door. While I walked, I clutched my clipboard to my chest and focused on my feet, keeping my gaze down. Things had changed in the last several months and it was more than the size of Abigail’s waistline. My hair had grown longer and I had dyed it a shade darker to feel better about myself. That didn’t change my wardrobe change though, I felt the need to cover up more than ever before and learned to love sweaters and cardigans to hide what I thought at the time weren’t worth anybody’s time. Patrick tried convincing me otherwise, and I reminded him of what pretty much put us in this position in the first place. Either way, I had not been myself in recent times. I was grateful though, for the opportunity I had been given, and even though I was heartbroken, I lived through it.

I was halfway through the doorway of the break room when my eyes saw the black Nike sneakers that had just stepped on my toes slipping out of my sandals. Hands held onto my arms to hold me up from falling. It happened before I could raise my head to see who I bumped into and after pushing my overgrown bangs out of my eyes, my heart stopped and my stomach sank. Gabe was standing, his feet not moving off of mine. I seemed to not notice or care about the pain as his hands at first tightened their grip on my forearms before he slowly let go and stepped back, releasing my feet. I looked down at them again and watched as he leaned down to pick up my clipboard and phone that had crashed to the floor unnoticed.

I looked at him again as his eyes landed on my face. His face was eerily void of emotion as he handed me my phone, the screen now cracked a bit. I let the longest sigh out, his bottom lip twitching before we moved to walk around each other. He looked down at me as we exchanged spots in the doorway and I felt his eyes penetrate my sweater into my soul. With a shiver running down my spine, I watched out of the corner of my eye him walk away, back hunched over and hands on his sidekick. My heart sank even more and I zoned out.

“Jeanie, did the basilisk catch you?” I blinked at the sound of Pete’s voice and suddenly saw his confused face in front of me.

“You could call him that,” I quickly whispered.

Pete’s face instantly changed to a more serious one. His eyes glanced in the direction I was staring off before pulling me towards their dressing rooms. Upon arrival, Andy stopped his practice drumming, causing Joe to turn around, his guitar strap sliding so his Fender fell to his side.

“What-” he started.

“Gabe,” Pete answered, already knowing. I looked at him and gulped.

“Pete, I’m giving you my two weeks, well, kind of, I mean,” I looked away. “I want to go home,” I whispered. Pete shook his head.

“Aurélie,” he started. Whatever Pete might have told me was cut off the minute the stage managers informed them to start heading towards the side stages. I understood, but could not express it as Pete looked at me with saddened eyes. I offered a pathetic smile.

“Get into character and we can fake it for a while,” I joked. Pete laughed faintly before following Andy and Joe. Patrick appeared next to me and produced a velvet cupcake. “I’m sorry, I forgot,” I remembered, suddenly. Patrick shrugged.

“This one is yours,” he insisted, handing it over before following Pete. I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes tight. Fall Out Boy were on stage for almost two hours tonight. That was all the time I needed to figure things out. I placed my clipboard down on the seat next to me and put down the cupcake as well. I had to find Gabe.

*

It was strange the feeling I got after seeing her face. My gut started churning the moment Pete told us he wanted us to come on tour with us. I thought at first it was going to be a prank to get me in a group of people that practically wanted to lynch me. I found out quickly everybody had learned to ignore it while hanging out with me. All I had to do was stay away from every girl that flirted with me. That was the easy part; the entire two weeks we had been overseas with them, I had been finding the courage to approach Aurélie and finding any excuse just to see her. This was the hard part. Seeing as though her girlfriends were not on tour with her for the overseas part, she was left with only the protection of Dirty and the others, which was much more than just intimidating; it was downright scary.

Finding her alone in the break room was unsuspected and I truly was surprised when she practically fell into my arms. After the lengthy and wordless exchange, I couldn’t help but feel worse about myself and the way she looked. Her hair was constantly in her face and her beautiful figure was hidden under layers of shirts and sweaters, as if she was afraid. But I was afraid too.
I sulked away to the public bathroom with a bottle of rum and stared at the showerhead there for the longest time before deciding it was normal, at least for me, to sit under it while it ran warm water.

Leaning my head against the tile, I closed my eyes and thought about Aurélie again and felt the warmth squeeze my heart. I heard a pounding on the door but didn’t flinch. The bottle had long been empty by then.

“I’m here,” I announced. The water continued to pour over me.

"Gabe."

Her voice echoed in my head as I widened my eyes. Looking up, I saw the face linked to the very voice. Her pout told me everything, she was disappointed in what she saw; a disheveled, broken shell of a man. Hardly a man at this point. I swallowed to clear the lump in my throat and looked her straight in the eyes, attempting to make any kind of connection.

"Aurélie."

She stared down at me from across the room before looking away. I slowly stood up and stopped the showerhead, opting to stand awkwardly against the wall, soaking wet and for the most part, drunk. She came no closer and I moved not a single inch.

“I’ve missed you,” I spoke, without thinking of the consequences.

She bit her tongue. She always bites her tongue. Her eyes glazed over after one blink and my heart stuttered, knowing what was to come of this.

“Gabe, why are you torturing yourself like this?” Aurelie paused and her hands intertwined within each other. “This isn’t the man-” she stopped and yet her mouth remained poised open. Her breathing stopped and mine quickly followed.

“I love you, Aurelie,”

She blinked and turned away, walking out of the bathroom.

“No you don’t,” she whispered.

I tried everything in my power to push off the wall and go after her, catch her before her body left the room, and touch her hand with mine- anything. But instead I slid down the wall again, the fluorescent lights seemingly becoming brighter until the blinding white took over all of my vision. The slam of the hotel room said it all; she was gone. Again.

My head hit the tile floor with a louder thud and the white turned to black.

I too, was gone.