I've Never Lit a Match

Alex Gaskarth had no ass. He was bent over, sifting through piles of his junk in their hotel room, wearing nothing but loose boxer-brief underwear that sagged around his tiny toddler butt. Layla sat across the room from him, brushing her hair and chuckling to herself at how Alex absentmindedly rocked his hips while leaning over to dig through his bag for clothes.

Casually, Layla decided that his skinny legs and perky lil’ bum were pretty cute.

That morning, they were all taking turns with the shower – since staying in a hotel meant that they actually had access to hot water – and Layla was on deck. Waiting her turn, she sat on the bed brushing through her unkempt summer hair, while patiently eyeing her cellphone as it vibrated with incoming text messages on the pillow beside her.

“Who ya textin’?” Alex asked in a sleepy sing-song as Layla set down the hairbrush and exchanged it for her phone. Walking over to her bed, Alex climbed in and nestled himself inside the cool, down comforter that laid bunched up by Layla’s feet. He was still naked, save for his underwear, and his hair was still mostly wet from the shower. He crawled across her bed, wrapping an arm around Layla’s thighs as he rested his head in her lap.

They had arrived in Houston at around two that morning. Having already been asleep in her bunk by then, Layla only vaguely remembered being shuffled off the bus and into the hotel lobby. She had sat, eyelids drawn thick like drapes, on a leather loveseat with her head dipping into Jack’s bony shoulder. After Matt finished checking their party in at the front desk, Layla was finally able to fall back to sleep in the room Jack and Alex had volunteered to share with her: the boys together in one queen-sized bed, her in the other.

Layla laid back into the thick wall of plush hotel pillows, yawning as she answered Alex. “My friend Jenna,” she told him. “She’s texting me about this guy she met at work.”

“That’s nice.” Alex pulled the blanket tightly around himself, asking: “How is she?”

In the technical sense of the word, Layla did hear him, though his question really only registered for her as a faint background noise, insignificant like the hum of your car engine when you’re driving down the highway. She was distracted, not by the three messages she had just received from Jenna, but by the one that had suddenly popped up on her phone – from Kris, of all people.
His message read, simply, Hey girl.

Layla – her heart hammering – sent back Hi, hated herself for it, then shut her phone and set it aside.
“She’s –” Layla found it difficult to answer Alex’s casual question, now that this new shock had left her feeling preoccupied and almost dizzy, “good.”

Alex sat up, asking: “you okay?” He pulled away cautiously, recognizing how her face now seemed somehow both flushed and pale.

Layla nodded, offering a soft mm-hmm. She sat still, hands held in her lap and scratching off some old nail polish with her fingers. She looked out of place in her partially sunburnt summer body; wild hair and pink cheeks that had previously been the perfect complement to her easy nature now just overwhelmed her shallow expression and made her look exhausted.

“Are you sure?” Alex hesitated to ask, softly nudging her with the back of his hand.

“Yeah.” She did that thing she does, Alex recognized, when she half-chuckles and almost rolls her eyes.

“Wanna hug?” he offered, awkwardly looking for a good way to handle the sudden switch.
She let him pull her in with a soft, “sure.”

They pulled apart as the bathroom door opened, Jack striding out with a towel wrapped around his waist, protruding hipbones on display.

“Anyways,” Layla perked herself up, walking into the newly vacated bathroom. “Did you guys really talk about me this morning?”

“Yeah,” Alex – still in nothing but his underwear – came over to lean against the bathroom doorframe while Layla brushed her teeth and made another attempt at wrangling an elastic that she hasn’t been able to get out of her hair while brushing it. “It was just a regular interview. We just had them add in a few extra questions about you… some plugs to get you mentioned.”

Despite the fact that living on the road during her last summer vacation before college left Layla with just about no concept of the days of the week anymore, it was actually a Monday in the real world and the boys had been up since five that morning doing radio interviews. The early call-time made Layla thankful that she wasn’t actually a member of All Time Low.

When the boys made a point of giving Layla loud, unnecessary goodbyes as they left the hotel that morning, she had stayed inside her dark hotel room with the air conditioning on, perfectly content cuddled up beneath that thick down comforter. She mumbled a barely coherent goodbye as they left – grateful to be exempt from such early commitments – before rolling over in bed and going back to sleep. A few hours later, she woke again when Jack came into the room singing her name and teasing about how they had discussed her in their interview.

“What questions did they ask?” Layla mumbled around the toothbrush hanging from her mouth. “What’d you say?”

Alex stood in the doorframe, thin arms crossed about his bare chest, watching as she spit into the sink and wiped the toothpaste-foam from her lips. “I don’t know. They were like, ‘tell us about this mysterious new band member of yours’ and asked your name… How we found out about you… Are you a permanent member? Why we decided to bring you on…” he listed. “Good stuff,” he went on. “We made you sound good, told people to look out for your music and whatnot.”

“Thanks,” she nodded, turning to the mirror to resume detangling the elastic from her hair. “Hey, do you have scissors?” she called Alex back.

“Why would I have scissors?”

“I don’t know,” she squinted at him. “I just need to cut this out of my hair.”

“Yeaaaah…” he made a face, “I have no idea.”

“Shit.” Layla stared at herself in the vanity mirror.

After a great deal of struggle and a bit of counter-productive but well-intentioned help from Jack, she finally tore the elastic band from her hair before moving on to spend another ten minutes in the shower alternating between conditioning and combing through her apparently untamable black curls. Not always able to access a shower on the road, Layla’s quick solution over the past few weeks had been to just leave her hair tied up atop her head. The multiple consecutive days without any form of real hair-care had apparently backfired.

In the shower, Layla swapped between feelings of frustration over the knots in her hair and thinking about Kris and what the fuck he might have been trying to accomplish with that text.

The thing about Kristopher Wallace, Layla knew, was that his intentions had never made a bit of sense, at least not so far as she could tell. He had had her infatuated early on, with all the ease that it takes for a faux-mature young twenty-something guy to convince a seventeen-year-old that he’s charming. In actuality, he was really talking down to her a lot of the time, which Layla finally realized a few weeks after he had left.

On the surface level, he had really been a good boyfriend. He always made time for her. He would pick her up after school and they’d play music together or marathon TV shows or sometimes go into Boston and find something to do. Sometimes, he and the guys would show up at the restaurant where Layla waited tables part-time after school and they’d make sure to be seated in her section so they could tease her while she worked and leave a big tip. He got along with Jenna and was always cool when she came along as a third-wheel.

And, even though he very clearly wanted to have sex with Layla, he made it just as clear that that wasn’t the point of their relationship, saying “hey, you could never disappoint me” when they were already mostly naked and she was nervously hovering over the words ‘no, not right now.’ He encouraged her to make something out of her talent and offered to help her do it, and he always gave her that dizzy feeling in her stomach, even months after they first met at that party last November.

Even after all that, he had left without goodbye. Layla thought they were going to Skype, that there would be late-night ‘I miss you’ phone calls and occasional visits when he had time off from recording or touring. He had let her believe that. When, instead, two full weeks went by after he left for California without so much as a text, she quit assuring herself that he was just busy and assuring everyone else that she wasn’t worried sick.

She had an anxious meltdown so rough that Jenna didn’t know what to do beside call her brother Pete and beg him to kick Kris’s ass on her behalf. A few days after that, Layla got a text from Kris saying he just “couldn’t do” a long-distance thing with her and that he thought cutting off from her completely “made the most sense.” As she came to terms with the fact that she had been charmed by such a complete asshole, and began to look back and see all the instances where he had only been condescending and manipulative to her, it wound up that her ego was truly more bruised that her heart.

What the fuck could he possibly want now and why should she care? She knew he was a piece of shit but, still, she made a goofy, blushing smile thinking about that time he’d called her baby and said “every part of you is beautiful” with his fingers inside of her. Yeah – okay – it’s a shitty, corny line but, just like him, it did the job.

“Fuck,” Layla’s vulnerable frustration was emphasized by how she over-enunciated the word. As she turned off the water – her hair conditioned nice and silky smooth – she resolved to call Jenna before getting carried away with too many day-dreamed scenarios in which she and Kris work everything out and become the perfect pop-punk power couple.

She wrapped a towel around herself and, much like Alex and Jack before her, wound up walking around the hotel room rummaging around for her stuff. Layla didn’t really think twice about wearing a towel while she looked for a pair of clothes and her makeup bag. Though, maybe, she should have.

Jack wasn’t the problem; he was lying on one of the beds with his cellphone, respectfully paying her no mind. It was Alex that made her uncomfortable, though, by how obviously he was trying to avoid making her uncomfortable.

“Oh, uh sorry,” he stuttered as she walked out of the bathroom in her towel.

“S’cool,” she shrugged. “I just need to get clothes,” she told him, trying her best to remain covered while bending over to search through her duffel bag.

The sight of the backs of Layla’s naked thighs burnt itself into Alex’s brain as he watched.

When she stood, she turned to find Alex red-faced, eyes darting all over the room. “Jack!” he yelled at his friend. “Get the fuck out! Let the lady change.”

Jack stood up, squinting his eyes between a confused Layla and a flustered Alex like and sleepy old man who couldn’t understand why he’d just been woken up. “What’s your problem?” he nudged Alex in the shoulder as he walked out.

Alex shrugged him off dramatically. “I’m fine,” he snapped like a bratty teen. He followed Jack out of the hotel room, shutting the door a little too hard behind himself.

“Okay… I’ll see ya in the lobby when I’m ready then!” Layla shouted at the closed door, suddenly feeling very alone in the wake of her Kris-Wallace-fueled vulnerability.

A little over an hour later, Layla was eating lunch in a 50’s-themed diner in downtown Houston with Alex and Zack, texting the story of this new development in the Kris-Wallace-Saga to Jenna under the table.

“Hey,” Zack nudged Layla, lightly shoving her shoulder with his open palm. “Why don’t you put the phone down and weigh-in on this debate?”

“Sorry…” she drew out the word, imitating an annoyed pre-teen. “Okay,” she chuckled, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to side with Alex. Spiderman all the way.”

“Fucking right!” Alex grinned, high-fiving Layla across the table.

Before Zack had called Layla’s attention away from her phone, he and Alex had been getting pretty deep into a Spiderman-versus-Batman debate. He was now genuinely shocked that she hadn’t broken the tie in his favor, a comically confused expression playing out on his face. The two shared one side of the booth, Zack sprawled out like a lazy old dog in the sun. He had his arm resting along the top of their booth, behind Layla’s head, and one of his legs outstretched beneath the table, using the spot beside Alex as a footrest. Layla didn’t take up very much room on her end, nor did she really mind Zack filling in the gaps. She thought that his body, languidly stretched out like that, was a fair representation of his low-maintenance, unabrasive personality.

“I don’t know…I used to be definitely pro-Batman,” Layla explained, “but, ya know, the Spiderman of the early-2000s was kind of iconic. Toby McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, and the upside-down kiss? That was a cultural moment.”

“The new Batman movie still looks sick, though,” Zack added and Layla agreed, saying maybe it would change her mind.

As they left the restaurant, Alex offered impressions of the “Batman voice” – which he had used in his argument against Bruce Wayne and his purchased superpowers. Dropping down to a painful-sounding throaty register, he growled such catchphrases as “I’m Batman” and, to Layla, “Wanna be my Catwoman?”

Layla laughed, made a comment about going to get fitted for her spandex suit, and walked ahead. Texas in June was unlike anything she had ever experienced and she was about ready to get out of the sun. Sure, the humidity of those New England summers she’d grown up with was the kind that made you feel like you were being sucked down into the pavement, where you would spend the rest of your days as a boiling soupy mess; but Texas heat gave the impression of very personal contact. She felt like someone had positioned a magnifying lens over her Disney-princess-white skin, like she could feel the start of a sunburn blossoming like a fever.

Alex took advantage of Layla’s decision to hurry up ahead of him and Zack. “So,” he began once she was far enough to be just out of earshot. “You and Layla… is there…anything there?” he asked.

“What?” Zack made a genuinely startled face, stopping to look at Alex. “What do you mean, like, a thing? Nah.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Why? Do you think she’s getting the wrong idea?”

“No, no,” Alex brushed it off. “I was just wondering, ya know. You seem like you’re getting pretty close…so I was just wondering.”

“Nah, we’re friends. We go running together and whatnot.”

“Whatnot?” Alex raised an eyebrow and Zack just laughed in response. “I mean, you did kinda have your arm around her at lunch…”

“What?” Zack laughed like he had never heard anything more incorrect. “No I fucking didn’t!”

“So there’s really nothing going on there?” Alex pushed.

“Nope.” Zack insisted. “I’ve never thought of that. Plus, I mean, that’d be pretty shitty of me. We take her on tour and do all this nice stuff for her and then I try to hook up with her…it’d be kind of like I was taking advantage.”

“Shit…” Alex realized this had never occurred to him before.

“Seems like you’re getting a little close with our girl, though,” Zack turned the conversation on his friend.

Alex just made a skeptical face in response.

“You look at her like…” Zack began, then laughed, “I can’t even describe it. You get this dumb look on your face when you look at her…then you get all jealous,” he added, teasing, “when you think I’ve got my arm around her but I don’t.”

“Okay, whatever,” Alex nodded sarcastically.

“Hey!” Layla, about ten feet ahead, suddenly turned and called back to them. “You talking about me back there?”

“Yeah!” Zack called. “Alex wants you reverse cowgirl.”

Layla laughed and Alex just blushed and hung his head.