I Have Been Right All Along

SARA’S POV

We follow Zack to the room where the meet and greet is being held, Hayley and I hang back a few steps from the guys, Pete and Patrick in front of us, Brendon in front of them.

“What the hell?” I whisper to Hayley, motioning my head towards Brendon.

She shrugs her shoulders, mouthing, “I don’t know.”

“Who the fuck really cares who knows first about Justin?” I say as quietly as I can.

Hayley just gives me a crooked smile, not saying anything.

I continue my rant, “Am I not allowed to inform inquiring minds? The only way I could answer Pete was to brief him on the whole thing.”

Luckily we reach the room, meeting up with the other band members, before I could really say anything else within earshot of Brendon. What I really mean is within the attention span of Brendon. He could hear me if he wanted to, but he’s obviously not paying any attention as he dances with Pete to the music that plays in the meet and greet room.

“And since when did he become paranoid? Like he automatically assumed we were talking about him before he walked up. As if all I can and ever will talk about is him,” I pause when Patrick turns around laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” I ask him, lightly smacking his arm.

“You’re getting pissed over nothing. I don’t think he’s even mad.”

“Now they know and I don’t?” I mock. “What is that? Isn’t that mad?”

“Not necessarily, he probably just--”

I cut him off and his open mouth closes.

I continue my rant while he begins to laugh at me, “Who the fuck cares who I tell first? I don’t have to tell him everything first.”

Patrick shushes me with his hands on either side of my head.

“Just don’t even get mad over it. It’s nothing.”

“It’s been a rough evening. I’m on edge!” I say loudly, pulling his hands down.

“I can tell!” Patrick matches my tone, laughing afterwards.

“Not your worry! Go sign some papers and shirts and…arms and tits or whatever.”

Both Patrick and Hayley bust out laughing.

“Tits? I don’t think I’ve ever signed any,” Patrick says.

I cross my arms, “Whatever. I’m just irritated.”

Zack claps, grabbing the attention of almost everyone, “Alright guys. We’re going to head inside in a few seconds. Since all three bands are going in at once, we need to be sure to keep the line going. There’s a lot of people in there and we need to get this done in a timely manner.”

He turns to me and points, “And Sara you need to stand at the back with me. There’s too many fans in there today for you to sit with everyone.”

He opens the door and lets the band members in. I hang back and wait to go in with Zack. After everyone files inside, Zack puts his arm around my shoulder.

“I need to talk to you for a second after this thing gets started.”

I nod, “Okay, sure.”

I stand at the back of the room while Zack reiterates some of the rules of the meet and greet. After he’s done he stands next to me, watching the line of fans.

“Hey, so next time someone shows up like Justin did today, you need to come and find me. Call me, text me, find someone who knows where I am. He wasn’t authorized to even be backstage, I don’t care if his buddy works here or not.”

“I don’t have control over what he does. I didn’t know he was going to be here.”

“I’m not saying you did. Just letting you know.”

“Why does everyone have to be mad at me tonight? I just want to go back to the bus.”

He looks down at me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder again, “I’m not mad at you! I didn’t mean to sound mad. It’s not your fault he showed up, I know that. I just have to talk to you about it since it happened, it’s part of my job.”

I let out a deep sigh feeling defeated. Whether or not he was actually mad or just sounded mad doesn’t change how it makes me feel.

I stand there stiffly, chewing on my lower lip. Tears try to make an appearance for the sixtieth time today, but successfully blink them away.

“I want to go sit in the hall,” I say quietly.

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Can I go back to the bus?”

He shakes his head, letting out a small laugh, “Can’t let you do that either.”

And so there I stand for the duration of the meet and greet, which lasts about an hour. After all the fans leave, the band members are instructed to quickly get their things from the dressing rooms and meet back at the buses in a half hour.

By that time I’m not sure if I want to go with Brendon or just go back to Paramore’s bus for the night. I caught a lot of glances from fans during the meet and greet, some of them more so sneers than friendly glances, which really only added more crappiness to my already crappy evening. I just kind of want to be alone and go to sleep.

I follow Hayley back to Paramore’s dressing room in an attempt to avoid Brendon for a few minutes.

“What should I do?” I ask Hayley once we get to Paramore’s dressing room.

“About what?” she asks, not looking at me as she hurriedly gathers her clothes and make-up supplies.

“Brendon wants me to stay on his bus tonight. I don’t know if I want to.”

She glances over at me, her hands full with make-up brushes, “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug.

She drops the brushes into her bag then places her hands on her hips as she looks at me, “You don’t feel like telling him about Justin, that’s why.”

I nod, “Yeah, I guess.”

“I would imagine that’s pretty understandable. Do you think he’s going to care if you don’t want to talk about it tonight? I doubt it,” she says, eyebrows raised.

“So basically I should go with him tonight.”

She nods, giving me ‘the eye’ as if the answer were the most obvious thing in the world.

I let out a deep sigh and head for the door, “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The door closes behind me and I head off in search of Brendon. I check Panic’s dressing room, but find it completely empty, which is weird; they usually take forever to get their stuff together and get back to the bus. The buses are usually waiting on them to get back to their bus before everyone could leave.

The next place I think to check is their bus, which is exactly where I find them. Except Brendon. All the guys are there sitting around except Brendon.

The guys turn and stare at me, not saying anything, as if I were an alien.

“Where’s Bren?” I ask, awkwardly looking around.

“In the back,” Spencer replies, pointing his thumb toward the back of the bus.

“Thanks.”

I find Brendon staring down at his phone in the back lounge. He doesn’t look up when I enter the room. Standing in the doorway, I stare at him, unsure of what to say.

Before I figure out if I should say ‘hey’ or ‘what are you doing’, he does a double take, then smiles really big.

“Hey!” he says, hurriedly getting up to embrace me in a hug.

I hug him back instantly feeling relieved and calm.

“I was just about to text you,” he says when he lets go of me. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to stay with me tonight or not. You didn’t seem like you wanted to when you hurried off with Hayley.”

“Yeah, sorry. I needed to talk to her.”

He nods, then smiles, “You okay?”

I sigh and scratch my forehead, “Yeah. It’s just been a really weird night.”

“Well staying with me isn’t going to make it any less weird,” he laughs, grabbing on to my hands.

“Yeah but that’s an expected weirdness.”

“Or is it?” he asks, flicking his eyebrows up mischievously.

“Yeah, it for sure is,” I laugh.

Brendon stares at me for a few seconds, his smile slowly growing.

“You know what I love about you? Even though what happened today happened, you still seem to be in a better mood than most people would be.”

I snort, “You must not have been paying very close attention to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been pissed all night. I even complained to Hayley and Patrick. I made myself seem real fun to be around, I’m sure.”

He laughs, squeezing my hands slightly.

“But you don’t seem very upset now.”

I tilt my head and smile at him, “All thanks to you. As soon as you hugged me I felt better.”

“Well if that’s all it takes maybe I can squeeze the rest of it out of you,” he suggests, hugging me again.

Man, he’s good. All the negativity that I had been feeling is now almost completely gone. Who would have thought that the person I had been attempting to avoid tonight is the one person who could make me feel better?

“You might want to go get some clothes from your bus before we leave.”

“I can’t if you’re still hugging me,” I say smiling against his chest.

“I guess I’ll let go if I have to,” he says, pulling out of the hug. He looks down at me with a smile.

“You could hug me all the way back to my bus,” I suggest, my hands lightly resting on his forearms. I don’t want to leave now, even if it’s just for a minute.

He shakes his head at me as a smile lingers, “I’ll wait for you.”

“Kay, I’ll be back,” I reply and then hurry off.

When I reach Paramore’s bus, I am immediately met with curious stares.

“Before you ask, I’m staying with Brendon tonight. Just so you know. FYI,” I blurt out on my way to my bunk.

I receive no reply to the information, but am told to ‘have a good night’ on my way back to Brendon.

I come back to Brendon diving head first into his bunk and I’m guessing he didn’t see me before he did so.

I take it upon myself to smack his butt, trying my best to hold in my laughter as he yells out, “Spencer! What did I say about doing that?”

I cover my mouth to stifle my laughs, watching him yank the curtains back.

“You!” he says, pointing at me, his forehead wrinkled and eyes narrow.

“Yeah, I did it! So what?”

“Go ask Spencer how hilarious that is,” he smiles at me.

Spencer yells from the front, “He threatened to burn all my underwear, Sara!”

“Well when you have an ass like that, one cannot help but smack it,” I say matter-of-factly.

“Hey, why don’t you get your ass up here and quit talking about my ass?”

“Sounds great to me,” I say, tossing my stuff into his bunk before I climb in to sit next to him.

His arm wraps around my stomach, pulling me down beside him. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I look over at him and smile, watching as he quickly closes the curtain and flips on the dim overhead light.

“Now I know you probably don’t want to talk about it right now, but can you just tell me a little bit about the whole Justin thing?”

I close my eyes and sigh, running my hands down my face once. Why is that the first thing he wants to talk about?

“What do you want to know?” I ask, looking over at him as he rolls on his side to face me.

“Well all of it, really, but whatever you want to tell me right now.”

“It’s not that I’m not going to tell you, I’m just really tired of talking about it today. But what do you want to know? I’ll talk.”

“Just give me a brief, I guess,” he says, playing with the hem of my shirt.

So I give him the same brief I gave Pete and Patrick earlier today, explaining that after we broke up, I realized I only took interest in Justin because he was interested in me.

“So what would make you not want to tell me about him?”

“I guess just the fact that I hadn’t really loved him the right way. I’m just scared that you might think the same thing could happen with you. Like maybe I’m unconsciously doubting you, too.”

“Except I probably wouldn’t have thought that.”

“Except I didn’t explain the whole thing to you, remember? That’s just super brief.”

“Well then what is it that I should be worried about?”

“Nothing! That’s the thing! I don’t want you to be worried about anything. It’s different with you than it was with Justin in a way that I can’t explain. With Justin I would always have thoughts like ‘maybe it’d be easier if we broke up’ or ‘I wish I were single’ or ‘is this really the person I want to marry because he’s definitely not my type’. All these things crossed my mind but I always came up with excuses of why they were irrational.”

“Like what?”

“Like no one truly marries their dream guy. There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship, which there’s not, really. Things like there’s always going to be something about the other person that is going to be annoying, you just have to figure out if it’s worth it to stay because it could be worse.”

Brendon nods at me, his lips pursed slightly. I can tell he’s a tad uncomfortable with what I’m saying.

“See now you’re confused,” I say, pouting.

He nods, looking away, “A little bit.”

“I don’t want you to feel confused. None of what I’m saying has ever been the case with you.”

“Right, but I’m sure it was never the case with him at the beginning either, right?”

“But you’re a whole other person, Bren. Maybe I need to explain a little more about him and why it didn’t work.”

“Okay,” he says in a slightly aggravated tone, making it hard for me to tell if he’s upset that I’m talking about it more or if it’s what I’m saying about it that’s making him mad.

“Here’s a typical thing he did that was a red flag I ignored: I can be quite passive-aggressive sometimes and when I’m annoyed that’s how I get. Now most of the time it’s to be funny but the way he perceived it was me complaining. And when that happened he would get mad and not talk to me, deny I made him upset, and pretty much be a huge baby about it. I don’t want someone taking my passive-aggressive humor as complaining.

“Or, for example, he’d want to walk twenty blocks to the mall from his apartment. Fine with me, but I hardly ever had the right shoes with me. I’d normally wear flats and didn’t keep tennis shoes with me. To him, that meant I never wanted to do anything he suggested. And he did this a lot: wanted to walk to the grocery store, to the library, to a restaurant. Hardly ever was it that I had the right shoes, so he always got mad at that, which was dumb because he had a car and could have easily drove. He’d call me lazy over that, too.”

I look over at Brendon but find it hard to read his expression. This does nothing but build up anxiety making me worried that he’s totally wanting to run the other way. So I keep talking out of nervousness, hoping I can get him to understand where I’m coming from.

“He also got mad at me over a crossword puzzle once. I’m bad at crosswords, but one time I had actually known the answer, but he kept telling me I was wrong. So I looked up the answer online, which he never wanted to do because he considered it cheating. But who fucking really cares? It’s a crossword puzzle from the stupid newspaper. Anyway, he got mad that I looked it up and knew the right answer, so he threw the crossword away and wouldn’t talk to me. I locked myself in the bathroom crying and juggled with the idea of breaking up because he did that kind of shit all the time. I didn’t need him to make me feel stupid. He never came to the bathroom to see if I was okay or to talk. I sat in there for an hour and a half before coming out. I asked him to take me home after that and he never tried to stop me, just agreed and that was it. A couple other times when we argued I left, hoping he would come after me, but he never ever did. Not even one time.”

I pause and stare at the light above me thinking back to when I was with Justin. Talking about what he did and how shitty he really was makes me glad I’m not with him. Not that I wasn’t glad before, but now I’m really glad.

I continue quietly, as if talking to myself, “And I really did think I was in love with him at the time. After we broke up I realized that I never really was. I cared about him, but I wasn’t ever in love with him. Of course things got intense really quick, but I really think I got tricked into the relationship. I would have never talked to him if he hadn’t shown an interest in me. And at the time I think he caught me when I was feeling lonely. I had just reconnected with an ex boyfriend and literally that week had just told him that I still liked him, but he had said he had moved on.”

I laugh at the irony of that, seeing how the same type of thing just happened to Justin today.

“I think at that point I was just willing to date the first person who forced their way into my life, which is exactly what he did. And I’m not saying he was a bad guy or whatever, because he wasn’t. He was funny and romantic and I think we really connected. We had a lot in common, but as time went on it fizzled out. Our commonalities became ones that were just common on the surface. We both were photographers, but he never liked any of my work. I always complimented him on his because he was good. I was good too, and I know that because I sold a lot of my photos. But the ones that sold the most were ones I had argued over with him because he thought they were boring. Arguing over something we both had in common had essentially marked that off the list of shared interests.

“Things went on like that throughout the relationship, but it wasn’t ever as obvious as it sounds. We got along great most of the time, but eventually grew apart I think. I was always subconsciously trying to convince myself that I was still interested for the mere fact that I was afraid of changing my whole life plan if I were to end things. There were a lot of moments I caught myself wondering why I was with him because I didn’t even find him that attractive, but was quick to tell myself that no one marries someone totally perfect.”

I roll my head to the side to look at Brendon, finding that his face has softened.

“You scared off yet?”

He shakes his head ‘no’, flashing me a small smile.

“Good. Because the difference with you is I actually find you attractive. And you didn’t force yourself upon me.”

“What happened is really kind of sad, Sara. You know that right?” he says, pushing my hair behind my ear.

I shake my head yes, feeling my eyebrows scrunch together.

“In the beginning it felt so right,” I say pausing. I look away from Brendon, feeling tears start to form as I feel a swarm of emotions come over me.

“We got along so well most of the time. We laughed a lot, we loved each other, or at least we thought we did. It was all so promising – I planned out my life with him. He came out of left field after our third anniversary when he told me he didn’t have feelings for me anymore. On the inside I was relieved, but on the surface I was confused. I was trying to be confused and sad about it, but I knew deep down that I was trying to fool myself. I tried so hard to convince him to stay. I gave him so many reasons to stay, the main one being that he had asked me to marry him so he had to have been sure at some point. None of it worked, obviously, those next few weeks. I could feel that I had already lost him. But I think he had lost me long before I lost him. I didn’t want to be the one to screw up our relationship because I had no idea if my thoughts and feelings were normal. I figured everyone had to have wished to be single or wished for someone else. I was scared to lose him because that would mean I would lose the life I planned.”

“But you’re doing alright now,” Brendon chimes in.

I nod, looking at him once again, “Yeah. I figured it all out on my own. Life went on. I was forced to change my plans. It was all for the best. I’m in a better place. I understand myself better and I know what I want. I know what I don’t want. I would hope I would know when a relationship is wrong and when to end it.”

Brendon grins at me and pulls me over, hugging me tight. My arms are curled up pressed against his chest, my head on his neck. I begin to cry, feeling how much Brendon cares about me.

“Why are you crying?” he laughs, rubbing my back.

I shake my head, “I don’t know. I’m just glad you’re here, Bren.”

“Me too,” he says before kissing my forehead.