Afraid of the Dark

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Unsurprisingly, we went out to dinner again that night; this time it was sushi. Unsurprisingly, everything about the restaurant was the epitome of luxury and extravagance. Unsurprisingly, the four members of Fall Out Boy wasted no time in launching into a rabid discussion of dorky comic books/action figures/cartoons from the 80's adapted into crappy summer blockbusters.

"And Transformers wasn't much better," Pete was saying. "It was complete fucking mainstream Hollywood drivel. They just completely fucking ruined-- Oh, thank you," he said (much more nicely) as a tall, slim waitress wearing expensive-looking jewelry placed a plate of food in front of him. He turned to flash his most charming smile at her and didn't look away until she relented and smiled back, her red-lipsticked mouth pulled taut with strain. I watched him in fascination; forcing complete strangers to like him, or at least understand him, was almost like some kind of sick hobby to him.

The rest of the band accepted their own food with more reserved politeness. Once the server left, they all looked over at Pete again, patiently waiting for him to continue on his geeky anti-Transformers tirade.

"So anyway..." Pete stabbed at something pink and fleshy on his plate but didn't put it in his mouth just yet; instead, he gesticulated with his fork as he spoke, the glistening piece of meat flopping around on the end of his fork as it swung back and forth in wide arcs. "I mean, they had the chance to make a really fucking incredible movie. And instead they sold out. They sold out and what did we end up with? Your typical Hollywood CGI-fest."

He shook his head and paused long enough to take a bite of whatever the fleshy pink stuff was (it looked like some kind of semi-raw fish rolled in various seasonings), his big white teeth tearing delicately at the meat. He chewed thoughtfully for a second and then dropped his fork, still laden with the remainders of that one piece of meat, onto his plate again.

"Disgusting," he muttered, grimacing.

Hurley, an emphatic vegan who had been watching Pete pick at his meat with barely-contained revulsion, laughed almost venemously. "Fuck yeah, it is," he said with a vindicated smirk, as if he himself had made the fish "disgusting" just to get back at Pete for being such a greedy carnivore. I'm sure he would have if he could.

He was a spiteful little shit when he wanted to be, that Andy Hurley. And he didn't like me--at all. He made that much clear. But I had worked with plenty of subjects before who hated my guts, and I had always let their caustic, snide remarks roll off my back. I was no more concerned about his opinion of me than I had ever been about anyone else's.

At Pete's deep sigh, I looked over at him automatically. He had deliberately pushed the pieces of fish to one corner of his plate, condemning them to eternal isolation amongst the decorative foliage in that one corner, and was now mulling over a much more harmless California roll. Hurley approved of this food; his smirk faded as he turned back to his own plate.

"Lame," said Pete, suddenly disrupting the silence.

All three of his bandmates looked at him expectantly, waiting for further elaboration. When Pete offered none, Stump prompted, "What's lame?"

"Transformers," Pete half-scoffed, as if it should have been obvious--and, in his mind, I guess it should have been. "Duh."

"Oh." Stump looked away. His expression was just slightly mortified and I felt sorry for him. There was no reason for him to feel stupid, anyway. I was quickly discovering that there were no stupid questions when it came to Pete (no matter what Pete himself might have you believe)--he was just so damned hard to get sometimes. "Right."

Pete must have sensed his mistake, because he put down his California roll and looked up at Stump with this calm, even expression. Stump met his gaze and we all fell silent in anticipation. I knew Pete wouldn't apologize outright, especially over something so small, but he would tell Stump he was sorry in his own peculiar way.

Or so I had expected. I had thought that I was finally learning to read Pete, but, once again, he threw me for a loop.

"Excuse me, I have to make a phone call," he said.

The words were strangely formal for him, and he stood carefully, folding his big fabric napkin and placing it on the table beside his plate with great care. The four of us--Stump, Hurley, Trohman, and I--watched him with quiet bewilderment, none of eating or speaking or even breathing.

Pushing his chair in (as was polite), Pete looked at me and forced a smile, and when he spoke next, it was like he was speaking only to me. "I'll be right back," he said, with that fake smile still held firmly in place. He wore it all the way out of the room as he walked around the table, stepped outside, and shut the door behind him with unusual grace.

The upscale sushi restaurant we were dining at tonight was the opposite of the windowless room we had dined in last night. Though its furnishings and menu items were equally extravagant, the VIP room was much smaller, and the walls were mostly made up of windows. Through all these windows, I watched Pete step out onto the sidewalk outside and dig his phone out of his pocket, his movements much sharper and clumsier than they had been inside. He scrolled through what I assumed to be his contacts list and then pressed the phone to one ear, his dark eyes fixed on his shoes scuffing against the concrete as he paced back and forth anxiously.

"Who's he calling?" I asked. I took a sip of my wine in order to seem more nonchalant; I knew I was prying, but I was curious. What had been so urgent that Pete had left the table immediately after getting his food, in the middle of one his very favorite rants? Obviously, he was a little ruffled by whatever it was.

"Is that one of the burning questions you're going to elaborate on in your big tell-all? Who is Pete Wentz calling?" said Hurley sarcastically. He rolled his eyes and took a bite of his leafy green rabbit food. "Riveting."

I stared back at him evenly for a moment, but he wouldn't meet my gaze, so I finally turned away and simply pretended he had never spoken. I was far beyond getting my panties in a wad over shit like that. It was just part of my job; in fact, thick skin is probably the main job requirement in this business.

Thankfully, Stump was much more cooperative. He, too, ignored Hurley and turned his full attention to me. "Ashlee, probably," he said, shrugging.

I looked out the window at Pete as I thought this over. He was still pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, sillhouetted against the ruddy orange glow of the streetlight. When his pacing brought him nearer, I could just barely make out his mouth moving too fast, his lips twisting and curling around the words he couldn't get out quick enough.

And then, all at once, he paused mid-step and his lips stopped moving. He turned so that he was facing the streetlight with his back to me, and something about the way he dropped his head to stare at his feet just made me so sad.

I had no idea Ashlee could make him so flustered and impatient--unsettled. Crestfallen.

"They're fighting?" It was more of a statement than a question.

Stump glanced out the window at Pete, saw what I meant, and simply shrugged again. "I don't know. Maybe." He became suddenly absorbed in picking at a stray thread in the elegant white tablecloth. A few moments passed and then he added, "They say the first year's the hardest, you know." At my obvious confusion, he clarified: "In a marriage, I mean."

"Oh," I said stupidly. I found myself looking down at the tablecloth too. "Yeah. I guess so."

"Plus," he went on, "Pete's not exactly the easiest dude to get along with. I mean, he's great, I like him, but...he can be difficult sometimes."

There was a prickly undercurrent to Stump's tone that made his purpose even more obvious: he was defending Pete and Ashlee's relationship. Not Ashlee herself, really, and certainly not Pete--just their relationship. Why?

I filed away my questions for later. I could think this over once I got back to my own empty hotel room.

For now, something else entirely was on my mind, and I wanted to get answers from Stump while I could. At his mention of getting along with Pete, I suddenly remembered all the day's events: how Pete had saved me and I had lashed out at him for it, how he had accepted my apology so easily that I never even really had to make one. I had expected him to make some caustic remark, or ignore me altogether--instead, he had taken me out for ice cream.

Sometimes I understood Pete completely, and sometimes I...didn't. At all. This was one of those times.

I desperately wanted to understand--more than I ever would have expected to. And Pete wouldn't give me the answer I wanted, so I was forced to turned the next best thing, the one person Pete claimed really understood him: Patrick Stump.

"It's so weird," I told him. "He wasn't even mad at me today, after what I said earlier. I was sure he'd be mad."

"Nah," said Stump. "Pete has a horrible temper, but it never lasts long. He's forgiving to a fault." He paused thoughtfully before adding, "He's been cheated on a million times because he keeps taking girls back even after they cheat on him, and then they just keep cheating on him."

"Yeah, this one girl probably cheated on him at least ten or twelve times before he finally dumped her for good," said Trohman. He shook his head, chuckling.

I felt my eyes widen in mixed shock and horror. "Really?"

"Oh, yeah," said Stump fervently as Trohman nodded along in agreement. "He'll take anyone back in a heartbeat regardless of the situation...depending on how much he likes them, of course."

And then Stump gave me such an impish, knowing look that I half-expected him to wink at me.

I was afraid to say the words, but the look in Stump's eyes was urging me to, so I decided to just go for it. "So...he likes me?"

Stump snorted.

"Well, yeah," said Trohman, grinning at my in his sleepy way. "Clearly."

I looked out the window to make sure Pete was still on the phone. He was. The pacing had slowed to a vague shuffling back and forth, turning him in a circle gradually. He wasn't speaking as much now; he was mostly just listening with a frown, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration, the corners of his mouth turned down unhappily.

When I could be sure he wasn't going to walk in and hear me ask--again--the question that he hadn't exactly taken to earlier, I turned back to Stump and Trohman. "Why?"

Trohman stared at me for about a second and a half, and then he started laughing. Stump, on the other hand, was all business as he straightened up and folded his hands together on the table. I had been afraid he would give me some vague non-answer (much as Pete had earlier, in fact), but, to my immense relief and gratitude, he didn't.

"Pete," he said matter-of-factly, "is completely obsessed with everyone who is completely unobsessed with him. The less interested you are, the better." Stump laughed once, dryly, and his lips curled up in the ghost of a smile, but the smile didn't quite follow through--as if he wanted to find this amusing, but couldn't somehow.

Before I could think that over too much, the door swung open and Pete stepped inside, making his way back to his seat at the table in quick, easy strides. He smiled at me again, but it was another fake smile, and those did the opposite of his real ones: instead of filling me up with an absurd, spontaneous joy that always made me smile back, these fake smiles just made me feel hollow and empty inside.

Stump glanced up at Pete warily. "How's Ash?" he asked.

"Great," said Pete with just so much enthusiasm. "She's doing great."

It was too obvious, the way he shoved that mask in our faces while the fear and defensiveness still gleamed there in his eyes, lurking in the tight set of his jaw. He took a drink of his wine and the smile faltered as he swallowed the bittersweet alcohol; the real Pete showed through for just a second as his face fell into a half-blank almost-grimace.

But then he forced the smile again. "Yeah, she's great. Just great."

I wanted to tell him that there were all those windows there, that we could see him pacing and snarling and cringing while he was on the phone, that surely none of that added up to great, just great. But he didn't know we had seen that part of him, and I couldn't bear to tell him. I knew that exposed feeling all too well, and I hated it. I wouldn't have wished that on anyone--least of all Pete.

-----

So far, life with Fall Out Boy was a steady stream of chauffered cars with opaque tinted windows and conversations that had been had so many times before, they now sounded almost rehearsed; the four band members took turns adding their usual comments at the usual points in the conversation. The only spontaneity came from the occasional tapping of a rhythm against a knee, Stump half-humming, half-singing a piece of some washed-out 80's hit in the back of his throat. And sometimes Pete.

But he clearly was in no state to be spontaneous tonight. He had put on a good show after his phone call home, but now he was curled up in one corner of the limo, rubbing his face. The others tempted him with a brief discussion of popular graffiti artists (one of his favorites, and hardly used at all), but he said nothing. He completely ignored New York City at night throbbing all around him, beyond those tinted windows. That wasn't like him.

We all recognized this and gave up trying to involve him in our conversations. In fact, conversation died out completely within a few minutes. What was the point if Pete wasn't going to join in?

I looked over at him sulking in that dark corner, oblivious to our worried glances, and remembered when I used to think it was sad that Pete had always come before his bandmates, and even the band itself. Two days later, I still thought it was sad, but not in the same way. I used to think it was sad that everyone thought he was so important--the center of the universe. Once I realized that he really was that important, it just made me sad to think about what that kind of pressure could do to a person.

How would it feel to be the center of the universe? To have entire galaxies and solar systems turning on their axes around you, the force of gravity pulling you this way and that as whole worlds shifted and moved?

The limo came to a stop outside our hotel. The five of us climbed out of the car, clumsy and careless and tired. It had been another late night; the sky was a clear, sharp black--like obsidian--and the block was peaceful enough that we could hear a car alarm sounding faintly in the distance.

Eager for some downtime, no doubt, Hurley and Trohman wasted no time in trudging inside. Stump started to follow them, but stopped as he realized that Pete hadn't moved from the sidewalk.

He paused to turn around and face Pete with a questioning look, one hand still propping open the door. "You coming?"

Pete was staring straight up at something. He didn't appear to have heard Stump; he just kept staring silently, his face smooth and emotionless, for so long that Stump started to speak again, but Pete cut him off with his belated response.

"I'll be in in a minute," he said. He glanced at Stump distractedly and then turned back to looking up again, as if whatever he saw up there was important and Stump was wasting his time.

"Are you sure?" Stump bit his lip in a very motherly fashion and added, "It's really fucking cold out here."

"Maybe you should go in instead of just standing there and letting all the cold air inside, then," said Pete, without missing a beat.

"...Oh," said Stump. He didn't blush this time, but he rubbed his neck awkwardly and looked away, though Pete hadn't been looking at him in the first place. "Okay then. I'll, uh...I'll see you later."

"See you."

I waited until Stump slipped inside, adjusting his hat anxiously as he went, and then I slowly moved away from the front door (where I had been hovering alongside Stump throughout this short exchange) and towards Pete. Once I was within a few feet of him, I hugged my arms about me, shoved my hands into my pockets, and stared straight up, mimicking his pose.

I kept waiting for him to say something to me, but he never did. He didn't even give any indication that he was aware of my existence. It looked like I would have to be the one to break the silence.

"What are you looking at?" I asked finally.

"The stars."

"...Oh," I said, surprised. He had a way of getting that response out of people, I thought wryly. When Pete was around, everyone was always saying, "...Oh."

I leaned back farther and looked up at the stars, the same way I had every night for all those years. They didn't look the same here as they had in the mountains: here, the lights of the city were stiff competition, leaving the stars dulled and few; here, the imposing figures of skyscrapers sweeping endlessly onward into the heavens formed a sort of tunnel vision--a small chunk of the sky you could only view properly by looking straight up.

"They're not as bright here," I mumbled to myself.

I heard the rustling of Pete's jacket as his head snapped around to face me sharply. "Here?" he repeated. "Where are they brighter?"

"Home."

"...Oh," Pete said.

I felt a small spurt of satisfaction to know that I had made him say it this time.

His jacket rustled again--much less violently this time--as he turned back to the sky. "Where's home?" he asked.

I began to fidget uncomfortably. "The mountains."

"The mountains where?"

"It doesn't matter where," I said impatiently. After the whole freaking-out-in-the-darkness thing earlier, there was no way I was telling him about home. "It's far, far away from here. That's all that matters."

That was certainly the truth. Even those stars--all those heavenly bodies that had been burning away in the darkness for billions and trillions of years before we lowly humans ever existed--even all those stars looked different here.

And that was exactly how I wanted it.

Pete must have sensed that I didn't want to talk about home, because he didn't push the subject any further. "We should probably go in," he said grimly, and I was jolted out of my thoughts. "It's really fucking cold out here."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I guess so. I need to work on the article anyway."

I expected him to turn to go inside, but he didn't. He was quiet for a long time, and then he asked in a hushed whisper, though there was no one else around, "What will you write about? In the article?"

That was probably the best question anyone had asked me in a while. Then again, I wasn't usually on the recieving end of the questions, so maybe it wasn't such a feat after all.

I sighed, and my breath escaped in a big foggy puff, mixing with the smoky cloud of his own breath as he turned to give me his full attention. "Music. Fame. Friendship. Love. The same things I always write about."

And then I shrugged nonchalantly, as if this piece were just like any other piece I had ever written. As if the nagging worry of how to translate Pete's presence into words wasn't going to keep me up all night (and I knew it would). As if Pete was just another cocky D-list celebrity and I didn't give two shits about him.

"Of course," I added in a lame attempt to rectify the lie my very demeanor itself had become, "I guess it just depends...you know. On what happens."

"Of course," said Pete, as if he understood. And I guess maybe he did.

He understood a lot of things I didn't think anyone else ever would.

"Everything depends on what happens," he went on. "Life is just one big chain reaction."

I nodded along with him, but I didn't really believe it. Not really. I knew the world worked in more precise ways than that.

Still, he looked over at me and smiled this small, reassuring smile--a real smile, which made my heart flutter, as per usual--and I was glad to take what I could get. I was glad to accept his view of a sloppy, clumsy, Godless world for now, if it meant that I could stand here and look up at the stars with him. The truth is, he just got me; even when he disagreed, at least he understood. That was something.

...No, it was more than something. It was everything.

I glanced up at the stars one more time, trying to fix their alignments in my mind forever, so that someday I could come back to this night if I needed to--so that I could go by the stars just like the sailors in ancient times used to do, blundering through these moments that would eventually make up my past with only the heavens above as my guide. But that, I knew, was guide enough.

When we finally turned to go inside, Pete held the door for me. As we stepped into the bright, bright hotel lobby, bringing the cold air in with us, I wondered what I would write about once I made it up to the solitude of my room. Music? Fame? Friendship? Love?

Pete and I rode the elevator up to our floor in comfortable silence, and I thought about the article. I didn't want to write about those things anymore. I wanted to write about stars--the kind that glimmered there in the sky for eons before collapsing into a black hole; and the mortal, human kind...the kind that burned out much, much faster, in not-so-glamorous ways.