Afraid of the Dark

Another gorgeous banner by BurntOutLights. <3

On the way back to the hotel after dinner, I watched the city pass by from the backseat of a massive SUV with a solid black interior. The hired driver and bodyguard were silent in the front seats, glancing in the rearview mirror to check on their employers every so often. In the row of seats ahead of me, Stump and Trohman were discussing Metallica in grave voices while Hurley tapped out a rhythm against his knee.

Wentz took one for the team and sat with the dreaded interviewer, so he was now slumped over in the seat directly to my left, within arm's reach. When I glanced over at him, I found him staring out the window at the people on the street, his melancholy expression reflected back at me in the dark glass of the tinted window.

He sensed me watching him and turned to face me. At first, he studied me just like he had studied the woman pushing a stroller on the sidewalk a moment ago (I didn't know it yet, but he kept a catalogue of people in his mind), but then a huge grin broke through his somber expression and changed everything.

His eyes were smiling and they seemed to be aware of only me, with a penetrating force that would have been uncomfortable if it weren't so warm and welcoming. The way he was looking at me then, he could have been tearing the secrets from my soul--but somehow, it felt more like he was letting me in on his own.

"You know," he said, so matter-of-factly that it was almost funny, "you're pretty okay for a bloodsucking reporter."

I fumbled for something to say; eventually my tongue and teeth and lips found, "Thanks," and settled for that, but in my haste, the bitter, cynical note of sarcasm drowned out what little genuine appreciation I had meant to let show through. I felt bad about that. And then I made it worse by adding, "And I'm not a reporter, I'm a journalist."

But, for what it's worth, he didn't seem offended, or even disappointed at my less than positive reaction. It didn't occur to me at the time, but much later, I realized that he was probably used to the hostility of strangers, being who he was. And there are a lot of things wrong with the world, but for some reason, this seems like one of the worst injustices out there to me--probably because I remember the way he smiled at me when I was just a hostile stranger, and because I once knew him well enough to know that he deserved better.

I don't think it ever really bothered him, though. He knew the world and was resigned to it. He accepted the bad and the good together, as they apeared in life.

"Journalist, whatever," he said. "Close enough." He laughed like he had just made a hilarious joke and turned back to the window.

-----

Back at the hotel, I told the four band members that I had planned on doing one more interview before I went to bed. Once again, Wentz was the only one to jump at the offer. No surprise there.

"I'm beginning to think you actually like interviews." I regarded him with suspicion as we walked down the hall towards his hotel room, side-by-side.

"I do!" he said. "I guess it's kind of famewhore-ish of me, but I can't help it. I'm just a famewhore-ish kind of dude."

"I think they call those sell-outs."

"Oh yeah." His eyes were laughing as we came to his room, and he turned to smile at me. "Where've I heard that one before?"

"No idea."

He laughed as he shoved his roomkey into the doorhandle. "Oh," he said suddenly, "and speaking of famewhores and interviews, me and Patrick--"

"Patrick and I," I said automatically, then added in a small voice, "...sorry, it's a habit."

He blinked at me a few times, as if completely bewildered by the fact that I had just corrected his grammar. "Uh--Patrick and I...we're going on some kind of radio show tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be boring as hell, but you can come if you want to."

I couldn't stop what came out of my mouth next: "That's what she said."

"Aw, fuck, we're already rubbing off on you!" He slapped his forehead in mock exasperation, grinning despite himself. "And you've only been around us for a day!"

I just laughed. "Maybe by the end of the week I'll grow balls and turn into a Star Wars geek with a sneaker collection."

He smirked at me as the door unlocked with a barely audible clicking sound and he pushed it open. "Maybe."

For the second time that day, Wentz held the door for me as I stepped into his massive hotel suite. The curtains had been left open and ghostly moonlight poured in through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, flooding the room with pale, ethereal light and casting shadows across the smooth marble floors. In the lonely gray tones of night, the suite had been transformed into a different room entirely.

Behind me, Wentz shut the door and a moment later the overhead lights flickered on. A little bit of the beauty and mystique the room had held a moment ago evaporated, but nevertheless, I couldn't help but feel relieved at the sudden return of light.

I was still staring at the nighttime view through the enormous windows when I realized that quite a bit of time had passed and Wentz was still hovering behind me, silent and unmoving in the doorway. I turned around and he was just standing there watching me, with his hand still resting on the lightswitch.

"What?" we both asked at the same time. "...Nothing," we said simultaneously.

We laughed, a little nervously, and he let his hand slide down off of the wall. "Sorry," he muttered. "You just looked like you were...you know, deep in thought or something and I, uh, didn't want to interrupt you."

"Oh--yeah, um..." I ran a hand through my hair and nodded towards the windows. "I was just, uh, admiring the view..."

Whatever awkwardness there had been between us a second ago disappeared entirely as his whole face lit up with excitement. "Oh, it's great, isn't it? C'mon, I'll show you the balcony--"

With that, he bounded past me, nudging my shoulder to indicate that I should follow--which I did, with some trepidation.

"There's a balcony?!" I wasn't such a fan of heights.

He laughed at my anxiety. "Just a small one," he reassured me. He flashed a smile at me over his shoulder as he led me into the bedroom area, around a wide king-sized bed, and to a solid glass door on the far side of the room. "Nothing too scary."

Wentz undid the latch on the door and stepped out onto the balcony, reaching back to grab my arm and pull me along with him when he saw that I wasn't budging of my own accord.

"See?" he said, wincing as the harsh winter air blew his bangs into his eyes. "This isn't so bad."

I laughed at his grimace. "Yeah, I especially love the minus-forty degree windchill. That's nice."

He frowned, feigning hurt. "You know, you might be a little nicer to me, since I'm the only one here who likes you."

"Oh, really?" I was genuinely surprised: I hadn't expected any of them to like me.

"Yeah." He raised a hand to his face to shield it from the wind and said, "You're kind of intimidating, you know."

I stared at him, trying to decide if he was being serious or not. Apparently, he was. "...I'm intimidating?"

"You are. I mean, I know you're all pale and freckly and girlish and you're, like, four feet tall and--what?" He paused long enough to look me over, and estimated: "--eighty pounds? But still... You're intimidating."

I cocked one eyebrow at him. "How so?"

"I don't know...you just give off these...vibes. Like you know everything. And you're so serious all the time."

But before I could even open my mouth to defend myself, he jumped in to qualify his explanation:

"--At least, that's how you seem to them. Personally, I think the whole 'solemn and dignified' thing is just an act. A defense mechanism." His eyes sparkled knowingly, peering back at me with such searing intensity that I was sure, in that moment, that he could see straight into my soul. "You've got them all fooled, but I see right through you."

...So he really could see my soul.

A thrill of terror ran through me and I looked away, pretending to cringe away from the wind, rather than him, to disguise my ridiculous fear. No one else had ever blatantly called my bluff before and, standing there on that balcony with Wentz looking at me like that, all I wanted to do was turn and run away.

But I didn't run. I swallowed hard and straightened up and told myself to be brave as I looked up and met his gaze.

"So you're not scared of me, then?" I forced my tone to sound casual, off-handed, but the half-joke came out stilted nonetheless.

I was making a conscious effort to laugh at the situation, and, to my relief, he played along. "No," he said, smirking. "I'm not scared of you."

"You're a brave, brave man." Still choking back that same old fear, I fought to keep the joke going with a sardonic half-smile. But my efforts were stupid, futile; he killed them in one smooth stroke.

"No, I'm not," he said, and the look on his face was abruptly serious. "I'm a fucking coward. That's why they all hate me."

There it was: another cryptic one-liner, a la Pete Wentz.

But, to my surprise, the words made perfect sense to me all at once. For the first time, I didn't have to try to understand him: his expression, or his tone of voice, or something in the air between us made his meaning perfectly clear somehow.

And then something shifted inside of me at the hurt, defensive look on his face; some maternal instinct surfaced, and all I wanted to do in that moment was to hold him, keep him safe from the outside world--the world that didn't see the way he smiled, so openly, the way he saw right through me, reached straight into my heart the way no one else ever had before and left me unscathed anyway, because he was nice.

I was surprised to find that it was true, even as I thought it: he was nice. And he was. No one should hate him, because he was nice.

That motherly instinct flared up inside of me even more violently as I consciously decided that he actually was a good person, and didn't deserve to be hated; somehow, I didn't even want him to know about such an injustice. "No one hates you, Wentz," I lied.

"Of course they do." But, as quickly as the gleam in his eyes had hardened, it softened and turned to something warm and sweet and inviting, drawing me in, as he added quietly, "And you can call me Pete, you know."

The protective feeling shifted once again, morphing into something else entirely--something softer, more private and tender, a giving-in that reminded me of melting. I had never felt that way before, but I was instantly wary of this new emotion, for some reason. All I wanted to do was reach out and touch him, smile at him, laugh and agree, try out the beautiful, crisp single syllable of his first name on my lips...but the defensive part of me warned against it. So instead I pulled on my armor, bristling.

"Can we go back inside now?" I said, purposely ignoring the little piece of himself he had offered to me. "I think my fingers are about to fall off."

Wentz distanced himself, too, responding to my forced coldness. "Well, we can't have that, can we?" he said, his tone too bland for sarcasm. "How would you write about what an obnoxious douchebag I am if you didn't have any fingers?"