Afraid of the Dark

Beautiful banner by MassRomantic19--who is an amazing writer, by the way. You should definitely check out her stuff, particularly "Death! And All Its Friends." (Oh yeah, only Lauren the SuperPimp could find a way to whore out someone else's stories in one of her own chapters, ahahaha. It's a gift.)

By the time we finally came inside from the balcony, I had lost all feeling in my face, hands, and feet. In the pleasant warmth of Wentz's hotel room, my half-frozen fingers felt like they were on fire. I rubbed my stiff, cold hands as they thawed and glared out the window at the harsh December weather.

Perched on the armrest of the couch I was sitting on, Wentz, on the contrary, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. He bit his lip as he took in my sour expression. "You know what would make this more romantic?" he mused, and then answered his own question: "Some White Zinfadel. We never finished off that bottle we ordered earlier."

I watched warily as he got up and walked over to the phone on a small table in the corner of the room. To my surprise, he actually ordered a bottle of White Zinfadel via room service--at one in the morning, apparently without complaint from whoever was on the other end of the line. Such is the life of a rockstar.

Once he had finished ordering and hung up the phone, he sat down at the end of the couch next to mine and ran his hand through his hair, sighing. "So what do you want to do while we wait for the wine?"

"Well, we could actually start the interview."

"...Oh yeah." He frowned at the prospect and made another suggestion: "Or we could...not."

"I thought you liked interviews?"

"I do, sort of," he said. "I guess. More than most people do, anyway."

"Why is that?"

Wentz regarded me with suspicion. "Is that a question-question or...just a question?"

"Does it matter?"

He started to say something and then stopped himself. "...No," he said finally. "I guess not."

"So why do you like interviews, then?" I pressed.

"I don't know..." He shrugged. "I guess I just like to whine about my life to people who actually pay attention to what I'm saying. Like therapy, but cheaper."

I could tell by the way his smile didn't quite reach his eyes that this was just another one of his usual self-deprecating jokes and nothing more--not the truth--but I decided not to pursue the question further. That wasn't the point; the point was that I could tell he wasn't telling the truth. The point was that, piece by piece, little by little, I was beginning to unravel the enigma that was Pete Wentz.

I think he knew that I saw right through his bad jokes, because he stopped grinning and leaned in closer to me. "So, I have a question for you, then," he said seriously. "Why do you like interviews?"

"Hmm..." I paused as I considered that for a moment. "That's a hard question. No one's ever asked me that before."

His eyebrows shot up in disbelief. "No way! You're a reporter--sorry, journalist," he amended, "and no one's ever asked you why?"

"Guess not."

"Well, I'm asking you now: why do you like asking questions for a living?"

"Oh... I don't know," I said evasively.

"Oh, no," said Wentz, grinning slyly. "Don't pull that crap with me. I gave you an answer. You gotta give me one, too."

"Fine," I groaned. "Give me a minute to think about it."

"You do this for a living, Sarah," he laughed. "You never thought about it before?"

My insides jumped a little in surprise at his use of my first name. I guess I should have been flattered that he remembered (because, honestly, I hadn't expected him to), but instead I only felt a little flutter of foreboding in the pit of my stomach. The same part of me that had shied away from calling him Pete earlier was too terrified to think about how I was important enough to him for him to remember my name.

Another part of me told me to stop freaking out over minor details that I was probably over-exaggerating in the first place. I listened to that part of me and went on with the conversation as naturally as possible.

"Not really. Not like..." I spoke slowly, figuring out what exactly I meant to say as I went along. "I mean, I never sat down and asked myself why I wanted to do it. I just did. I've always wanted it, ever since I was little."

He nodded as if this made sense to him. Maybe it did. I never could be sure what was going on inside that man's head.

"I guess I just like to know everything." I laughed a little at myself, and he smiled with me--but sweetly, not in a mocking sort of way. "I have a major fear of the unknown. It freaks me out. I like to know what's going on around me at all times. I like to be in control."

"That makes sense," he said. But then one side of his mouth twisted up in a crooked half-smile and he added, "But sometimes it's fun not knowing. You know? A little surprise never hurt anyone."

I shook my head. "I hate surprises."

"Really?" His eyes lit up. "I thrive on them."

This last statement was punctuated by a knock on the door, accompanied by a loud "Room service!", which startled me so much that I jumped and let out a little shriek. But Wentz wasn't jarred at all, and he laughed at me as he hopped down off of the couch and headed for the door.

"See?" he said teasingly. He threw his hands in the air, palms open: "Surprise!"

-----

If Wentz opened up readily sober, he was a jabbering quote-machine once he'd had a few glasses of wine. Getting him to talk was easier than pulling the string on the back of an old-fashioned talking doll. All I had to do was listen and write down what he said as he went on and on and on about...well, everything.

Some of the things he said were nice. He talked about his parents, how supportive they were and how much he loved them, how badly he wanted to take care of them now in repayment for all the years they spent taking care of him. He talked about his newborn son, Bronx, a lot, as always, and his dogs--about how, for years, he considered Hemingway (the English bulldog named after the classic American writer who eventually committed suicide), to be his only friend. He talked about all the charity foundations he had donated to and supported, about how he once walked through Chicago handing out hundred dollar bills to every homeless person he passed.

But some of the things he said were not nice at all.

Well, actually, there was just one thing--one thing in particular that still bothers me...that always will, I think.

It was my fault, really. It was my fault because I brought it up.

He was halfway drunk on the wine and I was a little tipsy as well, having had two glasses myself, and we were both laughing for no real reason. It was late and I had lost track of which questions I had asked him already and which ones I was still saving for later, so I just started making up silly ones on the spot.

"I want to know what you meant earlier when you said White Zinfadel would make this 'more romantic,'" I told him, using air quotes around his exact words.

"That's not a question," said Wentz.

"Okay, let me rephrase. The question is: Are you trying to seduce me?"

He giggled hysterically at that for a while before he could calm down enough to come up with a suitable response. "Nooo," he slurred. "I'm a married man."

"Okay. Lets talk about that."

"No, no, no, no, no..."

"Oh, come on."

"No," he said, shaking his head vigorously to reinforce this insistence. He was still a little red in the face--from laughing too hard or from embarrassment or from being slightly drunk, I couldn't tell--and he was smiling so widely that it made my face hurt just to look at him.

"Please?" I begged. "Please tell me about your marriage?"

"No!" He was silenced by a brief fit of childlike giggles, and once it passed, his expression turned abruptly serious. "There's nothing to tell, okay? It's just...it's..."

"What?"

"...Nothing. It's--nothing." Before I could try and persuade him further, he looked straight at me with that penetrating gaze of his and said matter-of-factly (if a little incoherantly), "Look, I know how you reporters are... I know...you just wanna get some juicy story on...mushy, lovey stuff...so you can sell more magazines--"

"No, no, no!" I insisted. "It's not about that. This stuff...this stuff won't even be in the article, I promise."

Wentz stared at me in bewilderment. "Then why are you asking?"

"I..." I started to tell a lie and, as the words left my mouth, I was startled to find that they were actually true: "I just want to know you."

The change was immediate. Something shifted in his face--softened, melted, turned sweet and easy all at once--and he reached up to run a hand through his hair as if self-conscious. His dark eyes left mine and he just sat there staring at the floor with the weirdest expression. His gaze was dark and serious, but the corners of his lips turned upwards in a small smile: half melancholy, half affectionate.

And then he stopped smiling, his gaze shifting from the floor to some point in space above my head as he stared off into oblivion, apparently deep in thought. When his eyes snapped back to meet mine again, finally, the look in them was both resigned and fiercely determined at once.

Wentz straightened up in his seat so that he was facing me dead-on. "I want to change one of my earlier answers," he said, his tone urgent.

I stared at him blankly. "...Okay."

"When I said that...it didn't matter if it was a question-question or just a question," he explained. "That was a lie."

I said nothing, but waited patiently for him to continue.

"The truth is...it shouldn't matter...but it does." His speech was slightly slurred, and it was obvious that he had to focus harder than usual to form complete sentences, but he seemed to be more aware of himself than I would have expected. "It matters because...I'm gonna answer a question-question differently than...just a question. You know?"

"Um..." I thought that over carefully. "I guess so--"

"For example." Wentz paused long enough to catch my eye and hold it there, staring at me without blinking or flinching away from my gaze--just looking me straight in the eye. "If you're asking me a question-question about my marriage, I'll tell you that I love Ash and she's all I've ever wanted. And then--" He stopped, cleared his throat, swallowed, still swaying unsteadily all the while, and then he collected himself and went on, in one big smear of consonants and vowels that sounded beautiful and terrible all at once: "Then you'll write that down in your little notebook and record it on your little tape recorder and put it in your little article and sell it to millions of little preteen girls who still don't know who the fuck I am after all these years."

He fell silent, but didn't look away. So I swallowed hard and asked the question I knew he was waiting for--the question that made the whole thing my fault, because I was the one who initiated the whole thing by asking in the first place.

He knew this. That's why he waited--he was waiting for me to ask. I am sure of it. I was sure of it, even then.

But Pete was different from all the other people I'd interviewed before him, because words were never just words with him. They always meant something more. Sometimes I didn't know what they meant--hell, sometimes he didn't even know what they meant, exactly--but they always meant something more. It was never just asking questions and getting answers, with him; it was a game for him all along, as so much of his personal life was, in one sick, twisted way or another.

Pete was different because, though I had always had a reputation for not putting up with anyone else's shit, something about him roped me in. He played his games with me, and I played along--knowingly. Willingly.

And so I walked right into the palm of his hand. I asked the question.

"...But what if it's just a question?"

"Then... Then I'll tell you the truth." And just like that, he was calm--so calm, so focused, so gruesomely driven it was almost scary, like watching someone plan out and calculate how to throw themselves off the side of a cliff. Essentially, that was what he was doing, anyway; his dark eyes stared right into my soul and told me this. And his voice was soft, so soft, as he said, "Then I'll tell you that I married Ash because she's sweet and she loves me and she gave me my son, and he's my whole world. But she's not all I ever wanted. Not even fucking close."

Before I even knew what to think about that, before I could think at all, Wentz turned his head to the side so that he wasn't looking at me anymore and started laughing. Hysterically. Out of control. And the whole thing was so bizarre and so sad and so frightening, but he just kept laughing and laughing, rubbing his hands together like the maniacal villain he might have been, his shoulders heaving, hands shaking, head waving back and forth as he laughed.

"Not even close!" he half-screamed through his laughter. "Goddamn it, she's not even fucking close!"

And then all at once he stopped shaking and screaming and yelling and he turned to look at me and the laughter stopped and, despite the horrible clenching in my chest, I was sort of surprised to see that there were tears streaming down his face.

He was crying.

"So now you know," he said, the four syllables jagged and uneven, stretched out over the bitter laughter that was making it's reapperance--sharp and sinister and staccato, like gunfire. His hand shook as he went to pour himself another glass of wine, the clear pale-gold liquid sloshing against the inside of the glass in time with his compulsive laughter. "Now you know me. Are you happy now?"

He downed the entire glass of wine in one go, stared down at the empty glass in his hand, and then sat it down on the table without looking at me.

"So now you know."

He ran a hand through his hair, wiped at his eyes, his fresh tears and the remnants of the afternoon's make-up blending together as one.

"So now you know."

He clasped his hands together in his lap, and somehow I knew without his telling me that it was to stop them from shaking: it didn't work, and so with a horrible grimace he tore the gleaming golden band from his third finger and dropped it into the empty wine glass, flinching at the hollow ringing sound it made.

"So now you know."

I flinched, too, and looked away. I wasn't sure if he was saying the words out loud, over and over again, or if I was only hearing them in my head. I was afraid to look at him--really look at him, beyond the general sweeping glance that took in nothing of any real importance--so I couldn't be sure. But it didn't matter.

"Now you know me."

The words were there, and they were true, so it didn't matter who said them anyway.