The Glass Passenger

“You’re angry.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement that fell very easily from Annie’s lips. Annie had come back later that evening feeling very fulfilled and accomplished.

She had yet again completed and had sent another soul on their merry way. Her mood was high and she was humming a tune to herself. But her mood dipped slightly when she took her usual seat next to Alex on the windowsill of his hospital room. Tension was streaming off Alex in the firm of hostile vibes that had the intention of hurting Annie. But she seemed immune to rays of this sort; maybe she had simply had too many experiences with them, and after a momentary sting she recovered.

“Of course I’m angry, what’s the point of this Annie? What’s the point of me telling you the stories to every single charm? Why should I tell you all of these private things that have nothing, nothing at all to do with you?” Alex said hotly glaring at her with a fire in his eyes.

He was still reeling from seeing Rachel in such a state. She had never been the kind of girl who cried. When they had first started dating Alex was partly horrified, partly amused that she could not cry in films. She could sit through all of ‘Titanic’ and ‘The Notebook’ without shedding a tear, and seeing her so worked up at his hospital was obviously a slap in the face.

At present there was nobody in the hospital room. It was dark outside and somehow Zack and Jack had managed to get Rachel out of the hospital. She was spending the evening with Jack and his parents. She still didn’t trust herself to sleep in the apartment that she and Alex shared and neither did the boys, they couldn’t let her cry herself to sleep wearing one of Alex’s shirts.

“Will you tell me the next story?” Annie asked trying to appease Alex.

“What’s the point Annie?” Alex asked again hotly, attempting to keep his blood pressure down.

“The point is that you have nothing else better to do right now Alex.”

Annie was simple, exact and to the point. In the real world Alex valued these kinds of traits and of course he had found those in Rachel and maybe that was why Annie proved to be such an annoyance in his current supernatural life. Sometimes she was just too much like Rachel.

“Please Alex?” Annie asked in a pleading way that meant he couldn’t deprive her of the story that was connected to the dice charm.

Eight months into their relationship it came to crunch time.

It had been a month after Rachel’s dad had suffered from a stroke and Alex had felt that this had cemented their relationship. In some bizarre way the difficult times following Mr Margot’s stroke proved just how much Alex and Rachel could handle together.

Of course Alex had been wonderfully accepting even though that month had been a month of great creativity for All Time Low who were currently pulling together songs for a CD that would later be know as ‘The Party Scene’.

Rachel witnessed little of the first songs births; all her time had been spent totally absorbed with her family and nursing her father after nature decided to fight back. It didn’t annoy Alex but Rachel felt as though she were neglecting her duty as girlfriend.

But during the weeks that followed on after Mr Margot’s stroke Rachel had felt the claustrophobia settling in around her.

“I’m going crazy Alex, it’s like I can’t breath,” Rachel had said one night to him as they lay wrapped around each other on Alex’s couching with the television on, but not really watching the film that was enfolding on screen.

He knew exactly how she was feeling, maybe it was simply because he was so in tune with her now that she didn’t really have to voice her feelings anymore for him to understand him, or maybe it was because he had been thinking the same things.

All Time Low had become a standard name in Baltimore. Everyone in the town knew who they were and what they did. Their music was appreciated and talked about, yet Alex definitely felt like a Hometown Hero but a National Nobody.

That wasn’t how it was meant to be.

“What do you want Rachel?” Alex had asked her after placing a loving kiss on her forehead.

“I want to breath and be free,” Rachel began but it wasn’t long before Alex interrupted her.

“Then go to New York!”

They had had this discussion many times but had always stopped before it turned into an argument but this time it was different. Alex exclamation provoked one of their first ever-real arguments. Rachel couldn’t leave her family and wonder off to New York to work in some art place, even though it had been a dream of hers for a long time.

Alex had been the one who prompted her to pursue the dream of showcasing and enlightening other people with art. His support for her dream of sharing art started when he visited her house for the first time and found that her bookshelf chiefly consisted of classical literature and art books.

“If you’re not going to go to New York then I’m taking you on tour!” Alex threatened.

They were now stood up face each other; Rachel had her hands on her hips defiantly and Alex held a defensive stance.

“You know I’m not coming on tour with you!” Rachel had protested loudly and with a growing sense of rage.

He knew of her aversion to tours and he knew that taking her on a tour would probably break up their relationship.

She had joined All Time Low on tour once right at the very start, whilst they were the tiny support band for another band that had a large cash flow and ego to match. The three weeks had been hell. Travelling had always unsettled her and she never felt the need to see as many places as possible, all she had ever wanted to do was simply leave Baltimore but not feel like a gypsy. Tour was unsettling, unhealthy and hellish with the ever-rising number of young leggy and beautiful girls chasing after the boys Rachel’s inferiority complex shot through the roof.

“You know what will happen if I go on tour with you! That’ll be the end of us!”

“Why don’t you go to New York then Rachel?” Alex had shouted at her, he couldn’t understand why she refused to chase her dreams. It was something that came so naturally to him and it frustrated him that Rachel couldn’t follow her dreams with the same ease.

“I can’t leave my family here like this and plus what if it goes wrong? What if I go to New York and it’s a disaster?” The anger had left her voice at this point and her true anxieties were shining through.

It was the fear of failure and having to return home with that failure strapped to her back like a monster that made Rachel live inside the security bubble that was Baltimore, even if it left her unable to breath.

Finally glad to be let into the workings of her mind Alex had dropped his defensive stand and had taken a step towards her, pulling her shaking hand into his.

“Take a chance Rachel, take a gamble and just get out of this place before it drives you mad!”

For Alex it had always been relatively easy to take a gamble, he thrived off spontaneity and the thrill of rolling the dices and seeing where they landed and what their numbers spelled out for his future. He had always tried to encourage Rachel to think in the same way, but her duties had always been more homeward bound even if it meant that she suffered in silence.

In the end of course Rachel took the gamble. She set off to New York at the same time when the boys fulfilled their duty as tiny and unknown support band. The gamble had paid off and only the fact that Alex would soon be home had enough pull to make Rachel come back home to Baltimore after successfully hosting three art gallery events that had attracted many a famous face.

She never told Alex that he had been right about the gamble because she was scared that he would encourage her to start to aim bigger and that these bigger dreams would move them apart, but that was something that she never shared with him.

“So do the dice mean that she just got lucky?” Annie asked with some confusion evident on her face.

“No they just mean that she was brave enough to throw them, what the outcome would have been wasn’t important. Whatever Rachel touches turns to gold,’ Alex said with a soft smile.

“Does that mean you too?”

Alex faltered slightly.

“I guess it does…”

But that was a thought with which he couldn’t occupy himself with. At least not just yet.