I'm Such a Mess, I Wonder How I Looked Through Your Eyes

Eyeing the paint that had splattered across my pants, I frowned meanly and then glared at the boy standing across from me. He smiled cutely in response and then shrugged his shoulders. As innocent as he looked, standing there in his own paint splattered clothes, a paintbrush in one hand while the other held a Milky Way candy bar, I couldn't help but laugh softly.

"Sorry Alyssa Jane." Jonathan told me.

"It's fine." I replied.

Jonathan considered me momentarily before he raised his candy bar to his mouth and took a bite. Chewing his food thoughtfully, his green eyes evaluated me. Unsure as to what he was thinking of, I disregarded his interest and turned my attention back to our pain job at hand. After dipping my paintbrush into the can of dark blue paint at my feet, I reached up and tediously painted in the lines of the mural we had stenciled earlier this morning.

"Alyssa, can I ask you something … kinda personal?" Jonathan asked.

"Sure, Jonathan."

"All this stuff going on between you, and Kyle, and Caleb," he said slowly, "do you ever think about maybe just finding someone entirely new?"

I remained silent until I finished painting what I had to paint. I leaned over and lay my paintbrush across the top of the paint can before I straightened up and faced Jonathan. I dusted my hands off on my pants while my eyes remained focused on his. As he stared back, he had a sheepish look on his face, as if he wanted nothing more at the moment than to take back his question.

"Sometimes I do consider it." I admitted. "I mean … I hate seeing them so … angry at one another. Before we were all the best of friends, and Kyle could take me out to grab a bite to eat without Caleb getting pissed off, and Caleb could buy me some silly little knick knack without Kyle threatening to kick his ass. Sometimes I love them to death and couldn't imagine how things would be if I turned down either one of them, and sometimes I just get so fucking upset that I want to leave without telling anybody, and find me a cute boy at some café … or skate park … and run away with him."

Jonathan's curious stare turned apologetic before he began to nibble at his candy bar once more. I licked my lips slightly, watching him.

"Why do you ask?" I questioned.

"I don't know," Jonathan mumbled. "No reason I guess."

"There's a reason why you asked me, Jonathan." I sighed. "Out with it."

"Well," he said slowly, "I know this guy who I think you'd like." Jonathan shrugged his shoulders before turning his gaze to our mural.

"Oh?" I asked, hesitant for the fact that I wasn't sure if I wanted Jonathan to play matchmaker for me. "What's he into?"

Again, Jonathan shrugged his shoulders. "He's into music and football mainly. And hunting, he likes to hunt a lot." With that, Jonathan fell silent, taking another bite of his candy bar.

I shook my head a little, thinking to myself. Looking at him, and piecing together the description of his friend, I started to panic slightly. "Jonathan?" I asked slowly. "You're not ... talking about yourself, are you?"

With my words, I watched as my friend choked on his food, coughed, and then spit it out. "What? No, no, not me." He said hurriedly as he shook his head. "I'm talking about my friend DJ."

"Oh," I blushed, "It's just ... I guess he's into the same things you are, huh?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Jonathan agreed.

"What made you think of all this?" I asked curiously.

"Apparently he met you a couple of years ago at one of my house parties," Jonathan explained, "he had been asking about you a month or so ago. And," he paused, watching me closely before looking down to the ground, "and I see how upset you get with Kyle and Caleb from time to time. I just thought that maybe ... you'd want to consider someone new."

Not knowing what else to say, I simply let a quiet, barely audible 'oh' escape from my lips. Jonathan's only response was the shrug of his shoulders, before dipping his brush into his own can of paint. Without another word, either of us set back to work with hopes of completing our mural within the next hour or so.

The time seemed to pass us slowly. Well, at least for me it seemed.

With so much on my mind, I took a step back and was partially surprised to find that I had been able to follow the lines of my stencil relatively well without too much of a variance from the original. Goodness knows that my mind has been elsewhere as of late.

"How are things coming along over there, Alyssa?" Jonathan asked, seeing that I had stopped painting.

"Good." I muttered softly. "Jonathan, can I ask you something now?"

"Of course, sweetheart."

"What do you think I should do?"

Jonathan ceased his painting and looked over to my side. "I think you should wait for it to dry, and then go back over the outlines with some black paint to make it pop a little." He said, nodding his head. "And then maybe - "

"No," I sighed, "I meant what do you think I should do about this whole ... love triangle shit?"

"Oh," he said offhandedly. "I, uh ... " he trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck with his freehand.

He frowned softly and then bit his lip before setting aside his brush. His eyes not quite meeting mine, he slowly made his way to where I was standing. Taking my hands in his, he squeezed them tightly and then finally brought his eyes up, locking them with my own.

"I think that you either need to pick one of them soon, or let them go." He whispered. "I know that I told them to back off and let you take the time to think about it, and I know that I told them that you didn't come here looking for a relationship with either one of them, but truth be told, that's what it's turned into."

"What do you mean," I asked slowly, "that that's what it's turned into?"

"I mean, it wasn't your intention to come along in hopes of getting with one of them, but your heart's decided that you have to be with one of them, and soon. There's no putting it off any longer. As much as it hurts you to have to choose, it's hurting them to sit around and wait for you to make up your mind." He explained; it's funny to think that I need someone other than myself to decipher and interpret for me what my own feelings and emotions are saying.

"Oh, Jonathan," I whispered sadly, "how on earth am I supposed to decide something like this?"

The expression on Jonathan's face matched my own sad one, and he reached up, caressing my cheek gently with his fingers. "Perhaps you already decided, but just haven't realized it yet." He suggested.

"I wish I would realize what I've decided." I said bitterly. "It would save us all a lot of this fucking heartache we've all be going through."

Jonathan didn't say anything, but rather let his gaze linger on my own. Perhaps he didn't know what to say in regards to the situation. Goodness knows, I've run out of things to say about it a long time ago.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Unsure where I was, I looked up at the unfamiliar face above mine as if the longer I stared at him, the faster I would be able to place him. My head hurt too much to think, though, and I blinked slowly, looking elsewhere in another attempt to figure out where I was.

My eyes were blurry, and the more I tried to focus, the more my head would hurt. Abandoning all my goals for the moment, I closed my eyes and simply lay there, in this unfamiliar place with unfamiliar faces.

"Ma'am, you need to stay awake if you can." The stranger said gently. When I didn't reply, he repeated, "ma'am?"

"Alyssa," I muttered thickly, my own tongue heavy and useless feeling in my mouth.

"What?"

I opened a tired eye and stared up at the strange guy who looked to be my age, give or take a year. "Alyssa," I mumbled, "my name's Alyssa."

"Alyssa, my name's Elliot." He said softly. "You're in the ambulance right now."

"Ambulance?" I repeated. "Why?"

"The story is that you were unloading your trailer of some sort, and somehow a ... table fell on top of you?" He said slowly.

"A table," I muttered, "along with a case full of various sorts of musical equipments?"

Elliot laughed softly. "Yeah, that sounds like the story we were told."

"I'm gonna kill those boys." I slurred. "What's the damage then, doc?"

"It looks like a broken arm and possibly a concussion; you were unconscious and unresponsive when we arrived."

I finally got the boost to open my other eye, but then instantly closed the both of them when the small space began to spin.

"Why do I feel so weird?" I asked.

"You were given a shot of Demerol."

"No," I grumbled, "no more Demerol. It usually makes me hallucinate. Give me Morphine instead please."

"Alright, Alyssa."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to gain control of my thoughts and organize them how they should be. Due to the Demerol, however, my thoughts raced, making me feel as if I were going crazy.

I wanted to keep talking to Elliot but I could barely pull myself together long enough to form a coherent sentence. Waves upon waves of emotions washed over me and before I realized it, I felt the tears starting to escape past my closed eyelids.

"Alyssa, what's wrong?" Elliot questioned. "Is the pain starting to come back?"

I tried to shake my head, but found that I had been strapped into one of those contraptions that you see them putting on head trauma patients on the television. I opened my eyes and wished that I could pull myself together long enough to tell Elliot that I didn't know the reason as to why I was crying, but I couldn't. I simply turned my gaze from his concerned stare and focused on a gauge of some sort above me.

Elliot went to the front and exchanged a few words with the driver before he returned to my side. "We're almost there, Alyssa." He said gently before wiping away my tears with some tissue papers.

A few minutes later, I was ushered into a sort of exam room by some nurses, with Elliot at their side, telling them my condition. He explained that I couldn't talk much because of the Demerol, and passed on the command that I'd be given Morphine from now on. After they took some x-rays of my left arm, I was forced to bid goodbye to Elliot in the form of a jumbled, intoxicated sounding 'thanks'.

Before I realized what was happening, I was either in the middle of a CT scan, or a MRA; I honestly don't know which. The process was done a little while later, and by the time I was back in one of the exam rooms in the trauma center, the Demerol was starting to wear off.

When a nurse and doctor returned to see me, I was able to carry out a normal conversation with them.

"It seems that you were banged up pretty bad, Ms. Parker," the doctor told me, "but your scans revealed that there's no swelling in your brain. Looks like your arm took most of the impact. There's a clean break on your ulna which will heal quickly with a cast, but a lot of the little bones in your wrist was been shattered. You're going to have to undergo surgery for it."

"Surgery?" I whispered. "What are you going to do to it? Screw everything back together?"

The doctor nodded his head. "Basically." He said.

"When do we do this, then?" I questioned. "I have a tour and a job I have to get back to."

The doctor laughed softly before patting my knee. "As soon as Kelly here gets you prepped for surgery."

"Mind if you just knock me out right here, right now Kelly?" I asked, turning to the pretty blonde haired nurse standing beside the doctor. "The pain is starting to come back."

It was Kelly's turn to laugh and she nodded her head. "We'll get you out of here in no time."

As Kelly started to gather some things, the doctor departed, leaving just the two of us. Neither of us said anything until after Kelly had administered some drugs into my IV. Seemingly as soon as she had dispensed the clear liquid into my IV, I started to feel woozy, and I had a hard time keeping my eyes focused on anything.

I stared up at the curtains, hoping that their simple color would help me steady my eyes, but found that instead of just hanging there, they started to dance out a tap number for me.

"No," I grumbled, "damn it," I said, knowing instantly that they hadn't listened to Elliot when he said to give me Morphine for the pain, rather than the Demerol.

"Ms. Parker, what is it?" Kelly asked.

Upset, I shook my head. "Let's go." I muttered, my words starting to slur once again.

Without another word, Kelly fumbled around with something on the bottom of my bed, and then pushed the dancing curtains back before she started to wheel me off. By the nurses' station, though, I heard someone calling my name, and then the bed stopped abruptly before Caleb's face appeared above mine.

Some sort of emotion pulled at my chest, an emotion that I wasn't quite able to place at the moment. I stared up at Caleb for a couple of seconds before I opened my mouth.

"Kyle." I slurred.

Caleb tilted his head to the side, giving me a confused look. "No, I'm Caleb," he said slowly, "not Kyle."

"Where's Kyle?" I asked tiredly.

Caleb reached over, brushing aside some of my hair. "He's on his way." He whispered. "I ... I'll see you when you get out of surgery, Alyssa."

Without another word, Caleb walked away, and suddenly I was able to put a finger on what it was that I had felt when I first saw him.

Disappointment.

I was disappointed when I saw that Caleb had arrived first, and not Kyle. I was disappointed to find out that Caleb was the last person I would see before going into surgery. I was simply disappointed that it was Caleb and not Kyle.

And so it would seem that in the middle of my Demerol induced psychosis, I finally realized what my heart had decided a long time ago ...

Kyle William Burns was the one.

The boy I wanted to love, and be loved by in return. The boy I wanted to start a family with. The boy I wanted to marry and grow old with.

It had always been him.