The Missing O

Bring Me The Horizon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia.

Bring Me The Horizon are an English metalcore band from Sheffield, Yorkshire, who formed in 2004. They played a style of music that fuses death metal and metalcore, known as death core on their first album - but they have taken on a more eclectic style with their latest album.

Members
Oliver Sykes
Lee Malia
Matt Kean
Matt Nicholls
Jona Weinhofen

Apparently there’d be a former member of the band, a guy called Curtis Ward. Through further research I also found out the following: they’d stolen their name from a line in Pirates of The Caribbean, they’d headline a few tours in both the UK and the states and that Oliver had supposedly pissed on a girl.

With each link that Google presented me with, the angrier I grew, and when I’d finally dared myself to venture onto Google images, seeing his face smirking back at me a thousand times over, I’d become furious. Not only with him or his brother or Matt and Charlie, but with myself.

If I’d paid just the blindest bit more attention, I probably would have figured this out for myself. I mean, maybe not that Oliver was in a pretty bloody famous rock band that had a good deal of success lagging behind their arses, but that there was something else going on.

His apartments was too nice, his clothes too new and the fact that he always paid for everything suggested that he had more than a clothing line up his sleeve.

Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t act as though he had millions stuffed in his back pocket that threw me off - generous as he was, he wasn’t a show off. Or maybe his shitty car had kept me second guessing. I’d understood from the beginning that Oliver had money. I’d just never pried deep enough to find out where it all came from.

Two weeks after Christmas, and just a few days into the new year, Tom called me again, to ask if I’d meet him at Asda to help him with the food shopping.

The fact that neither of the Sykes boys had taken up my offer of a Christmas dinner at Charlie and I’s apartment hadn’t seemed to have made a cut deep enough to be noticed over the sting of Oli’s latest bombshell. I didn’t plan on bringing the first issue up with Tom, but the latter was hard to be avoided.

To be honest, my sourness and bitter rage that I’d newly began feeling toward his older brother had rubbed off on him a little. But then again, so it had with Charlie. They all knew, and they’d all kept it from me. But I missed Tom, a little more than I should have for someone I barely knew, so I’d agreed to go with him.

“Have you ever tried this? It’s fucking amazing,” Tom asked, throwing a carton of mango smoothie into his cart after showing it to me. I didn’t even reply, just inspected the selection of yoghurts with arms folded, walking slowly beside him.

“Morgan,” he sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I lied to you. But Oli made me promise not to tell you about the band or anything to do with it. Don’t be mad with me, please.”

“I’m not mad at you,” I said, just a tiny lie.

He sighed again with distress. “Oli has his reasons, Morgan. He wasn’t doing it to hurt you or anything.”

I stopped when we reached the cheeses, the fury having built up until it seeped into my face, bright as the Red Leicester.

“Oh of course. Like keeping this shit from me wouldn’t have pissed me off in the slightest. It completely changes who he is, Tom.”

With a sad smirk which could also be taken as one full of wisdom - far too much for that of nineteen year old - he pointed one of his long fingers at me like I’d just proven his point for him.

“That’s exactly why he didn’t want you to know. It would have changed things between the two of you,” he pushed his trolley round into the next isle - meat. If Oliver were here he’d probably be revolted. Actually, if he was here at this precise moment I would have kicked him where it hurts.

“Being famous,” Tom continued. The way he said the last word made it sound like he thought it was a joke, “it effects the relationships you have with people, more than you think. Things like image, popularity, money…all that shit, it gets in the way. But if you thought Oli was just any other bloke, then it would have been real. He’d have known that you were into him for him, not his money or what clubs he can get into. You have to understand that at least.”

I tried to go back, way back to where it had started, that first Sunday in the café. Whilst ignoring the pang at how I missed those days, I imagined how differently things would have gone, had I known.

"Hello, I’m Oliver. I’m a rock star and fucking loaded. Fancy a lemon slice?”

Tom was right. No matter how decent a person I could wish to be, it would have altered things, one way or another. Maybe I’d have accepted him sooner, or maybe not at all. I wasn’t in to the arrogant, ‘Look at me, I’m amazing’ type of people. I like subtlety. That was another asset I’d admired of Oliver; he fascinated me in so many ways, but they were so hidden it was a miracle he’d let me see them. Or maybe an accident. Now I understood - he really did have something to hide. He’d been holding back on me, all this time.

And what a good job he’d done too. There had been a few slip ups, along the way, but non of which I’d picked up on until now that I knew. Take the first time I met Tom, when the younger brother had told him to get out of the public eye. Or the time we’d gone shopping for his mothers Christmas present and that girl had given me stink eye, just for walking with Oliver. But to that girl he wasn’t just Oliver. He was Oli Sykes. A guy that I didn’t know at all, a complete stranger.

I’d even been introduced to the band at one point - not in person, of course. Britt had been working on their promotional art for months. The second the guy in the corridor outside of Oliver and Matt’s apartment had told me the name of the band, it had clicked. Britt had gone as far as to offer to make me a copy of the CD, but I’d completely forgotten about it. Only if I’d remember and gotten that CD. Would I have found out? Definitely, sooner or later I must have.

This was all so fucked up.

“I don’t know what to do, Tom,” I groaned.

He threw a few packets of sliced ham and Corned Beef into the cage that was steadily filling. Just as if this were any other shopping trip and not like he was practically giving me counselling.

“Well, I am his brother, so my advice is probably a little biased,” he said. “But if I were you, I’d call him. You know, talk it out. Only thing is, I’m not sure where they are right now. Not sure of the tour dates and all that.”

“He’s your brother, he could be in Germany for all you know, and you’re totally clueless,” I grinned, for the first time today, and he returned it, followed by a shrug. But my light mood faded and I felt just as depressed. “Doesn’t matter anyway - he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“You’re crazy. Really, Morgan,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure he does. In fact, I’d put money on it. But, you see, Oliver is probably the biggest girl when it comes to…well, girls. One’s he really cares about anyway - and he’s definitely hung up on you, Love. He won’t make the first move, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not crazy. He’s pissed at me - he hasn’t spoken to me in nearly three weeks, if you don’t recall, Thomas.”

“I told you - he’s a total wimp. You scare the shit out of him - he’ll never admit that of course, but I know him like a…well, he’s my brother. He told me what happened at his appartment,” Tom’s blue eyes - such an eerie shade, almost ghostly, so unlike his brothers - scoped my expression, waiting to see if this too would have angered me. I guess at the moment I was a bit of a time bomb. I felt guilty instantly, only then realizing what I must have been putting the poor kid through.

I made somewhat of an effort to relax, trying to soften the tension in my shoulders before taking a breath and clearing my mind.

“What did he say about it?” I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know the answer, but I guess I had to if I wanted to make this murky situation any clearer.

“He was totally bummed out about it. Just rejected and all that. Didn’t really say too much, but he thought that he’d done something wrong,” Tom admitted, not quite meeting my eye. He instead busied himself with choosing between Lemonade and Cream Soda. After a long battle, Cream Soda won.

“Something wrong?” I prompted, knowing there was something he wasn’t letting on.

“Oli…he’s got quite a past,” he looked at me, guilt ridden, as though he was telling on his sibling. “As a bit of a ladies man. That’s dressing it up a bit, I guess. He was a bit of a slut. Was - okay, Morgan?” he said, his reaction to my own. “He isn’t like that anymore, the Sod’s finally grown up a bit. I guess he just thought he’d moved too fast or something.”

Trying to take everything in such a short space of time - we’d gone from a secret Rockstar life to an Ex whore, and that was only between the diary produce and fizzy drink isles. It made my head spin, just a little.

“Okay,” I breathed, just trying accept everything. “But why did he stop talking to me?”

Tom shrugged. “You’re guess is as good as mine. You’re gonna have to talk to him, sooner or later. And the longer the two of you leave it, the more awkward it’s going to be.”