Your Eyes Shine Like The Stars At Night

Josh, Darren, Seth and I were all playing nice during the concert: making perverted wisecracks, running around like idiots, and playing the songs like nothing was wrong. I may not have been on speaking terms with them, but I knew that the fans came to have a good time, and I was going to make sure their ticket money didn’t go to waste.

“Did everyone have a good fucking time tonight?” Darren shouted into the microphone, grinning widely when the crowd cheered back at him in response. “Awesome! Here’s the worst part of the night – the part where we have to leave all your incredibly sexy selves and go backstage, and you all go home,” he said, jutting his bottom lip out.

The audience made a collective “Awww” in disappointment. “But,” Darren continued with a smile, “you all probably know by now that once we get offstage, that if you scream for us, we’ll probably come play a few more songs for you.”

Goddammit, I thought to myself. The last thing I wanted after I got offstage was to have to go back out and, literally, put on a show for them. The novelty of putting on a façade for the fans was definitely wearing off. I was sick of everyone on tour except for Brittany.

We all put on fake smiles, directed toward the mass of people, and waved, running backstage. My bandmates huddled together, starting a conversation, but I excluded myself, pushing past them angrily and going to the dressing room. I was walking as fast as I could, just to get away from everyone, and my shoes were clacking on the floor. Much to my dismay, I heard, “ONE MORE SONG! ONE MORE SONG!” being chanted from the front of the venue. I sighed, turning on my heel and grabbing my guitar yet again.

Once again, we put on one hell of a show. Not only could we play our instruments effortlessly, but we could fucking act better than any A-list Hollywood actor. Angelina Jolie, step aside.

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It was awkward. Very awkward, actually. The four of us sat nervously in the front lounge of our bus, no one saying a word. Legs crossed, I stared at my fingers, picking at the edges of my nails for something to do while Darren, Seth and Josh sat around me.

Seth sighed, then lifted his hand, thrusting it downward in the air, pretending to be holding something.

“Seth, what the hell are you doing?” Josh narrowed his eyes at him.

“Cutting the tension,” he said simply.

I rolled my eyes. “Piss off, Seth.”

“Dammit, Scarlett, you’re the one who’s making this so fucking awkward. You haven’t so much as looked at any of us since Saturday,” Seth mentioned with a pleading tone.

“With good reason, I might add.”

“At least she’s speaking to us now,” Josh muttered.

I stood up, walking to the bus door. “Well, not anymore. I’m going to talk to Brittany. Oh wait, I better not leave, because if I do, you’ll all talk about me behind my back again, right?!” I said sarcastically.

This got under Darren’s skin. His expression hardened angrily, and his face brightened to a shade of red as he stood up to be eye-level to me. “Scarlett, we weren’t talking about you! We weren’t fucking gossiping! It was genuine concern, and until you begin to realize that you can’t be so selfish when people try to help, I would really rather not talk to you. We’ve all been making efforts to speak to you, but since you’re being so goddamn stubborn, I’m giving up.” He put up his arms in surrender and defeat. “Go tell your little friend Brittany all the bullshit you want, but we all know the truth.”

His words pierced me like venom. I felt as if the imaginary knife Seth was using to cut the tension earlier was now being used to cut me. And cut me deep it did, because I felt hot tears prick the corners of my eyes as I opened up the door and left.

As soon as I closed the door behind me, I leaned up against the side of our bus and buried my face in my hands, allowing myself to cry freely. I felt liberated, to an extent, because this was the first time since my sister Sandra had given up on me that I was allowing myself to let go and sob. It was the first time I’d let myself feel the pain, and face it head on, trying to deal with it rather than run away from it.

I felt a pair of long, lanky arms wrap around me, rubbing my back soothingly. As much as I wanted to give in and allow Jack to help me, I couldn’t. Help and concern were two things I had trouble taking from others, because for most of my life, I’d been self-reliant. My brother Luke was the only person I had really opened up to about what I had been doing to myself, and he was the only one I would take aid from.

“Jack, please, go away,” I whispered, my eyes closed. I felt safe in his arms, but I just couldn’t bring myself to open up to him.

Jack exhaled, ignoring my request. He wiped the rogue tears from my cheeks, and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, looking down at me. My head hung low, and my eyes were still shut.

“I can’t go away,” he said softly.

“Why not?” I asked quietly, still not looking at him.

“I can’t go away knowing you’re out here crying alone. I don’t like seeing it, but I’d feel even worse if I left you.” We were still speaking in hushed tones, as if loud noises would break us.

“Jack, please, I really don’t want to talk to you right now,” I murmured.

“I know you’re mad at me, but I’m not leaving you.” Why did he have to be so stubborn? This is when I lost it. The near silence was too fucking loud. I broke, and was about to throw it all right back to him. I opened my eyes and looked at him for the first time, my eyes reading fury. I pushed him away from me, releasing myself and stepping to the side to escape. “When I ask you to leave, you fucking leave! You’re the last person I want to see right now. Just seeing your face makes my blood boil! You’re a rat and a gossip and a liar! There was a time where I thought maybe we’d be together, but I can’t be with someone who disregards what I want just to make himself seem like the good guy! Let me just say one thing. Pretending you care by doing a fucking intervention does not make you the good guy. It makes you the guy who gets so deep under my skin, that looking at you makes me want to scream.”

I didn’t wait for a response, I just turned around and walked down the street towards the coffee shop I’d seen earlier. My body was trembling from nerves and my blood felt like it was on fire. Every breath I took was shaky and unsteady, and I clenched my fists tightly, knitting my eyebrows together in anger and frustration.

I quickly ordered and paid for a cup of coffee, hoping it would help to calm my nerves. It didn’t.

I nearly dropped the cup because my hands were shaking so much. My heart was pounding, and when I looked up and saw Brittany standing by my table, I felt like my heart was going to pop out of my chest.

“Brittany!” I screeched. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

She shrugged and gave me a small, friendly smile before sitting across from me. “Jack told me what happened,” she said simply in a soft voice.

“Mmm,” I mumbled in response, taking another sip of the hot liquid. “How’d you know I came here?”

“He said he saw you walk in this direction. The only places around here besides this coffee shop are a salon, a pharmacy, and a candle shop. It wasn’t hard to figure you’d be here,” she chuckled lightly. “Unless of course, you planned on starting a fire on ATL’s bus with a candle, cutting your hair so the police didn’t find you, and then buying an “I’m Sorry” greeting card from the drug store.”

I laughed, rolling my eyes. “Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but I’m still a bundle of nerves.”

“I can tell,” she replied, nodding her head at my hands, which were still shaking. “So are you ever going to forgive any of them?” she asked in curiosity.

I shrugged my shoulders, pressing the cup to my lips again. The hot sensation of the liquid sliding down my throat was relaxing. “Probably,” I answered.

“All of them?”

“No. Just most of them.”

“Define most,” she prodded.

“Most as in, everyone except for Jack,” I clarified.

She looked at me as if I were a child, and she was my mom, silently chiding me to be nicer. “You obviously both like each other, so why even bother avoiding him? He was just trying to help, which means he cares about you, which means he’d be a great boyfriend,” she pointed out.

“Well apparently, he doesn’t know how to help. It was pretty stupid, what he did.”

She chuckled. “If you’ve known Jack for as long as I have, you would expect nothing but stupidity from him. He does what he can, but he’s like a child: he doesn’t always know what to do, or how to go about doing it, but he always wants to help anyway.”

“I don’t care, I don’t need help. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t have a problem.”

She sighed deeply, evidently thinking otherwise. “Come on hun, we need to get back to the buses. We’re leaving soon.”

I followed her out of the shop and down the sidewalk that led to the parking lot down the street. We were silent the whole way back. Ever since I’d stopped speaking to the boys, Brittany had been the one person I was still talking to, but after our discussion in the coffee shop, I’d felt as if it was hard even talking to her anymore. No matter who I was talking to, I felt like I was in an impenetrable bubble, and I wasn’t letting anyone in, no matter how much I actually wanted to. I didn’t know how to take sympathy.

Jack was still standing outside of my bus where I’d left him an hour ago. His arms were crossed and he was standing alone, looking at the ground. My heart lurched at the sight of him, but once again, I was going to push him away, just like I did to everyone else in my life.

My stomach rumbled once again in hunger, and I saw his head snap to me out of the corner of my eye when he heard it. I ignored him and stepped into my bus, feeling his eyes on me as I did so.

My bandmates were still in the same chairs they had been in earlier, and it was mostly quiet, but the air seemed much less thick and much less tense, for which I was grateful. “Hey guys,” I greeted quietly.

They all looked up, nodding their heads at me. Cautiously, I stepped forward, situating myself between Josh and Seth on the couch, seeing if they’d deny me access. Thankfully, they graciously allowed me the spot without argument.

“So…” I started.

“So,” Josh mocked playfully, jabbing me lightly in the elbow. Apparently things had cooled down since I left.

“So, I’m sorry, guys. For being bitch. And yelling at you. And walking out,” I apologized sincerely.

“Yeah, we know you are,” Seth smiled, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. I laughed at him.

Darren still seemed unusually quiet, so I tempted him to speak. “Darren, I’m especially sorry to you. I screamed in your face, and that wasn’t right,” I shook my head in remorse. “I regret it.”

“It’s okay,” he said, ungluing his eyes from the window and smiling lightly at me. “Heat of the moment, I know. We both kind of blew up.”

Just like that, I’d gotten three of my best friends back. The challenge I wasn’t looking forward to undertaking was getting Zack, Rian, Alex and Matt to forgive me for yelling at them in the intervention. Still, Jack was the one person I was refusing to apologize to.