You Can't Be Missed If You Never Go Away

She didn’t let go of his hand as they walked, she actually laced her fingers with his and tightened her grip on his hand.

“Alex,” she whispered, causing the boy with the coffee colored hair to look at her. His warm brown eyes looked like pools of molten chocolate as he looked at the girl who had his heart, and would always have his heart. “I need to know, did you ever get over me?”

He dug his teeth into his bottom lip in thought before answering, “No, I- I don’t think I ever did.”

“I thought so,” Kyra smiled.

“What about you?” he asked as they continued to walk. “Did you ever get over me?”

“If I said no, I’d be lying,” she said.

“But when you said no when I asked you to…”

“I didn’t love you then,” she replied. “I was mad at you for a lot of things, Alex. I couldn’t be in love with you after hearing how many people you‘d been with and seeing you with Natie. Just because you flashed a shiny ring in my face and said you’d promise me that you’d change, I couldn’t believe you. I missed you for a while, though. I tried and I got over that feeling. But I don‘t think I ever got over you.”

He shrugged. “You know I missed you, even though you were right here the whole time on tour and you were with Jack. Did you ever have that feeling?”

“Alex, how am I supposed to miss you?” Kyra questioned with a giggle. “You know you can’t be missed if you never go away.”

“I don’t know that,” Alex responded, stopping and spinning Kyraleigh to face him. “I mean, you’re right here and I still miss you.”

She let out a giggle and looked up at him. The makeup, blood, and tears stained her face and her hair was rather messy, but Alex looked past it and saw the girl he had grown up with. He licked his thumb and ran it over Kyra’s cheeks to remove the smudges. Kyra grabbed his wrist and looked up to meet his eyes, keeping his hand on her cheek.

“Alex,” she whispered. “I think I still love you.”

“Kyra, I know I still love you,” Alex whispered before leaning over to press his chapped lips to her spit ones softly. Kyra let go of his wrist and wrapped her arms around his neck as his free hand found her hip to pull her closer.

He was in heaven; Kyraleigh was his again. Nothing in the world could ruin Alexander William Gaskarth’s happiness from the fact that tour was ending in three and a half weeks and Kyraleigh would be hanging around with him after that. Well, except if he saw the girl standing twenty feet away from them, sending a death glare into the back of his head.

Steff stood there, frozen in shock as she watched the blonde everyone had grown to hate kissing Alex, yet again. It sickened her to see that scum attached to anyone, let alone Alex, when Jack had just broken up with her and she acted so devastated over it. She regained a sense of reality and decided it was time to go back to the bus.x-x-x

Jack had given up on trying to sleep once Vinny and Rian walked through the bunks to get to the lounge. They were followed by Matt and Zack, who made even more noise, making sleeping quite impossible, so he rolled out of the bunk and went to the front of the bus where Kara sat, repainting her nails with a pale green color. Jack sat down next to the brunette and opened his mouth to ask her something when the bus door went flying open and a blonde came onto the bus, Initially thinking it was just Kyra, Jack sighed, but when he noticed it was Steff, his caring instinct kicked in.

“Steff, are you okay?” he asked as Kara capped her nail polish bottle. Steff shrugged and sat next to Jack muttering, “I guess.”

“What did that girl do now?” Kara asked, fanning her nails off, Jack wrapped an arm around Steff, who leaned into his shoulder.

“She’s out there kissing Alex,” Steff whispered, causing both Kara and Jack’s mouths to drop.

“I’m going to kill that girl,” Kara muttered, going to the window to peer through the blinds at the couple, not caring what happened to the paint on her nails. “That girl is going to fuck up the whole band, you know that? First she’s with Alex, he breaks her heart, then she leads the poor boy on and gets with Jack. Then she breaks up with him and goes back to Alex? You know, next she’ll be all over Zack or Matt in a few weeks. Oh and as soon as she gets within five feet of Rian, I swear to god I’m going to deck her…”

“Kara never talks like that,” Jack whispered into Steff’s ear with worry evident in his voice. She nodded, knowing Jack was right, and Kara turned around to look at them. “I think she is serious.”

“Kar, don’t do anything drastic,” Steff warned. “She’s a slut, we can’t change that fact.”

“But…” the brunette started

“Nothing drastic,” Jack stated calmly, tightening his grip on Steff’s shoulder.

To say Jack had become protective of Steff since the time she kissed Alex Lipshaw would be an understatement. Jack practically took the girl in like she was his little sister. Whenever she needed someone and Kara wasn’t around, Jack took it upon himself to be there, mainly because he didn’t like her hanging out with the Hey Monday boys too much. They weren’t bad people, Jack just didn’t like how they looked at her like she was some sort of prize. Especially Lipshaw. Jack knew he had a ‘thing’ for Steff, and as long as Jack was around, Lipshaw’s ‘thing’ wasn’t becoming a reality.

Kara let out a dramatic sigh and fell onto the couch. Jack rolled his eyes and Steff let out a giggle.

“If I can’t deck her, how are you going to keep her from ruining the band?” Kara asked.

“Dunno,” Jack said, blowing the bangs out of his eyes. “Why do you even care about it, Kar?”

“I just want to show him that he’s making the wrong choices,” Kara sighed. “He’ll ruin everything if he keeps it up. But he won’t listen to us, now will he.”

“I know how to fix that,” Jack suggested.

“And how would that be?” Kara asked.

“We make ‘em jealous,” he stated simply. “Kyra likes playing games, so let the games begin.”

“Well what type of games are we talking about here?” Kara asked, furrowing her eyebrows together as she looked at him.

“I need a hot blonde that is willing to be a make out buddy, possibly, and I’m talking like very slim possibility here, a fuck buddy,” Jack replied. “It’s a sure fire way to make Alex and an ex-girlfriend that is a blonde jealous.”

“Where the hell would you find a hot blonde on tour to make Alex and Kyra both jealous?” Steff asked before Kara could respond to Jack’s high school-like behavior.

“I’m pretty sure I’m looking at her,” Jack smirked, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

Steff blushed and replied, “We’ll see about that, Barakat.”

“So is that a maybe?” he questioned.

“Maybe.”

He beamed and removed his arm from her shoulder so he could stand up. He walked to the fridge, grabbed a vitamin water, and proceeded to walk to the back lounge.

Kara looked at her friend quizzically. “Are you seriously going to consider that offer, Steff?”

The blonde shrugged. “Dunno, Kara, it might just be the best way to…”

“Be classified as a whore,” Kara interjected.

Steff frowned and stated, “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” before getting up to go climb into her bunk.