How A Heart Breaks

When I woke up the day after my birthday, I felt it rage inside my bones. I know twenty-two is not really an old age, but to me, it feels like I’m ancient. It almost makes me want to hurl, though only slightly. I knew that today, I would most likely be overly sarcastic, and come off as a bit rude, and I know that by now, Nathan and Porter will be expecting it.

While I’m glaring into my fridge to find something to eat, Nathan bounds through my door without even a warning. In fact, I hadn’t even been expecting him to show up on this particular day: the whole band tends to stay away fro me. I growl, but I don’t look at him, and he’s running his mouth about something that is most likely stupid, because he’s just always been like that.

I slam the fridge door shut, and spin around to face Nathan, who’s still talking with some smile on his face, and I don’t think he quite knows exactly why I’m snarling at him, but once he realizes, his mouth shuts and his eyes fall to the floor. Because along with my grumpy state, I become pretty sensitive to people looking at my face directly, it feels as if they’re looking for any signs of aging, and I’ve become scared that they would even point it out when it was noticed. I know it’s almost even an irrational fear, but it’s still there, and everyone who really knows me, knows that. So, just don’t look at my face the day after my birthday.

I don’t really even know why it’s that specific, or why it bothers me so much, although it’s just in really in my control. It does make me feel like a nut case sometimes, and I would not put it above Nathan to think that exact thing. He mumbles something under his breath that I don’t particularly care about, his shoulders slumped. I turn again, to walk over to a cabinet, which I knew held three boxes of Mac and Cheese, which I was somehow craving. Probably because it reminded me of a child, and I was almost even desperate to bring out the kid in me.

I grasp the box in my hands and turn to face Nathan again, and I lightly shook it in his face. He just grins and nods, telling me he’s going to watch television, I ignore him and violently rustle around in the pots and pans drawer trying to find one the perfect size. At the precise moment I pull one out, my door flies open again, and I grind my teeth as I stand to pill the pot with water. This is how my friends are- they just barge into my apartment with no real notice.

“Are you guys fucking ready?” Porter screams, making Hayden and Julian cheer behind him…like the retards they are. I look down at the pot in my hand and picture hitting him- actually, all of them, over the head with it. Porter then bounds into the kitchen, with Julian responding to the silence with: ‘I guess not’. By the time they get in here, I’m placing the pot on the stove, and Nathan is suddenly back in the kitchen to reunite with the rest of us.

They don’t even bother to greet each other, they just jump into a conversation that I make myself actively not a part of. I roll my eyes as I go back over to the cabinet and pull out the last two Mac and Cheese boxes, because I know that it’d Hayden’s favorite food, and Julian is like a black hole, and Porter is probably hungry since he never eats breakfast. As I’m turning with both boxes in my hand, I hear light laughter.

“How’s your day, old man?” the boxes on my hand begin to get crushed as I tighten my fingers around them and drop them to the floor before the contests spills out. The room goes still, and it’s almost as if they aren’t even breathing. I look up, my eyes narrowed sharply at Porter, who still has this grin on his face.

“What?” I growl darkly, peering at him through my hair. I probably resembled a demon right now. Porters’ smile only grew, and I gave him no time to even think of a sentence as I started running after him. He yelps, turning quickly to run away. My long legs carried me much quicker than him, and I lunged, sending us both flying into the sofa back, which of course made it tip over. We rolled on the carpet floor, throwing painless bitch slaps at each other, because I could never really hurt him.

I pin him down and count to five, and smiled triumphantly, proclaiming I had won. He looks up at me and pouts.

“I don’t know about your family,” I say, “but my grandfather cannot do that.” He laughs.

“Don’t worry, just a couple of more years and-“

“Porter, shut the fuck up or I’m quitting the band.” Of course, I would never, not when we were performing at Warped, which was quickly approaching. Still, he looks at me in horror, making me chuckle as I roll off of him.

“See, made you smile!” Porter grins, poking my cheek as he sits up. I looked at him for a moment, returning the smile. And just when I think his eyes make take me whole, reality engulfs me.

“Pash!” I hear the yell from Nathan screech horridly from the kitchen and immediately, I know that it’s about the pot that I have managed to forget about. My sour mood returns, and I growl, standing quickly and running toward the kitchen.

“Can’t you jackasses do anything?” I groan upon seeing the pot, which was sporting over-boiled water that was nearly spill out of the edge.

“We did!” Julian says, making Hayden nod.

“We put the Mac and Cheese in it,” he adds. I turn to glare at them, a wooden spoon in my hand, and I thrust it in their face.

“And then you stir it!” I shout, “not stare at it with your fish eyed expression!” I turn back to the pot and blow down on the bubbles that were arising to make it calmer before I started to stir it.

I heard the television turn on and knew it Porter since he was the only one in there and then, the others disperse to join him, and leave me to drown in my thoughts of old age. I can feel the prominent bags under my eyes now. I groan, setting the wooden spoon down and covering my face with my hands.

Fuck.