I Swear I Love You

Jimmy’s POV

“Come on Jess; talk to me,” I pleaded, looking for any kind of sign of response from her. Ever since we left the venue she had been silent- not even breathing too loudly. She just sighed, shaking her head. “Look I’m sorry Jess! What more can I say?”

“I’m not the one you need to say sorry to.” Her silence broke as she finally looked up at me. “I’m not; am I?”

Her gaze burned into mine until I could stand it no longer, and mine dropped to the floor. I hadn’t actually said sorry to Gates since I basically tried to kick the shit out of him- hell, in my opinion he deserved everything I gave him.

Not saying another word she pushed up off the bed in the hotel room we were in, reaching out for the door handle.

“Where are you going?”

She didn’t even turn back to answer. “I’m going for a walk.”

“At this time?”

She shrugged.

“Come on Jess, you can’t be serious,” I protested, walking over to her and holding her by the wrist. “You don’t even know this place! What if something happens to you?”

“Well then I guess I’ll just have to look out for myself.” She looked down at where I held onto her. “Please let go of me Jimmy.”

“No. I’m not letting you go on your own.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“No you won’t,” I said, trying to find her gaze. “Look, if you really want to go, then I’ll come with you.”

I’m not going to lie, I had expected her to say something about it- but she didn’t.

“Fine.”

“You… you are?”

“Well I can’t stop you. It’s a free world.” Her wrist slipped after my lax in grip due to my surprise of her quick submit, allowing her to open the door and take a few steps into the corridor. She faltered slightly on her feet as she turned back to me. Her gaze seemed unwilling to reach mine, but by some effort she managed it. “Are you coming then?”

Grabbing my jacket quickly I rushed to her side, nodding. “Yeah.”

--

With neither of us knowing our way around we just basically ended up walking around aimlessly- although to get to that part it took at least an hour and a half since there were fans waiting outside the hotel that clearly these were the more dedicated ones- and naturally, instantly recognised who I was. So at least a hundred photos and many signatures later, we got to some secluded park situated about half an hour away from the hotel. In some ways, it mirrored that time back in Houston. Of course in a lot of other ways, it didn’t.

God that alcohol we had back then would help so much.

“If you want me to apologise to him then I will.” Considering her silence I was speaking more to the air than her. “If you want me to that is.”

She sighed. I had been getting more of those than actual words from her lately. “I don’t want you to apologise to him.”

“You don’t?” I asked, surprised. Then what the fuck is wrong with her then?

“No.”

“Then what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to want to apologise to him.” She closed her eyes briefly as if she were thinking, before rolling her head to the side and opening them at me. “Not because I told you so.”

I sighed. Couldn’t it be enough that I’ll do it for her?“He deserved it you know. Every single one.”

“In your eyes perhaps,” she replied, turning away to direct at the night sky. Her gaze was softer upon them in comparison to when she looked at me. “But not in mine. He’s still my friend.”

“Come on Jess, you heard the things he said!”

“Of course I did.”

“And you still don’t think I was right?”

“No, I don’t.”

I sighed. “Why? Tell me how you can be so calm towards a guy who has been nothing but an utter dick to you.”

“Because I know life is too short to dwell on things like petty arguments,” she replied. She closed her eyes and sighed, speaking with them still closed. “He’s saved my life before. How can you ever be angry at someone who is the reason why you’re still breathing?”

I snorted. “Look, I know he’s helped you out with your insulin stuff before but it’s going a bit overboard saying he saved your life.”

“But he did.” She opened her eyes and smiled. “It was back in high school; around a week before I got told I was diabetic. Before I knew I was your regular party-animal, out every night, drinking until dawn and up a couple of hours later for school- if I went that is. Normally if I turned up I just passed out on my desk anyway since I was still drunk.”

“You?” I said incredulously. “You were one of the bad ones?”

She laughed. “You could even go as far as saying I was the bad influence on Brian. Normally it was me that dragged him out to all the parties, not the other way around.

“Anyway in the couple of months leading up to the day I was told I started to feel really bad, often feeling faint and just tired all the time. Naturally I thought it was just because of the drinking so I didn’t think anything about it. Brian was always trying to get me to stop but he couldn’t- in the end all he could do was watch me do it and make sure I wouldn’t get too bad- or end up looking after me if I did.”

“So what happened in that last week then? You get trashed real bad or something?”

She nodded. “One of the worst actually; it’s that what led up to finally getting diagnosed. You see, Brian and I had gone to one of my friend’s house parties, and after starting drinking at midday and ending around 3am I was pretty much spent. However the next day I was feeling real bad, but thinking that it was just because of how much I drank the night before, I didn’t think too much about it. When it carried on for the next few days though and I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything along with falling in and out of consciousness he finally persuaded me to get checked out and well, I found out I was diabetic.” Her gaze softened. “I might have had an early grave if he didn’t make me go to the hospital. If I had carried on as I was back then, I probably wouldn’t have even seen my 18th birthday.”

“So even if someone messed you around, because of something they did in the past you’ll never let yourself be angry at them?” I asked. “Even if they did something you could never forgive?”

She laughed quietly to herself. “You don’t get it do you?”

“What is there to get?”

“Just know that I’m not angry anymore.” She smiled. “Let’s just watch the stars; you don’t need to be angry with them.”

--

At some point we must have fell asleep since I was woken up to something nudging at my foot.

“Oi mate.” Opening my eyes a crack I glanced up to see a pair of cops looking back- it felt just like that time in Houston; except of course this time we at least had our clothes on. “It’s morning. You need to move along.”

“Oh yeah… sorry,” I mumbled, propping myself up on one arm and rubbing at my eyes with the other. “I’ll move.”

Obviously just coming off the end of a night shift the two of them just gave me ‘the raised eyebrow’ and shook their heads as they walked off, muttering something I couldn’t make out under their breaths. It was only perhaps after they left that I realised Jess had basically curled up next to me; where one of her arms had at some point during the night rested against my chest and must have fallen to my lap when I sat up. She hadn’t woken up yet though, still sleeping soundly despite the dew soaked into her clothes, along with mine.

“Jess?” I shook her gently on the shoulder. “Jess? You need to wake up.”

In normal helpful fashion she simply rolled over to ignore my protests, still perfectly asleep in the process. Typical. I didn’t try another time however since my cell started to ring, still not disturbing the sleeping princess beside me as I pulled it out and answered.

“Hello?”

“Jimmy?” The female voice of Val replied, layered in a thin coat of panic.

“Val? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? You’re missing that what’s wrong! I had to ring down to the front desk to get someone to unlock your door because you didn’t answer when I knocked or called, and then what did I find? The room was empty Jimmy! Empty!”
Oops. No one knew about our excursion out last night, and considering I wasn’t exactly planning on staying out, hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. Man, it’s like Houston all over again.

“Where are you? We were meant to be on the road half an hour ago!”

“Half an hour?” I echoed, frowning. “What time is it?”

“Just gone eight.”

“Oh.” We were meant to have left by half seven, since it would take us a day or two to drive to the next venue. “My bad. I’m coming back now.”

She sighed; I could already imagine her shaking her head with disapproval. “Where are you? We’ve already packed up all your stuff so we can swing by and get you.”
“In the park about ten blocks or so from the hotel.”

“Is it quite a wide open park, where you can see a sweet shop directly opposite the front entrance?”

Glancing to the entrance I was surprised to find that she was right. “Yeah, that’s it. Did you come here yesterday?”

“No, I just passed it on the way to the water park with Matt. I’m guessing that Jess is there with you?”

I glanced down to my side; curious as to how the hell she had managed to stay asleep throughout the conversation I was having. If she hadn’t rolled over earlier, I would have sworn she was dead. “Yep.”

“Alright. We’ll be there in ten; Logan’s just doing a last minute check on the bus. Wait outside the entrance for us.”

Ending the call I couldn’t help but sigh as I looked down at Jess. How the hell was I meant to get her up?Clearly she wasn’t going to be waking up soon so in the end I just slipped my arms underneath her and swung her onto my back, making sure that her arms rested over my shoulders as I held her legs in place to keep her there.

“Hurry up Val,” I murmured while standing in front of the park entrance, my gaze dropping whenever anyone walked past. From the state of us we either looked like we were homeless, or that we had a bad end to a good night. Either way, whichever scenario you chose it just looked bad. I can’t tell you how happy I was when the tour bus finally pulled up, even if everyone- including the roadies and Larry in the bus behind- saw us looking like a mess. Hell, I doubt anyone ever looked good after a night in the park. I’ve tried it twice now, and nether time ended up particularly well.

“What the hell happened to you?” Matt asked as he followed me to the back, the others only a short distance behind him. Larry seemed to be interested in the answer as well so I guess that was the reason for him suddenly appearing on the bus.

“We went out for a walk and just ended up crashing there,” I replied after tucking Jess into my bunk. “Do you know if any of my clothes are in here, or are they all in the luggage bit?”

Matt’s forehead creased in thought. “I think Val grabbed some of yours and Jess’ stuff and put it in a duffel bag somewhere…” He trailed off as he must have had a sudden epiphany as to where it was and passed it to me. “She thought you might need it.” His gaze swept over me. “By the looks of it, you better thank her later.”

Quickly rummaging through the bag I found one of my hoodies and some black pants, mentally thanking Val as I disappeared into the bathroom on the bus for a few moments to change. By the time I emerged Logan had already set off again and everyone- excluding Jess- had gathered in the entertainment section near the front. This unfortunately still included Larry.

“Did we have a fun night James?”

I cringed at how he said my name. Just by looking at him I could tell that he was pissed- hell, ever since Houston I’ve been taking care to tread the line around him. Well, I guess kicking the shit out of Brian wasn’t exactly treading the line but thankfully he didn’t find out about that yet. Either that or he hadn’t had the opportunity to bring it up with me.

“Did anything happen last night?”

“Did anything… happen?” I echoed slowly, trying not to look too guilty. “Not really. We just went for a walk last night.”

“And forgot to come back?”

“Well…” I scratched at the back of my neck, trying to figure out what to say. “I guess you could say that.”

“You know James, I overlooked the last time-” All of them turned to me at this point as I could feel my cheeks burn; none of them apart from Johnny or Larry knew about last time. “-but you are being extremely careless. What happened to the intelligent person I first met?”

I chuckled. “You know, I was kicked out of school, so I don’t see how I can be called smart.” Larry didn’t laugh. “Well…” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t mean… What I mean to say is that I meant to…”

“It doesn’t matter what you wanted to do, the fact is that you didn’t,” he interjected. “I’ve got half a mind to send this Jess girl home.”

“What?!” Not only Brian and I protested at that, every other person did as well. “You can’t!”

“If she is in any way obstructing your duty as performers upon this tour I have every right to,” he replied calmly. From the way he looked at us I could tell he had every mind to enforce this given power. “You did after all sign a contract stating it with the label that you would perform your duty unless otherwise unable due to special circumstances.”

“Come on, you can’t be serious!” Brian shouted. You could tell from everyone’s shocked expressions that they were expecting this outburst to come from me, and not him. “You said we could bring guests with us, so don’t you try to lay shit by saying she now can’t!”

Larry sighed. “Look; if you want this girl to stay; then stop causing havoc. My job description said I’d be managing five adults, not five kids.” He shot Brian and me looks. “Well, two kids at least anyway.” He sighed, pushing himself off the couch. “I’m going to sit up front. Make sure you take heed of my warning, because I will kick her off if something happens again.”

As soon as he disappeared up the front Brian scowled. “What a dick.”

“Oh don’t be like that Bri,” Val murmured, reaching over and patting him on the knee. “You know he’s only doing his job.”

Brian crossed his arms and huffed. “You wouldn’t have threatened to kick Jess off if you were still our manager.”

“Maybe so…” She trailed off, flashing a devilish look at all of us. “But you wouldn’t have done anything to make me warn you, now would you? I’d make sure of that. Out of interest though-” She fixated her attention onto me. “-what did you do before that Larry overlooked? I know you did a number on Brian but I didn’t think he knew about that.”

Instinctively guilt ripped through my expression at the mention of what I did to him, my gaze dropping as I addressed him next. “About that… Gates I’m sorr-”

“Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged. “I would’ve done the same.”

“Go on, kiss and make up,” Val interjected with a light chuckle. “You don’t want Larry to know about your little lover’s tiff.”

We both glared at her. “You make us sound like a gay couple.”

“Unintentionally, I assure you,” she replied, still smiling. “After all, one of you is married to a girl and the other one I am sure is having fun with one.” She turned to Brian. “What happened to that girl anyway? She was gone long before we had to leave.”

“Who, Holly?” Brian exhaled a sigh as Val nodded. “She went home.”

“What a shame.” She fell back against Matt’s chest. “I would have liked to talk to her; she seemed nice. How come she didn’t see you off? She seemed rather protective of her Brian.”

“We had an argument.”

“An argument?”

“She said I was acting off towards her, even when I said I wasn’t.” He grabbed at his left wrist suddenly, his gaze drifting to the side. “So she left. Said she didn’t want to be with me if I was going to act like I was to her.”

Val frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“No I’m fine.” He quickly stood up, still holding onto his wrist. “I’m going to catch a few hours out back. Wake me when it’s lunch.”

Before Val could protest he walked off, dropping into the bathroom we had installed just past where the bunks were. She just shook her head and sighed. “He has been acting a bit off lately, hasn’t he?” She looked thoughtfully up the back of the bus. “I wonder why?”

“I’m sure he’ll tell us when he wants to,” Matt interjected, shifting on the couch to make both him and Val comfortable. “It’ll take us a while to get to Massachusetts, so there is plenty of time for him to spill. For now-” He wrapped his arms around Val, pulling her gently closer to him. “I’m good with just waiting here.”

Val stared out back for a few more moments before it retreated with a sigh, her fingers locking with his. “I hope so.”

Matt chuckled. “Put it this way, this tour isn’t over so if he doesn’t spill soon, I’ll get it out of him.” He grinned. “One way or another.”