Days of the Old

On the way out, I was surprised the kids Brian shoved past didn’t bow down to him and kiss his feet. They all looked like they were petrified of him. I didn’t think they were pansies, because just taking one glance at the look on his face—I was close to shitting my pants myself.

Tyler was nowhere to be seen, which only made me want to cry even more. He didn’t even come after me, it was as if in the span of a few months he’d become a completely different person. What were the past few days about, though? Was it all an act? It was confusing me, and the only thing I could seem to process as Red opened the front door for Brian was that he broke his promise.

It was as if I was in a daze, at least until I heard Brian unlocking the doors to his SUV, which was when I began struggling uselessly. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to have to deal with Matt and everyone else. This was too big for me to deal with all at once. I had to get away, I had to sit down and think everything through first.

“Put me down,” I snapped, piteously failing at my attempt to put up my usual tough exterior.
Honestly, I was a little surprised when he set me down on the cracked and battered sidewalk to open the door, and I took it as my chance to get away like I’d wanted to. Even if it was just for a few minutes, I would be happy. Even if I got lost in one of the worst parts of Huntington, I wouldn’t mind. I needed time alone.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Brian demanded a few feet behind me, and I could feel his eyes on my retreating figure. I picked up my pace then, from a jog to a sprint, but then, almost immediately after he called out to me, his arms curled around my waist and he was pulling me back to the SUV. I cussed under my breath, wishing I was more athletic. I should have known I couldn’t outrun him.

Opening the back door, he pushed me in and slammed the door in my face after he put the child lock on, and I would have rolled my eyes had I not been so close to tears. Once the first one came, there was no stopping the rest. Not this time.

He broke his promise. He’d given himself to a substance. Was it more important to him than I was? I wondered if he ever even thought of me when he did his very first line of cocaine. Did he even having an inkling of an idea as to how much this would hurt me? He was my best friend.

Was he, still? I wanted to say yes. I really did. I knew I’d always consider him one of my closest friends, but could we ever have the same relationship that we’d had before? He’d gotten himself into loads of trouble, I knew that, and he’d begged me not to tell anyone. I had no fucking idea how I was going to get through this and still be his as close as we were prior to all of this crap. He was asking me to lie for him, something that before, he would have never even have dreamed of doing.

Trust. Something that was such a big part of our friendship. He knew it, and he’d blown it. No doubt was in my mind that he knew that, too. And part of myself knew that he didn’t care.

As soon as Brian got into the driver’s seat, he didn’t make any more contact with me whatsoever. The silence during the drive to better parts of Huntington was silent, but far from calming. The night was far from over. He pulled into a park and killed the engine, dialling Matt’s cell number as he did so. “I found her,” He said simply, anger seeping through in his tone. “Yeah, she’s okay,” He said after a few more moments, then sent a glare out to me through the rear view mirror. “Do you wanna talk to her?”

Oh god. No, no, no. I did not want to hear the disappointment in Matt’s voice. I didn’t want him to find out that earlier tonight, I’d been willing to sacrifice the relationship and trust we’d built up over the past few months for someone who valued a line of coke more than I.

I rapidly shook my head when Brian handed his phone out to me, and I jumped when he slammed his free hand down on the steering wheel before turning back out toward me. “So help me Payton, if you don’t take this fucking phone right fucking now—” He didn’t have time to finish his threat because I had snatched the phone from him.

Nervously, I looked down at the phone, knowing that Matt was on the other end, waiting to talk to me and lecture me about how stupid I had been. There was no denying that, every single thing I’d done that night had been some of the most idiotic things I’d ever done.

“Hello?” I squeaked, squishing myself against the door as I tried to get further away from Brian. Never had I seen him so angry, and it was scaring me.

For a while, it was silent on the other end, and then I heard Matt breathe a sigh of relief through the phone. Guilt washed through me, he had been worried about me, while I hadn’t even given so much as a second thought when I snuck out. “You’re okay?” He asked quietly.

“Yeah,” I replied, refusing to let any emotion show through in my voice.

“Do you know how much trouble you’re in?” He demanded, his mood changing like a whip.
I didn’t answer, of course I didn’t. What could I say? A lame ‘yeah’? I was better off saying nothing at all. Another sigh came through the phone and a few more moments of complete silence passed. “Give the phone back to Brian,” He finally snapped.

Wasting no time in giving Brian his phone back, I all but threw it at him and pressed myself even tighter to the door, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the cool window. My body felt as if it were on fire due to the panic that was beginning to set in.

What was I going to say? The truth was probably a good idea, but if I did, I knew I could pretty much kiss any chances of still having a friendship between Tyler and I goodbye. And I needed Tyler in my life in some shape or way, even if it was strained.

Before I knew it, Syn had the door I’d been leaning against wrenched open, which only resulted in me almost falling flat on my face. This angered me a little, he didn’t have to be so fucking rough. Once I’d regained my footing I sent him a glare, turning on my heel and started down the sidewalk and away from the house, feeling a little braver when I was around familiar surroundings.

A hand was placed on my shoulder before I even got two steps in, and I tried to shrug out of their grip but they were relentless. I let out an agitated groan. “Fuck off, Brian! You’re not my fucking father.”

“You’re pushing it, Payton.” I whipped around at the sound of Matt’s voice, and wanted to smack myself for not recognized his grip on my shoulder. If it had been Syn, he would have just thrown me over his shoulder like he’d done before. Just one glance at him and I knew he was strain to keep his cool.

His hand remained on my shoulder until we got into the house, where he made me sit on the sofa in the living room. No one else was there. “Where is everyone?” I asked, my voice small in the large living room as the two large men glared down at me.

“Looking for you,” Jimmy said from the threshold, sounding relieved and happy, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Matt and Brian as they both studied me.

Unsurprisingly, Matt got straight into it. “Do you know how much danger you put yourself into tonight? You could have been hurt,” He paused and looked me straight in the eye, while I just sat there on the sofa numbly. “You could have been killed, Payton.”

“It’s—it’s not that big of a deal, Matt.” I said, my voice hoarse. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry. I wanted to ask why nothing could ever go right for me. I wanted to spill my guts.

I’d made some shitty decisions tonight, but I didn’t regret them. If given the chance, I probably would have done a few things differently, like stop Tyler from going to the party, but after that I did everything I thought was right given the situation I was in.

Soft footsteps were heard coming down the stairs, and Matt stopped what he was about to say.

My eyes just about bugged out of my head when I saw who it was. “Hey, guys,” Tyler said, almost groggily as he stretched. I was frozen, rooted into the sofa as I stared open-mouthed at Tyler. What the fuck was he doing?

Matt crossed his arms over his chest as he scrutinized Tyler. “Where were you? Payton said she was going to the party with you.”

“Me? A party?” Tyler asked, seemingly dumfounded as he pointed to himself for confirmation. Matt nodded expectantly. “First I’ve heard of it. I’ve been asleep all night.” He said as he produced a jacket. “I was just about to go for a walk.”

Seeming to tense even more, Matt waved him off and I heard the front door slam shut just a few moments later.

Another wound to add to the collection, but this one held a new hurt. He had betrayed me; he had fooled me into this. He set me up. What happened to my best friend? I looked down, picking at a rip in my jeans as I maintained my breath; I felt like I was going to pass out at any moment.

What was going on? I was so confused. I knew he had done this to make sure I couldn’t get him in trouble (although, I would have more than likely taken the blame for it anyway, simply because I wanted to hold onto some scrap of hope that he was still my best friend), but I just couldn’t understand why. Underneath all of that, what was going on with him? Had drugs taken over, were they impairing his judgement? Had they really changed him? And more importantly, was it still possible for him to change back?

Brian chose possibly the worst moment to show Matt what he had confiscated from me. And to think, I had been so lost in my thoughts I had almost forgotten about it. “This is what I found her with.” He said, quietly as Matt stared at it in shock as he took it from Brian, holding it nimbly out in front of him.

“Payton,” Jimmy gasped, coming closer when he caught a glimpse of what Matt was holding. I flinched, he hadn’t called me by a nickname, which he always had, ever since I got here. I knew then that I really, really fucked up. “Is this—is this yours?” Disappointment was evident in his voice.

This was it. It all came down to what I said then, and I closed my eyes when I felt everyone’s stare on me. What I was about to say was going to ruin everything we had worked for. “Yes, it’s mine.” My words were hollow, I was wondering if they were even going to believe me. But who else could have owned it? After all, Tyler was asleep all night.

“Did you try it?” He asked immediately, coming much closer until he was right in front of me and leaned down, peering into my eyes. Matt had since turned around, the tiny baggy thrown onto the coffee table as he braced his hands behind his head, his back to me.

“No,” I whispered, looking straight into his eyes. I needed him to at least believe that. “I promise I didn’t, Jimmy.”

Please believe me, please believe me. Why would they? To the best of their knowledge, I had lied to them numerous times, not just today. All of the other times I kept things from them—why would they believe me then? He let out another relieved sigh before getting up and going back to his place, leaning on the archway. Brian did the same, and I noticed him give the baggy to Jimmy, whispering something in his ear before Jimmy was off. He was probably off to destroy it.

My attention was quickly diverted back to Matt, who had since turned around and he stared at me for one long, tense moment before he sat on the sofa, his head in his hands. He let out a low, cynical laugh, and I jumped once again at the sound. Laughing? At a time like this? “You know, for a while I didn’t know what Lauren was talking about.”

At hearing my mother’s name, my chest constricted and my head snapped up, I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?” Do not bring my mother into this.

He did a double take on me, and quickly stopped laughing as he too narrowed his eyes at me. “Uh—yeah, when she phoned me last summer,” He said, looking at me sceptically as if he expected me to already know this. “She—you don’t know about that?”

I slowly shook my head, not saying a word. “When she phoned me last summer? She wanted me to take you; she said she couldn’t handle you.”

“That’s not true.” I rasped out, and that was the only thing I could get out before my lip began trembling and I clamped my hand over my mouth before I forced myself to look away. Matt wasn’t showing any signs of stopping any time soon.

“Yes it is. She said that she felt like a failure as a parent and that she wanted me to try.”

“Shut, up.” I said through clenched teeth. He was opening up wounds that weren’t even healed over yet. I thought my lungs were going to collapse. I wanted to punch something, and if he didn’t stop I would.

“Matt, man,” Jimmy started from the doorway, taking a step closer toward the back of the sofa I was on. I didn’t look up at anyone; if I did I would break down just like that. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

“No Jimmy, I fucking should! Maybe she’ll smarten the fuck up from now on!” Matt yelled, and that was the first time I’d ever witnessed anyone interrupt Jimmy. And that made me mad, Jimmy was only keeping everyone’s best interest in mind. I was about to stand up when Matt was abruptly towering over me. I leaned back into the couch, refusing to show how scared I was as I glared up at him.

He looked me dead in the eye. “Up until now, I didn’t know what she meant when she said you didn’t care.”

By then I’d had enough, I could no longer restrain myself. “You goddamn liar! That’s not fucking true!” I screamed and pushed against his chest until he stumbled back, shocked. Only for a moment, though, and he was coming back toward me again, his expression livid.

Someone yanked me back by my shoulders and I recognized Jimmy’s arms as they curled around my waist, hauling me over the back of the sofa until I was out of Matt’s reach. Or he was out of mine. Brian restrained him by putting his hands on Matt’s shoulders and pushing him back until he stopped, and that was all I saw before Jimmy carried me out through the hallway.

Zacky was back, and he quickly went to Brian’s side to help Matt calm down, just barely giving Jimmy and me a sideways glance. I tried to get out of Jimmy’s grip, but I didn’t struggle too much. I knew it was useless, and I didn’t want Jimmy to be even more disappointed in me.

After he’d shut and locked the bathroom door, he finally let me go, gently placing me on my feet as he stared at me softly. The rage I’d been feeling earlier had begun to wear off, and the full force of Matt’s words were beginning to set in.

I sat down on the lid of the toilet, placing my head in my hands as I focused on keeping my tears at bay. “Are you okay?” Jimmy asked softly, kneeling down beside me as he put a comforting hand on the small of my back.

“Is it true?” I asked, not being able to keep my voice from wavering as I ignored his question. I continued when he didn’t say anything. “What he said. It’s true, isn’t it?”

It is. He didn’t have to say it out loud. Why would Matt say such a thing if it weren’t the truth? I racked my brain, trying to think of anything, any signs that my mother may have been giving off last summer that led to something as drastic as sending me off with a stranger, but I couldn’t really come up with anything. Sure, she’d been gotten fed up with my antics quite a few times, but never had she mentioned anything along the lines of what Matt had just said.

She was willing to give up on me; she had come so close to it, too. “Why didn’t—why...” I stopped after a few moments, I didn’t know how to even word the question. Jimmy seemed to understand, though, and he gave me a small, sad smile.

“Everything was set up, last summer. Around August I suppose,” He started, looking down. “We’d gotten all the proof and everything was ready, the only thing left to do was sign the papers.”

When he paused for a moment, I took advantage of it. “Proof? What kind of proof?”

He cleared his throat and looked up again to lock his eyes with mine. “Well, birth certificates, paternity tests, all of that bullshit. But you have to understand where Matt was coming from,” He added hurriedly, his eyes widening at thought of giving me another reason to be angry with Matt. “When some chick he hadn’t seen in over a decade calls and says he’s got a kid he’s never met before, things have to be ugly at first.”

I wasn’t mad at him for calling my mother ‘some chick’, because it was Jimmy and I knew he meant nothing by it. Besides, I had more important things to deal with other than picking a fight with one of the closest people to me.

Paternity test? I most certainly did not remember anything in regards to that, at least, I think. I sat up straight, looking straight ahead as I focused recalling the events of last summer. Paternity tests involved blood samples. Blood samples, blood samples.

One day in late August of last summer, my mother had come to me, expressing her newfound worry of my small stature and pale complexion. She had suggested I may have been anaemic, that she wanted me to get some blood tests done just to make sure. That should have been a red flag for me.

But like Matt said, I was busy not caring. How the hell was I supposed to know that my mother had been planning something and was trying to discreetly ship me off? What did she think was going to happen, how was she planning on telling me about him?

All of this was too much for me. I was finding out about everything that had been kept from me in such a short span of time, my brain was having a meltdown. I could not think another coherent thought as I latched onto Jimmy, who was surprised by my actions but quickly began shushing me. Picking me up, he placed me on his lap as he sat on the toilet lid, while I clutched his shirt with one hand while the other was wrapped around him, my head buried in the crook of his neck.

She gave up on me. That was the only consistent thought that was running through my head, everything else was jumbled and I couldn’t even make sense out of myself. My tears soaked one of Jimmy’s beloved Metallica t-shirts, but I hoped he wouldn’t care, because I didn’t know what I would do if I didn’t have someone there to comfort me.

“Shh, come on baby girl, Matt’s not really mad at you,” He whispered and began rocking me back and forth when I couldn’t hold back a strangled sob. “He’s still new at this, too. He was so scared when he couldn’t find you, and he about shit himself when he saw the coke. He just didn’t know how to react, Patey.”

Finally, after another five minutes, I sucked it up and stopped crying, pulling away to wipe my tearstained cheeks. This was the first time I had ever cried around Jimmy, but I was not embarrassed by it. I knew Jimmy understood I needed to let some of my emotions out.

Just as I let out a shaky breath, someone knocked on the door and Jimmy looked at me when I tensed. Please, please don’t let it be Matt. I wouldn’t be angry when I saw him—I no longer wanted to strangle him—but I knew that if I saw him so soon I would break down all over again.

“Guys? It’s just me and Leana...” Johnny called through the door, giving another soft knock. I exhaled slowly, relief flooding through me as I nodded to Jimmy, who reached over and unlocked the door.

It swung open and Johnny hadn’t been lying—it was just him and Leana, and they both gave me a small, but comforting smile when they saw me. I couldn’t even force a smile, but I don’t think they were expecting one on return.

Now that the door was open, I could still hear Matt talking loudly from the living room, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. It was as if my ears had been stuffed with cotton, although I knew from the tone in his voice that he was still angry. Leana noticed I was trying to decipher what he was saying and her smile widened, but it was still tense. “Listen, Patey, you’re gonna stay with us until everyone calms down, alright?” She said, jutting her thumb between her and Jimmy as she spoke.

Until Matt calms down, she meant to say. However, I did not object and I let Johnny escort me up to my room to pack a small overnight bag, because truthfully, I just wanted to sleep all of this off. I wanted to wake up when everything was calmed down.

I just hoped Leana was right, and that everyone would calm down, that everything would be okay. But one can only hope, right? What could I have done to make everything better?Confess. Tell them the truth. There wasn’t anything I could have done. There wasn’t.