Skylines & Drivebys

It was as if everything stood still. My memories had done him no justice – they were incomparable to the original right in front of me. I didn’t know what to do. My joints locked and my bones turned to mush. At first his eyes were gentle; kind, loving as they once were. Then all too soon it turned to anger; he was livid. I wanted to get up and hug him. To kiss him; oh how I longed to kiss him, to make all the hurt go away – but it was me. I was the problem. The only way to make it go away was if I went away.

But I still yearned to touch him. I missed him so much. I had spent every ounce of my being trying to not miss him, and all the time I’d spent doing that was wasted as they burst out of the door I trapped them behind.

I could feel his hate. It wasn’t too difficult and he wasn’t trying to hide it. In the space of the small room, the atmosphere became clogged with animosity all towards me. I’d hurt him. He could never forgive me.

And I could never forgive myself either.

Suddenly his voice tore through my curtain of thoughts, “No, I’m not doing the interview. I don’t want to,” he crossed his arms firmly over his chest.

My heart sunk and I didn’t understand why. I knew he would refuse. There had been no hope in me. I was like an empty balloon further deflated.

“You have to,” Keith, their manager stated simply as he was tapping away on his Blackberry.

“I. Don’t. Want. To.” Alex repeated through his teeth.

My breath caught in my throat as his voice registered in my head which earned me a nasty glare from Alex. Tears welled up in my eyes as every single memory – both amazing and painful – became as clear as day. His voice; a thing of beauty I hadn’t heard in a year. I felt like I had been drowning for the longest time and only now had I taken a breath; only now had I seen the light.

“This is no time for your first rock star tantrum or diva fit, Alex. You can throw one later,” Alex opened his mouth to cut in and Keith put his hand up to stop him. “I don’t care. This is a huge interview. Don’t blow it.”

Alex huffed, defeated and watched his manager walk out of the room completely unaware of what he just created. He strode to the single seat to the left of the couch and looked at me blankly. I was unable to move my feet.

His eyes bore into my skull and I didn’t have a clue as to what may have been going through his head. I scrambled in my mind for possible reasons as to why he was staring at me so intently when he said, “So are you gonna stand there or are you gonna get this interview over with any time soon?”

Oh. I tried to compose myself and pretended that this was no big deal, but I could barely hold the papers right. The rest of the guys were on the far side of the room, watching everything unfold over their shoulders as they were “grabbing some snacks”. Lynne sat helplessly next to the camera, and a few other people were drifting in and out of the room. I was basically on my own, without a paddle. Or something. I couldn’t get my thoughts straight.

And everyone could tell – you could have cut the tension with a knife.

I cleared my throat as it dawned on me: The quicker I start, the faster I’ll finish. The sooner this whole ordeal would be over with and I could just go home to my ice cream and cry.

I started with the basics, “So...”

“So...?”

“Uhm, can you introduce yourself?”

He smiled, but it wasn’t his smile. It was the smile of someone bitter, resentful. Someone filled with anger. It was a smile you’d give to your friend’s aunt’s annoying kid when they won’t stop following you around and bug the shit out of you and all you really want is to dropkick them off the Statue of Liberty. That kind.

“I’m Alex Gaskarth and I sing and play guitar in the band, All Time Low.”

I mentally winced, thinking that there’d be more; that he’d say something subtle to provoke me, but was surprised when that was the end of the sentence. I asked a few more preliminary questions before turning the page over. At Gen. Y, we would normally say, “The page that Gets the good stuff.” But in this case, the good stuff was the farthest thing I wanted to get.

I skimmed over the first question and wanted to run, “Can you clarify what happened in the song...” I paused, scrambling for a morsel of courage or anything, but came up short. He looked unamused, thinking it was a ploy to build up suspense or for dramatic effect, “Remembering Sunday?”

He was unamused, “What, did you write these questions yourself?”

My throat closed up, “No.” My voice broke, “No, definitely not these questions.”

Alex didn’t look convinced, but answered anyways, “Well, it was about this girl I’d been stoked to see ‘cuz I, well, hadn’t seen her in a while.” His voice was borderline monotonous. Almost no expression, but just enough lilt to not completely throw anyone off. “When I got back to her place, she wasn’t there. Like in the song, the neighbours said she left, moved away, whatever. And hell yeah, it was raining all day, but it sure as fuck wasn’t funny. God, I walked in that shit for hours. Actually, it was the same girl that “Vegas” is, oh wait, was about.

His voice was cutting. It killed me to have to listen to our story.

“Do you remember that line ‘I would have married you in Vegas had you given me the chance to say ‘I do’.’?” Yeah. That’s about her.

Alex was telling every ounce of truth, and it was killing me. He was a winner. He always would be. If you strike him hard enough, he’ll undoubtedly strike back with the same amount of force and triple. The hardest fact to swallow was that I never meant for any of it to happen.

He waited patiently, mockingly yes, but patiently still, for my reaction. I had been practicing stoicism for the longest time, but it was still difficult to not break down right then and there. I cleared my throat, “But those two songs are about a girl you obviously loved,” I stressed the tense, “they’re so different from the feeling of the bonus track on the deluxe edition, ‘Paint My Skies Black.’ Is that song about someone else?”

I swore to myself that I would find whoever made these questions and hunt them down. I had no more hope left to hold onto. I knew who the song was about. Me. It screamed it plain and simple.

“Nope.” He replied, popping the p, “It’s about the same girl. Total 360 right? The reason it wasn’t on the original release of SWIR was because such an event happened after the release, so when we got the chance to have a deluxe edition, I just had to add a bonus song and put it on there.

If the floor could have opened and taken me to nowhere-land, I would have gladly let it, “Why not save it for the next album though?”

“Because it was, like I said, a continuation of Vegas and Remembering Sunday, weren’t you listening?”

“I’m just reading the questions.” I murmured.

He just shrugged, satisfied with what he’d said. The remaining questions were generally harmless, and I tried to get them by as smoothly as possible. At the end of the interview, I was struck with fear. I normally hugged whoever it was that I interviewed. I could never even touch him, even more, he’d never touch me.

“Thanks for hanging out with us, Alex – “

He cut me off mercilessly, “It was an interview. There was no ‘hangs’.” He made the quotation marks with his fingers.

I sighed, “Then thanks for the interview.”

He stood up and stretched his legs; I stood up and straightened my dress and when I looked up, I was face to face with someone who had nothing but absolute hate for me. I considered just grabbing my stuff and going, but Lynne, standing next to the camera, coughed and pointed at it.

I mentally sighed and stuck my hand out for a shake. He looked at it in disbelief, but understood when I threw a glace towards the camera. Alex limply grabbed my hand and it was like an electric shock. The touch, no matter how vehemently angry the motives were, was more than I could take. I dropped his hand and we looked at each other silently one last time before hearing the almost inaudible beep of Lynne turning off the camera.

I took that moment and bolted out of the room, leaving Lynne trailing behind me.