Our Heat Is Gone

Dan is a genius. I had to give it up to him. I can honestly say that I had a blast the night the guys took me away to have fun and forget about leaving and Josh for a day. However, the big pang feeling of leaving them always came up.

I refused to see Josh after the last time we went out and I was leaving tomorrow morning. It wasn't like he tried to contact me. He called numerous times, left messages, even resorted into leaving me a message online, and he also tried stopping by, but I was too chicken to face him. I guess I also didn't know how to approach a situation like this since we've never been in this position where I would ignore him or have done anything to make him mad at me. I guess you could say I was giving him the cold shoulder which he really didn't deserve. This whole mess was all my fault. I needed to figure out what I was going to do about this soon because I don't want to leave Josh on a bad note.

Max was currently helping me pack up a couple of the last of my last suitcases. The rest of the guys were busy with their own businesses, but promised to meet up in the morning to say goodbye.

"Max! You can't just throw these clothes in my bag like that." I said sitting on the floor, but getting on my feet to walk over to my suitcase where Max was tossing my delicate clothes carelessly into my bags.

"They're just clothes, Lexi." He said like it was no big deal. With the material and price of those clothes, hell yeah it was a big deal.

"They're delicates, Maxi." I said correcting him and using the nickname I gave him.

He smiled and moved over to my dresser, looking at the scattered items that lied on top of it.

"Mmmm..." Max hummed as he looked through the clutter.

"Max, you better not be looking at my under garments."

"I'm not. I'm just looking at your stuff."

"Max." I warned. Stuff could be anything to him.

"Relax. I'm talking about your stuff like this old photo of all of us." He explained and held up the framed photo of the band and myself so many years ago.

I put down the delicate clothing item I had in my hand in the bag and walked over to my dresser where Max was holding up the picture. It was a photo of us taken after the guys had come back home from their first real tour. We'd partied hard in celebration. We all looked really young too.

"Look at my hair!" Max exclaimed.

"I know. This is so old. I miss your old hair. Oh man, Chris doesn't even look like that anymore and Dan definitely got older."

"Matt looks...the same." Max noticed and I just laughed because after all these years Matt did look the same. "Lexi, you and Josh look so cute." He gushed and nudged me as our laughter died down.

My eyes diverted to where Josh and I were in the photo. I smiled on the inside. I loved that photo, it was where things kind of started. Josh and I had just started dating that year.

I just shrugged at Max's comment. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and gave me a reassuring squeeze. I looked up in front of me to the mirror and just smiled weakly at Max to let him know I'd be fine.

"Let's just finish cleaning my closet then we can be done." I said and got out of his grip.

-xxx-

Max had left once we finished putting every item of clothing I owned into my suitcases. I hated packing with a passion, but I was sad that we finished because it was just a step closer to leaving.

"Lexi, I'm going to go visit a friend before we leave. So please be safe and make sure you get to sleep early tonight because our flight is in the morning." My mom said quickly as she left the house.

It was already night time when she decided to leave to give a friend of her's a quick goodbye that I decided I had nothing else to do so why not go to sleep early. It might have been only a couple of minutes later when there was a knock on the door. I figured it'd be my mom just forgetting to take something along with her like her license.

I looked through the peep hole and surely enough it was not my mother on the other side of the door. Taking a couple of steps back away from the door as if it were going to burst, I just stared at it and didn't make any movements until the person on the other side spoke up.

"Are you going to open the door or what, Lexi?" It was Josh and he knew that I was home alone.