I'm Not Letting Go

(Pete)

I guessed I loved Ashlee.

She was always there for me, and she was really hot. I had always thought that.

But besides that, she was barely tolerable.
She always had it her way, only wanting to please her needs, and not considering anyone else or the consequences.

I honestly didn’t notice all this until it had all come and gone.

It’s like looking directly in the sun, know you it has a bad reputation of burning people's eyes out, but don’t care because of its looks and because of that you trust that it won't burn yours, but in the end, it does anyway.

Those few short months, I had sunglasses or something, because she wasn’t burning me yet.

Everything was good, I was actually happy.

We had finished recording again.

And Dakota, for the first time, was the farthest thing from my mind. I knew she was happy with Brendon and that I was happy with Ashlee. And I thought that nothing could change that.

If I had only remembered that history likes to repeat itself.
(Dakota)

He was happy so I was happy.

I mean of course I loved being with Brendon and I wanted every second, but he would always be the second choice in my heart.

I felt bad, because I knew he loved me then more than I think I could ever love him, and that’s just because I already love Pete so much.

Pete didn’t seem to care.

He was happy, so he let everyone believe.

Not that I would have noticed because we never saw much of each other.

Panic and FOB ran on completely different schedules, so there was time made for hang out with your “best friends.”

Brendon and I had moved fast, but just to slow down again.

We got engaged in the summer of 2007, but then never really made any rush to get married, I never really understood that.

That winter, FOB went on tour, The Young Wild Things Tour, inviting Gym Class Heroes, Plain White’s, Cute Is What We Aim For, all close friends of theirs, but oddly excluding Panic, as they had also done the Honda Civic Tour, also filled with a bunch of FOB friends, who were also all of Panic’s friends.

The guys didn’t think much of it, I did.

I felt like it was a snub, a cold shoulder. I guess that why I laughed so hard when I found out that Pete broke his ankle and would have to wear this retarded boot thing for the rest of the tour. I think he deserve it for being such a dumbass and jump off a thirteen foot high amp.

Then Christmas came, we both went home for the holidays, but oddly enough after Pete and Ashlee spent Christmas week in Chicago (yes he had brought her home for Christmas),they went and spent New Year’s with her family.

Not that’s weird, but it is for Pete, actually going and meeting the girl’s parent, because you want to, that doesn’t sound like the Pete I knew.

That sounds like a guy who actually falls in love with a girl, and does the right thing.

And that’s not Pete.

(Pete)

I was a dumbass. I broke my stupid ankle from jumping off a stupid amp. But I could care less, it just another medication for me to take. At that point I had come up with quite a concoction of pills to make me seem like myself again, but I never was without her.

That year, 2007, I brought Ashlee home, Chicago, for Christmas. My parents liked her a lot better than Jeanae, not that was hard to do, and more than Michelle, but not as merely as much as they liked Dakota, but everyone else did, including me, too.

Then we went to Texas to see her parent for New Year’s. It was weird. I went there because she complained the whole time we were in Chicago that she didn’t want to spend the whole holiday with my friends and family, and I should really met her parents, as seeing that we were considering getting engaged.

She just assumed that I wanted to ask her dad while we there. But honestly, just because we had talked about it and we were going to visit her parents, that didn’t mean we were going to get engaged anytime soon.

But I did talk to her father about it anyway, just to make her happy. He said that I should start out with a promise ring and see how it goes from there. And that’s what I did.

Plus I was going away soon.

Fall Out Boy was gonna try to break a world record, playing on all 7 continents in the shortest period of time.

Then we were going back to the studio.

So I would give her the promise ring before I left, then when I get back, see how things are then.

If I had only known, I would have never spent all that money.

(Dakota)

He had spent way too much money on a stupid little ring that says
“May be some day, I’ll asking to marry me sometime far in the future.”

That was the kind of fake commitment she wanted and was the only kind he could handle.

While he was gone, she was making her new album, meaning she couldn’t go with them.

But that doesn’t mean she was alone. She did exactly what I thought she would do.

Pete never found out, and no one ever told him, because well all thought that she was the only one that should, and if she wants to live with guilt then, she’s only that can get rid of it.

What surprised me was that right after that, they got engaged, in May 2008.

Then I found out why, I wasn’t surprised.

I was surprised that Pete was, but I mean he should've been.