You're So Pretty On the Outside

Halfway through Jennifer’s conversation with Venita, my stomach began to churn. I got up silently and left the room as quickly as I could without drawing attention to myself. Once I was out of the room, I booked it to the bathroom and started spewing my guts into the toilet. I groaned in disgust when I finished and stood up to brush my teeth.

It had come out of nowhere and I let out a sigh before scoping out Sarah. I forced her to take my temperature and she concluded that I did, indeed, have a slight fever.

“Go take a nap,” she ordered.

I shook my head vigorously. It was rude to go to sleep when there were people over.

“Anna, if you don’t sleep then you’ll just get sicker. The guys will understand.”

I stumbled a bit as she pushed me towards my room. “Alright, alright, woman,” I muttered.

I walked into my room, but I didn’t take a nap. Instead, I turned on some music and laid around singing along to it. Unfortunately, half an hour into my little sing-along fest, my stomach decided to be a bitch again.

*A week later*

My relationship with Oli had been pretty much on again, off again. I can’t say that I was really surprised when I finally got his call. It had been coming ever since the day we finally got together, secretly or not. It was the reason why I didn’t want to tell people about us from the beginning.

“Can you meet me?” Oli asked over the phone.

“Sure. Where are you?”

“I’m at the parking garage closest to your house.”

I grabbed my keys after ending the phone call. Knowing which parking garage he was talking about, I hopped into my car and drove the 15 minute ride.

“Anna, you have to make a choice. You can’t keep doing this to me. You can’t just tell me you love me one day and then the next say that you want nothing to do with me. I love you, Anna, but if I keep letting you treat me this way, it will kill me. So you have to make a choice. You can either stay with me and let me tell people that we’re together, move in with me, maybe have a family and get married one day or you can walk away from me. Walk away from everything that we’ve built this past month or be in a real relationship. It’s your choice.”

I looked at the ground as tears pooled in my eyes.

“What if I can’t make that choice?” I questioned softly.

I heard Oli sigh and my head shot up as I heard the scuffle of his shoes on the linoleum signaling that he had stepped backwards.

“Then I’ll have to make the choice for you.” He sighed again and looked up at the ceiling, his own eyes welling up with tears. Oli looked at me and he seemed to have aged years within the few minutes of our conversation. “I was hoping that this could have gone differently, you know. I had hoped that you would stop thinking about your past so much and move on to have something with me. I don’t mean this to sound cheesy, but what we have is special. I know that and I know that you know that as well. Why can’t you just take that step forward?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. Believe me, Oli, if I could get past everything then I would. I love you too, more than you can imagine. I just don’t know how to deal with everything. I don’t know how to deal with my dad leaving us, my mom killing herself over it, or having to move in with my sister halfway through the school year. I don’t know how to deal with a real commitment or how to deal with someone outside of my immediate family and friends loving me. It’s just… I don’t know. I just can’t do it. I’m sorry. Maybe someday we can try this again.”

I felt my heart drop to the floor when he just shook his head and turned away from me. He stopped mid-step and turned back to me. I looked at him expectantly.

“You need to stop living in the past, Anna. And I don’t think that you can do it alone,” Oli said softly before walking away from me.

I grimaced at his words, knowing what he was trying to say. A shrink wouldn’t be able to help me any more than alcohol. I already waste half of my paycheck drinking; I’m not going to waste the other seeing some ‘doctor’ who really knows nothing.

I wiped away a few stray tears from my face as I made my way to my car. So Oli had finally had enough of my shit, but I couldn’t blame him. I would have done the same thing.

Just as I was about to pull out of the driveway, I realized something. Not once had he called me Angel. It was always Anna. The name rang through my ears as I realized the severity of this breakup. All of the other times it was obvious that we were just having a little argument and we would get back together, but this time it was a lot more serious.

I drove back remembering how much Oli and I had gone through in the short time that we had been together. Sighing, I flipped on the radio and laughed humorlessly at the irony of the lyrics to the song playing.

If I could turn it around I swear I would
I'd change everything that I knew I could
Yeah, I'd tear this down for you
Because you were right and I was wrong
I was scared and took too long
To say what I knew I should

There's no need to point fingers
I admit that I'm the problem
I admit that I'm the one to blame
And I'm trying so hard,
To just maintain some sense of sanity
While driving myself insane
Time it moves so fast
And I'm living in the past
I'm living in the memories we made
If I could go back, that's what I'd do
Back to the photographs of me and you
Please tell me where we went wrong

The inevitable had happened. Oli had finally gotten sick of my shit.

So for the rest of the day, I sat around eating ice cream as I wallowed in my own self pity. For the rest of the week, I continued to self pity and self loath myself until it was almost time for me to go off to my new job and everyone else to go on tour.

My stomach continued to act up.

“Maybe you should get that checked out,” Jennifer commented as I threw up for the millionth time.

I brushed my teeth before replying. “I’ll be fine. It’s just the flu. I’m leaving later today anyway. I don’t have time to do anything. If it’s still like this later on, I’ll get it checked out.”

“But still, you’ve been throwing up for a week and you don’t have a fever anymore.”

“You don’t always have a noticeable fever. I’m fine. Just drop it, okay?”

She sighed and gave up the fight. She knew by now that if I wanted to do something then I would and if I didn’t you would have to go to hell and back to make me do it.

“Just don’t hurt yourself by doing too much, okay? You could be stressing yourself out with your new job and the breakup and everything.”

I sighed and sat next to her. “Yeah, maybe. I’m just glad that almost nobody knew otherwise everybody would be feeling sorry for me and I hate that. I’ll pity myself, but I don’t want other people to do it.”

“I guess I know what you mean. Lee and I have been great, but if something happened to us I wouldn’t want to see the sympathetic look in everyone’s eyes. I wouldn’t consider not telling anybody about it though.”

I looked away when she glanced at me sternly.

I stood up and mumbled, “I have to get ready.”

It was the day that I was finally going to Wales. The people at my job were paying for my hotel until I could finally move into the little house that I was actually able to afford. All of my new friends wouldn’t be leaving for another 2 days.

My flight left in 3 hours. You needed to be there an hour before to make sure you got through security and it took half an hour to drive to LAX leaving an hour and a half for me to get ready to go, gather everybody up, grab something to eat, and pack all of my bags into the trunk of my car and the guys’ rental. We left just in time for me to have to run to catch the plane.

”Flight 1167 to Cardiff, Wales now boarding.”

I turned back to my friends and smiled sadly. Everybody had gotten security passes to get to the gate so they could see me off. Even Oli came along.

“I’ll miss you guys. I know I’ll see you all again, but it’ll be lonely while you’re gone.”

I hugged each and every one of them tightly.

“I’ll miss you,” Oli whispered in my ear during his turn.

“I’ll miss you, too. I still love you. Just so you know.”

He squeezed me tighter in response and didn’t let go until Sarah shoved him out of the way.

“I know you have a crush on her, but we all want to tell her goodbye,” Sarah said with a roll of her eyes.

Everyone laughed at her statement except for Oli who mumbled something unintelligible.

”Last call for flight 1167 to Cardiff, Wales.”

I frowned in the direction of the voice.

“I guess that’s me…” I trailed off softly. I groaned in distaste as I wiped a tear from my cheek. I chuckled softly. “I didn’t think that leaving would be so hard.”

I was already starting to walk into the little tunnel that connected the plane to the airport when I heard Oli’s voice call out to me.

“I love you, Angel. I always will. Don’t you forget that!”

I glanced back to see Bear helping a security guard to hold him back. I ran back, hugged him tightly again and kissed his cheek before rushing onto the plane to find a seat. It was a full flight so I had a bit of trouble finding my seat considering I was the last person to board the plane. I forced my carry on into the overhead compartment and squeezed my way into a middle seat between a fat old man who was already leaning against the wall drooling in his sleep and an extremely young mother bouncing a crying baby on her lap.

It was obviously going to be a long flight. Why did I have to ask for a coach ticket?