I Hate Myself Without You

By the time Josh and I actually went back to the hotel it was 4 in the morning. We just found a little place to sit down and talk. We talked about a lot in those few hours. We talked about if we wanted a Summer or Spring wedding, when we wanted to wedding to take place, if we wanted it back in Vancouver, or in Salmo, or if we wanted to go somewhere tropical. Josh brought up Hawaii as a honeymoon idea. I told him that he needed to calm down with the wedding stuff because we had only been engaged for about 5 hours. He was obviously very excited. I was too, mind you. Then he started talking about having more kids. I couldn't tell if it was the beer or actually Josh, but I liked how he had become so suddenly open to having more kids. Josh still wanted a little girl. He even explained to me why he wanted a girl.

“You know, it would be really awesome if we had a baby girl,” Josh said to me. I was cuddled up right next to him on a wooden bench. He had draped his sweater around my arms when I started getting cold.

“You've never explained to me why you're so keen on having a girl,” I stated. Josh wrapped his arm around my shoulders a little tighter. “I thought you'd be sick of girls by now, with having 4 sisters and what-not.”

“I never got to be the big brother to my sisters. Finley gets that chance. Finley gets to be a big brother; he gets to be the protective one that hates all his sisters boyfriends,” Josh said. I just listened. I could tell there was more. “Airin's really close to your mom. You're close to your dad. Finley is close to you. Finley ADORES you.”

“But Finley loves you too,” I said.

“But he's more attached to you,” Josh continued. “I want to be the dad that my daughter can come to when she has boy problems. I want to be the dad that can tell her that not all guys are going to break her heart. I want to be able to call someone my little girl.”

It was honestly too sweet to hear Josh say things like that. When we walked back to the hotel and I got settled into bed, I started thinking about what Josh would be like if we had never gotten back together. Would he of gone back to drugs? Would the Marianas Trench be as successful? Would he be in a relationship with a lunatic? Would I still be with John? Would John and I have kids? Would I still be living in Salmo? Would Ellaries Dollhouse even exist? All those thoughts brought me to my sleep at around 4:30.

Airin woke me up around 10:30. He told me to go have a shower before every one else got up. I did just that, sleepily walking myself to the bathroom to have a shower. I turned the water on, stripping out of my clothes (which I just slept in), and got into the shower. The hot water just made me more sleepy, so I had to turn on the cold to wake me up. It was not pleasant standing in ice cold water for a few minutes. I turned the hot back on and warmed myself up before I got out of the shower. I wrapped a towel around my small frame and kicked my clothes towards the door, keeping one hand gripping the towel. I opened the bathroom door and kicked my clothes out. I continued this pattern until I got to my bag and grabbed that before going back into the bathroom to change.

The rest of the boys eventually woke up and had their showers. Marque and I were fighting over mirror time. All I wanted to do was straighten my bangs and put my hair up. Marque had to blow-dry, straighten, and style his hair. I asked him why he didn't just get a hair cut and be done with it. He thought it was a good idea. Then he asked me why I hadn't cut my hair in a while. My hair was a little past my shoulders, and it was just getting too much to handle to straighten, so I just had little waves here and there in my hair. I told him I hadn't found time to cut my hair. So, Marque and I both agreed to get our hair cut when we got back to Vancouver. We were going to have a “girls day”.

We all decided to go have lunch before out interview at Much Music. We just went to a Tim Hortons because it was the first thing we saw when we walked out of the hotel. We got to Much Music Headquarters and were ushered to the green room. We had to choose 3 people to do the interview, so we agreed that Keith, Zack and myself would go out and do the interview. Every one would be out at the end of the show for an acoustic performance of our first single off the album. One of the managers came and got us and gave us our microphones. We heard the VJ Jesse start our intro.

“Here talking about their new album, tour life and so much more, please welcome the guys from Ellaries Dollhouse, Keith, Zack and Josline,” Jessie said, which cued the audience to start cheering. We walked out in that order and Jesse greeted us. Jesse was a new one that I hadn't met before today. We all sat down on the stools, which I hated. They were always too tall for me, so I basically had to hop onto them. “So how are you guys doing?” A chorus of goods sounded from us. “I'm going to bother Josline first here. My twitter exploded last night with tweets about you and Josh,”

“It's already all over twitter?” I asked.

“And YouTube,” Jesse added. “I mean, that was a big thing. Did you not even know it was on twitter yet?”

“No, I don't check my twitter...ever. I only updated it a few days ago. See, I'm smart, I turned the notifications off on my phone, so I don't get bombarded with tweets every few minutes,” I said.

“I got all of them,” Keith said. “My phone legit had 35 tweets mentioning Josline this morning.”

“I don't even have twitter, so I don't get these things,” Zack added. “I don't even know what a tweet is.” Jesse laughed.

“You gotta get on that Zack,” Keith said. “Even I have one, and I'm the most computer-illiterate people ever.”

Jesse laughed, “How shocked were you that Josh proposed to Josline? Were any of you expecting it?”

“I'm pretty sure Airin was expecting it, because he went ring shopping with Josh, but I was completely shocked,” Keith said.

“I actually kind of...knew...” Zack said. My mouth hung open in shock at him.

“You knew?!” I said.

“How did you know?” Keith asked.

“I've gotten to be really good friends with Mike, and he let it slip that Josh had a surprise planned for Josline last night. I pieced two and two together and came out to that conclusion,” Zack explained. I turned away from Zack.

“I'm not talking to you for the rest of the interview,” I said, but couldn't prevent myself from laughing.

“So, let's talk new album. You said in a radio interview that your new album was going to sound more like Kliik did?”

“Yeah, we're really looking forwards to this album coming out. The sound is more poppy, but it's more a personal album. Everyone wrote at least 2 songs for this one, so it's going to sound really cool,” Keith said.

“Marque actually wrote a majority of the songs for this one. I think Airin only wrote one,” Zack said.

“I wrote 3,” I said.

“So basically, we're all going to get a look into all of your lives?” Jesse asked.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“We've never tried to exclude anyone from the album writing process. We always made time together, and we would usually head over to Josline's or Marque and Airin's place and we sit around and try to write and figure out guitar work,” Keith told Jesse.

“But, when you're not writing or working on the album, what do you guys do? How often do you see each other outside of the studio?” Jesse asked.

“Honestly, not very often. I see Zack almost every day because he lives right next to me,” I said.

“Keith is really off in his own little world. We don't see much of him,” Zack said.

“I usually end up getting really busy with my own work. I have some movie stuff I've been doing, I have a son now,” Keith trailed off slightly and some of the girls in the audience awed.

“And he's one of the cutest things ever,” I added.

“Well, tell us about him then!” Jesse smiled.

“He was born at the end of August, his name is Brandon,” Keith said. I smiled at him. I thought it was a nice gesture that Keith named his son after his brother.

“So Zack is the only one that's not married, or engaged,” Jesse directed to me, “or has kids.”

“You know, that may be true, but I got this going on for me,” Zack wiggled his prosthetic leg up and down, making me squirm in my seat.

“Stop doing that!” I exclaimed.

“I thought you weren't talking to me?” Zack asked.

“I didn't talk, I yelled at you. There's a difference.”

The interview went by and then we had to get ready for the acoustic performance. Marque had an acoustic bass, Airin had a tambourine, and Zack and Keith had guitars. Jesse introduced us once again, “Here with their new single, it's Ellaries Dollhouse.”

Zack started playing a nice, relaxing, but sad, sort of tune. I readjusted my mic stand to accompany my height. “This is Cages,” I said into the microphone.

Stuck in world so left behind,
the heartache break
your hands are tied.
Nowhere to run
nowhere to hide
we're so estranged
there is no time.

And when our cages restrict our wings
we'll find things don't come easily.
When the walls finally start to breath
you'll find the world is not so big.

Has someone broken down your pride?
Did someone leave you high and dry?
Oh what does it take
for us to be loved?
Oh, how much does it take
for us to be saved?

And when our cages restrict our wings
we'll find things don't come easily.
When the walls finally start to breath
you'll find the world is not so big.

Just be a fighter
and don't give up.
So leave with me
and leave the cages behind.