Lost in Stereo

Jade's Point of View

“I was born to love you; I was born to lick your face. I was born to rub you, but you were born to rub me first!” Jack sang loudly in my ear the next morning. I buried my head under my pillow, trying to ignore him, but then he started singing it again, even louder. “I WAS BORN TO LOVE YOU-”

I took the pillow and whipped it at his head, making him groan. “Goddamnit, Jack! It’s an off-day, I’m sleeping in, you fat fuck.”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t wait any longer,” he whined. “I have news. And shit, that actually really hurt.”

“Sorry,” I rushed. “What’s your news? The sooner you tell me, the sooner I can go back to sleep.”

“I don’t think you’ll be going back to sleep,” Jack smiled.

“Will you please just tell me already?” I begged, my patience running out. I’d been up late, texting Chase, actually. It turned out that aside from working merch, we actually had a few things in common and had lost track of time while talking.

“Skye’s back!” Jack cheered.

My eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yeah!” Jack exclaimed, practically bursting with excitement. “She came in last night. Rian and I picked her up from the airport.”

“She didn’t tell me that she was coming back….” I trailed off, frowning slightly as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

“She wanted it to be a surprise, I guess,” Jack shrugged.

“I’ve gotta admit, I am surprised,” I nodded. “What time is it anyway?”

“It’s five-thirty,” Jack answered. “You wanna go say hi?”

I shook my head. “Jack, she’s probably sleeping like any normal person at this hour. Why aren’t you?”

“I was too excited and happy to sleep,” he replied. “The family’s back together!”

I smiled, rolling my eyes a little. “You should probably try to get some sleep, then,” I advised. I rolled over and went back to sleep for a few hours until Flyzik came around to wake everyone up to go to breakfast to celebrate Skye’s arrival. We went to some hole-in-the-wall diner that ended up having amazing food. I sat next to Skye, and Alex sat across from the both of us, Zack on Skye’s other side. They were sitting pretty closely and were loosely holding hands under the table. I decided to ask her about that as we were leaving, but as we walked back to the hotel, Alex got to me first.

“Hey,” he greeted, trying to keep his tone light. He and I had been getting along fairly well since Skye left, and our rules probably helped a lot with that. Still, I felt the need to keep the whole Chase situation to myself. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” I nodded. “Aside from Jack invading my room at five-thirty this morning.”

Alex laughed and rolled his eyes. “Guess he was too excited about Skye, huh?”

“That’s what he said,” I said.

“It’s pretty crazy that she’s back,” Alex said. “I wasn’t expecting her to come back so soon, let alone speak to any of us. She was pretty fed up.”

“I think everyone was,” I shrugged. “And I can’t blame ‘em.”

“Me neither,” Alex sighed. “But listen, I feel like we should show Skye that we can get along. I mean, if we’re gonna talk the talk, we’ve gotta walk the walk.”

I nodded. “Okay. What’d you have in mind?”

“I was thinking we could have like a friend date tonight or something,” Alex answered after a moment of hesitation. “I mean, nothing serious. We can just hang out and watch movies if that’s what you wanna do, or grab dinner, or whatever. But just something to show that we can be civilized.”

I nodded again, grimacing a little. “Does it have to be tonight?”

“Well, I guess not,” Alex said. “We have another day off this week, so I guess it could be the day after tomorrow or something, but I thought maybe you’d wanna get it out of the way. Plus it would show her sooner that we're capable of being human.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Why, what’s going on tonight that you can’t do it?”

“Well, you know that merch guy for Hey Monday? Chase?” I edged carefully. Alex nodded, his jaw clenching a little. “He’s supposed to hang out with me tonight and watch movies.”

“I see,” Alex deadpanned.

I sighed. “You know, if this is uncomfortable for you, it’s in the rules that we’re supposed to talk about it.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Alex replied sharply. “I just thought you’d wanna hang out tonight, is all.”

“We can still hang out the day after tomorrow,” I offered. “You can pick what we do, I don’t care.”

“Okay,” Alex agreed. “I’m gonna go catch up with Skye, then.” He jogged ahead to walk along Skye and Zack, leaving me towards the back of the group. We headed back to the hotel and after a few hours, Chase came over to my room to hang out. We watched a few of my favorite movies, including American Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs. We rejoined up with everyone later on for dinner. This time, Alex and Skye sat across from us. Skye had just finished talking about her time spent away from the guys and I, and then Alex started asking questions.

“So how was your movie day?” he inquired, trying too hard to sound casual.

“It was good,” I said.

“I liked The Silence of the Lambs, even though it was completely twisted,” Chase commented. “I didn’t get American Psycho, though. I thought it was actually kind of stupid, really.”

Alex and I both looked at each other for a second like what he’d said was completely blasphemous. “Are you kidding me? I explained it to you, like four times.”

“It didn’t make sense, especially the ending,” Chase shook his head.

“It’s open to interpretation,” Alex explained. “Was he just insane and thought he killed all those people, or was everyone else just too wrapped up in their own lives to notice?”

“I think he was just insane,” Chase breathed. “Twisted and sick.”

“There’s more to it than that, though,” Alex continued. “I think he did kill all those people. I mean, if you look at the situation where he killed his co-worker and sent his body to London, it makes the most sense. Everyone kept confusing the main character for someone else, and when people say they spotted his co-worker in London, they were probably confusing him for someone else as well. I mean, it was the late eighties, the height of the yuppie population. Everyone dressed alike, had the same hair, and they were all too wrapped up in themselves and the next cool thing to pay attention to the dorky Patrick Bateman losing his mind.”

Chase sat quietly for a moment, and I just stared at Alex, remembering when we would stay up all night and talk about these sorts of things. Finally Chase nodded slowly. “Maybe. Or you might be over-thinking it.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Alex said, smirking a little.

The rest of dinner passed by uneventfully, though I couldn’t help sneaking a few glances at Alex and smiling at him. Later, Chase walked me back to my hotel room, making small talk along the way. As we were about to say good-bye, he said, “Hey, we’ve gotta talk for a second.”

I leaned against the door frame. “Sure, what’s up?”

“Back there, at the restaurant…” he started.

“What, with Alex? Don’t worry about that, he’s just really into that movie,” I waved him off.

“It’s not that,” Chase said. “But it does have to do with Alex. I see the way you look at him. Whether it’s when you watch him onstage, or a situation like back at the restaurant…you just get this, like, star-struck expression on your face.” He shifted his weight so that he was also leaning against the doorframe. “I know you two used to date, and it’s pretty obvious that you two still like each other.”

“It’s not like that at all,” I protested.

“It’s okay,” Chase said, smiling lightly. “I get it, and it’s fine. The heart wants what the heart wants. Which is why I’m going to gracefully bow out of the situation.”

I looked down. “I’m sorry this didn’t work out.”

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “It’s not like we were dating, you know? We were just talking, and sometimes that doesn’t work out. But I think we should still be friends, though.”

“Definitely,” I agreed. “I need someone to make sure I don’t claw someone’s eyes out when they ask for ‘that one’ at the merch table.”

Chase laughed, turning. “I’ll see you around, then.”