Take This To Heart

When Chris’s set was done, he decided to go back to his merch tent and meet a few fans. He invited me to join, seeing as I’d now become a special addition to his Warped Tour dates. Thirty minutes are his performance, he started getting comments about it over MySpace.

He leaned back in the camping chair he was sitting in behind the merch table. Scrolling the internet with his phone, he started laughing and said, “Accept” out loud, taking his finger and dramatically touching the screen of his LG Chocolate Touch.

“What? Accept what?” I was confused.

Smiling and still laughing he handed over the phone to me, his MySpace page comments expanded to fit the screen. My eyes widened at his newest one: the one he accepted. “OMG!!! is ur friend going 2 b on all ur Warped Tour dates?! If so I’ll b the 1st 1 2 ur set! He was sooo hot! And he could sing! 2 hot guys singing is deff my cup of tea. Luv u chris! Good show. : )”.

I turned towards him. “You did not accept that, because the Chris I know would never do that to me.” I moaned, faking anger and hurt.

His grin grew. “Ah, come off it, Envy. You know you liked singing up on stage. And you defiantly liked seeing that message.” His eyes brightened up. “I got an idea! I’ll write her a comment on her page and tell her to meet us here and you two can get to know each other!”

He snatched his phone from my hands and began furiously texting away, his tongue poked out the side of his mouth as he looked to be deep in thought.

“No!” I grabbed the phone back and tried to stop him in his awful act. He lunged for it again, laughing and wrapped one of his hands around my both my wrist, successfully prying the phone away from me. “Chris, don’t!” I whined. He’d reduced me to begging.

He rolled his eyes. “C’mon Phoenix. Why don’t you want to have a little fun why you can? You can’t tell me talking to a girl isn’t fun. Especially-“ He stopped and gave me a funny look. “You’re not gay, are you? Because I didn’t really feel that gay vibe thing when we met.”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Do I look gay to you?” I paused and took at my phone, looking at the screen. “I just have a lot of stuff on my mind at the moment. I don’t need to mix a girl all into it. I just need to wait before I start looking for someone.” I sighed and replaced the device into my pocket.

He must have noticed my anxious look because he, worried, asked, “What exactly are you waiting for?”

I shrugged. “Everything to get back to normal. For Emma to wake up. For me not to have to make new friends at school next year.” I groaned. “I don’t want to be the new kid.”

His eyes widened. “You’re still in school?”

“Yeah. Senior.” I looked at him and noticed his look of amazement.

“You look like you’ve already graduated. Like you’ve been out of school for at least a year or two.” He shook his head. “Exactly how old are you?”

“Umm…sixteen.” I bit my lip. “I skipped a grade.” I explained.

“You’re sixteen!?” His eyes grew huge. “And this whole time I thought I was talking to a kid my age. You’re tall for you’re age.”

I looked at him skeptically. “How old exactly are you?”

He smiled. “Nineteen.” He bit his lip as if he wanted to switch the topic, but was nervous to.

Finally, he asked, “Emma? The girl in the coma everyone’s talking about? You’re her brother right?”

“She’s like my sister, but we’re not actually related.” I sighed bring my arms around my stomach, hugging myself. “She got hit by a car.” I explained.

He looked away. “Was then when you were being antisocial? When Alex and Jack had to feed you and the…,” He paused, “Incident in the meal tent happened?”

I groaned, throwing my head back. “You heard about that?”

He laughed. “I don’t see how anyone didn’t hear about that. You’re quite a debate around The Warped Tour, Phoenix.” He smiled then mimicked, “’He had no reason to say anything like that.’ ‘He was just expressing himself,’ ‘He needs to find another way to do it then.’ ‘He just lost his sister and has been thrown into a totally different environment than what he’s used to! How do you expect him to deal?’”. He laughed. “And it goes on and on and on.”

He opened his mouth to say something else before a guy a little shorter than me walked up. His brown hair was swooped to the side and a small nose ring glinted in the sunlight. He smiled, then frowned when his hair fell back into his face. He pushed it back into place in a matter of seconds and grinned again. “Hey Chris. This him?”

Chris stood up to greet the new comer and walked around the table before pulling him into a hug. I could only stare at them in shock; Chris towered over the new kid and he was calling me tall? I don’t think so.

Chris kissed the new kid on the forehead and held him out from shoulder’s length, taking in every inch of him. “When’d you get the nose piercing, Jordan?!”

So the kid’s name was Jordan.

Jordan smiled. “About four months ago.” He flicked his attention back to me and Chris released.

“Yeah,” Chris answered his earlier question. “This is Phoenix Envy. He’s the one everyone’s been talking about.”

Jordan stretched out his hand for me to shake, smirking. “You’re the one who started the whole debate in the meal tent.”

I looked away. I didn’t want to think about that right now. Jordan seemed to notice that he’d hit a sore subject and chewed on his lip in the tension. I scratched the back of my neck as a wave of shock came over me. Everyone had heard about the incident, making me the most hated person on tour at the moment.

I looked up and opened my mouth to tell them I needed to go, but I never really heard the words leave my mouth. I was too focused on the fact that I needed to get away from all the rumors and gossip as soon as possible.

Chris nodded and said goodbye. Jordan just waved, obviously still feeling awkward. In a trance, I walked back to the bus. It was empty, just how I was hoping it would be. All I wanted for the time being was to be alone and to think things over for a bit. That would have proven to be a bit more difficult if Alex, Jack, or Zack had been present.

A shower, I decided. A nice cold shower. I went to my bunk and pulled out clean clothes: the pair of black skinnys we’d bought at the mall and my old faded black Vulcom shirt: the same one that Emma had clutched onto so tight that night she thought I hated her.

I closed my eyes at the thought and tried to smile, remembering the happier times. When I realized that I was getting lost in my thoughts, I tried to regain my control and force my mind blank. As I did, I stepped into the small bathroom, closing the door before stripping myself of all my clothes. I stood in the small cubical and turned the tap labeled ‘cold’. It felt pleasant against my skin and was a warm (or cold) welcome from the heat outside.

I scrubbed at my skin hard with a soapy rag, hoping that the dirt and grime would free itself of my skin. When I felt clean enough, I started to work with my hair. It seemed to be getting a whole lot grosser looking, no doubt due to the sweat that I produced daily. It was also looking a lot more lighter, which Zack attributed to the fact that I’d been out in the sun a lot more lately and could have naturally lightened my hair. Instead of the natural dark brown that looked almost black, it was now a reddish brown.

Truthfully, I didn’t know how I felt about the new shade. Zack had told me he liked it. Jack proclaimed he couldn’t tell that much of a difference. Alex had been no help at all and told me that I needed to decide for myself if I liked it because it was my hair, after all.

I looked down at my fingernails and smiled. It was one thing I loved about showers: you could get in with the filthiest looking fingernails but by the time you got out, just about all of the filth had been washed out from underneath them.

Turning off the water, I shook my hair like a dog, causing water droplets to fly everywhere. I grabbed for my towel and drying my hair as much as I could before drying off the rest of my body and slipping back into my jeans, my back to the door.

That’s when she spoke and I realized I’d been watched the whole time. “You have a really cute butt for a guy.” She giggled. And I froze. I knew that voice anywhere even though I’d only heard it once.

I’d just gotten my jeans on and a blush crept up my face. I had a feeling she’d saw more than just me sliding on my jeans and that made me feel a little bit violated. Nibbling on my lip piercing, I turned slowly, zipping up my fly and buttoning my jeans.

“Vivian.” I breathed out, shocked and embarrassed. “Um, did you open the door?” At the moment all that was occupying my mind was the fact that she’d seen me completely naked and had been enjoying every moment of it while I’d been oblivious. I could care less at what or why she was doing here. “And how much did you see?” I was completely horrified as she smirked.

“Enough to make you blush, apparently.” She took a few steps closer. I instinctively backed up, into the blurry -still damp with condensation- shower door, and swallowed. My cheeks heated up again and I blinked, realizing how exposed I still was; I had yet to put on a shirt and she was eyeing me up and down like a piece of candy.

This was defiantly not the Vivian Ross I’d met at Best Buy. Or maybe it was considering she was the bold one who handed out her number first.

In a swift movement, she had me pinned up against the glass, her fingers trailing down my chest, down my stomach, down to the front of my jeans. Something twitched down there and I tried to show no emotion, but it was proving to be slightly harder than I thought (no pun intended). I was partially relieved when she stopped suddenly and traced her finger’s back up my front before weaving her arms around the back of my neck and allowing her fingertips to play with my hair. She immediately pulled me into a kiss and even though I was confused and nervous, I kissed her back…which resulted in me getting shoved away. Hard.

She looked at me in pure horror, as if she’d just got caught doing something extremely unforgivable. “Oh my…” She couldn’t finish her thought and looked away in confusion and sorrow. What the crap? What was going on? One moment she was practically seducing me and the next she’s pushing me away? Confusion clouded my eyes.

Her sad eyes met my confused ones as she looked up and she fell to a heap on the ground and started sobbing. “That –that wasn’t s-supposed to happen, Phoenix!” A strangled cry escaped her lips. “I’m so, so s-sorry. I just saw you and you were so…” She shook her head, looking away again, not knowing what to say. She brought her knees up to her chest and cried into them, pulling herself into a ball with her arms.

I was completely at awe. I didn’t know what to do. This had never happened before. I’d never been lusted after and I certainly had never comforted a girl besides Emma. Emma was easy to comfort…Viv, however…. She was just about as confused as I was at the moment.

I slid down beside her. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Viv.”

She glared at me through her tears. “You’re lying. I practically forced myself onto you.”

A crooked smile wormed it’s way onto my mouth. “It’s only wrong if I didn’t like it and told you to stop.” By now, the hormones she’d aroused were clouding my rational thinking and I nuzzled her neck, sucking slightly.

She release a small sound of pleasure, but gently pushed me away. “Phoenix, No.” She sounded annoyed as if she was talking to a naïve puppy instead of an actual person. Her tone irritated me and I leaned away from her pursing my lips and looking the other way.

She sensed my disapproval and annoyance, but did nothing about it. But I sure as heck wasn’t going to do anything about it. She started it.

Finally a sigh escaped her lips and she looked back over at me. The sexual tension in the air was high and she wasn’t able to bare it. Standing up, she checked her make up in the mirror and left. My eyes followed her every move.

When she was gone, I let my head fall forward into my hands and raked my bangs into my face. I stood up and slid on my shirt and shoes, telling myself I didn’t care about what had just happened.

That was a lie.