Like You to Me

Hard work never bothered me. At a young age I came to terms with the fact that if I wanted something, I was going to have to work for it. After my mom left, my brother and I were kind of forced into her position: we did most of the cleaning while our dad was off at work and dinner was usually up to me. When Saxon was in charge, there was always a large pizza and a two-liter of Pepsi waiting on the table. To spare us the health issues down the road, Saxon was fired from that job and it was given to me. I didn’t know much about cooking other than whatever I conjured up was bound to be loads healthier than Papa John’s daily special.

I guess that’s why my company and I went hand-in-hand. From the very first day I worked my ass off to make a name for myself. I went to every local show and handed out t-shirts--most of the time for free since people weren’t keen on buying clothing from a company they’d never heard of. I made sure bands knew my name and spent 20-hour days pressing merch. For a few months, my social life went out the window completely until I’d established a small following. The only people I saw were Saxon and my father, and that was only because I had to cook them dinner.

Tour wasn’t much different. You had to keep on your toes at all times; sleeping on the job (or at least slacking off) wasn’t an option. There were heaps of kids wanting merch every night and you had to make sure you tended to every one. On top of this, you had to keep in good spirits even when you wanted nothing more than to rip out everyone’s hair, including your own. Most kids at shows are under the impression that whoever’s running the merch table has it easy because they aren’t an actual member of the band. They think you just stand there and take their money. What they don’t realize is that you’re running off just as much (or as little) sleep as the band members they’re so enamored with and your day isn’t over until you leave for the next city. There’s unpacking, setting up, selling, repacking, money counting--it’s utterly exhausting.

And then they don’t even tip you.

After I’d finished setting up both the band’s and Nova’s merch, I took a seat and waited for the first swarm of kids to enter the venue. My brother and the rest of the van were in the venue’s “green room,” as they liked to call it. I could only assume they were having a lengthy discussion with Anderson about his vile attitude. I wanted to eavesdrop. I wanted to blurt out all the rude things Anderson had done and said to me since the moment we met but I knew it wasn’t my place. If worst came to worst and he got kicked out of the band, I wouldn’t be surprised. Nor would I be disappointed. The only downside to his departure would be the band’s lack of a replacement.

I glanced at the time at my watch and groaned when I realized there were still twenty more minutes until doors opened. As a band lower on the totem pole than the rest of the bands they were on tour with, my brother was playing third--after the two local openers but the opener for the tour roster. That meant I wouldn’t be seeing them for another two hours at least. Part of me began daydreaming about it being Anderson’s farewell show. It was a long shot but I couldn’t help myself.

At the peak of my boredom, I sent a quick text to Mike, asking how he was and how everything was going back home. After talking nearly nonstop since I’d left, I thought it was strange that he hadn’t called me all day. Or, at the very least, shot me a text message. We were both busy, I knew this, so I tried my hardest to push any negative thoughts out of my mind. It wasn’t like we could ignore each other forever. Something within ourselves prohibited us from doing that. When we even spent a few consecutive days without speaking it drove us mad.

If there’s one thing I love about tour, it’s the distractions. Granted they aren’t always beneficial, because distractions are merely a temporary solution to a problem that’s most likely not going to away on its own. Especially when you’re ignoring it rather than fixing it. When you push the pain to the side until you’re able to face it again, it sort of comes with a vengeance once you do. It’s angry. It doesn’t want to be ignored. And when it has your full attention, it leaves its mark. It hurts worse. All the negativity I tried to ignore eventually came seeping through my thoughts as the night progressed and I hadn’t received a reply from the only person I wanted to talk to.

Dallas, Texas never let me down in the letdown department. Every time I came back was worse than the time before it, and I found myself making promises that I’d never come back. If I absolutely had to it wouldn’t be without a fight. There must’ve been something in the water that made the city absolutely dreadful. I guess the company it kept didn’t help much either. Maybe it was my shitty-to-begin-with attitude but my tolerance levels were at an incredibly low peak. And every time some oblivious teenager asked an even slightly moronic question I felt like I was going to implode.

“Why don’t you go get some fresh air?” Saxon suggested as he neared the table. He’d just got done performing. I assumed he’d changed because the shirt he was wearing wasn’t sweaty and he didn’t smell as rancid as I thought he would.

“I’m fine,” I muttered through gritted teeth. My brother laughed at my blatant lie and pushed me toward the doors of the venue. “Can you come with me?”

He took one look at me and nodded. Luke was put in charge of running the merch tables until we got back; this put me on edge. The kid had a knack for losing things, especially money, and half of the inventory being gone would send me over the edge. A few tours ago, at our stop in Norfolk, it was Luke’s turn to drive. We were halfway to Baltimore when we stopped at a gas station to refuel both the van and our stomachs when he lost the keys. We spent a solid hour and a half looking for them before he realized they’d been in his pocket the whole time. Needless to say, that was the last time Luke was ever in charge of anything valuable.

Once my brother and I reached the van, he slid the door open and ushered me inside. The weather was nice, beautiful even, and the warm breeze felt like heaven as it blew through the backseat. I didn’t want to admit that Saxon had been right about me needing fresh air so I kept quiet and waited for him to start asking the questions I knew were inevitable. He needed to know everything--every little detail about every single thing, even things I didn’t think were important.

“So, why the long face?” he asked as he pulled his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. I laughed as he pulled out a joint. It felt good to laugh, even if it wasn’t anything over the top. I wasn’t in stitches but I was smiling, and that was a start.

“You know I hate this place.”

It was Saxon’s turn to laugh. He took a hit before passing it to me. I mimicked his actions and rolled my eyes as I went into a coughing fit. Being such good friends with Mike you’d think I’d be a marijuana connoisseur but I wasn’t even close. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I’d even smoked. Unlike Mike, I didn’t get the same satisfaction out of it that he did. Unlike my brother, I didn’t use it as an escape. “Correct me if I’m wrong but I think it has something to do with that crush of yours.”

“You are wrong,” I lied. Saxon knew I was lying too. He knew all the things I tried to hide. That’s what brothers are for, I think, because Vic was the same way with Mike. It was nice, though. I had someone I could actually trust who knew me inside-out.

“You were fine yesterday,” he remarked as he took a few more hits of the joint and passed it back my way. “Why the sudden change? Something happen?”

He deserved to know the truth. He was my brother, for fuck’s sake. We didn’t keep secrets. After our mother left, we were all each other had. We made a promise to one another that we’d always be there. Part of that meant we’d always be honest because it’s hard to help someone when you don’t know what they’re going through.

“No, nothing happened-”

“Shea, come on-”

“-and that’s the worst part,” I finished. Saxon stared at me (with his bloodshot eyes and saucer-sized pupils) and urged me to continue. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ve been going back and forth for weeks now. We’re best friends, we have sex, we don’t talk for a while, we’re friends again, and then the cycle just keeps repeating itself.”

“Gross,” he whispered.

I slapped him on the arm before continuing. “I thought things would change between us, y’know? It was stupid of me, really, to think he’d just magically fall in love with me just because we fucked-”

“How do you know he’s not?”

I wanted to tell him that he was an idiot for even suggesting such things but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It may have been because I was high as a kite; it also could’ve been because he wasn’t such an idiot. But I just sat there thinking about what he said and how untrue it was. I wanted it to be true but it was so unrealistic that I couldn’t even pretend, not for one second. Mike was never going to love me. He was never going to see me as anything more than his best friend who, by some regrettable mistake, added with benefits to the end of that title. I would always be the one who accompanied him to parties and laughed when he was piss drunk and fell down the stairs. I would always be the one who was in the passenger’s seat when he got pulled over for speeding and had to sit on the bag of weed so the cops wouldn’t see it.

“Get real, Sax. It’s Mike we’re talking about.”

At that point I started to cry because reality was finally catching up with me. Or maybe it was because I was still high and emotions were always more intense then. I didn’t know. Saxon still let me cry on his shoulder and he didn’t care what my reasons were. I could’ve been crying for some totally irrelevant and unrelated reason and his reaction still would’ve been the same because he was my brother and that’s what he was supposed to do. You’re supposed to comfort the people you love when they’re upset, not ignore their text messages and go days without talking to them. And then I realized that what Mike was doing to me was a reflection of what I’d done to him and I started crying harder.

“Any guy who wouldn’t fall madly in love with you is either really fucking stupid or gay.”

For a split second I smiled a genuine smile for the first time since we left San Diego. Then, as if it happened in slow motion, Anderson appeared. He took a few seconds to survey the scene in front of him before adding his two cents.

“Or they’re really fucking smart and know better than to fall in love with whores.”

It didn’t take Saxon long to react, to defend me. I was still crying when Zach and Darby came rushing over to break up the fight. They had no idea what was going on. I didn’t have the energy to explain it to them. Words were still being exchanged when they pulled my brother off of Anderson, who’d acquired a busted lip in exchange for Saxon’s black eye. They were shouting at one another in fragments. If they had been written down they would’ve been blurry because that’s what they sounded like. For the life of me I couldn’t understand who was saying what so I stopped listening. I pushed through the crowd of kids who’d stopped to watch the fight and ran into Luke, who was on his way outside to inspect the damage. We didn’t say anything to one another, just silently swapped duties and went on with the rest of our nights.

By the time the last of the merch was repacked into its respective tubs, I started carrying them out to the trailer. Darby helped me since he was the only member of the band who wasn’t off doing their own thing in order to clear their mind. Once we were finished, he rounded up the group and we all took our usual seats. It was Luke’s turn to drive and Anderson was banished from being within two feet of my brother so he was in the passenger’s seat. All I wanted to do was sleep. My eyes were heavy and my body ached and I still hadn’t received a text message from Mike.

Dallas never gave me a reason to be happy.