Like You to Me

I woke up with a headache and a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach, but no missed calls or text messages. Accepting my losses, I threw the blankets off of myself and sat up, looking around the room for my brother. He was still asleep with his head buried under his pillow -- a habit he’d never managed to break since he was a kid. Our parents always yelled at him, thinking he was going to suffocate himself in the middle of the night, but after twenty-one years, it seemed nearly impossible. Even though I couldn’t see his face, his body language told me he’d be feeling much better when he awoke than I was now. It was kind of childish, maybe even ridiculous, but I was jealous of him.

Saxon never had trouble with relationships because he never wanted one. He preferred to date girls for months, sometimes even fractions of a year, before he made anything official. The only time he had a legitimate girlfriend was during his senior year of high school. Her name was Sydney and they dated for six months. To be honest, I was almost shocked when I found out my brother had a girlfriend. I didn’t know Sydney but I could tell she made my brother incredibly happy...until she cheated on him, of course. After finding a way to deal with his broken heart, he never officially had another girlfriend.

It’s not that I wanted to turn into my brother and ignore relationships altogether, but I wanted to forget about Mike. I didn’t want to hurt anymore and I didn’t want to deal with my problems by drinking them away. Hangovers were awful -- probably the most terrible thing in the entire world -- and I didn’t want them to become a morning routine. Saxon got to live in that honeymoon period all the time. You know, that feeling you get when you have a crush on someone. It’s innocent and it makes you feel like you’re on top of the world. There’s nothing else like it. That’s how I felt about Mike until everything became complicated and messy. Otherwise known as before we had sex. I’d do anything to take back what happened, to have the relationship we had before we ruined it. Or, rather, I ruined it. Above all, I just missed my best friend. I didn’t care about my feelings anymore.

I decided to take a shower and move on with the rest of my day. Staying in bed with a hangover was only going to make it worse. After I took a few Tylenol and long, hot shower, I’d be fine. I’d just have to lay off the alcohol for a few days.

We were packed and ready to leave the venue by quarter after one the next morning. Everything had gone according to plan and no prying fans had asked me about Mike -- which I was beyond thankful for, as you could have probably guessed. The band, as a whole, were getting along much better than they had been on the first few nights of the tour. We were a week in at this point, finishing up our only date in Arizona and making our way to Pomona, California. Mike always kept track of where I was on any given day, meaning it wouldn’t be that big of a surprise if he showed up the following night. Pomona was the closest we were going to get to home; both Mike and Vic made a point to come to every local, or as local as the tour came, show. I didn’t know if they’d break tradition with the current state of things.

As I finally settled into the back row of the van, my phone started vibrating. A nauseous feeling like the one I’d gotten when I woke up filled my stomach. Even though I missed Mike, I didn’t particularly want to speak to him. I’d noticed a two-minute phone call I’d made to him while drunk and I was sure I’d said something inappropriate, I just didn’t know how severe it was.

I decided to risk it, though. If it was Mike, I’d have to deal with the consequences of my drunken antics. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have to worry about it until further notice. The rest of the band were still inside, talking to fans that had stayed late and to the other bands. I never talked on the phone in front of them. I’d always been a stickler about my privacy.

“Hello?”

“Shea,” Vic greeted me. I could tell he was smiling; I could hear it in his voice.

“Uh, what?”

I hadn’t meant to sound as rude as I did. As I said a million times before, what happened between Mike and I had nothing to do with Vic. I was always bad at taking my own advice because I was spiteful and vindictive; I wanted to take out my frustrations with his brother out on him and he didn’t deserve that. Vic always got stuck in the middle, was always expected to fix things he had no control over. Both Mike and I went to him when we were having problems (not that we had many) and fully expected him to have all the answers. He always did, but he never told us what they were. He made us solve our problems ourselves.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, obviously taken aback by my harsh tone of voice.

“Sorry,” I apologized quickly. “It just hasn’t been a good couple of days.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Almost like we were having a face-to-face conversation, I could picture Vic raising his eyebrows, effectively calling my bluff with his body language alone. I hated that he could do that. I hated that someone other than my brother could read me like a book because it made me vulnerable.

“I’m not getting off the phone until you tell me so you might as well.”

I chuckled sarcastically. “You know I can just hang up on you, right?”

“Don’t you dare-”

“I won’t, I won’t,” I interjected. “I just...I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it.”

“Which means it’s about my brother,” he answered all-knowingly.

“Which also means you should probably know what I’m talking about.”

Vic sighed into the phone, not even trying to conceal his frustrations. “You should’ve told him how you felt, Shea. He had no idea and you’ve got to remember that. He didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Does it really matter, though, Vic? Just because he didn’t mean to hurt me doesn’t change the fact that he did.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t change anything, but you shouldn’t be mad at him.”

If my voice was the volume on a television, it would’ve raised about fifteen levels as I screamed into the phone. “Are you fucking serious right now? I shouldn’t be mad? He led me on. He made me think I had a chance, even if he didn’t know how I felt. You don’t do that. You don’t fuck people, especially your best fucking friend, then act like they’re dead to you as soon as they leave-”

“So what’s going to fix this then? Or are you going to be pissed off about it until he breaks up with her and confesses his undying love for you?”

“Don’t mock me, Vic,” I warned, feeling the resentment begin to shift from his brother to him.

“You’re living in a fucking fantasy world, Shea. You know how my brother is, especially with girls. Don’t act like you’ve been wearing blinders all this time because that’s bullshit and you know it.”

“And don’t you act like I’m just another girl.”

“Look-”

“No. Just...just leave it alone, okay? This is the last time I’m going to talk about it. When I get home, I’ll keep acting like I don’t exist and we can all go about our lives normally.”

Vic sighed again. “You’re going to be in Pomona soon aren’t you?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Would you call security on me if I came to see you?”

“No,” I replied, too stubborn to lose the hard tone I’d acquired.

“Alright. I’m going to come see you tomorrow and we can talk then. Don’t be surprised if my brother’s with me.”

“If anyone else is with you two, I’ll probably end up in jail.”

I disconnected the call and slammed my phone onto the floor of the van. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with anyone else. My phone breaking would be a blessing in disguise because it’d lessen the burden of my calls and texts going unanswered. Mike would have an excuse then and I’d stop thinking (at least for a while) that it was my fault. I still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with me, what it was that pushed people away. First my mother and now my best friend. But I knew who’d be able to tell me.

With a surge of confidence, I exited the van and headed back inside. My brother and the rest of his bandmates were gathered around one of the bigger band’s merch booths, talking amongst themselves. I hadn’t been very social since the beginning of the tour so I hadn’t made very many friends. Everyone was friendly so I hadn’t managed to make any enemies, either.

“Can I borrow Anderson for a minute?” I asked faux-sweetly as I approached the group. Saxon eyed me like I’d gone mad. Anderson, however, shrugged his shoulders and followed me outside.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. He was leaning against the brick exterior of the venue as he dug through his pockets for a cigarette and lighter. Once he found his, he flicked it a few times, failing to light his cigarette every time. “Fuck. You got an extra on you?”

I nodded and pulled mine out of my back pocket. I didn’t smoke but I always kept one on me incase someone asked -- a habit I’d picked up while on the road.

“I...I need to ask you something, and you’ve got to be honest with me.”

Anderson smirked as he handed back my lighter. “Of course.”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

The words came out easier than I expected them to. Anderson, however, adorned a look of shock that I most definitely was not expecting. It was like the concept of hatred between the two of us was a relatively new concept, like he actually hadn’t spent the last few years poking at a voodoo doll of me.

“Hate you? I don’t hate you, Shea.”

“Well, you certainly don’t like me.”

He laughed. It wasn’t condescending or crass, either. It was a genuine laugh that someone would expel when they were humored. “It’s not that I don’t like you. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve definitely never been able to tolerate one another, but I don’t dislike you. I just like to give you shit.”

“I just...I just need to know what it is about me that pushes people away.”

He eyed me skeptically. “You talkin’ about your mom?”

“No.”

“So you’re talking about Mike then.” It was more of a statement than a question. Anderson wasn’t stupid. “I can’t really give you advice if I don’t know what happened.”

“He has a new girlfriend.”

“One that isn’t you?”

My eyebrows knit together. “Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s pretty obvious how you two feel about one another. It’s pretty gross, actually.”

I sighed and sat on the curb outside of the entrance. “Obviously not if he gets a girlfriend right after I leave.”

“Ouch,” he mumbled, the smoke from his most recent inhale accompanying his words on the way out. “It’s not you, Shea. Trust me on that.”

I shook my head, confused by everything that’d happened in the last thirty minutes. I was positive Anderson would be able to tell me all of my flaws. In fact, I was certain he’d written them down in a notebook, ready to spew them out at any minute. Instead, he was being civil. I’d even go so far as to say he was being nice. Anderson Costanzo wasn’t nice. Maybe he was to other people, probably only attractive females and select members of his family, but definitely not to me.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied awkwardly. “I’m just going to, uh - I’m just going back to the van.”

Anderson nodded. He stomped out his cigarette and went back inside. I walked back to the van as slowly as possible. I figured tomorrow’s show would come slower if it took me longer to get to the van, as if it was the van itself that would take me to Pomona. I knew that wasn’t true, but what was true was how much I dreaded the following night’s show.