Like You to Me

I remember the day Adele bought her car like it was yesterday. She’d made such a big deal about it that I’m sure all of San Diego could remember, too. A few days prior to the actual purchase, we’d been scanning the newspaper looking for cheap furniture to fill the office with. We were both broke and couldn’t afford proper furnishings so we did what any desperate, money-ridden person would do: recycle. Adele kept getting distracted while I made phone call after phone call and eventually stumbled upon a listing for a used car dealership. Their advertisement of the day was a 2004 BMW M3 and she wasn’t taking no for an answer. After some mediocre-at-best convincing, her parents agreed to buy it for her as long as she made monthly payments.

When I saw the black car sitting in the parking lot of Glass House, I felt a strange sense of familiarity wash over me. That wasn’t something I felt often on tour. Most of the time I felt anxious and out of place -- probably the exact opposite of what someone who’s on tour half the year should be feeling. But I couldn’t shake it. No matter how hard I tried to not feel so on-edge all the time, it was damn near impossible. Just seeing Adele’s car calmed my nerves. If Mike was going to show up, I was going to need her for moral support...and probably sanity support as well.

I hadn’t been outside of the van for two minutes before she came barreling over, hugging her brother first before attaching herself to me. I returned her hug with a small laugh. Hugging wasn’t my favorite thing to do but it felt nice to be with people I knew again.

“Here, let me get that,” Adele said to me as she took the box I’d been holding. I watched her disappear inside the venue before scanning the parking lot for any other vehicles I’d recognize.

“Is he here?” Saxon asked as he appeared beside me. He knew me too well.

“No, I don’t see Vic’s truck.”

He shrugged before taking a box of the band’s t-shirts inside. “He’ll be here.”

Grabbing the last of the merch, I followed him inside and began setting up the tables. Adele offered to help me run the table during the show and I accepted her offer. The tour was expecting a fairly large turnout since Pomona was the closest to home as my boys were going to get. Roughly an two or so hours of distance weren’t enough to stop most of their fans and, even if it was, our friends and family were definitely going to be there.

“Is Vic coming?” Adele asked as we began hanging up both sets of t-shirts.

“He said he was.”

She nodded. “So I guess you know about-”

“Mike’s girlfriend? Yeah.”

I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. The second I started feeling the least bit happy wasn’t the right time to talk about things that only dragged me down. I’d spent the last few days moping around because I wanted someone I couldn’t have and I wasn’t planning on spending the rest of the tour that way.

“His girlfriend? They’re not together, babe,” she replied, as if it was going to make me feel any better.

Aggravated, I threw the t-shirt I was holding back into the box and turned to Adele. “Look, I really don’t give a fuck whether they’re dating, okay? I just don’t want to talk about it.”

If Adele had known what happened between Mike and I she probably wouldn’t have looked at me like I’d stabbed her in the back. Amongst other beings, Adele was a constant source of gossip -- something I rarely dirtied my hands with. I didn’t like other people meddling in my business so I didn’t do it to theirs. But Adele was a different story. She was on top of the latest celebrity news, always knew who was dating who, and could tell you anything you wanted to know about the personal lives of our group of friends. It bothered me but everyone else had just accepted it as fact.

Talking about the girls Mike dated wasn’t out of the ordinary for her. She liked to talk shit on them to make me feel better because she always said I was better for him than any other girl was. It was probably her fault I let myself grow feelings for him in the first place. Never, in all the time I’d known Mike, had I thought of myself as someone he’d date. Yet every time I saw him with a different girl or Adele made some comment about how cute we’d be together, that’s all I could think about. I guess once you hear something enough you start to believe it, no matter how ludicrous it seems.

As if on cue, I heard my brother start yelling excitedly, drawing my attention to the doors of the venue. Vic and Mike were standing there talking to Saxon and Darby while I was trying my hardest to keep from vomiting. I knew that seeing Mike was going to be hard no matter when and where it happened. Just seeing him before I left for tour was hard enough; add a few days of not speaking, another girl, and my bitterness, and you’ve got yourself a disaster.

“I-I’m going to the bathroom,” I said quickly, hoping Adele would catch on that something had happened between Mike and I and that’s why I was acting so weird.

There weren’t many people at the venue other than the touring bands, various people they put on the guest list, and the employees, yet I still found myself pushing through a crowd of people just to get to my destination. One girl in particular caught my eye. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her. The way she eyed me gave me the impression that she knew me as well and that our last encounter, if there even was such a thing, hadn’t gone well. It pierced right through me to the point it physically hurt me to keep staring at her.

Brushing it off, I entered the bathroom and immediately went to the sink. I turned on the faucet, getting the water as cold as it’d get, and splashed it over my face so many times I began to go numb. It was the only thing keeping me from going insane. I didn’t want to feel anything anymore, especially the feelings I had for a person who didn’t reciprocate them. Knowing he was only a few feet away was killing me. Almost instantly, I was thrown back to my teenage years when I was so depressed over my mother leaving that my dad sent me to a psychiatrist who signed a monthly script for Zoloft.

The door flew open, revealing the girl I thought I knew yet desperately hoped I didn’t. She stood in the doorway for a few seconds, just eyeing me, before she pushed past me and went into an empty stall. Turning around to look at the locked door, I mumbled a fucking bitch under my breath before returning to the table, eager to ask Adele if she knew what in the world was going on.

“Was she kind of tall? Long dark hair?” I nodded, eliciting a heavy sigh from her. “Yeah, that’s Mike’s girl -- the one you probably heard he was dating.”

“What the fuck is her problem?” I grumbled, eyeing the bathroom door.

“I don’t know. Maybe she knows you’re Mike’s best friend and sees you as a threat.”

I scoffed; I wasn’t a threat to anyone. Mike didn’t even want me. All I was good for was a few meaningless (at least to him) fucks, a few hours of holding hands, and a mediocre goodbye. Somewhere down the line, our years of friendship became irrelevant and I didn’t know how it’d happened.

My nausea got worse when I saw Vic walking over to the table. Mike wasn’t with him. This was both a blessing and a curse, because it showed how worthless I’d become to him but I had extra time to gather myself.

“Hey,” he said softly as he wrapped his arms around my neck.

“Hey yourself.”

He pulled away, resting against the table. I noticed the way his eyes scanned the room as if he was looking for someone, probably his brother, that was supposed to be there but had suddenly vanished into thin air.

Adele broke the awkward silence. “Hi, Adele! It’s so nice to see you, Adele! We haven’t seen each other in months! God, I’ve missed you so much, Adele!”

Vic laughed and hugged her. They got along much better than her and Mike did. The elder of the Fuentes brothers had a lot more patience than the youngest, meaning he could put up with Adele longer. Sometimes he laughed at her jokes and they held meaningful conversations -- two things that didn’t happen all that often when it came to Adele.

“Where’s your brother?” she asked, and I immediately felt my stomach turn inside-out.

“I don’t know,” Vic shrugged. “He was just here a few minutes ago.”

Adele rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t imagine it has anything to do with that bitchy slut he’s with?”

Vic held his hands up in front of him. “That was out of my control. Apparently a good friend of her’s is playing the show and she was going to be here regardless.”

“He could’ve said hello. I’m pretty sure that’s the least you can do when you see your best friend for the first time in almost a few weeks.”

I wanted to tell Adele that him and I weren’t best friends anymore but she wouldn’t have listened. I would’ve had to tell her the whole story and I wasn’t ready to. If she hadn’t caught on by now then she was likely to remain clueless for a while.

“What time is it?” I asked out loud, even though I knew doors were only an hour away. I groaned once Vic confirmed this. “I’m going to go lay in the van until doors. I need some fresh air.”

I didn’t wait around for Adele and Vic’s replies; I was already out the door before they were able to comprehend what I’d just said. But, as I should’ve expected, things weren’t any easier once I was outside. Mike and a group of guys were standing right outside the van talking and there was no way around them, seeing as how another band’s van was practically right on top of ours.

“Excuse me,” I said, trying to squeeze by. When Mike saw me, I was sure his eyes were about to bulge out of his head, but he didn’t say anything or try to keep me from walking by.

Once I locked myself inside, I broke down. All I could think about was seeing Mike’s face when I walked by and seeing the total lack of regard he showed me. Best friends weren’t supposed to do that. Well, we weren’t even friends anymore so I couldn’t use that excuse. But people who claimed to care about each other weren’t supposed to do that. Even if you ignore someone 99% of the time, if you still care about them that little tiny bit, you shouldn’t treat them so badly. That’s why I couldn’t figure out what I’d done that was so bad to deserve such treatment from Mike.

A knock at the window caused me to wipe my nose on the back of my sleeve and roll down the window. (The boys weren’t loaded with money, therefore they couldn’t afford a van with automatic windows and locks.)

“Shea, I think we need to talk,” Mike said. I nodded and unlocked the door, already knowing this conversation was going to end horribly. There was a sliver of hope that I was wrong, though, and that’s the only reason I agreed to speak to him.

“She doesn’t like me,” I blurted out.

“What?”

“The girl you’re with. She doesn’t like me.”

He half-groaned, half-sighed. “She doesn’t even know you.”

“So? That doesn’t mean she didn’t look like she wanted to rip me apart limb by limb.”

Ignoring everything I’d just said, Mike continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “I owe you an apology-”

“That’s a fucking understatement,” I mumbled.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at his lap and sighed every few seconds. It would’ve been a perfect time to tell him everything that was on my mind but I couldn’t find the words. The nausea was still lodged in my throat and I kept trying to swallow it. It didn’t help that I kept imagining that Mike was scooting closer to me every time I looked away or he thought I wasn’t paying attention. That was a stupid assumption, though. I noticed every movement he made, every sound, everything.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked him, careful not to sound too nervous. I was, though.

“Of course.”

The way he said it made me feel terrible, like our argument was a natural thing for us to be going through; like we hadn’t completely crossed the line.

“Why her?”

Mike looked at me like I’d gone mad. “Shea, what are you-”

“Why not me, Mike?”

We were equally stunned. I couldn’t believe I said it and he couldn’t believe I felt that way. Whether it was because he felt the same or because I’d just ruined everything wasn’t clear, but he didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I didn’t know, Shea.”

I lost it then. “I gave you everything! How could you not know?”

“I didn’t think you’d feel that way about me! You know how I am. Why would you want to be with someone like me?”

He was my best friend. He was the one who always invited me places and introduced me to everyone. He was the one who picked me up to go get drunk and/or high and then had to call us a ride home from wherever we were. He was the one to sleep on my couch and never leave my side when I was having a bad day. He was the one to hold my hand for no reason, to come into the office with coffee and lunch so I wouldn’t be mad at him for interrupting. Not like I could ever be mad at him, though. He was the one who made me forget about things, to make me focus solely on the people who were still in my life and not the ones who’d left. He was the one who could always put a smile on my face and feel the least bit happy, even when I thought my world was falling apart faster than I knew how to fix it.

He was The One. How could I not feel that way?

And then there was the girl he was with who would probably never care about him as much as I did, who’d never fall in love with all of his little quirks and mannerisms. She’d never see him as anything more than a guy in a band with a decent-sized wallet. She’d never love him like I did, yet she was the only one able to say he was hers.

“Because, Mike,” I started, knowing I already sounded as stupid as I felt. “You...You don’t realize how much-” I stopped talking. Saying exactly how I felt wasn’t going to change anything between us. It was obvious he didn’t feel that way about me and ruining his current relationship wasn’t going to change things, either.

“Is it because we had sex?” he asked. His voice had grown a lot kinder and understanding.

“No. That only made it worse, I guess.”

Mike sighed and turned to look at me for the first time since we’d been talking. I was sure I looked terrible; I could feel the bags underneath my eyes and I hadn’t slept properly in days. My hair was probably sticking out in all different directions and my clothes were wrinkled. But Mike never cared about those things, and I knew this from the way he tucked a stray hair behind my ear and rubbed my cheek with his thumb. Everything he did to me and for me was so gentle.

“You deserve so much better than me.”

“I know,” I replied truthfully, “but I don’t want better, I just want you.”

In movies, that would be the part where the guy grabs the girl and kisses her passionately as they forgot about the world around them and just focused on one another. But life isn’t a movie and I didn’t get my happily-ever-after. After lying to myself and everyone around me for so long, I started crying after I said those words to Mike. I was emotionally unstable to begin with after all and the way he was taking everything so well just made it worse because it made me think I had a chance.

There was another knock at the window and I looked over, seeing my brother. He pointed at his wrist, signaling it was time for doors to open, and I pulled myself together as best I could. Mike didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just used his thumb to rub away the remaining tears. He opened the door for me and followed me out, wrapping me into a tight hug.

“Everything’s going to be okay, I promise,” he mumbled into my hair before I pulled away and went inside, knowing he was probably lying but choosing to believe him anyway. It was the only hope I had left.