Like You to Me

Two and a half weeks later, Vic had all but moved into my apartment. He began sleeping there on a nightly basis - so often that I’d gotten him his own key made - citing reasons that were essentially meaningless to me. I didn’t want to hear about how Mike was handling our foiled friendship because I didn’t want to hear about how poorly I was doing when it came to moving on. Even though Vic tried to shoot down those thoughts routinely, saying that Mike was almost more of a wreck than I was, it was much easier for me to envision the youngest of the Fuentes siblings having a grand old time without me in his life. Such figments of my imagination made it easier for me to pretend I didn’t care. Even though I was clearly lying to myself, it took a majority of the pain away. That was all I cared about.

It was a Tuesday night, which meant Vic was hosting band practice at the house he shared with his brother. I’d be able to expect him back at my place around two or three in the morning, short-tempered and in need of a shower. Typically I didn’t wait up for him; I only ever knew he was there because the bathroom was a room over from my bedroom and Vic wasn’t the most graceful person, especially when he was trying desperately to be quiet. Once I heard him tip-toeing up the creaking stairs, I knew exactly what to expect. I had him all figured out, from the angles he used for the water temperature to the way he always dropped the bottle of shampoo on his foot. Although I’d never had a roommate and Vic wore on my nerves a majority of the time, it was nice having him around.

When my front door flew open at quarter to ten, revealing a stressed out Tony Perry and a furious Victor Fuentes, I knew something had gone awry. The latter of the pair didn’t say anything to me as he stomped up the stairs. The door to the guest bedroom slammed and I winced. Tony merely shot me an apologetic look before taking a seat on the couch. I’d been awkwardly standing in the middle of the living room since I heard the door open. It scared me so badly I must’ve jumped a foot in the air.

“What was that all-”

Tony cut me off. “It’s probably better you don’t ask.”

“Please don’t tell me it had something to do with me,” I begged. There was a groan waiting to be released but, for Tony’s sake, I contained it.

“Ok then,” he agreed. The fact that he didn’t say anything afterwards led me to believe that it did, in fact, have everything to do with me. So I just stayed quiet. I didn’t want Tony getting any more involved than he already was. My problems with Mike were between the two of us. Vic had only gotten involved because he wanted to be. If he hadn’t shown up at my apartment that one night, he’d be free of the drama that rode on my back constantly. It’d been weeks since it happened, as I’d said, so there was no chance of ignoring it so long it went away. Not anymore. If I hadn’t blown everything out of proportion immediately that may have been a possibility.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked him in a small voice. Tony always made me nervous for unexplainable reasons. He wasn’t some brooding, tortured musician that scared me half to death; he was quite the opposite. He played the role of the band’s foundation quite well. Calm, responsible, shy, sweet -- Tony was everything you could ask for in a friend. Yet I always shied away from him, leaving him and I to be mere acquaintances even after so many years.

“Sure.”

“Is he really taking it bad?”

I wanted to know. The selfish part of me wanted Tony to tell me that Mike was utterly miserable without me around. I needed to know that I meant something, anything at all, to him. The realistic part of me knew Mike wasn’t going to wait around very long. All of this was my fault anyway. The distance, the explosion, the aftermath -- if I hadn’t let any of them occur, who knows where Mike and I would’ve been. But I did. I let those things happen and I couldn’t take them back, no matter how badly I wished I could. I guess I wanted to know so badly because I wanted to justify my own feelings. Most of the time I walked around half-nauseous, just waiting for myself to get so upset I yakked all over the floor. Half of myself was missing. I knew where it was (on the other side of San Diego) but I couldn’t just go retrieve it. It was more complicated than that. At least that’s how I made it out to be. Talking to Mike would’ve solved all of the problems that were plaguing everyone’s lives.

All Tony did was nod. One simple gesture was all it took for me to lose the last ounce of sanity I had. The tears began pouring out of my eyes, over my cheekbones and down the remainder of my face. For Tony’s sake I kept them quiet. Sobbing would’ve put us both in an awkward situation since I was positive Vic wasn’t in the mood to save the day. In that moment, that’s exactly what I needed. But Tony filled the void well, simply getting up to fetch me a few tissues and letting me know everything was going to be just fine. They weren’t, I knew that, but hearing them from someone who’d never been anything short of honest helped me enough to cease the tears.

I dabbed the corner of my eyes with the tissue before mumbling an apology. “Sorry. You probably think I’m mental.”

“Trust me, that was nothing compared to what happened at practice.” I froze; I was too afraid to ask because I knew it’d all come down on me. That’s just how those things always worked. Even when I was countless miles away I could manage to fuck up something I had no business of fucking up. Tony picked up on this -- at least, he picked up on my curiosity -- and continued, “Vic began hounding Mike about talking to you. You know, like apologizing and shit, until he just lost it. And I mean really lost it... started kicking over his snares, throwing his drum sticks, all of that. Jaime took one to the temple,” he paused briefly to stifle a laugh, “and then Vic started going off about how he was ruining practice. Jaime left before it could get too involved. I stuck around since I didn’t want them to kill each other. I mean, you would’ve too if you saw the way they were eyeing each other. Anyway, Mike eventually stormed out of the studio and Vic told me to drive him home because he was liable to find Mike and run him over.”

Stunned was the only word I could come up with to describe how I was feeling once Tony relayed the night’s events. Never, in all the years I’d been friends with the Fuentes brothers, had I seen them turn on one another. They had sibling-inspired disputes. Sometimes they even called each other foul names behind one another’s back, but they never went at one another, especially over a girl. And I knew that’s all I was to them when it all boiled down to the bare essentials. I was Mike’s biggest regret and Vic’s most prominent headache. Those two left little to be proud of, even when I knew I wasn’t giving myself much credit. There used to be a time when the boys would defend me against other people -- drunk assholes at parties, desperately creepy guys who were trying to score a date, egotistical band guys who thought I’d be an easy fuck, etc. -- and now Vic was the only one who even bothered.

I heard him trampling down the stairs, dragging me from my apathetic thoughts. I often found myself wondering why on earth I’d purchased an apartment with hardwood floors. Everything about them irked me: the noise, the freezing cold temperatures they never failed to provide me with, the collection of dust. None of those things really seemed to matter once Vic and I locked eyes. As much confusion I had within mine, Vic’s had fury. I opened my mouth to speak, to mumble any kind of apology that’d get me out of that mess, but nothing came out. It was so typical that I could’ve screamed. It was the goddamn story of my life and I was growing increasingly tired of living that way. I wanted people to be able to rely on me, to receive the apologies they deserved when they were due, and not have to walk on eggshells around me because I was a walking travesty.

Vic stopped at the foot of the stairs and pointed a finger in my direction. “You need to fix this.”

“What?” My eyes widened and I immediately felt my hands begin to tremble. “Vic, I can’t-”

“I don’t want to fucking hear it,” he snapped before grabbing his jacket and slamming the front door behind him.

Tony stood up from his seat on the couch; I turned to face him, already knowing what he was implying, and just sighed. He left to go find Vic and I retreated to my bedroom in search of a sweater. Talking to Mike was the last thing I wanted to do. One million different outcomes ran through my mind, not one of them the least bit satisfying. Out of all the years I’d known him, I knew just as well as anyone that he wasn’t likely to forgive and forget. Neither was I. This posed a problem, because even if I did apologize, there wasn’t a guarantee that anything would be fixed. While he cared about me enough that his anger with me usually faded after a couple hours, I’d crossed the line. Instead of owning up to what we’d done, I ran from it, ignoring the attempts he made to try and help me. That was nothing new, either.

I was twelve when my mom began her affair; two years later Saxon and I went through the pain of our parents’ divorce. She moved to Arizona -- Tempe, in particular -- and started a brand new life, void of my brother and I. Her new boyfriend, Vince, had children of his own. In fact, he had a son and a daughter, not too far apart in age from me and Saxon. According to her, they were the perfect kids. Vince’s son, Tyler, was only a freshman in high school and was already playing on the varsity baseball team. His daughter, Kelly, never got anything lower than an A+ on her report card and was bound for some bogus Ivy League school as soon as she graduated... valedictorian, of course. We got all of this information via phone calls and Christmas cards. The phone calls were few and far between, typically lasting only ten minutes at the most. She’d ask me how I was doing in school, to which my reply would be, “Fine.” In a huff, she’d ask to talk to Saxon instead.

My brother was more bothered by the divorce than I was, seeing as he was the one closer to her. The day she moved out was the worst day of his life; he didn’t stop crying until the following afternoon. He didn’t even stop to eat or sleep. After that he became a different person -- more bitter, more detached. Music was his escape and he threw himself into it permanently. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t fall asleep to the sound of him playing guitar. I wanted to help him but I couldn’t. No one could. I don’t think he ever truly got over it, either. The band was his way of shoving all of our mother’s doubts right back in her face because she thought we’d never amount to anything. Saxon would always be the shy kid who locked himself in his room with a guitar -- his only friend. I, on the other hand, was going to be the one to drop out of college due to an unexpected pregnancy or something equally as outlandish. Because of our mother’s lack of faith in us, we never felt good enough. We’d never be as good as Zach and Kelly and she’d never love us as much.

My dad tried to help us but his attempts were futile. My brother was a helpless cause and I only pushed him away -- a habit I’d never learn to kick. Even though Saxon and I exceeded our father’s expectations of us, the two of us never grew out of that feeling that no matter what we did, no one would ever recognize it. This drive Saxon crazy, eventually resulting in his success, but I didn’t draw the same conclusion. I was lost, to say the least. Lost in my brother’s sudden success, lost in my own expectations of myself, lost in my mother’s lack thereof. I didn’t know who I was and I sure as hell didn’t know who I wanted to become. So I retracted into myself, eventually becoming a warped interpretation of the person I used to be. I became quiet, incapable of handling confrontation. If something went wrong I ignored it instead of trying to fix the problem.

Which obviously explained how I’d managed to go the last two and a half weeks without talking to Mike. Deep down I knew it’d come to a head eventually and I’d be forced to talk to him. Knowing that probably prolonged my ignoring him. I thought that maybe, just maybe, things would fix themselves on their own and I wouldn’t have to get involved. Maybe one of his conversations with Vic would inspire some sort of third-party apology and he’d know how sorry I was. That was a stupid thought, though, considering I was so convincing when it came to the situation and my lack of feelings toward it that I almost began believing myself.

With a heavy sigh and the company of my good friend nausea, I pulled out of my apartment complex and toward the residence of the only person I’d ever truly fallen for, knowing that if I didn’t fix this I’d lose them forever.