The Way It Played Out

A few days after the guys left for tour, there was a knock on the door. I took my time going to answer, hoping whoever it was would give up and take off, but they knocked again just as I opened the door.
Pete surveyed me seriously, taking in my sorry appearance- loose Ramones t shirt, loose, worn blue jeans, and shoulder-length black hair. I knew I was horribly pale, even worse than my usual skin tone, and my eyes were probably sunken from lack of sleep.
“I was afraid of this.” Pete sighed, as if he’s expected it, and walked into the apartment.
I closed the door and followed him to where he was sitting on the couch, wondering what he wanted.
“How’re you holding up? And give me the honest answer.” Pete’s hazel eyes met my blue ones and seemed to cut through straight to my soul, right into the reservoir of emotions I’d been building up.
“He doesn’t like me. He doesn’t hate me, but we’re not besties anymore. Not even friends. He won’t even look at me. I can’t remember the last time he even spoke to me.” I said, staring at my hands in my lap.
“Sweetie, he’ll get over this. You were his best friend for his whole life, and he can’t forget that.” Pete said gently, putting a consoling arm around my shoulder.
“He’s certainly doing his best to try.” I muttered drily, and Pete sighed.
“I know, but he’ll come around. For now, you just have to work on being you again. I mean, look at your hair!” Pete teased, trying to cheer me up.
The smile I gave him was probably the weakest, most pathetic thing he’d ever seen, and his own tentative grin slid right off his face.
“My, you can’t just hide in here forever.” Pete said.
“I know.” I admitted. “I’m not going to. I just need to… to plan. Need to think about what’ll happen when I climb out of this hole.”
Pete studied me carefully, as if he wanted to say something but didn’t have the nerve to bring it up. Instead, he obviously changed subjects.
“What about your art? The sketches? Are you still doing them?” Pete asked interestedly. He’d given me a few assignment doing album artwork for his Decaydance bands, but nothing recently.
“Not as much.” I murmured sadly.
“Can I see what you’ve been doing?” Pete asked.
“I don’t think you’ll like it.” I said quietly as I slid my sketchpad out from under a few magazines and novels on the table.
Pete flicked past all the old sketches he’d seen before, to my newer ones. The sad, scary, depressing ones I’d done all in black and white.
Pete blinked, staring at them, taking each one in slowly, his eyes darting around and taking in details no one else seemed to notice. The pixie cut of the girl in the coffin at the funeral, the broken guitar by the bed of the girl who was just staring out her window, the small ring that might have been a tattoo on the left wrist of the girl standing at the edge of a building’s roof, arms out as if she could take flight.
He seemed to notice the people at the open grave scene that immediately followed the funeral had no faces, but there were certain familiar ticks to some of them.
Pete looked up at me, over the sketch of the faceless mourners, his eyes sad as he pointed to a man standing between a man with an afro and a man with a hat, a man with longer hair standing slightly behind them. “That’s us.”
I stared at the picture. “The thing is, I wasn’t paying attention to anything I was drawing. I just… let it happen. I didn’t mean to kill myself in them.”
“Amaya, you wouldn’t really try suicide, would you?” Pete asked, serious. For some reason, it looked like I’d managed to hit a nerve with Pete. Like this was hitting a little too close to home for him.
“I don’t think so. I hope I wouldn’t. I really don’t want to die.” I said, staring at the ground, and Pete relaxed a little. “But sometimes, I feel like I’m just wasting life. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be here.”
“Maya, how do you feel about Bill? Really?” Pete asked, after a long silence.
“I… I think I love him, Pete.” I said, swallowing. “And that scares me.”
After that visit, Pete would pop up randomly, unannounced and unplanned, and just visit with me for a while, talk to me, joke and laugh with me. I tried to act normal when he was there, but it was so hard when I felt like part of me was missing.
Over time, Mike, Sisky, Michael, and the Butcher stopped calling me while they toured. Then the texting stopped. Then I didn’t even hear from Cobra Starship or Panic! anymore.

||The memories, oh, they cut like knives||