My New Addiction

Jess
Two weeks later
"Well, what do you want to do?" Stephen asks me as we lay down on his bunk, the bottom halves of our body covered by a blanket as I was wrapped around his arms. Two weeks have passed and we're meeting the end of the Dirty Work tour soon.
"I don't know."
"Maybe we can go watch a movie?" he said as he got down from where we were just sleeping at. "Sleeping" is what we'd like to call it. Nights like these happen more frequently now and it just feels weird.
"I'm getting broke, Stephen. We’ve been dining out for the past few weeks and it’s making my stomach go larger than life.”
“It’s always been large.” He smiles as he tackles me to the ground, our faces nearly an inch away. “Well, what do you want to do, really?”
"Well, then, I don't know anymore." silence filled the bus as Stephen pulled me towards the table right beside the windows. I miss the small cozy van where Stephen would pull me into and I just rest my head on his shoulder. Right now, we were alone at the bus while everyone else got up to get themselves breakfast. My attention was caught by a piece of paper that I got from a hotel we just stayed at recently. It gave me a good idea for some good ol’ note passing just like we did back in 8th grade.

"How are you feeling?" I scribbled then slid it to Stephen whose eyes seemed to be fixed on the window.
"Everything's Fine." he wrote back with a circular frown face drawn directly beside the phrase. He passes it right back as he smiled.
"The icon doesn't represent it pretty well." my legible handwriting was somehow scribbled by my shaking hands. I don’t feel very well about what’s about to happen. Call it premonition but I just don’t feel good.
"Exactly." He mutters, disregarding the paper we just wrote on, the sound of his voice shocking me. Then I suddenly remember everything that had happened between us, everything that lead to where we are now. From that very first kiss, to the first night of tour. A few weeks had passed and there was a remarkable change between us. I became quiet and distant from everybody else, talking to someone else would be a miracle. I can't even speak a word to the new people I just built relationships with. Everything's Fine, Stephen wrote. Except that it wasn't.

"What are we doing, Jess?" he looks away from the paper and straight into my very soul.
"What do you mean?" I reply. "We can grab breakfast if you-"
"I mean, what are we doing? You can't keep telling yourself that you're having the grandest time with me when you obviously don't." he said, cutting me off.
"You don’t know that, Stephen. What makes you say that I'm getting bored with whatever this is that we're having?"
"I love you, Jess. You know that. But do you really have to put a label to it?" his face was straight, sending me back to that night at the beach when he told me he couldn’t ask for anyone but me. Screw that now right, Stephen?
"Why is it so hard to tell people that we're "dating", Stephen?" I said, slamming my hands into the table. "Oh wait, are we even dating? Last time I asked, you told me we were just having fun."
“Where’s the fun in you sleeping in my bunk every night? Fooling around every. Single. God. Damn. Night. Isn’t “fun,” Jess.” He puts the words “fun” in quotation marks. “I want you to be more that just sex, Jess. You’re my best friend. You’re not some late-night booty call.”
“I was just sex to you, then?” I asked, trying to hold back the tears.
“I don’t know!” he screams, "Well, whatever this is, I think the both of us should just quit it. Stop whatever it is before it gets the best of us."
"You want this to stop?" Attempting to hold back the tears was useless now since the tears just streamed endlessly. “Because I don’t know what this is either.”
"We're going to be the death of the band, Jess. We talked about this. If there's one thing that will lead of us spiralling into failure, it's whatever we're having. I can't just keep having sex with you, Jess. We just can't keep doing whatever this is that we're doing."
"So that's what I am, your fuck buddy, right?"
"God knows you're more than that, Jess."
"Why are you so afraid of calling me your girlfriend?"
"Because you're not..." those words tore me apart. Of course, I wasn't (and never will be) Stephen's girlfriend. Had I known, I would've lowered down my expectations. Stephen wanted fun and I gave him that. I knew him for nearly a lifetime but in that instant, he became someone I was definitely unfamiliar with.

Storming out of our newly acquired bus was the reflex action upon hearing those words. I ran off to the concert venue we were going to play out in a few hours so I can at least calm myself down. I needed girl time the most but Courtney was nowhere to be found so I settled with releasing all my rage into my drum set.

"That's some hardcore banging right there, Jess." a fairly familiar voice said behind me. I didn't realize I broke down sobbing by what had happened between me and Stephen earlier. I look up to see Chris, an acquaintance I met in the midst of tour.
"I, um, I'm sorry." I wiped my tears as I apologized profusely. I didn't know you were around and I was just, I, um- I'm sorry."
"No need to be sorry." he said, looking at me from the opposite side of my set. "Wanna talk about it over coffee sometime?"
"Actually, now would be a great time."
Talking to Chris was fairly easy. We talked about drums like we did, the band he was in and we exchanged a good amount of tour stories. It was enough talk to get my head off Stephen until he brought it up the moment I seemed to be calm.
"So, you and him, do you have a thing?" he asked, seemingly curious by what just happened earlier today.
"Used to… starting today." I reply.
"Well, that's tough." Chris said as he took a sip from his coffee.
"I'll get over it," I say, hoping that I really would