Forever & Always.

The next few weeks in Jersey were amazing. Gerard seemed happier and, in turn, this made the rest of the guys happier. I hadn’t seen him touch alcohol or drugs since the night of their party. Things felt as if they were finally coming together.

My fingers were loosely entwined with Gerard’s as we made our way through the familiar town of Belleville, New Jersey. He was talking non-stop about the next album he and the guys were planning. There was a lot of mention of cancer and marching bands, to say I was confused would be an understatement. I didn’t say anything though, just let him talk. I loved watching him when he spoke about the music he made. His voice would take on an excited edge and he’d never stop grinning. The real world would just melt away in his eyes as the fictitious world he was trying to create with his lyrics became the only thing he could see. He would disappear into this imaginary world and it’d be difficult to pull him back to reality. It was one of the many things I had always loved about him.
But, even as I tried to enjoy the lovely day with my friend, I couldn’t help but glance nervously over my shoulder every few minutes. I had been on edge ever since the texts I had received from Aiden. The police hadn’t been of much help to me. There wasn’t much they could do seeing as my fiancé was in Ireland and I was in Jersey. I could understand their logic but it didn’t stop me from being nervous every time I left the house. What if Aiden’s threats really weren’t empty?

“Hey C, you okay?” Gerard squeezed my hand and pulled me to the left as he dragged me into a small bookshop.

I nodded and let my body be pulled along by him. It was so easy to fall back into old habits with Gerard. I hadn’t planned on it happening, expected us to take a long time to even start talking, but here we were best friends once more. It was like all those years we had been apart never happened.

The book store we were in was one Gerard and I often frequented as teens. It had a huge fiction section which pleased me and was also one of the only book store’s that had a large graphic novel section, which made Gerard ecstatic. As soon as we entered the shop he and I parted ways as we always did.
The shelves were, as always, badly organised. Titles weren’t in alphabetical order and certain books that didn’t belong in the section were lying sideways on the shelves. It was the same way it had always been. The shop had always been a bit unorganised, a bit quirky and that was why Gerard and I had always liked it.
I had just selected what looked like a good horror novel and was settling down into one of the worn armchairs hidden away in the furthest corner, when my phone began vibrating in my pocket. My heart leapt into my throat and I jumped up from my seat. I slipped my phone from out of my pocket and sighed in relief when the name ‘Oisín ’ flashed across the screen.

“Hey,” I smiled as I clicked the green answer button on my phone.

“Ciara?” Oisín’s voice was choked with tears and his breathing was loud as he attempted to gasp in lungfuls of air.

Immediately I became frantic, “Oisín? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I…No!” He all but wailed and I could hear the anguish and pain clearly in his cries.

Something was wrong. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. Oisín needed me, but there was no way I could have a private conversation with him in the eerily quiet bookstore.

“Oisín just give me one second, ‘kay?”

“Okay.”

I placed the speaker of the phone against my shoulder my eyes scanned the near empty shop. I spotted Gerard’s familiar black head of hair over by the magazines, his gaze focused on a copy of NME. My feet brought me over to him on instinct, tapping him on the shoulder and making him jump.

“Oh…you wanna leave C?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I just need to step out and take a call. You can just chill in here and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He quirked the right side of his mouth down as he eyed me apprehensively, “You sure?”

I nodded and shot him what I hoped was a reassuring smile before turning and heading outside to the busy mall walkway, “Hey Oisín, you still there?”

“H…hey Ciara,” His voice still sounded thick like he was fighting back tears.

“What’s wrong hon?”

I could hear a lot of shuffling and a door being closed before he spoke again, “I…I can’t do it anymore Ciara.”

The mall was busy, especially for a week day, so I had to search to find a reasonable quiet space to sit and talk. There was a bench nearby so I let my body drop onto the hard wood before replying to the near frantic teenage boy on the other end of my phone.

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that I don’t want to be here anymore. I-I wanna die!”

My heart felt like it had stopped and everything around me seemed to fall silent. The world just stopped as I tried to understand what had just been said to me. Oisín couldn’t want to die; he had so much to live for. The thought of losing him made me want to scream.

“Oh, a bhabóg, don’t think like that.” I tried to soothe him even though my hands were sweating and my heart was pounding so loud in my chest that I was sure the people walking by could hear it, “You have so much to live for.”

There was silence for a few minutes and all that could be heard was the sound of Oisín’s breathing on the other end of the line. It hitched every couple of seconds with the occasional hiccup, evidence that he was still crying. I was clueless at what to say. Of course I wanted to help, but was afraid of saying something that would just make things worse.

“I’m just so scared Ciara,” He whispered and the long-distance connection made it difficult to understand him. “It’s scary without Max y’know?”

The thing was I did ‘know’. I knew exactly how difficult it was to face the world with no best friend on hand. When I was his age it had seemed like it would be impossible. Well, at least until I found Gerard and the rest of the Jersey boys.
I told as much to Oisín. Reminded him that things won’t always be this bad and that he will make new friends who can see him through this tough time.

“It will be hard hon,” I told him honestly, unable to lie to the sweet boy. “But, you gotta keep remembering the good times you and Max had. It makes it easier – believe me.”

We spoke for another few minutes. Oisín listening to me and realising that his life didn’t need to end – at least not anytime soon. We joked about for a little bit and I assured him that I would be home soon, it was obvious he needed me to.
As I ended the call I couldn’t help but wonder why it was that kids like Oisín never had the type of friends they needed when going through a tough time. I was lucky to have found Gerard when I was at my worst. There were so many kids I had dealt with in schools all over Ireland that had been left alone in their time of need. It was horrible to see.

I decided not to go looking for Gerard just yet. After my conversation with Oisín I needed a few minutes to gather myself, my emotions were going up and down like a rollercoaster. My fingers fumbled with the clasp at the back of my neck until it opened and the silver locket I never took off tumbled into my jean clad lap. As always, I was met by the grinning faces of Fergal Kilborn and Gerard Way, two of the greatest friends I’d ever had.
Fergal had been there for me for years, my oldest friend. We knew everything about each other; well I’d always thought we did. He’d never told me about his problems with depression and so his suicide had shocked me to my very core when he took his own life when we were seventeen. It had scared me. That was when Gerard came on the scene. I moved to Jersey and he wanted to become my friend. He put me back together and helped me deal with my grief – and everything else that life threw at me. He was my best friend, and at one point even more than that. These two guys were two of the most important people to ever enter my life and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have met them.

“You kept that silly little locket?” A familiar voice from beside me made me jump and I heard that distinct chuckle as I did so.

I looked up into those familiar smiling hazel eyes and nodded, “Mhmm…I never take it off.”

He took a seat beside me on the small bench. A soft, almost nostalgic, smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, “I remember the day I gave that to you. It was the day after Halloween.”

“Yeah,” A small giggle escaped my parted lips. “You climbed in through my window because Austin didn’t want you in the house.”

We laughed at the memory and I let my head rest against Gerard’s shoulder. The moment was perfect.

“Y’know…I always hoped I’d have a photo in that locket. That’s why I gave it to you,” He laughed. It was a low, nervous sound that I was unused to hearing. The only Gerard I had seen since returning to Jersey was this confident one, the frontman of a rock band. I wasn’t used to hearing him sound nervous. “I guess it was silly of me to think you’d ever want a picture of me in there.”

I always wondered why he thought so lowly of himself. Had I not shown him how much I loved him when we were teenagers and I promised to marry him? Was he oblivious to the vast numbers of teenage girls who screamed his name every night, proclaiming their love to their idol? He was as close to perfect as was humanly possible, yet he was filled with self-doubt.

“Here,” I handed him the locket that was now closed. “Take a look inside.”

Tentatively, he took the dainty piece of silver in his large hands and opened the tiny clasp. His face immediately lit up when he saw his face inside the locket. He teared up and bit down on his bottom lip trying to hide his emotions from me.

“Thank you Ciara,” He whispered so softly it was a wonder he was audible above the roaring crowds in the mall. “It means a lot that you’d put me in here opposite Fergal.”

I shrugged as he handed back the necklace, avoiding his eye contact. His comment made me feel awkward for some reason and I didn’t want the discussion to continue. Instead, I put the silver chain back around my neck before settling back against Gerard’s shoulder, closing my eyes as he began to talk about random things.
There was no need to answer him, or even listen that intently. My raven-haired friend was perfectly content to just ramble about everything that went through his mind whether I was listening or not. But it didn’t really matter, we were just happy to be in each other’s company after so long. Even after a couple of weeks of being friends again it was hard to accept that it was real so we’d spend hours doing just what we were doing in the mall, sitting together and just talking idly.

“So, who was on the phone?”

Trust Gerard Way to ruin a perfect moment.

I sighed, debating with myself about what to tell him. After a few seconds of internal debating I decided to be honest, there was no need to lie anyway, “Uhm…it was a friend from Ireland. He’s going through a rough patch and wasn’t feeling too good so he rang me.”

Gerard just nodded, not asking any prying questions like most people would. He knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t willing to talk any further on the matter so he just let it slide.

“Remember how I used to do similar things for you?” His voice was soft and his eyes pained.

I nodded mutely. Gerard had been there for me on all the nights that I had felt scared, when I thought things were never going to get any better. I’d just call him up and he’d talk to me until I fell asleep.

“We used to stay up so late,” He laughed a little and shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep easy unless I spoke to you just before bed.”

“Same,” I mumbled. Hearing his voice just before going to bed used to put me at ease and made the transition into slumber that little bit easier. In the years we had been apart I had missed his whispered stories that were told to me in the early hours of the morning.

“I’ve missed you C,” He grinned and pulled me into a hug, kissing me lightly on the forehead. “I’m glad I got my best friend back. I love you”

“Missed you too Gee,” I mumbled against his shoulder. “L-love you too.”

It was quite hard to tell him that I loved him. Every day he would remind me that I was his favourite best friend and that he loved me most, and I would struggle to reiterate the words back at him. I mean, I was ecstatic that Gerard and I were friends once more. It was amazing to be able to slip back into my old Jersey life, but I was scared. I was terrified that he’d hurt me again, that this time when he did I’d be hurt beyond repair.

“Hey, wanna come back to mine and watch a movie?”

I pushed all negative thoughts out of my mind and forced myself to smile up at Gerard, “Sure. Let’s go.”

He took my small hand in his rather large one and dragged me out of the mall to where his car was parked. I was going to make the most of this second chance with Gerard. There was no way I was going to blow it by being paranoid and holding onto the past. Everything was going to be just fine.