Betrayed

It had been five years since Trey died, and life had taken on certain normality for Neche and me. We all accepted Bear into our family, and after Neche and Matt married, Matt adopted Bear as his own. We never talked about Trey, or what had happened that day, and we hid it from the world. Nothing good would come from that kind on publicity. So we moved on with our lives and moved in with the guys. We had found out that Jason and Matt’s parents were actually heavy drug users, and the reason they lived by themselves was because their parents were constantly in and out of rehab. This explained the hurt and anger in each of their voices when their family was brought up. They boys weren’t home often, however and currently, we were on tour with Avenged for the release of their third cd, City of Evil.
“Dammit, Jimmy! Can you put some fucking pants on?” Neche laughed as Jimmy paraded around the bus completely naked. He was, of course, completely trashed and I stood up to guide him to the back.
“Here ya go Jimbo,” I handed him a pair of boxer briefs; “Put these on… you’ll feel better.”
He smiled drunkenly at me and tried to hug me. I laughed and told him I’d hug him when he wasn’t naked. I walked back up to the front of the bus and sat next to my sister on the couch. Bear was now five years old, and he sat in my sister’s lap. He was holding an iPod in his hands and was watching a cartoon on it. I tousled his hair and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. Pulling the headphones from his ear, he looked up at me, smiling, revealing two missing teeth.
“Love you Aunt Mina!”
“Love you Bear.”
He smiled again and put the head phones back on. Neche rolled her eyes and smiled at me. He hasn’t said a single word to me since he put the headphones in, but he’ll talk to you.”
“Yeah, cause I’m the cool Aunt,” I joked.
She laughed and shook her head, “I thought I was a cool mom!”
“You are a cool mom!”
We looked up to see Jimmy walk out, fully clothed this time. Fortunately, Bear had been in the bathroom when he came out naked the first time. It was stunts like that which made it so he couldn’t come on tour. We all knew what kinds of things the guys did on tour, and while we didn’t agree with them, it wasn’t our place to ask them to stop. Neche and I were just grateful our Berry’s didn’t partake in such activities. Jimmy sat next to us and promptly fell asleep. I looked over to my sister and she smiled and leaned her head on my shoulder.
“I’m so glad I have you, Mina. I almost lost everything…”
“Shhh… don’t talk about it. We’ve got everything we could ever want now. No need to dwell on the past.”

And it was true, we really finally had the normal life we always wanted. Well, as normal as living on a bus for a good portion on a year could be. Normally, Bear wasn’t allowed on tour, but Avenged made a special exception for his fifth birthday. It was only for two days, but it was important that we got to spend his birthday with him. Neche and I would be flying home with him to California to join Val and some more of Avenged’s girlfriends, but for now, we would enjoy our men… enjoy our family.