At Second Sight

“did you tell her?” Zack asked me while I grabbed a couple beers from the fridge

“tell her what?”

“that you love her”

“sure” I handed him one of the beers I had, opened the other one and started drinking from it

“as something more than a friend?” he raised and eyebrow

“what makes you think I …” I started but the sound of a female voice filled up my ears

“It’s so obvious, Brian” Brooklynn, Jonathan’s girlfriend, said as she walked into the kitchen

“who else knows?” I looked down feeling guilty, I had fallen inlove of my best friend’s girlfriend, who also happened to be my best friend.

“only us” Zack spoke again “we know what would happen if this shit hits the fan”

“but we’re not judging you, you just can’t help who you fall for” she said sympathetically . it was easy for her; she was with who she wanted without feeling guilty as fuck.

“the less we talk about it, the less it hurts” I said as I walked out of the kitchen and back to my room, where Jonathan, Matt, Val and her sister were chillin’

It was hard for me to play it cool when in my very own backyard the girl I was inlove of and my best friend were talking, patching their relationship or maybe just making out.

“you’re spacing out” Zack told me as he handed me another beer

“I’m ok” I nodded, I was obviously lying; I felt my guts twist and my heart was racing and it all got worse when Jimmy, my best friend, walked in with the saddest look on his face; she was gone, gone for good, gone forever.

We all walked towards him, held him, told him things to help him ease the pain but how can you make your friend feel better when you’re feeling like crap over the same girl as him?

It soon was too much to take for me so I went downstairs to the kitchen for something else to eat.

“go get her” Zack spoke from behind me, causing me to jump in surprise

“cut it off” I rolled my eyes

“you love her, probably more than Jimmy does, go get her” he suggested

“I don’t even know where she is” I said as I sat on one of the stools by the table

“she’s on her way to the airport” Brooklynn added as she walked in, again, this guys were always messing up with my head

“she’s Jimmy’s” I shook my head “he’s like a brother to me”

“you know I believe in the “friends before whores” oath but you gotta do something before you regret it for the rest of your life” Zack told me

“here” Brooklynn handed me her car keys “I can go with you if you need moral support”

“I’ll go too” Zack said as he took the last sip of his beer “we’ll tell the guys we went out to buy more beer”
And with that said the trip to the airport begun, I zig zagged my way to the parking lot and parked on the first vacant space I saw, ran inside the airport and looked for the first flight to NYC in the board.

“Gate 7! Run!” Brooklynn yelled at me, I looked around and found the seventh gate, ran towards it but it was too late. I saw the plane taking off through the glass’ walls, I swear I heard my heart braking. I had finally embraced the idea of falling inlove just to have my first love going away, and the worse part was that she didn’t even knew it.

“Gates! Gates! You’re spacing out” my friend Zack shook me back to reality “you ok?” he asked concerned

“yeah” I rubbed on my eyes as I stared at the contract in my hands. We were in a meeting with out label, who would had known that we could go from being a little garage band to be signed with Warner.

“everything looks good to me” Matt spoke from across the table

“then you guys should sign it” Larry, our current manager suggested

“but we have one last request” Jimmy spoke from next to Matt “we need a body guard, especially me”

“granted” Larry nodded “now sign” he pushed us, I hesitated but at the end did it, flash backs plaguing my brain.

“so this means you’re leaving for tour in two weeks” Larry spoke as he checked on his laptop for our schedule “and the night before the tour begins you’ll have a party with all of the bands so you can get to know eachother”

“sounds good to me” Johnny said as he passed his just signed contract to Larry.

“welcome to Project Revolution guys” a guy I barely know from the label said as he opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared shitless.

Project Revolution was a tour Mike Shinoda, from Linkin Park, had pulled together during the years and this year’s line up consisted on Linkin Park, Atreyu, Dream Theater, some new metal band, a new indie wave band and us, which mean hell for us.

There was a time when everything was easy for us , there was a time when we could go out, tell people our names without living in fear of them knowing us and killing us but then it all changed thanks to Jimmy.

Back in high school he met this chick called Anna, they became close very quickly and started a relationship, he cheated on her a couple times but she forgave him and everything was cool until she got tired of being humiliated and decided to leave.
To our fortune Anna was Alex Varkatzas daughter and had a very interesting family. Mike Shinoda was her uncle and her virtuous Godfather happened to be Mike Portnoy, all the guys in those bands considered their daughter and they all were extremely overprotective on her so when they split up and we decided to start knocking on a few doors to get signed, Brandon Saller paid us a visit and threatened our lives leaving us with no other solution but to change both our band’s name and our name; we went by stage name now.

A few years after those events we got signed by an independent label, they fucked us up and then we got signed with Warner which was the best thing that could had ever happened.

We went from being “lips of deceit” to be “Avenged Sevenfold” and I went from being “Brian Haner Jr” to be “Synyster Gates” all because of a girl; my best friend, the one who haunted me in my dreams, the one who I still longed to see, the one who has made me fall inlove.

Though just by singing this contract brought back one of the most horrible memories in my brain I still was eager and excited and yeah, maybe just a little scared of seeing her again.
I knew as a fact she was gonna be there; her whole family was in that tour.
The tricky part was approaching her without her family noticing it’s us.

“oh, lucky for you we have someone here that wants to meet you guys” the record business man spoke “here’s Alex Varkatzas, singer for Atreyu, he stopped by to say hi”

FUCK-MY-LIFE! I thought. My musical career just died before even my major tour started.