That Girl

Alex became my human shield and the excuse for me to kick Jeannie and Jack out of the Gaskarth household for the day. “Alex and I have to work on his vocal conditioning, so I think we’re going to need you to leave.”

Though he was obviously confused, Alex quickly played along and chimed in a quick, “Yeah, I’m still having problems with breathing.” Then he helped me shoo the couple out the front door.

Jeannie sent me a soul-eating glare as she grumbled and hooked her arm through Jack’s, dragging him out of the house. I felt as if a large weight dropped from my shoulders as the door shut behind them.

“Vocals?” Alex questioned, sounding more than a little bit confused as I dragged him up the stairs by the wrist and into his room. I quickly shut the door behind me and leaned against it, breathing heavily. “Stella, what’s going on?”

It was silent for a moment. I tried to figure out what to tell Alex. Oh yeah, I just let Jeannie in on the fact that Ryan Ross confessed his love for me and kissed me and that’s why everything is so utterly screwed up right now. I had a feeling that wouldn’t go over well any time soon. “I just really needed for Jeannie to leave.”

I could tell Alex was judging me a lot right then, “What’s going on, Stel? Was Jeannie harassing you or something?”

“Harassing and ‘or something.’” I said vaguely, trying to make my way around him. I tensed up when he caught me around the arm and turned me to face him.

He brushed my hair out of my eyes and examining me closely, his face just close enough to make me uncomfortable. I swallowed thickly and stared intently at the wall. “Oh.” He said after a moment, and my eyes flickered to his only to see how wide they were and how surprised he was, “This has to do with Ryan.”

I practically flew across the room, bracing myself on his desk and eyeing him as if he were some sort of alien as I gasped out, “How the shit do you do that?”

And Alex had the nerve to look at me as if I were the freak. “It was him, wasn’t it?!” When I noticed at he was moving towards me slowly, I perched onto the desk, trying to establish some semblance of space between us. “He did something that made you flip at the gig, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I admitted.

“It must’ve been something big.”

“It was.”

“Are you going to tell me what it was?”

“I really don’t want to.” i said honestly.

“But you should.”

“I told Jeannie and she flipped a bitch about it.”

“Well, Jeannie flips bitches about a lot of things.” Alex said with a hint of a smile, which was totally true. She had almost as much of a flair for the dramatic as I did.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. We’re friends, Stella.” Alex reminded me (and almost sounded like he was trying to remind himself) with a hint of a smile, “I care about what Ryan did that made you cry.”

I sucked my lip between my teeth, weighing the pros and cons of the situation before probably making one of the most irrational decisions of my life:

“He kissed me.”

“Ryan kissed you?” I tried to ignore the way his jaw set and how he suddenly ran his fingers through his already mussed up hair.

“Yeah, and then he basically told me that he’d been in love with me since he met me.” Before I knew it, I was off on a rampage, “And I really shouldn’t have been crying about it, because, you know, I don’t have any right to be sad when I was the one hurting him, but I did anyways because despite popular belief, I am stupid. I basically led him on the whole time and Brendon even told me that Ryan was into me and I brushed it off as if there was no way it could possibly be true, because, you know, there was just no way. I was a bitch- I am a bitch to everyone and I was pissy the whole time while recording-.”

“Stella-.”

“-and I was basically the most difficult person to work with because I wanted everything to be perfect so I was overly-controlling and rude and I had this massive superiority complex, which I still have, not that there was any hint otherwise, and-.”

“Stella Fazzah-Madison-.”

“I’m a bitch! How could he possibly have ever been into me is beyond any rational understanding. Shit, now I’m insulting him. Ryan deserves a lot better, you know that? I mean, I was a stupid little girl who got picked up off of the streets because I was in the right place at the right time. God knows that if not for that night, I would’ve probably been kidnapped or some shit and made into a prostitute or something equally as degrading-.”

“Oi! Stella Wentz!”

My gaze shifted to him, “The fuck did you just-.”

“Just be glad I stopped there, because the next one was going to actually be something to freak you out.” Alex said.

“Try me.”

“Maybe some other time,” he said, eyeing me a certain way before continuing, “but that’s irrelevant.”

“What’s relevant, then?”

“It’s not your fault.”

“What’s not my fault?” I asked.

“It’s not your fault that you didn’t know that Ryan likes you.” Alex gave me a look that silenced me from protesting, “He didn’t say anything about it, so it’s not on you. It’s not even on him, as much as I’d like to blame it on him; I know how hard it can be to admit that you like a girl myself. What is your fault is how you’re dealing with it.”

“When did you get so rational?” I looked at him a bit funny, because he was acting a bit funny.

“I’ve got to grow up sometime, don’t I?” He responded vaguely, “You don’t like Ryan back, right?”

“No.”

“And that’s okay, because it’s not the end of the world.”

“Maybe not, but it’s the end of our friendship.”

“Oh, that’s a crock of shit, and you know it, Stella.” Alex crossed his arms, giving me that steely look with his dark eyes, “You’ll make amends at some point, you just have to give it time to blow over.”

“Okay.” That word felt strange on my tongue. Alex made a good point: I was being dramatic- of course I knew that, but it’s not like Ryan liking me and me not liking him was the end of our friendship. It might be awkward for a while, but at some point, we’d figure it out. I just had to wait it out for him to clear his head. In the mean time, it would probably be smart to give Brendon a quick call and apologize, and then get my shit together so that this tour was the best thing these boys had ever seen.

“Now let’s actually do some of that vocal work.”

“Actually,” I weighed a few thoughts in my head before finally deciding: “I think I want to teach you how to swing dance.”

“How to what?” He looked mildly horrified at the word ‘dance.’

“I know you probably think it’s super emasculating, but I’d like to get my mind off of this whole tour-musicians deal, and plus it’d be really fun for Prom.”

“You want to swing dance at Prom?” Alex asked in disbelief, “You’re kidding.”

“No; I’ve always wanted to swing dance at a school dance. It’s kind of my Grease-Footloose fantasy.” I admitted, giving him my best pout and wide-eyed stare.

He let out a grumble and a sigh before giving in, “Alright, but stop giving me that face.”

***

“Hey, Stella.” Brendon’s voice sounded extremely exasperated, and I immediately felt a tight ball of guilt settle in the pit of my stomach.

“Hey, Brendon,” I said uneasily. All that confidence and conviction from the conversation with Alex was being replaced with doubt, was this really what I should be doing? “I just, uh, I don’t know exactly how to segway into what I want to say…”

“Just come out with it then.”

“I hope you guys don’t hate me too much, but I still want to be good friends with you, all of you.” I word vomited, “And I know now’s not exactly the best time to be making requests and stuff, but I hope at some point Ryan can forgive me and we can all be really good friends- and this isn’t one of those empty suggestions, I genuinely want to be close to you all again-.”

“Alright.”

“and- wait, what?” I asked, sure I’d misheard him.

“I’m not going to over-complicate things right now, but maybe after the tour, we can all have coffee and try to go back to being friends.”

“Clean slates, Brendon,” I corrected, “I don’t want us to go back, I want us to be better, and I think we all need to start over, you know?”

“Sounds good,” he responded after a short pause. “See you after our tour?”

“Actually, probably after the All Time Low one. We leave pretty soon.”

“Okay.”

After we said our goodbyes, I hung up and that knot in my stomach came loose, and I felt like my whole body lightened with the relief.