When I Grow Up, I Want to Be Famous

“Max, what happened?” I hiccupped down the phone, rubbing the tissue against my sore face. I couldn’t face speaking to HIM just yet. The album has presented a shit load of questions that I realised I hadn’t acknowledged.

“What? Jase, what’s wrong? Josh is her-”

“No!” I said quickly, hiccupping again. “No I can’t... I can’t speak to him just yet.”

There was a pause and I could tell Max was trying to work out silently what was going on. Josh was there I could sense it.

“He gave me the album,” I sniffled to speed up the process.

“Oh,” Max said bluntly and there was another silence. Josh and Max seemed to be having a silent conversation.

Until I heard in the background “Let me speak to her?”

“Please, Max, no I can’t deal with it right now, I need to speak to you!”

There was some scuffling. It sounded like Max was trying to backup from Josh.

“Alright, alright, hang on.” Without saying anything to his best mate I heard him walking away. There was a sound of the door shutting and gentle fuzz that signalled he was outside. “He gave you a copy of Hold Me Down?”

“Yes,” I sniffled, even the title stung. “He left it in my bag for me to find.”

“Seriously? Oh, that’s not right,” Max groaned in sympathy, they weren’t in on it then. “I’m sorry you had to hear it this way Jase, none of us had any idea you’d reappear, we’d thought you were gone for good and would never listen to our stuff again. We were keen to stop him but he is the one who writes everything. We told him he’d regret it but he wouldn’t listen. We had to record the album even when you showed up, we were on a contract, we didn’t have time for new stuff, I’m so sorry Jase.”

“It’s okay,” I breathed. “I’m not too mad about the album, I get it, I deserve it, I’m even used to it, no Max I do!” I said firmly when he tried to disagree. “But some stuff came up when I was listening to it that I need answered.”

“Go ahead,” he said quietly.

“There’s a few lines in the album that stung pretty bad. Max please answer this for me now, is he playing me?”

“Yes, playing me,” I said bluntly, my voice sounding thick and my chest feeling heavy. “There’s something about keeping his friends close and me even closer and if I move close he’ll push me away.”

“What? Oh, no Jase, that’s him being a prat, what he wish he could have done, but you’d vanished. Honestly, none of thought we’d ever see you again, Reading was a huge surprise. Oh Jase he’d never do that to you, you’ve been friends too long for him to hurt you so badly like that, those songs, it’s like it’s all in a world inside his own head.”

I nodded silently which was stupid because he couldn’t see me. Erin was watching me nervously from the end of my bed, her legs crossed and clutching a pillow. We’d barricaded my door just in case my mum came home early. She was going to hit the roof if she saw me in this state again. She’d go to her every length so I’d never see even a glimpse of You Me At Six ever again.

Max stayed quiet letting me process it but after another hiccup he spoke.

“He would never ever intentionally hurt you.”

I nodded again my eyes welling at my own stupidity. I blinked them away, sniffed and let out a heavy breath.

“I know, I know, I know, don’t tell him, please.”

“I won’t,” he replied quietly, waiting for me to talk now.

After I’d managed to collect myself again I asked what else was pressing on my mind.

“I want to know what happened in my absence.”

It was Max’s turn to let out a long breath, it crackled in the phone.

“Please?” I asked because I could tell he was reluctant. “I can’t listen to that and not know.”

“Yep,” was all he said, sucking in sharply. He cleared his throat and I waited patiently. “Ummm, it was pretty brutal Jase. He locked himself away after you umm... split, we tried to see him for days but he just slammed the door in all our faces.” I winced, thinking to how the guys weren’t right now. “When he finally did surface about a week later he went out every night. He got slammed Jase, he was ruined.” I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat. “I got him to crash at mine because there was no way I was going to let him go back home to his parents in that state. Anne would throw a fit. He was drinking and drinking and drinking and throwing up all the time, it was pretty rough. He would crash until late afternoon and just start the cycle again. My room absolutely stank. ” A horrible vision of Josh crashed out on a bed surrounded by bottles and vomit surfaced and I closed my eyes as if it would help it go away. “It took me a while to coax him out of it.”

“Just you?” I whispered.

“Just me,” Max repeated. “Not everyone wasn’t so forgiving of his drunken slurs.”

I groaned, a knot twisting inside of me so badly I had to hold my stomach.

“The state you saw him at Emily’s was nothing compared to how he had been, I’d managed to get him sober for a few days before that date, he was coming round then, and then you showed at the party.” I cringed. Despite the amount I had drunk I remember the night quite well and now that Max was describing it I remembered his gaunt, unkempt, thin, tired appearance. “He didn’t drink himself into a stupor after that, he went into song writing mode instead. You’ve heard ‘Finders Keepers’ and ‘Kiss and Tell’ right?”

“Sort of,” I answered slowly. “I saw the ‘Finders Keepers’ video and heard ‘Kiss and Tell’ live...”

“Right, right, well he’d gotten the most of the initial backlash out of him by then but he’d calmed down, he’d turned bitter, darker. He was a fucking pain in the arse. We hit Warped Tour and it was a fucking disaster. Forced to be in a small space with a number of people for that long isn’t good.”

“They fell out with him didn’t they?” I asked bluntly. Max didn’t answer for a moment.

“Yes,” he finally said. “It was so hard. He was so... dark. There’s only so much you can take of someone’s moping and negativity. He’s meant to be leading this band and he tore everyone’s heads off at every possibility. Dan and Matt wanted to pretty much murder him by the end of the tour. Then someone told us that he was going beh-” Max fell silent. I let him and just listened, my curiosity was overflowing but I knew this wasn’t the time to ask about that. “He even phoned home,” he said quickly, covering what he’d about to say. “Telling his parents he wanted out but I overheard Anne telling him how stupid he was being. Even his mother was growing sick of his attitude.”

“But not you?”

“I’ve known him almost as long as you Jase and my tolerance is higher than most peoples. He needed a mate, I was there.”

“Thank you Max,” I said quietly.

“You won’t be thanking me in a moment,” he said bleakly. “I encouraged him to pen ‘Hold Me Down’ as Bobby and the label were pressing us for new stuff. I even helped him write some of it.”

My throat clenched as I took this in. Max, the one person who I could always count on...

“Okay,” I said slowly.

“I just helped him artistically, filling in his blanks,” he said quickly. “We thought you were gone,” he repeated desperately.

“Max it’s fine,” I said. “Seriously.”

“We wrote it, brought it to band practice, which have been the frostiest since we started this thing.” He paused and then carried on quickly, as if keen the change the subject. “And then we ran into you at Reading and you pretty much know the rest, mind you, you fucked with his mind when you reappeared.

“Sorry,” I whispered automatically, another question had appeared my mind. “Was he dating Rebecca?”

Max laughed awkwardly.

“That’s probably a conversation for you two, that’s not my place.”

I sighed.

“Did they sleep together?” I asked seriously, ignoring his attempts.

“No,” Max replied, equally as seriously and my shoulders lifted. “But really, I’m not having that conversation with you, that’s his business.”

I growled and Max laughed.

“You alright?” he asked after a moment, his voice thick with worry.

“Yeah,” I answered and I did feel a hell of a lot better. “Yes, thank you Max.”

“Anytime,” he replied.

“You guys having fun?” I asked in a lighter tone.

“Yeah, actually it’s pretty sweet, it’s better than Warped because there doesn’t feel like there’s a massive dark cloud over us all the time.”

“Why did you go back?” I asked curiously.

“We’d signed up before we hit Warped.”

“Ahhh, huh, well, I won’t run up your bill anymore, give my love to everyone and give Josh a little slap for me?” I teased. “I can’t have the pleasure being in England. It’s mainly for him running away from this,” I reassured Max who was laughing now.

“Okay, speak to you later Jase, perk up!”

“Always do,” I replied lightly. “Bye Max my darling!”

I dropped my phone onto the bed and let out a huge massive sigh. Everything lifted and settled on my chest so I could focus on the right things. A few worried vanished but a few more had settled.

I needed to speak to Josh at some point and that was weirdly scary. I was now also freaking out about Rebecca and the status of the band. After listening to the album, I thought they were going to be the least of my sorrows. I was relieved I was getting over the new material so quickly but there was no way in Hell I was listening to it again.

Erin was watching me still, her eyebrows had vanished into her fringe and she was waiting expectantly. I just smiled weakly at her. She rolled her eyes and collapsed backwards.

“You do realise I’m still going to murder your boyfriend.”

***

I couldn’t work out if he was being really respectful about waiting for me to be ready to call him first or if he was scared to talk to me. It was probably the latter. I was scared to talk to HIM but there was no way I could wait until November when they’d come home. I wanted to clear things up as soon as I could, or at least as soon as I was ready. I’d thrown the album in the bin, refusing to listen to it again. It felt wrong having the conversation over the phone.

Alice suggested a good idea when I’d phoned her for a catch up. Skype.

I waited anxiously for him to receive my call after we’d exchanged a few texts to agree a time.

His face appeared on my screen and I softened a little. He looked terrified. He looked pale and tired again. Good. I shook myself. No, not good. I just sighed and laughed out a “Hello.”

“Hi,” he replied nervously, scratching the back of his head. Seeing him, any anger I’d felt just went away. I couldn’t blame him for what he’d written. If I’d been in the same position and opportunity I would have probably done the same. I’d brought this on myself.

“I’m not mad at you Josh,” I said bluntly, keen to get it out in the open. He didn’t say anything; he was just watching me nervously still, like he didn’t believe me. He looked like I was going to rip him to shreds, despite the fact that he was millions of miles away.

“Seriously. I don’t know what Max told you about our last conversation but... I’m not mad.”

“I would be,” he whispered. I smiled a little.

“Yeah well you get used to these things,” I said, looking down at my nails. “And you get over them.”

“I only wrote all that because I love you so God damn much,” he said quickly, not looking at the camera. “It hurt. I was a prat. I’m sorry.”

I nodded when he looked at me again.

“I love you too and that’s why I can forgive you so easy.”

It was his turn to smile slightly, it was only fleeting but it was there.

“My sister on the other hand...”

He groaned, leaning forwards to bury his face into his hands, rubbing his eyes.

“Great, another family member who hates me.”

“She’ll come around,” I lied because I knew Erin, she wasn’t going to let this one go for a while but she was busy in University anyway. He just laughed darkly.

I bit my lower lip, chewing over the words I wanted to say next.

“There was one or two things I wanted to ask though,” I said tentatively. His scared expression returned and he just nodded.

“The last song on the album.”

“Ahh, Fireworks,” he muttered, more to himself than me.

“Fireworks?”

“Yeah, I wrote it on bonfire night last year, well the outline, I filled it in when we... But I think I know what you’re going to ask. It’s exaggerated Jase, I know you didn’t sleep with anyone, well... no I don’t-”

“I haven’t!” I said, quickly, relieved but nervous now. I hadn’t slept with anyone but Josh but I had kissed someone else... “But...” I started gnawing on my lip again. “I kissed Harry the week before Reading.”

He didn’t look mad. He didn’t explode. He just looked hurt for a moment and then it vanished.

“It was only brief and I realised I felt nothing for him. I only thought of you when I did it.”

He wasn’t looking at me, his eyes were glazed over as if seeing something else, and he smiled again. He shook himself and then turned back to me.

“And you kissed someone else too,” I said before he could say anything. His smile vanished.

“And what happened to you happened to me. I saw only you.”

“So... you and Rebecca?” I asked curiously.

“We were... sort of dating I guess. She was chasing after me and I needed a face to help me get over you. It sounds horrible but it was what I needed. It got me out the house and encouraged me to get on with my life, I had no idea I’d be seeing you at Reading.”

I felt wounded but I’d known, I’d felt this.

“I was sort of seeing someone else too,” he answered honestly, wincing, scratching his head awkwardly.

My body tensed.

“I guess I was playing the field. I’m sorry-”

“There’s no need to be sorry,” I said calmly. “You had every right to find someone new.”

So if I hadn’t reappeared at the festival, would he be with someone else right now? The thought churned my gut until I felt sick. I remembered that we were together again now and forced myself to look at the screen.

“I’m still sorry,” he said, his eyes appealing to me desperately and my heart lifted.

“Me too,” I replied in a whisper, I cleared my throat.

There was a silence where I could hear the TV in the other room.

“How’s the tour going?” I asked, my whole body relaxing now. I was actually really curious now everything else had settled in my head.

“Pretty good, better than Warped, I think we’re more familiar with what to expect. It’s a lot of travelling though, we move state from night to night, it’s nuts. We’ve got Halloween coming up so we’re going sh-”

He stopped suddenly, looking up quickly over the camera to the other side of the room presumably.

“Josh?”

He glanced back down.

“What was that?”

“Dan.”

And a whole new series of questions surfaced to the top.

“Is everything okay between you guys?” I asked slowly, assessing his reaction.

“Actually Jase, I better go, we’ve got sound check, I’m sorry.”

Great. So there was something he was avoiding - there was something wrong with the band.

***

That night I dreamt of everything. I dreamt of everyone from my youth. Katie. Nia. Tash. Kendra. Jonzey. Lucy. Amelia. Abby. Lewis. Ashley. Summer. Alex. Harry. Everything bad that had happened coursed mind, mixing memory and my imagination.

I changed from memory to memory, drugs, brawls, hospitals, backstabbing, storm outs, parties, until my characters started converging on me. Katie and Nia advanced, sneering at me, pulling my hair, clawing at my face with inch long nails-

Alex helped me, pulling me backwards by my arm but then he was gone-

And Josh appeared, looking gaunt and a mess with an empty bottle of vodka in one hand and then pair started beating the shit out of one another. Harry was holding me back as I watch them rip each other to shreds. There was blood everywhere-

Then Tash, Kendra and Summer appeared, their hands all over Josh, pulling him away, grinning about it while he just stared at me, horrified at me, horrified at something I had done, his face bloody and fists bawled, his knuckles scuffed-

Then the band were there, trying to speak to him, to calm him down but he wasn’t listening-

He was just staring at me-

Staring and hating.

He finally retaliated to his band mates who were trying to push him backwards, away from me. He started screaming with words I couldn’t hear. He got himself free, shoving Dan in the chest, pushing him away as viscously as he’d just done with Alex-

Then all hell broke loose.

Harry clung onto me no matter how much I wanted to pull myself away.

And I watched, horrified, as they started to tear each other apart-

I woke with a start. My throat dry and my whole body shaking. It took myself a few moments to convince myself it was a dream. But was it...?

***

“I still can’t believe you forgave him,” Emily muttered in disbelief when she travelled up for a visit. “I like Josh and everything but if a guy had publically said all that shit about me...”

“Everyone’s saying that,” I sighed. “They all think I’m mad. If we hadn’t known each other for so long I think it would be easy for both of us to move on but we just can’t escape one another. I have to get over this for it to work.”

Emily just looked at me like I was crazy and sucked on the straw of her coke as we walked out of McDonalds. I followed her down the high street in silence, lost in my own thoughts. Whatever was happening with the band was still bugging me. I’d asked Emily but she didn’t really know what was going on. She just knew Dan and Matt were avoiding the others more. Like me, she hadn’t really felt right asking what was happening.

I tried to focus my thoughts on the shop windows as we walked past but I couldn’t see past the reflections. Despite speaking to Josh I still felt shitty and even looked shitty. I was missing them and it was reflecting on my appearance. Annoyed at what I saw, I steered Em into the nearest Boots to buy a selection of pamper products.

That night we shared a bottle of wine, painted our nails and dyed my hair a chestnut brown, removing all traces of my blonde. It was the closest colour I could find that had matched my hair in my youth. Feeling a hell of a lot better, physically and emotionally, I managed to sleep pretty well that night, for the first time in a while.

***

Work was my best distraction. I had visits from people that had gone to Uni now and then when they came home to visit their families but I was pretty much on my own for a few weeks. Erin vanished as did Emily. I hadn’t seen Harry in over a month but I’d gotten calls every now and then from his new place. I was keen for the boys to get back as soon as possible. I enjoyed my job, I had people to speak to and I soon realised my work mates were going to become my new set of regular friends.

Sarah was my closest friend at work. She was an intelligent small blonde from quite a well off family. She was originally a bit wary of me but opened up after we’d been sent to tag a load of stock out back for a few hours. She reminded me of Emily, she wanted to be a vet but hadn’t got into an Universities this year so she was sitting extra evening courses and was working to fund herself next year. Billie and Krysten were two other gorgeous and fashionable workers who were bubbly and easy to get on with. I found myself, as much as I tried not to, becoming good friends with Mitch, the tattooed male sale assistant. I’d had bad experience with male friends so I tried to keep him at a distance but I got on with him the most after Sarah. I didn’t tell anyone in work about much of my past, or about the band or even about Josh. They knew I had a boyfriend but that’s where I stopped the conversations.

I went on several work nights out to distract myself and found myself spending more and more time with them outside of shifts.

“Urgg I can smell it,” Krysten moaned as she dabbed at the fake blood underneath her nose.

“Yeah it’s not the best,” I said, my face wrinkling up in disgust. “They were selling it off cheap, I can see why now.”

“You’ll be too fucked later to care,” Billie argued, her focus on the small mirror in front of her, dabbing a grey eye shadow to her cheeks to darken the area. We’d decided to go for a vampire-like-bloody-undead sort of look. It was a bit hit and miss, we looked Halloweeny but we still got to wear pretty dresses.

I grimaced in response. I hadn’t planned on drinking too much. Alcohol had fucked me over too much, plus it was seriously affecting my diet. I’d started a whole new slimming routine to try and make myself feel better. I’d changed my hair, I was going to change my body.

I was almost done. I was just raking my Straighteners through my hair a few times when my phone buzzed.

It was a text telling me to check my email.

Confused, I switched my Straighteners off, pulled up my laptop and clicked on my email. It was a picture from the band.

It was a mass email sent out to a ton of different people but I still grinned at the screen. Only a few weeks left...

I shut the lid gently, hiding my screen from the rest of the girls and returned to my side of life.

I got caught so up in it all that the end November arrived quickly and soon it was the day the guys were meant to return home.

Elissa invited me down to meet the guys back. The Franceschi family seemed more than happy to see me again. My reconciliation with their son must have had sparked a positive change in him because they didn’t seem like they wanted to kill me. To be fair they’d always been lovely to me, much more than I’d deserved, but I guess I’d spent so much time around the house in my youth there was a lot less tension than I expected.

My visit was meant to be a surprise that Elissa had thought would be nice. I sat on the sofa with her, catching up whilst we waited for the arrival. I’d headed down just before they were due to land so they’d make it back about half hour after me. Obviously there was a delay, and a massive one at that. It got so late I embarrassingly dozed off on the sofa.

I must have really been tired because I didn’t even hear them return home. My mind must have picked up on it but wouldn’t put the pieces together. I was confused when I was gently shaken awake. My eyes open dozily to look at an unshaven, tired, but happy face smiling inches from mine. I pushed myself up quickly in humiliation that I’d fallen asleep.

“I’m so sorry,” I croaked, blinking furiously, and grabbing my head when it swam. “I didn’t mean to sleep, oh God I’m sorry.”

Josh was just laughing at me. He looked shattered though, the circles under his eyes again.

“What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my temple.

“Just after one,” he replied, sinking down next to me, rubbing his own head and stifling a yawn.

“Flight got delayed and we were at the baggage collection for ages because we had a shit load of equipment.”

I nodded, sinking backwards like him into the cushy sofa. I sat quietly, observing the family’s little reunion. It was amazing and so pleasing to see the effect he had, despite it being so late, of returning home to his love ones. The room was so full of happiness, I felt warm for the first time in months. Deciding stories could wait until morning, because everyone was dozing off, the house went to bed, leaving me alone with him for the first time in what felt like a fucking lifetime I can tell you now. It wasn’t months spent where I’d been trying to get over him now, I knew his absence and I missed it the entire time, regardless of the album.

I turned to him once we’d changed and his bedroom door was shut.

“I miss-”

He cut me off. He put a hand on the back of my neck, pulled me forwards and pressed his lips to mine urgently. I let him, a little stunned but happy. Nothing else was said, nothing NEEDED to be said. Pure connection. We fell onto the bed but didn’t proceed any further. We were both so tired we fell asleep where we lay, intertwined.

I had another decent sleep, like the night Emily had stayed over and I woke up completely happy.

I blinked myself awake slowly, the light from outside flooding in through a small gap in the curtains, the stream of sunlight directly on my face. I moved my head forwards a bit to get out of the light but paused, my nose barely an inch from his. I couldn’t help but smile. There is no greater feeling than waking up next to the person you love. His lips were parted slightly and his hair was sticking up in all directions on the one side of his head. He looked so completely at peace.

Out of the light, I closed my eyes and just drifted in and out of consciousness because I didn’t want to move and wake him. When I reopened them again, he was staring at me. Blue locking with green.

Again, he didn’t say anything, just pushed forward to kiss me. My whole body just sighed with happiness and relaxed. I stayed pressed together for a few moments, until we broke apart to get a good look at one another. His eyes traced up to my hair and he ran his fingers through it.

I suddenly felt self conscious. My words came out in a rush, like I was trying to explain myself.

“My blonde was getting messy and Autumns here and I thought darker woul-”

“You look beautiful.”

I smiled shyly. Every negative thought that had crossed my mind in the past few weeks vanished as if they’d never been there.

“As do you,” I teased, rubbing his facial hair with my hand until his face screwed up, forcing us both to laugh. “Come on, I think your family is dying to see you.”

We spent the morning listening to tour stories over coffee and pancakes. Josh was avoiding parts at times. He kept pausing every now and then, like he was cutting himself off and he quickly changed the subject. There was one focus point – Dan and Matt.

“What’s going on?” Elissa asked bluntly, cutting across his story about Halloween. The entire room could sense something was wrong. Maybe, like me, they’d been curious for a while. I thought it was weird that he hadn’t told his family about it.

He hesitated, staring his sister down before dropping his eyes to his mug. I sank backwards in his chair, running his hands over his face.

“I don’t know,” he groaned. “I really don’t. I think they hate me. I think my band mates hate me.”

“But you looked like you were having such a good time,” I said quietly, confused.

“It’s our job,” he muttered. “We have to look like this is the best thing in the world or we won’t sell.”

“Why do you think they hate you?” Elissa asked, baffled.

He shrugged, he was clearly unwilling to talk about this.

I had sort of been forming ideas in my head. Max had told me how he’d manage to piss everyone off during Warped, had he pushed them too far?

“Max doesn’t hate you,” I whispered, my eyes glued to him. The words just sort of slipped out, but I knew it was the truth.

He just blinked at me and nodded slightly.

“We couldn’t wait to get home,” he responded, sinking into his chair and rubbing his face. “It’s been Hell. I know I’ve been a bit of a prat...” His voice was shaking now. I’d never seen him like this. “But it’s something else. It’s like they know something I don’t. Like I’ve done something awful to them but I actually have no idea what it is.”

“Have you talked to them?” Elissa asked, her voice was completely serious and she’d leant forwards on the table like me.

He snorted, his eyes slightly glassy, fuck, this was really getting to him.

“We don’t talk, and I mean at all, I’m amazed how we got through this tour, I don’t know how we’re going to get through it again.”

“What’re you saying?” I asked, my voice dropping a tone.

His eyes flashed to mine and I shivered. I knew what he was saying.

“I’m saying,” he said slowly. “I think this may be the end of the band.”