I Can't Not Love You

[Alex]

“I beat you again!” Jack said cheerfully, jabbing me in the chest with his controller. Jack had definitely come out of his grumpy mood from this morning. He had lightened up a little once we started playing and now he was a lot more energetic than he had been earlier. That may be due to the fact that he had beaten me six times in a row at Mario Kart.

I laughed, pushing his hand away, “Get your hands off me.” Jack pouted, pulling his hands away quickly and putting them on his lap. I leaned back against the couch we were sitting on as I returned to the main menu of the game, “This is getting boring already.”

“You’re only saying that because you keep losing,” Jack scoffed.

I shrugged, “Maybe. It might be fun to play with more people though...”

“Who? The crew is busy, Rian is on the phone, and Zack doesn’t like Mario Kart.”

“We’re on tour, Jack. There’s a whole band on the other bus,” I said with a smirk, wiggling my phone as I pulled it out of my pocket.

“Oh, yeah! See if some of the Maine guys want to come play!” Jack said happily, his eyes lighting up. I chuckled and scrolled through my contacts, looking for one of the guys’ names. I found John O’Callaghan’s number and dialed it, listening as it rang.

“John O’Callaghan, at your service,” I heard John say, and I snickered.

“What kind of services?” I teased, and John groaned.

“I need to learn to check the caller ID before saying things like that. Especially when it’s you. What’s up, Gaskarth?”

“I was just wondering if any of you guys would be interested in coming over to our bus and playing video games with Jack and I. It’s getting boring with just the two of us,” I replied.

“He’s just mad because I’m winning!” Jack yelled out.

John laughed, “Video games with you and Jack? That sounds like it could get pretty violent.”

“Video games with Jack and who?!” I heard someone exclaim on the other end. That was definitely Pat Kirch.

“Jack and Alex,” John replied to him, and I heard a cheer.

“Let’s go! Now!”

I laughed, “So is that a yes?”

“Apparently so,” John chuckled. “We’ll be over there in a minute.”

There was a loud knock at the door in the next few minutes, and I headed up front to go open the door to the bus. Pat ran inside, followed by Garrett Nickelsen and John.

“It’s so cold,” Garrett grumbled as he walked inside, rubbing his arms.

“The temperature outside is at least 25 degrees. It could be worse. You’re just used to the Arizona weather,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.

“Well either way, I’m freezing!”

“Don’t be a pussy,” I scoffed, leading the three of them into the back of the bus.

“Hi guys!” Jack greeted cheerfully. The boys greeted him before sitting down, and John laughed as he looked up at our game shelf.

“I forgot that you guys play that Nintendo 64 instead of the Xbox,” John said with a slight smirk.

“We have the Xbox too,” Jack pointed out, pointing at a shelf below the Nintendo 64. “It just gets used less.”

“Obviously. It looks like it has dust on it and it’s only the second day of tour.”

“Here,” I said, tossing a controller at John. I looked at Garrett and Pat, wondering who I should give the last controller to. Pat was sitting beside Jack and Garrett was partially lying down on the other couch, his eyes closed. “Garrett, you look like you’re dead.”

“I’m tired, not dead,” Garrett replied, not opening his eyes.

“He’s mad because I woke him up early,” Pat spoke up. “I don’t know why he’s so annoyed – it wasn’t that early.”

“Seven is way too early to wake up when I didn’t go to bed until three am!” Garrett protested, opening his eyes to look at Pat.

“And whose fault is that?” Pat questioned, crossing his arms.

“Yours! You kept me up talking in my ear all night!” Garret exclaimed.

Pat pouted, “Yesterday was our first day of tour. I was excited!”

“More like drunk on caffeine,” John chuckled.

“I don’t know how you’re even wide awake after four hours of sleep,” Garrett grumbled.

“Jack and Pat are both like that. They can function on no sleep and still be wide awake and crazy,” I pointed out.

“Usually that’s a good thing, but at the moment I’m jealous of that ability.”

I chuckled, “So are you even going to play with us, Garrett?”

“Probably not. I only came over here with them because Jared and Kennedy are being annoying over on our bus and I couldn’t sleep,” Garrett said, running a hand through his hair.

“You can have this, if you want to sleep.” Jack tossed a blanket at Garrett and he grinned.

“Warmth!” Garrett said happily, wrapping it around him and curling up on the couch. “Goodnight.”

“I guess it’s just the four of us playing, then,” I said, tossing a controller at Pat before sitting down between Jack and John.

“That’s okay – you’ll have enough trouble beating me as it is. I’m a beast at this game,” John smirked.

“Oh, hell no! You’re going down!” Jack argued.

“We’ll see about that.”

--------------------

“You cheated!” Pat yelled, tossing his controller down in frustration.

“It’s not even possible to cheat in this game!” I protested. I had finally won a round of Mario Kart, only my third of probably over thirty games. Apparently this was considered cheating in Pat’s rulebook.

“You suck at this game – you must have cheated if you won!” Pat argued, crossing his arms as he looked at me.

“Just because he won doesn’t mean he’s cheating, Pat,” Garrett piped up from the other couch. He had woken up a few minutes ago, when Pat started yelling at me. John had been right – the game was turning vicious.

“Yes it does!”

Jack shrugged, “I don’t think he cheated.”

“Jack! You’re supposed to take my side!” Pat whined.

“Why?” Jack asked with a laugh.

“Because I’m better than Alex!”

“I beg to differ,” John scoffed, and I blushed slightly.

“Yeah, Alex is better,” Jack agreed, and Pat just pouted.

The door to the back lounge swung open and we all looked up to see Flyzik and Danny walking in.

“There you are! We’ve been looking for you guys for fifteen minutes now!” Danny exclaimed.

“I told you that we were going to play video games all day,” I shrugged.

“We didn’t think that you meant it literally! We couldn’t find John, Garrett, or Pat either – Jared told us that you guys had come over to play video games,” Flyzik sighed. “C’mon, all of you guys need to go get ready for the show.”

“One more game,” I said, picking up the controller and starting a new race. Pat dove for his controller as Jack, John, and I started the next race.

“Seriously?” Flyzik complained. No one responded because we were focusing on the game. The four of us let out yelps of protest as the screen suddenly went black, and I heard Garrett and Danny burst out laughing. We looked up to see Flyzik smirking and holding up the cord to the game console.

“Flyzik, why do you always have to ruin the fun?” John asked, pouting at him slightly.

“Matt!” Jack whined, throwing the controller at him.

“Ow!” Flyzik dropped the cord, rubbing his chest where Jack had hit him. “I’m a tour manager – it’s my job to ruin your fun.”

“It’s already five o’clock, you guys – the All Time Low meet and greet is at five-thirty,” Danny pointed out.

“What?! Shit!” I exclaimed, jumping up and running to my bunk. I was still in sweatpants and a hoodie from this morning – I needed to get dressed.

“Fuck, that means we go on stage in like two hours,” John said, also jumping up. “Come on, guys. Let’s go get ready and do a sound check.”

“See you later,” Garrett said, pulling himself up from the couch and stretching before following John out of the bus.

“Bye, cheaters!” Pat called out, running behind them and shutting the door as they left the bus.

I glanced at Jack as he walked out to his bunk, “I definitely didn’t cheat in that game.”

Jack laughed, “I believe you, Lex.”

“Yay!” I hugged him, despite his attempt to pull away from me, “At least someone believes me.”