The End of the Line

It’s funny, really, how it all came to this. But here we are. The end of the line.

I sit here, sipping my coffee slowly as I take in the sounds and smells around me. The house is stirring. Bacon sizzling in the frying pan, a batch of muffins in the oven, my wife, Camille, pulling the kids out of bed for school.

Somewhere off in the distance, a phone rings. But it’s not loud enough to bring me out of my thoughts.

The band that I started all those years ago, Escape the Fate, has finally reached it’s end. The last original member to leave, Robert, finally quit two months ago to start his own family. For every beginning, there is an end. For some reason, this end is bittersweet for me.

Sweet in the fact that for a little more than three years, I put my heart and soul into that band. Then in a moments notice, it was ripped out from under me. It’s run its course. Bitter in the way that… though I’ve harbored a deep hatred for the guys remaining in that band… they are still, and will always be, my brothers.

In the past, I’d had chances to go back, but I’d finally gotten my career reestablished and didn’t want to risk losing everything. Again.

“Ronnie?” the soft, musical voice of my wife chirps from nearby. Slowly, I raise my gaze from the table in front of me and look up at her. Her hair, though messy from sleep, frames her heart shaped face. She smiles lovingly down at me as she waits for me to gather myself; I’m like this every morning. It takes a while for my brain to wake up, and I spend the time until it does thinking.

“Hmm?”

“That was Joey Simmrin on the phone,” she states, sinking her teeth into her full bottom lip as she removes the bacon from the grease and sets it out onto a single plate.

Joey Simmrin is known to the world as Escape the Fate’s manager. Though he may not be the most honest man you’ll ever meet, he did take the band from nothing, to world famous in a few short years.

I nod once to tell her to continue and she sighs, picking up an oven mitt from off the counter and slipping it onto her hand. “He had an odd request.”

“Okay,” I murmur, not quit sure where she’s going with this.

“He said that Craig Mabbitt quit this morning.”

My eyebrows raise up onto my forehead, almost up into my hairline, at this revelation. I’d assumed that Craig would never give up his claim to fame. I guess people can surprise you. I just never thought he’d be one of those people.

“He said that, if you’re interested, he’d like for you to give him a call.”

“Why would I do that?” I ask, confusion written all over my face as Camille carries the plates of muffins and bacon over to the table, setting them down into the center of it as our two children, a boy and a girl, troop into the kitchen for breakfast.

“He said that he’d be interested in you rejoining the band.”

A small smile plays across my lips at her words.

The end of the line; an ending, or a new beginning?

I’ll let you be the one to decide.