All or Nothing

Everyone started talking at once, rushing around the house, picking up keys and putting on shoes to start looking.

“She’s not missing!” Brian hollered as loud as he could.

Everyone froze and looked at him.

“What?” Katie asked.

“How do you know?” Matt piped up.

“I crashed here last night and woke up obscenely fucking early. I was outside smoking and I saw her running. She went through the park and looked like she was heading towards the cemetery. I just assumed she was going there.”

“When was this?” Katie asked.

Brian pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at the time. “I’d say about two hours ago.”
“So she’s probably either still there or making her way back to the house.”

“Yeah, I’d bet,” Brian said.

“Well, I guess that’s over with,” Val said, putting her keys back in her purse.

“Actually, Brian I need you to help me with something,” Matt said, coming forward.

“What’s up, man?”

“Come on, I’ll show you,” Matt said and walked to the door. “We got some errands to run.”

“Alright,” Val said and breezed by him out the front door. “I’m going to meet Kaicey at the house so we can sort through the rest of the merch.”

Brian walked over to Matt and they walked out the door, waving goodbye to everyone.

“Alright, Jimmy, you’re up,” Johnny said and Jimmy walked passed him, throwing his fist up for a bump and Jimmy headed out the door.

“What the hell is going on?!” Katie asked when everyone left except Zacky and Johnny.

Both of them just shrugged and Katie made a noise of exasperation. She watched as the boys just looked at each other before moving opposite ways around the house before moving to the door.

“Wait, where the hell are you going?!” Katie cried as she watched them.

“Come on, you’re going to want to see this,” Johnny said and motioned for her to come behind them.

Katie grabbed her bag and followed them out of the door, pulling it closed behind her.



“I don’t get why I’m helping you.”

“I miss hanging out with you, Cheese, and while we’re both in California, I’m going to take advantage of it. Now, I need a box full of cords and then we can go drink.”

“Jimmy,” Eliza said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not even noon yet.”

“That means we’ve had four hours that we could’ve been drinking. We’re behind, Cheese!”

Eliza laughed and continued to look around the messy studio. Jimmy had found her as she was walking back to Katie and Zack’s and had picked her up, saying he’d been looking for her. He’d brought her to L.A. to help him with a few things around the studio before they went out to lunch. Eliza had begged to go change first, but he had said he thought she looked great and that it was just a small lunch.

“I don’t see any box of cords,” Eliza said, flipping through a magazine she’d found on the table.

She looked around the room, thinking of the memories she’d had in there. She glanced at the couches where she’d painted Zacky’s fingernails, where she and Katie had counted the amount of times Brian screwed up one day and how many times he said the word “fuck”, which of course, was every time he’d messed up. She smiled at the memory of him getting angry at himself for missing part of his solo and him screaming at his guitar. She remembered how much fun they’d had recording the song “A Little Piece of Heaven” and how Jimmy had come out of nowhere with the piano piece for it, how they’d all added in bits and pieces to the song and Matt yelling “Come here you fucking bitch!” over and over again while he and Jimmy laughed hysterically.

“Check the sound booth,” she heard Jimmy holler from somewhere and she was brought out of her reverie.

She dropped the magazine and moved to the booth, opening the door. She looked around the room and didn’t see anything except a couple of chairs and a microphone.

“There’s nothing here!” she hollered.

“Check under the cabinet under the window!”

She rolled her eyes and got down on her knees to look under the cabinet. She saw a few boxes and she had to push half her body into the cabinet to reach them.

“They better fucking be in here!” she hollered when she pulled the box closer to the opening.
She rocked back on her heels and started to open the box when a noise to her right caught her attention and the box was forgotten.

Brian was being shoved in the sound booth and the door was shut. From her angle, she could see Matt and Jimmy holding the door that Brian was shoving himself against. She could see Zacky, Johnny, and a very worried-looking Katie in the background.

“What the fuck?!” she said, looking towards the guys.

“Open the god damn door you assholes!” Brian yelled and banged his fists on the door.

“You two aren’t coming out until you fucking talk. All of this running around on eggshells around you two is driving us all bat-shit crazy. You two either need to figure this out and get back together which we all know you both want to do, or you need to finally say you’re over each other and get on with your fucking lives,” Zacky said through a microphone coming into the studio.

Brian had paused in his antics to listen to Zacky, but once he’d finished, Brian started banging on the door again. Eliza’s eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open in astonishment as she looked back and forth between the guys and Brian.

“This isn’t going to end well, you know,” Katie said as she moved to stand beside Zacky.