The Girl At The Rock Show

Matt’s POV:

The look on Tessa’s face when she saw him walk in nearly made him want to turn around and leave. Emily happily stayed oblivious as she walked impossibly closer to him, continuing to make their way over to the rest of their friends.

By then, everyone was staring at them and Matt wanted to go and hide. This was seriously turning into the worst night of his life. It had originally just been the worst day of his life, but now it was getting even worse. Thankfully he still had a few moments before Vinny came back over, but until then, he had a few moments to allow the initial shock to set in before all hell broke loose.

“Hey Flyzik,” Colussy said as he gave him a subtle frown. “And Emily.”

“Hey guys! I’ve missed you!” Emily replied happily as Matt just grunted a hello and shook his head slightly when Colussy gave him a look asking him to explain.

He looked over to Tessa to try and silently tell her he would explain everything later but she wasn’t even looking at him. But he honestly didn’t blame her. She was probably so pissed at him at the moment and never want to speak to him again. Again, he didn’t blame her.

“Flyzik,” Vinny growled when he saw him standing there with Emily. Thankfully she was the only one, once again, that didn’t notice what was going on while everyone else was nearly ready to rip his head off.

Vinny was instantly at his sisters side, and when he tried to pull her closer, she moved away, mentioning something about that they should get the theater to see the movie. Everyone agreed and they all began to walk toward the proper theater. He caught all the looks everyone was shooting him and just wished they’d stop. He knew what an ass he was being, he wasn’t trying to be on purpose, there was a good reason, he just couldn’t tell anyone yet.

“Hey Matt, I need to talk to you quickly.” Vinny said as he grabbed his arm tightly, pulling him away from their group, but more importantly, Emily.

He silently thanked the merch guy for getting him away and heard him mention to the others that they would catch up with them. With one look Vinny shot him as he dragged him toward the bathroom, he began to wondered if it was such a good idea to go with Vinny into a small room alone. His mind not being that helpful, coming up with scary scenarios in his head making him mentally shudder.

Just as the bathroom door was closing, someone else slipped in and he heard Vinny sigh, thinking that they were going to have to wait to talk. But then Matt glanced over and saw that it was Zack standing there with an equally pissed expression on his face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Was the first thing Zack asked, crossing his overly muscular arms, succeeding at being intimidating.

Matt took a breath, “It’s honestly not what it looks like.”

“Oh really? What does it look like to you? Because to me it looks like you totally just broke my sister’s heart. What do you think Zack?”

Zack nodded, “Looks about right to me.”

“What the hell happened to you breaking up with her? Did you suddenly realized that it was more fun to lead her on and then let her realize that it was all a joke and go running back to Emily? Seriously what the fuck? You’ve been head over heels for her for six years. Six years! I thought you two were going to live happily ever.” Vinny said, his voice getting louder and louder making it echo in the bathroom.

Matt crossed his arms and gave a few moments silence. “Are you done yet? Or are you going to continue to yell so the whole theater, including your sister to hear this?”

“She should hear this so she can hear what an asshole you really are.”

“Vinny, maybe we actually should hear him out,” Zack suggested, trying to be the voice of reason.

Vinny shot the bassist a glare but just rolled his eyes and nodded, gesturing for Matt to continue. “Fine, you have one minute.”

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Matt muttered as Vinny sighed and raised his hands up in frustration.

“How about the beginning? Like today for instance? What happened when you tried to break up with Emily, or did you pussy out of it?”

Matt groaned, “No I didn’t pussy out. I told her, I told her about everything, about being in love with Tessa, about kissing her and cheating on her everything.” He left a pause, rubbing his eyes and trying to keep himself together. “She just simply forgave me. At first I thought that it was going to be an unusually easy breakup, and then she started talking about how we can make things better, that she wasn’t going to leave me just because of a simple kiss. She didn’t understand that I was actually breaking up with her.”

He glanced up for the first time since he started speaking, seeing the shocked and confused expressions from his two coworkers. They were both silent, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Then why didn’t you tell her what you really meant? When did you do this?” Vinny asked, being the first to recover.

“I would have, but that was before my parents burst in, talking and being their usual loud selves saying that they heard from Emily that I was coming home for the day and that they wanted to see me before I left again. Then I got a call from Keith asking me to meet at a Starbucks to catch up on how things were going. By the time I finished with him it was already late and Emily called to say that she was already on her way to the theater to meet up with us for the movie. And now we’re here,”

“Jesus, so she basically didn’t give you any room to explain.” Zack asked as Matt shook his head. “You’re not screwing with us are you? You’re not really just feeding us complete bullshit so you can save your sorry ass?”

Matt shook his head again, “Would I really screw around like this when it comes to Tessa?”

“No you wouldn’t, because I see how you look at her.” Vinny sighed as he ran a hand through his hair. “We believe you Matt, but you seriously need to fix this. Soon.”

“I know I just need to figure out how to get her to talk to me again.”

Vinny nodded, “I can try and help with that. But you need to break up with Emily. Soon.”

“Yeah I will tonight as soon as we get back.”

Zack and Vinny just nodded as Matt checked the time and sighed, telling them that they better get back before Emily or someone else comes to find them. They all walked to the proper theater and walked in just as the previews started playing. Thankfully, their group was easy to find and Matt unfortunately took the only empty seat next to Emily.

She gave him a happy smile as she handed him some popcorn but he shook his head and turned his attention to the screen. He could feel eyes on him and turned his head to see Tessa looking at him. But as soon as she saw him looking back, she turned and tried to ignore him.

By the time the movie was over nearly two hours later, to say he was bored was a understatement. He didn’t pay any attention, too busy thinking about Tessa and how the hell he possibly was going to fix this. But he was thankful that Vinny and Zack at least knew the truth, they would help get everyone else to explain what was going on. Hopefully the other wouldn’t hate him forever.

He followed the rest of the group out to the theater and down the hall to the main doors. He let himself fall to the back of the group where he knew Tessa was with her sister and Danny. Reaching out, he took her arm and she instantly wiggled out of his grip and stopped walking giving him one of the scariest looks he’s ever seen from her. He had only seen her mad a few times, but this was something different and much worse.

“Don’t touch me.” She hissed as he instantly pulled his hand away from her and ran it though his hair instead.

“Tessa please, let me explain,” He said as she gave him a sarcastic laugh.

She blinked at him a few moments and he knew that she was trying to stop herself from crying and he gave her a moment, not wanting to get embarrassed since he knew she hated crying, especially in front of people.

“You want to explain? I think you walking in with Emily is enough of an explanation.” She said quietly, voice cracking a few times.

“Tessa, it seriously wasn’t what it looked like. If you just listen to me-”

She shook her head and moved away when he tried to reach out to her again. “I’m beyond listening to you. Its fine Matt, I get it. You only wanted me around so you didn’t have to be alone and now that you’re back in town for a while you can go crawling back to your real girlfriend. But just know that when we get back on the road again, I won’t be there. We’re done; you’re not using me like that again.”

“Tessa no, that’s not what it was at all.” Matt said wanting anything to just grab her and kiss her until she understood what was going on. But he knew that she wouldn’t take that well and would probably get punched because of it. So he just stood where he was, looking down on a broken Tessa.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. “Please let me fix this,” he whispered as she scoffed and rolled her eyes looking away and shaking her head. He involuntarily stepped closer to her again, reaching out for her.

“No,” she said, taking a step back. “No, you’ve done enough. Just leave me alone. I don’t want to be around you right now.”

“Tessa,”

“Please,” she pleaded, eyes begging him to let her go. “Just go away.”

He dropped his gaze to the floor, feeling tears begin to fill his own eyes. She didn’t say anything else and he saw her walked past as quickly as possible. A hand touched his shoulder moments later and he glanced up to see Zack standing there giving him a sympathetic look.

“She’ll come around,” Zack said, squeezing his shoulder.

Matt just shook his head, “something tells me she won’t.”