Shattered Glass & Broken Hearts

“We’re going to be together forever, right, Ronnie?” Emily asked as she lay with Ronnie on some playground equipment at the elementary school that had been their meeting place for the last few months. It was the only place that they were able to see each other now, especially after Max had found out about them. He hadn’t exactly been happy about their relationship, and he’d all but forbidden the two from seeing one another.

“Of course we are, baby. If you’ll keep me, anyway,” Ronnie scoffed as he turned his head to look at her. A smirk formed on his lips when he caught sight of a thin red rope that was tied so tightly to the playground equipment that it hadn’t come off in the last two months since it’d been there. “Remember that night?” He asked her softly, his lips kissing the corner of her mouth softly.

A light blush tinted Emily’s pale cheeks as she too looked at the red rope. She definitely remembered that night. It had been the first time she and Ronnie had gone all the way outside the safety of his bedroom or a motel room, and it had also been the first time he’d experimented with rough play.

“Yeah.”

He chuckled, shaking his head softly at her slight embarrassment. He wasn’t bothered by it because he knew it was just how Emily was. She was so unlike her brother in so many different ways. She wasn’t rough around the edges like Max, wasn’t harsh with her words like Max was at times. Emily was all innocence; all softness. She was all his.

“I love you so much,” he murmured against her neck after several moments of silence settled over them. “You’re the only one for me, Em.”

Emily sat up straight as a bolt in her bed as she awoke from the dream she’d been having. The dream in and of itself hadn’t exactly been a bad one. Actually, it had been pleasant compared to most of the dreams she’d been having for the last ten years. It had been a memory of some good times she’d shared with Ronnie, back before the accident. Hell, that memory had taken place before she’d even graduated high school.

But even still, she hated having dreams about Ronnie. It hurt her heart, knowing that she still wasn’t over him. By this point, she doubted she ever really would be. Her heart was completely broken and it was still just as shattered as it had been the night he’d walked away. She wondered if his heart fared any better.

She’d heard the rumors; that he was dating various different people, and that he’d had a couple of relationships. It hurt, even though she knew by now that it shouldn’t. It had been ten years, and he should be allowed to move on. But it still stung her heart, knowing that he was clearly over her when she still hadn’t begun to get over him.

“Emily! Em! Open up!”

She groaned when she heard her brother’s voice, not wanting to deal with Max today. She had known that he was planning on coming over. He had called her the night before to tell her that he wanted to come over and talk to her about something, though he hadn’t told her on the phone exactly what it was that he wanted to discuss.

She pushed the blankets off of her body and then shuffled through her bedroom, not caring that she looked like shit. She had just woken up, after all, and it was just Max. He was no one to impress.

She unlocked the door and then swung it open, giving her brother the dirtiest glare she could as she stepped aside so that he could come in.

“Well shit, what’s got you so grumpy?” He asked her as he plopped himself down on her couch, arms crossing behind his head as he grinned up at her.

“It’s seven o’clock in the morning and you’re here,” she retorted before she sat down across from him. “What’s so important that you had to wake me up?”

Max just gave her his signature grin; the one that told her he was up to something and that she probably wasn’t going to like whatever he had to say. She pushed her hand back through her hair, waiting for him to speak, and then sighed as he did so.

“Well, you told me yesterday that you were going to see a band with Joss and Hanna in a bit, right?” He asked her, arching his eyebrow. “Well, that got me thinking…”

“Max, no. Whatever you’re thinking, no.”

His face dropped and he crossed his arms over his chest before he turned his head so that he was looking more directly at her than he had been before.

“Give me one good reason why you’re not even gonna listen to what I want to ask you,” he frowned as he waited for her response. Emily just rolled her eyes, knowing that he wasn’t going to give up. Max was just as stubborn as she was; that, it seemed, was one quality that the two siblings did share.

“Don’t even go there with me, Max. Every idea you’ve ever come to me with has been a bad one.”

“Name one,” he shot back at her, arching his eyebrow.

“The time you tried to convince me that going down the basement stairs on a skateboard would be a great idea,” Emily told him, arching her eyebrow in a similar fashion to his. “The time you tried to convince me that I’d be okay if I decided to jump off the roof and into the trampoline. The time you—”

“Okay, okay,” Max cut his sister off, frowning. “I get it. So some of my ideas aren’t all that bright. But this isn’t exactly an idea…this is me just coming up with something.”

“Well, the answer’s still no because it’ll still be something stupid,” Emily told him. “Take it to Gab or something, I’m sure she’d say the same thing I would.”

“But Em, you’re my sister. Please just hear me out?”

Emily sighed, watching as her brother gave her a pout. She knew that he probably felt bad about ever giving her stupid ideas, like jumping off the roof and skating down the basement stairs, and at the age he was now, she doubted he was going to come up with something too stupid or dangerous. Still, though, she thought to herself, with Max, any idea could be risky.

“Fine. You can tell me your idea. But I’m not promising anything,” she finally consented, unfolding her arms and pulling a pillow up to her chest. “Go on and spit it out.”

He grinned widely and then cleared his throat as he started to speak. “Well, I was thinking that since you’re living here in L.A. all alone and the band is gonna be going on tour soon…Maybe you could come with us and—”

“Didn’t I already say I wasn’t gonna go on tour with you guys this time?” Emily sighed. “You got yourself in enough trouble last tour as it was. You almost fucking got kicked out, Max. Adding me into the mixture won’t help anything because any time I’m there, it just increases the fighting because—”

“I meant it when I said I got sober, Em,” Max cut her off, slight anger in his tone as he narrowed his green eyes at her. “I realize I have a past, but so does everybody. I got clean. The guys know that.”

“I know you’re clean now, Max,” Emily frowned, feeling bad about what she’d just said a few minutes ago. She hadn’t meant to hurt her brother’s feelings. She knew how hard he’d worked at quitting the drugs, and she knew that it had caused him a lot of pain, giving up everything like that. He’d gone through really hard withdrawals and it had nearly killed her to see him in all that pain. “That’s why I shouldn’t go on tour with you this time.”

“What kind of reason is that?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t even make sense, Em. You’re just saying you don’t want to go because I’m sober now.”
Chapter title: I need an earthquake to shake this pity.

“No, I’m not,” she argued. “I’m saying I don’t want to go because I don’t want to go. You need to fix things with the guys and me being there won’t let that happen. I distract you because you’re always worrying about me, Max. You always have, ever since we were kids, and it’s time for you to start thinking about yourself. I’ll be fine. Mom and Dad are just a few hours away if I need someone, and you’re always just a phone call away.”

“I don’t feel right, leaving you in Hollywood by yourself,” Max shook his head. “Especially when I know that asshole’s gonna be off tour when we’re going on tour, and—”

“Ronnie hasn’t tried to contact me in ten years, Max. He hasn’t written me so much as a letter, called me, sent me an email…nothing. If I haven’t heard of him in ten years, Max, I highly doubt I will in the next few months,” Emily told her brother as she leaned back against the couch. “And furthermore, he’s not an asshole.”

“He abandoned you, Em,” Max exclaimed angrily. “I never liked the two of you together, but fuck. You needed him then and he just…he left!”

“He had his reasons, I’m sure,” Emily told her brother in as calm a voice as she could manage. “Ronnie always had his reasons for everything he did. If he left me, he had a reason. Don’t blame him for that because I never did.”

That much was a lie, but Emily didn’t feel like letting her brother know how much Ronnie’s absence in her life still continued to hurt her. She’d never gotten over him and while she suspected that Max and the rest of her family already knew that, she didn’t feel like calling it to his attention. It would be opening doors that had long since shut, and that wasn’t something Emily felt like dealing with.

“Please just…think about it, okay? You’d be able to come off tour if you wanted so that you could go to that show with Hanna and Joss. I just…I worry, Em, and I hate worrying about you.”

She ignored the way he sounded guilty because she knew he felt responsible for all the bad things that had ever happened in her life. She knew Max better than anyone; after all, she was his sister, and they’d spent more time together than most siblings did. They’d never had that ‘sibling rivalry’ that most kids did with their brothers and sisters. No, she and Max had always been close and it was why it tore her up that he blamed himself for everything.

He wasn’t responsible for the car accident that had left her in permanent pain, and it wasn’t his fault that Ronnie had broken her heart. Both of those things would have happened regardless of anything Max could have done, and she didn’t understand why he couldn’t just see that and move on like she had tried to.

“We’ll see, Max,” she sighed, looking down at the wood floor. “We’ll see.”

Max gave her a smile that told her he was genuinely happy with her answer, but all Emily felt was guilt because she knew that she’d given him false hope. She wouldn’t think about going on tour with him and the band this time. Max needed to heal his relationships with the guys, and as for Emily, she had some relationships she needed to heal, too. She just didn’t know how to go about doing that, and especially not if Max was around. While he was on tour, it would be the perfect time to try, though, and that was why she wasn’t going to go with him this time.