Feet First

I woke up to a blinding light in the van and rubbed my eyes.

They felt raw under my hands, and then I remembered I’d been crying.

I pushed those thoughts aside not remembering or wanting to remember why.

I sat up, and saw the van was empty, shit.

On top of everything else, I was probably late.

I pulled on some shorts and a shirt, not caring if they matched, grabbed my water bottle and left.

As soon as I slid out of the van, still half asleep, I saw a perky and smiling Andrew.

“Hi, how’re you?” He asked.

“I’m fine, I’m just tired.”

“Yeah I figured, you were up late because you were crying, I figured I’d let you sleep in.” He said.

Then it all came back into my mind at once.

It was like a wave of pain hit my brain, and my heart.

I remembered Alex’s face when I yelled at him, and how I almost saw his heart break in his eyes.

“W-what time is it?” I stammered.

“It’s nearly 10, we have a little over an hour before our set. You need to get over to the stage and
warm up your voice and help tune things.”

“Oh, okay.”

He hugged me.

And I sunk into his body and wrapped my arms around him, and let him hold me.

Sometimes, I felt Andrew was psychic. He knew when I needed a hug, or someone to agree with me and say it’ll be okay. And he knew when I needed someone to tell me to stop being dumb and that I was selfish.

It made me wonder why he and I hadn’t ever been together.

We made each other happy enough.

He let go of me, and we walked together.

I thought about this for a minute.

Andrew was kind, but he was my brother at this point.

I think I’d always held him to be the sibling I never really had.

And I loved him a lot.

I looked up at his goofy smile and it made me smile, “why are you so excited?”

“I don’t know. I guess, I’m happy our band is finally recognized, like as something other than just a
shitty supporting band you have to watch before the real show comes on. We really do have Alex and Jack to thank for that.”

“Yeah. We do.”

This tour really had been incredible so far. We’d probably quadrupled our fan base, we’d played for more kids than we’d ever dreamed this early in our career and we’d been signing autographs.

It was mind blowing.

We’d also started writing new music.

I’d gotten a lot of inspiration on this tour, mostly because I haven’t felt this happy in a while, well,
before today.

Now the sadness was starting to creep back in, and so were the memories from the pervious night.

I pushed them aside, I couldn’t let them affect how I was going to preform today.

We got to the stage, and Matt and Sam greeted me.

Surprisingly, they didn’t ask me about Alex, I probably had Andrew to thank for that.

Even though the boys in All Time Low are their heroes, they calmed down a lot since they’d been
hanging out with them. I still think that they look at them and wonder how they got to be friends. I saw that in their eyes sometimes.

We all talked about the set, and tuned instruments and readied ourselves.

“You know Liv, you’ve gotten a lot more present and lively on stage in the last few weeks.” Sam
said.

“Yeah you’ve really been coming out of your shell.”

“Thanks guys.” I said.

I thought about it, and they were right.

Usually I left all the talking to them, only speaking to introduce the song or to say hello and my
name and the bands name.

I think more fans started liking me when this happened.

I tried to think what caused it, and I realized it was Alex.

He made me happier.

Sadness panged in me again, and we were about to go on stage.

Oh god. I thought.

I’m just going to have to sing through it.

Let the pain show in the song not on your face.

And in a leap of faith, I climbed onto the stage.

“Hi guys!” I said, trying to muster up a happy voice.

It seemed to work, since I was greeted by cheers.

I smiled.

“How are we all doing? You’re probably all hot. I’m hot.”

“Lets not be conceited here Olivia.” Sam chimed in.

“That’s Sam, he tries to be funny.” I said, walking over and leaning on him.

“That’s Matt and he likes hairy dicks.” Sam said, pointing at Matt.

We heard the crowd cheering and laughing.

“And that’s Andrew and he likes reading books.” Matt said.

“Well, now that you know are names, are you ready to have fun?”

They cheered.

“This one is called The Equinox, if you know it feel free to sing with me.” I said.

When I heard the drums start pounding, and the guitar and bass play the opening notes, I had to
turn back to Andrew, my smile dropped when I was out of sight of the crowd.

Andrew looked at me, and gave me a reassuring look.

”You can do this.” he mouthed.

I let the pain flood in, and I tuned around, and started to sing it out.

I let my voice met in with the beats of the drums and the humming of the guitar, and let my lungs
fill with air.

I let all the images of Alex’s broken face, and the sounds of his broken words throwing shards at me
fill my head and my ears.

And I let them well inside me along with the hurt and the sadness and the anger and the pain.

And I let them out, conveying all of these things with my words and my voice.

The crowd blurred and all I felt was the music.

When I was singing, I felt like I was in another world.

Another world where I didn’t have to hide anything, because I knew my emotions could be
conveyed, and it wasn’t bad.

Nobody would tell me not to.

Nobody could tell me not to.

I was free.

I took my last breath, and heard the instruments cut off.

I felt better.

I did.

We continued our set.

And soon, it ended.

As I sang that last word, I knew this was the best set we’d played in our entire lives, and I looked
out in the crowd, and saw around two hundred kids, all sweating their asses off to come see us.

This was the biggest crowd we’d had so far.

Tears started welling up in my eyes.

“I’d just like to say, this has probably been my favorite show so far. You’ve all been incredible, and
this is the biggest crowd we’ve played for so far on this tour. Thank you so much for listening. We love you all.”

Cheers greeted me once again, and we walked off stage.

“Liv, that was awesome.” Sam said, lifting me up into a hug.

Andrew and Matt quickly joined this hug.

“I’m just really proud of us guys. Seriously. Best set ever. We all did so well. And we’ve come so
freaking far, and the best is still yet to come.”

They all smiled at me.

We all helped clear off and re-load the van.

Then we all walked around Warped together.

Sam and Matt wanted to stay by our tent, hoping someone would want pictures or for them to sign
something.

Andrew and I walked together.

“Well, Liv, I know you’re sad right now and I’m probably being a bad friend, but I’m gonna have to
leave you.”

“What? Where are you going?”

He looked down at the ground and smiled.

“Well, uh, you see, there’s this girl. She’s here helping her brother’s band, and she sells their shirts
and stuff. Her names Annabelle, and, uh, she’s really cool, and pretty, and nice. And I was hoping to go talk to her again.”

It was then that he looked at me, trying to judge my reaction.

“Aw, Andrew! I’m happy for you.” I smiled.

Girls never made him nervous like this; I mean they did, because Andrew was adorable and shy. But
he never showed it; he always tried to play it cool.

But this was different. He was getting nervous because he liked her.

“So, you don’t mind?” He asked.

“No, please, go.” I said.

“Thank you.” He said, starting to walk away.

I turned to go get a schedule for the rest of the bands playing today when he turned back around.

“Liv?”

“Yeah?”

“Okay, I know you may be mad at him, but I know Alex makes you happy. And I know you care
about him. And I know you don’t want to loose him, whatever friendship or something more you
would loose. So please talk to him.”

“O-okay.” I said, he caught me off guard.

“Okay. I’ll see you later.

He hugged me then left.

I walked over to the giant Van’s inflatable, trying to map out the rest of my day.

And as I went about the day, I kept thinking about what Andrew said, trying to figure it all out.



It was bordering night and I was sitting on top of the van trying to write.

I thought about how incredible it was the sun was out till almost 10 o’clock.

And how someone somewhere in some time period decided that the summer days should be longer,
giving way to all of the incredible warm nights that seemed to go on forever.

I silently thanked whatever scientist or philosopher or whatever individual decided that should come
to be.

As I wrote lyrics about these thoughts, Alex invaded my mind.

I thought about the time he Jack and I had watched the sun set while sitting on a patch of grass
watching some bands set.

I remembered thinking about how much had changed since high school, and how much hadn’t.

Like how High School Jack didn’t seem to care about anything and couldn’t take one person or thing
seriously. He treated everything as a joke, and in a sense he was still like that. But now, I could tell
he cared so much about the bad and the music he was helping to create. He was serious about music, but he let his not caring mentality flow into the little things that didn’t matter, and he let those go.

And High School Alex cared so much about what others thought, and he was sometimes selfish and sometimes mean. But now Alex was everything but selfish, he cared so much about all of his fans and everyone involved in the music he was creating. And did care what others thought, but not in the high school social ladder way. In a way that helped him improve, and even though, sometimes, I could see the negative comments and opinions hurt him a lot, he never took them to heart.

I thought about Alex’s smile. And how different he looked now as opposed to in high school.

I mean he was always attractive. I’d always thought so even though he was dating my older sister.
My older, and much prettier, perfect sister.

But now, oh god, now he was really attractive.

As I kept thinking about this, I thought about what Andrew said.

And how he’d implied that maybe, I was afraid something beyond friendship too with not forgiving
Alex and/or talking to Alex and seeing if he’d forgive me.

And maybe, I was.

I’d thought about all the time he’d made me laugh, and made me smile.

And the times he’d hugged me and made me feel safe.

Oh shit, maybe I did like him.

I bit my lip.

My thoughts drifted to Alex telling me he liked me.

How could he still like me after what I’d said to him?

He probably didn’t, I told myself.

With all these thoughts swimming in my head, I knew there was only one thing to solve all this.

I had to talk to him.

I didn’t know if he was still angry, but if I let this go another day, I was afraid the affects would last
a long time.

I knew talking to him would clear my feelings as well.

I needed to be sure I wasn’t just afraid of loosing him as a friend, or, whatever he meant to me.

I hopped off the top of the van, it was really dark, and I had no idea what time it was.

It couldn’t be too late, and I suspected someone on the bus would be up.

I started to walk over.

Taking my time, planning what I was planning on saying, when I heard it.

”Sing, me, to sleep. I’ll, see you in, my dreams.”

It was Alex.

He was singing, sitting outside the bus.

I paused.

Then it occurred to me what he was singing about.

Tears welled up in my eyes.

I couldn’t do this.

There was no way he could ever forgive me now.

I’d upset him too much.

I heard to guitar stop, and knew he’d see me if I didn’t leave.

I turned to leave when I heard him call my name behind me.

Then I was glued there.

I felt like I couldn’t move.

He put the guitar beside him, and walked over to me.

He stopped and stood extra close to me.

I looked down at his shoes, trying to hide the fact I had tears on my face.

He tilted my chin up.

His smile faded into concern.

“What’s wrong?”

“I-I just thought, that you were still mad.”

“No, I’m not. You had the right to yell at me. Maybe not what you did yell, but you had the right to
be mad.”

“No Alex, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, you should still be mad, and then that song, and-“ My
tears drowned out my words.

“Shhh, calm down, didn’t you hear me? I forgive you. It’s okay.” He said, wiping my wet cheek.

“O-okay.”

“I’m just scared as hell you’re mad at me.”

“No, I’m not.”

He hugged me.

“Alex?” I said, pulling away from his hug. “Did you really mean what you said? When you said you
liked me?”

He smiled, and blushed a little.

“Yeah. I did.”

I almost didn’t believe it. He was such an incredible human being, he was smart, and nice, and attractive, and he liked me.

“Okay.” Was all I could say.

He laughed.

“Olivia, you are the most damn confusing human being alive.” He said, and I smiled.

I looked up at him, and found him looking at me, now only inches away from my face.

“I know.” I said.

And he laughed again, and closed his eyes, and kissed me.