If Love Is The Answer, Could You Repeat The Question?

So it’s like this: You’ve cried until you can’t cry anymore.

And it’s only been two hours. Maybe it’s a little bit pathetic to spend two hours straight crying over a guy, but this also happens to be the guy you’re in love with.

You drag yourself from your tear soaked pillow in your bunk and into the bathroom where you cringe at the person staring back at you in the mirror. You look awful and it doesn’t make you feel any better. Your eyelids are puffy and red and your eyes are bloodshot. Your cheeks are also bright red and to make matters worse you didn’t have makeup on and your hair was a mess.

How someone like him could have ever even considered falling for someone like you was beyond you. Your throat tightened at the mere thought of him and it was suddenly hard to breathe in the tiny bathroom. Without bothering to fix how you looked, not that how you looked mattered much anyway, you left the bathroom, pulling your hair into a messy ponytail before leaving the bus again. You still had a job to do, no matter how much you didn’t want to go and do it.

You found that the trailer was completely empty by now, and you really should have figured that out seeing as you skipped out on the past two hours. You took a deep breath before opening the backdoor and going into the venue. It was alive with the crew in the middle of setting up. The few people that looked up at you’s faces dropped into barely there glares as you passed by them, heading to the merch booth.

Vinny didn’t greet you with his usually easy going smile and you didn’t expect him to anyway. It was clear the entire crew knew what you didn’t and no one was very happy about it. You were done asking what you did. Curiosity was killing you, but no one wanted to talk to you so getting answers apparently wasn’t going to happen.

It seemed time liked to drag on when you were uncomfortable and the silence between you and Vinny was extra uncomfortable. Just as you were about to leave to double check the mics, Vinny finally spoke up.

“Can you at least tell me why you did it?” He asks. It wasn’t a demand, but he still had that edge in his voice.

“Did what?” You ask quietly.

“Hurt him like that.”

“Okay look, have I ever lied to you?” You ask, and he looked confused but shakes his head. “Then please, believe me when I tell you, I honest to God have no idea what I did.”

And there are those tears again, pricking at the corner of your eyes because this is frustrating as fuck. Before either one of you can say anything you hear footsteps behind you and you already know who it is without even having to turn around.

“I need you to untangle wires since you didn’t put them away properly yesterday.” He states and by the time you turn around he’s already walking away. You leave out that it was actually Danny who did it because he wouldn’t believe you anyway and that means talking to him.

It was really hard for the rest of the night to concentrate on working and selling merch with a fake smile next to Vinny who was considerably less cold towards you now. There was a small spark of hope that maybe he believed you unlike everyone else.

You could see him through the sea of fans, almost hiding behind the speakers tonight, but with a faint smile on his face. You knew that being on stage, even if it was off to the side and only doing backup, it was still his favorite part of the night. And maybe he’d be in a slightly better mood after the show and finally talk to you.

That hope was quickly dashed when you went to ask him something about Jack’s guitar during take down and he completely ignored you. You held back more tears during the rest of taking down and reloading, carefully avoiding going anywhere near him after that.

It was when he was busy with Jack and Alex at the after show signing when Danny pulled you behind the bus.

“You’re either a really damn good actress or you actually have no idea what’s going on.” He says, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “So here.”

He hands you the phone and you look down at the photo opened up, nearly dropping it when you realize what it was of. There was a picture of you with your arms wrapped around someone’s neck, kissing them. And that someone wasn’t your current boyfriend (although you weren’t sure if you were still together at this point). A small time stamp in the corner read yesterday’s date.

You look up at Danny with wide eyes. “This isn’t—it can’t be—I—”

“Are you really going to deny it when the proof is staring you right in the face and is all over Tumblr and Twitter?” He asks, his tone going back to hard and cold, almost matching up with his perfectly.

“Yes because I didn’t do it!”

“I find it really sad that not only did you cheat on him, but you can’t even own up to it when there’s proof.” He shook his head before taking his phone back and walking away, leaving you shaking and in shock again.

Before you have time to recover he’s standing in front of you, glaring down at you in the dim light again and it was like that one night weeks ago under the lamp at the college campus.

“We need to talk.” He says and his tone still isn’t any lighter than before.

“Okay,” You nod.

“Why?” He asks, his voice losing its angry tone and sounding almost desperate. “Why would you do something like that?”

You take a deep breath, “I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me.” He’s almost pleading. You can see in his eyes that his anger is just a cover over the hurt and you can’t stand to see him like this.

“I’m not,” Your voice taking the same begging tone as his was. “I swear I didn’t.” You wanted to reach out and touch his arm, grab his hand— anything as long as it meant physical contact, but you didn't want to set him off again.

“But there’s proof.”

“That proof is fake.”

“No!” He yells and you flinch, not expecting the sudden burst of anger. “How can a photo be fake and everyone’s talking about it. People are even saying they saw you. Just stop fucking lying to me or are you trying to hurt me more?”

“No, I’m not trying to hurt you and I’d never cheat on you. Why won’t you believe me? Better yet, why won’t you trust me?” You’ve started to cry again. There was no use hiding how you felt. “Are you really going to believe something that came out of the All Time Low fan base when you know how much they fucking hate me?”

There was a long silence as you both stood there, him still glaring at you and you looking desperate and pathetic under his hard stare. And the silence wasn’t the only thing he broke when he finally spoke.

“No, I don’t trust you. Not anymore. And I can’t be in a relationship without trust.” There wasn’t a hint of anything but pure resentment in his eyes and voice

“Please, don’t do this.” You whisper through the stream of tears steadily falling down your face. “I love you.”

He just shook his head and took a step away from you, “Y’know, I knew you said you weren’t good at relationships, but fuck, I never expected you to turn out to be a lying, cheating whore.”

The words were like a slap to the face, and you almost wish it had been a slap instead of him saying that. He turned away from you after giving you one more disgusted look and headed to the crew’s bus. You continued to stand in the same spot, crying and feeling like your world had just ended, because it really just had, until you heard someone walking towards you, and you were actually scared that it was him coming back to insult you more.

You jumped when you saw Alex’s shock of pink hair step into the dim light from the venue. He opens his arms and you fall into them, crying even harder than before if that was even possible.

“Do I even ask what happened?” He asks softly.

“H-h-h-he ca-call-called me a-a wh-wh-wh-whore,” You stutter out and it almost physically hurt to say that.

“What?” Alex yells and you just shake your head, not wanting to say it again. “Here, let’s get on the bus, it’s time to pull out anyway.”

He puts his arm protectively around you and leads you to the door of the bus. Before stepping on Alex turns and glares towards the crew’s bus and you peak over his shoulder to see him standing in the shadows. You didn’t even notice him there since he was wearing all black but the light that was pouring from the bus lit up his features and you could’ve sworn you saw tears on his face but you weren’t sure as Alex slammed the door and ushered you in to the front lounge.

He sat down on the couch and you did the same, the only other person in the room was Jack.

“Okay so explain to me what happened and you can skip the parts about him thinking you cheated on him, I already heard that bullshit from him.” Alex says.

“D-do you believe it?” You couldn’t help to ask.

He snorts, “No. I was with you almost all day yesterday and you were too busy to be able to run off and kiss someone else.”

And it was true. Alex had finally stepped up and helped you out yesterday because you made him stay in bed just one more day to make sure he was 100% better.

“Did you tell him that?”

“Yeah, but he went on and on about some stupid picture and how it’s proof.” He shook his head in annoyance. You let a long breath out; finally someone believed that you didn’t cheat on him. “But what happened behind the bus?”

“D-Danny finally showed me the picture because I hadn’t seen it and I tried to tell him that it was fake but he didn’t believe me and then Matt came and asked about it, and I tried to tell him too but he wouldn’t listen and I asked if he even trusted me a-and he s-s-said no.” You pause, trying not to cry any more than you already had, but it was really fucking hard. “And h-he said he c-couldn’t be in a relationship with-without trust and then he c-called me…that and walked a-away.”

You were annoyed with yourself for stuttering so much and you couldn’t bring yourself to repeat him calling you a whore. Alex pulled you closer into his side, rubbing your arm comfortingly. You were thankful Alex had been playing that big brother role towards you since the beginning of tour, it was something you really needed, especially now.

“How do I make him believe me?” You ask pathetically. Despite calling you a bitch and a whore and yelling at you and completely breaking your heart, you still wanted him and to fix things.

“I really don’t know.” Alex finally says, “He’s a really stubborn person and it’s really hard to change his mind.”

You sigh, knowing that Alex was right. There was nothing you could do. The feeling that knowing things between you and him were probably over for good made more tears spill over as you buried your face into Alex’s side. You fought so hard to be with him and it was all ended by some stupid rumor started by a pissed off fan.

Awhile later your tears had subsided and you were dozing off and Alex shook you, telling you to go to bed. You nod, standing up and hugging him one last time before heading towards your bunk. You pause outside of it, peering into his empty one. Had you known today would have ended like this you would have never left it, or maybe you should have never gotten into it in the first place. You look down at your left hand at the promise ring he gave you. You slowly pulled it off, step over to his bunk and place it gently on his pillow.

You turn away and crawl into your bunk, but don’t lie down. Instead you curl into a ball at the very end, thankful that you’re short enough to be able to sit upright in it and lean your head against the wall, your knees drawn to your chin.

You couldn’t get the image on Danny’s phone out of your mind. It was clearly fake, you knew that for sure. And of course it had come from Tumblr so that means you’d probably never know who made it since it was likely to be reposted over and over.

But…that didn’t mean you couldn’t try to dig up the original images. They had to be somewhere; one of them for sure had to be floating around since it was you.

You pull out the small laptop you brought without out from under your mattress and open it, hoping to God that you could find them. This wasn’t even about trying to fix things with him; it was about making him see the truth. As long as he knew the truth, things would be okay. Actually, they wouldn’t at all but you’d be able to sleep easier at night knowing that he knew you weren’t a lying, cheating whore or the bitch he thought you were.

So you sign into your barely ever used Tumblr account with the determination to stay up all night if you had to.

So it’s like this: This isn’t over yet.