We're Stuck Halfway

This pop song was not meant to induce heartbreak. It was pretty straightforward, a song meant for relationships that revolved around love-hate-love and another factor that can simply be put at lust.

But hearing the first lines of what used to be Holly’s favorite song caused her to snap. She had foolishly thought that she could live through a few minutes, just for the duration of the song; it proved to be excruciatingly challenging. The lyrics forced her to reminisce what should have been forgotten long ago, deep within a box that she left behind with everything else in the most literal sense it could take.

She let out a shaky breath as she pressed a finger to the next track button, calming down her racing heart as The Cure took over the speakers of the car. The mixtape had completely caught her off guard. She had no idea, no warning that her boyfriend even listened to the band.

With that, he continued to tap on the steering wheel to Friday I’m in Love as he drove. If he was aware of the sudden charge in the atmosphere, he was good at hiding it, Holly noted. But she bitterly reminded herself that Jesse was an actor, a damn good one to say the least, and he could’ve been suffering from constipation and she wouldn’t have noticed even a single bit. Dating an actor had its major downfalls – this was only one out of a hundred.

As the song reached the bridge, a question escaped from his mouth, “You don’t like the previous song?” One of the things that got Holly so horribly attracted to him was his taste in music. Ever since he started asking her out, he’d been putting together mixtapes for her. Apparently, the one they were currently listening to was special, since it lasted over six hours and contained songs that reminded him about her. She learned this when he popped the first of six CD’s into the player enthusiastically, looking forward to the next five hours and forty minutes they would be spending together with only two stops.

She stared down at the bag of chips she had in hand, opting to look for a larger chip instead of looking him in the eye. She weighed the consequences of lying to him and decided against it. Holly Price was not a liar. “It’s alright, but I’m not really in the mood to hear how much I make you feel like shit.” She smiled sardonically as she picked out the biggest piece, hoping he got the pun.

Jesse wasn’t laughing. She looked up to find his eyebrows scrunched up, the brightness of the sun causing his golden hair to gleam even under the tint of her sunglasses. “You’ve never done that before. That’s the first time you skipped a song on one of my mixes.” She was about to comment that she did indeed skip songs before: Down With the Sickness and some other heavy metal tracks he had ‘accidentally’ put on some of the other CD’s, but he raised up a hand. “Excluding the heavy metal tracks.” He turned to her when they paused at a stoplight, saying, “You stiffened up as soon as it played.”

She flinched once the words were out of his mouth. Even if her stomach started to churn, she still bit off the chip she was holding, taking her time and chewing on it loudly. Finally, she spoke, “It’s nothing.”

He returned his gaze to the road, finally smiling. “If there’s one thing Hollywood has taught me, it’s that whenever girls say ‘it’s nothing,’ it’s obviously something,” he stated.

He reached for her free hand, running his thumb over the soft skin of her knuckles. The distinction between his soft skin and calloused fingertips made her mind reel over what she was really doing.

She was using one of the most perfect people on the planet as a rebound, and he wasn’t even aware of it.

It wasn’t like he was going to get angry with her if he knew; she just couldn’t bring herself to explain to him every complicated detail of her previous relationship and how much work it’d take to make her heart feel at least three-fourths full again.

If she explained every aspect of her broken heart to him, it would be reliving the seven useless years of about a third of her existence all over again. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want him fussing over trying to fix her as well. He was doing a good job without knowing, and that was enough.

So she picked the safe turn to the conversation. If she said something about it, the most logical reason would be about him, but if she didn’t say something about it, Jesse would figure that it was about something serious, and she didn’t want it to be.

“I… uh… my ex and I used to listen to it. Kinda like a theme song.” They obviously listened to it a bunch of times, yes, but marking it as a theme song of some sort was a total exaggeration. Thinking about it that way made her want to gag, actually. Their theme was definitely not a song by his band, much less a twenty-first century pop song. It was Heroes by Bowie, requested by some noob during their prom. They happened to be dancing to it, and they just loved the way it made them feel together, so ever since then they’d blast it up to set the mood whenever they found themselves alone.

“Oh,” was all Jesse said in reply.

Holly usually kept their talk about her past few years in Arizona at a minimum. She’d mention stuff from ten, seven years ago, but nothing sooner than five. It meant that she’d have to bring him – bring them up, and she never wanted to. She almost never lied to Jesse, but she didn’t necessarily tell him everything, either.

“In fact,” she said, squeezing his hand. She knew she was going to kick herself for it later, but she had this sudden urge to let a little bit of herself unravel, at least for his sake. She was sick and tired of always hiding beneath a blanket screaming ‘I’m okay!’ when she knew she wasn’t. “I used to know the guys from that band.”

Jesse stirred; she watched him straighten up in his seat from the corner of her eye. Her heart was pounding in her ears. They’ve never gotten this close to a conversation about them. “I knew you must’ve gone to high school with a few band members.” She could hear rather than see the bright smile on his face. “It’s inevitable in Arizona, you know? You’re friends with them. Cool. Are they-”

“I- I’m not really…” She internally cussed at herself. Despite wanting to divert the discussion away from them as quickly as possible, she couldn’t let him go on with his life thinking she was still friends with them. “I’m not really friends… or anything with them.” She let go of his hand to shift her position, curling on her side so she faced Jesse all the way.

He shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

She almost gasped. “But why not?”

A soft laugh escaped from his lips. It wasn’t the calculated type used to make fans from the side of the red carpet sigh dreamily. It was the laugh he used to make her heart flutter, the laugh that added even more butterflies to the lifetime supply that resided in her stomach. “Olly, you wouldn’t bring them up if they mean nothing to you.” He glanced at her and opened his mouth, nodding at the chips she still held in hand.

She looked down, realizing that she had clutched the bag in her hands tightly. She was so stupid. So reckless. Why did she even bother with bringing them up at all? She needed to be more cautious if she wanted to keep them separate from her new life.

She popped a chip into his mouth, sitting up as she did so. “It’s complicated.” She decided to take the risk of switching topics. “You can actually compare to ours. For instance, I’m not so sure if I’m really your girlfriend, or just that stranger who seems to walk your dogs every Monday and walk out of your apartment building ever too often. Am I your girlfriend, or Jesse Eckhart’s neighbor who seems to be getting a little bit too friendly with the star to keep him from hitting on other Hollywood starlets such as himself?” she asked, remembering the headlines on the gossip websites that pieced a tiny bit of the puzzle that was their relationship together.

Jesse was lucky that his manager had found the articles in time because Holly’s name could have been released to the public, and Holly’s parents, big shots among the estate companies, didn’t want her to be desensitized to the whole idea of the paparazzi. Holly had enough attention from seven years of dating an Arizonian band boy, what more two years with an up-and-coming Californian actor?

“Agh, please don’t bring that up again,” he groaned.

Holly stifled a laugh, reaching out for his hand on the stick. She let him know that whatever happened ten months ago was the past, smiling delightfully at the long stretch of desert before them. She could make out familiar canyons by then, realizing that they weren’t far from Glendale.

Just as soon as she forgot about her worries of being back in AZ, Jesse reminded her once again. “How’s your relationship with them complicated?”

She backtracked, taking her hand from his to look through the bag of Lays. Great. “Why are you so interested in them?” she chided, not liking that they weren’t straying away from the topic.

“Did you like any of them?”

The words made Holly’s heart jump. She moved up her eyes to study him. His jaw was taut and his fingers held the steering wheel just a little bit too tightly. And suddenly, it all made sense. Holly was in the red zone, and Jesse was almost in the green. He was about to piece it together that there was something off with the band, and she didn’t understand why it made her feel so vulnerable knowing he was close to finding out The Maine’s bassist was that guy.

But he shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair, smiling at her apologetically. “I’m sorry.” He massaged the nape of his neck, pulling away just to reach for her hand one more time. “Don’t answer that, I was being-”

“No, I didn’t.” Holly finally found her voice, and when he looked at her, she smiled. “And I don’t.” She managed to convince herself that what she was saying wasn’t wrong; that she really never liked any of them. She loved them all. One of them, though, she loved too much.

Her last encounter with anyone from the band was... strained. It was with him, unfortunately, and it was a few months before she moved from Gilbert to Glendale. She had to go to the nearby drug store to get some sleeping pills because she couldn't fall asleep that week. He was looking through the dental floss rack when she saw him, and he seemed to notice her only when she was on her way out, for she was pretty sure that the crash she heard from inside was caused by him tipping over a rack.

Ever since that day, she made certain that the band knew nothing of her – that she was their past just as they were hers. It hurt to cut herself off from them completely, but it had to be done. If she stayed, those who were on her side of the situation would go against the ones who weren’t. Though she wasn’t sure who would be on which side, she couldn’t stand the thought of them being split into two because of her. She told herself that she didn’t regret it either way because she met Jesse in the long run.

She leaned her head on the window, biting her lip at Jesse’s sudden silence. It was a sign that he accepted her answer, and she should’ve been happy, but his sudden question about her previous love life still made her worry that she said something wrong. She wanted to tell him anything reassuring, but she felt numb after all the emotional stress she underwent because of the topic. The music from his player helped, at least. She barely knew the songs that were playing by then, and she tried to avoid listening to the lyrics. They told her too much.

Holly didn’t know how much time passed before she smiled at the sight of the cabin-like house. Although it really did look like a cabin, the terraces on the sides gave it away, with glass sliding doors and deep red curtains. It was something others expected to see from somewhere like Michigan, but it was in Arizona, and it was hers. Hers, and well, Charlie’s. The sleek red Sebring parked behind the silver Mini Cooper in the small garage indicated that she was home.

“Oh God,” Jesse muttered as he switched off the ignition.

“Oh no,” Holly said at the same time, taking the CD out of the player before pushing the car door open. Jesse was already pulling two luggages out of the trunk when Holly got there to help with her lighter bags, and she followed him as he made his way to the front door. She stuffed the CD in with the rest of her collection.

Much to their demise, the front door swung open ever so brutally, revealing an enraged woman with sunglasses perched atop her head. If looks could have killed, Jesse would have been dead by then.

But he, always the charmer, took Charlie into his arms, exclaiming in a cheery voice, “Good seeing you again!” She shoved him with a ‘beat it’ before moving onto Holly, expectant.

Before Holly could ask why, Charlie shouted exasperatedly, “Do you not know how long I've been waiting for you both? Two hours, Holly. Two hours!” She continued to rant while Holly stared back at her nonchalantly. Jesse was already on his way to get the next set of bags. If Charlie was expecting an apology, they were expecting this to happen all along.

“Do you really want to cause a scene for those meddling grand-women across the street?” Holly asked, trying very hard to suppress a smile. “I bet they would love to comment on how their teenage neighbors fight about such petty things in broad daylight at their gardening club downtown in some apartment of the wife of one of their cousins.”

Charlie grinned, hugging her. “I can’t say that I didn’t I miss your sarcasm.” She pulled back, making a face then. “Wow, look at the irony. I love it.”

From behind Charlie, Jesse was scratching the back of his head, looking at Holly with eyes she couldn’t quite fathom. He looked pained. Quickly, she separated from Charlie. “So I’m here, no need to miss me anymore. Now I need to bid Jes my farewell.” She swallowed hard. “I won't be seeing him for a short while.”

Charlie rolled her eyes. “A short while? You guys can do it.” She meant it jokingly, Holly knew, but there must have been something in her eyes that told Charlie what she really meant because they both froze. Charlie assured her that they’d talk about it later before disappearing behind the big oak door.

She was still staring at the door when Jesse pulled her into his arms. She took off her sunglasses, but she couldn’t seem bring herself to look into his eyes. “I'm gonna miss you so much,” he breathed into her ear. His warm breath made her shiver, and it was strange because the Arizona heat should have killed her.

She gathered herself, smiling against the nape of his neck. “Jes, do you trust me?” she whispered. She willed herself not to cry, not to show anything obvious. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t separate from him. The thoughts of losing him horrified her. She lost Garrett because of the distance that separated them. It couldn’t happen with Jesse, too.

His arms squeezed her frame closer to his. “With all my heart,” he replied, and his voice cracked and it broke something within Holly as she struggled to keep herself together. “I trust you so much. Do you trust me?”

She lifted her head, finally having the courage to look him in the eyes as she said it. Their color still startled her after so long. The usual blue looked green in the silhouette of his face. “I have a feeling I trust you more than I trust myself.”