Wanted

Eliza sat cross-legged on her bed in New York. She’d been back less than an hour and she’d showered and unpacked before starting a load of clothes. There was a box in front of her filled with things from Jimmy’s house.

Jimmy’s mother had been there, as well, and she’d told them to take anything they wanted. While looking through some of the stuff, Matt had found a manila envelope with Eliza’s name on it. Purposely, she hadn’t looked inside, knowing she’d want to do it when she was alone and not in front of a lot of people. She’d stayed with Brian that last night, neither of them saying much, just enjoying the company of each other.

With a sigh, she leaned forward and opened the box. From inside, she pulled out a few jump drives, Jimmy’s camera, a small box filled with some pictures, the envelope and two t-shirts. With tear-filled eyes, she pulled the black shirt over her tank top and hugged herself. The shirt smelled like him.
Swiping under her eyes, she reached forward to the box again to pull out the box of pictures. She flipped through them, one by one, a tear slipping out for each one she looked at. From the time they became friends again, up until the week before Christmas, there were pictures of everyone; concerts, parties, random times in between, they were all captured.

Flipping through the third pile of photos, she pulled out a jump drive and took the cap off. Pausing to set the pictures down, she inserted the jump drive into her computer. When it loaded, she opened the folder and started to play one of the videos. She picked the pictures back up, but they were forgotten as the screen came to life, showing a video from the most recent Halloween party. Immediately, Eliza teared up again.

She watched all of the movies on each of the ten jump drives until she fell asleep, tears staining her cheeks.



Thomas hurried up the steps to Eliza’s apartment and opened the door with his spare key.

“Alright, bitch, I’m here! Why was it necessary to wake me up this fucking early?”

“It’s almost ten, Thomas. It’s not early,” he heard from somewhere upstairs.

Rolling his eyes, he dropped his keys on the counter and carried the two cups of coffee up the stairs where he found her furiously cleaning.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“My apartment is a fucking wreck,” she said as she wiped down a bookshelf.

Thomas looked around to see nothing wrong with her room. Glancing back out of the door, he saw the hallway was spotless, too.

“Eliza…Your apartment is clean.”

“No, it’s not! I haven’t even gotten downstairs, yet!”

“Eliza.”

“What!?”

“Your apartment is spotless,” Thomas enunciated as he walked forward to hand her the cup of coffee meant for her. “Why are you even worried about it so much?”

“Adam is coming over.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, looking around her room. “Who is Adam?”

“Adam is the band’s tattoo artist.”

“Why is he coming here?”

Eliza paused in her work and blew a wisp of hair out of her face. “Matt and I talked for a little while this morning. Apparently since I left Huntington a week ago, Brian’s been spiraling downward again. He’s holing himself up. We thought if we all got tattoos together…maybe it would bring Syn out of his funk.”

“…You’re in New York, Eliza. How is that supposed to bring you guys closer or whatever? Also, I’m going to need you to either call him ‘Brian’ or call him ‘Syn’ but not both. I feel like we’re talking about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here.”

“Adam is here for some tattoo expo, but he leaves for California this afternoon. He plans on doing the guys either tonight or tomorrow, but I don’t want anyone else to do this. It has to be Adam. He’s the one who did their deathbats, along with mine, and we’ll be damned if it’s someone else.”

“Okay, that’s fine and junk but I still don’t understand…”

Eliza sighed and went back to cleaning. “Matt and I think that if Brian has something to focus on, like designing his tattoo, then it’ll help bring him out of his..shit.”

“Eliza…”

She closed her eyes, breathed in, and waited for him to continue.

“Why don’t you move back to California?”

She whirled around to face him.

“My band is here.”

“Eliza…”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Brian and I talked about this, believe it or not. I mentioned to him that maybe I should move back to Huntington. He…flipped out? He doesn’t want me to leave the band. I’m about to open for my favorite band in the world on a country-wide tour and he feels that if I moved back to Huntington it wouldn’t be fair to me.”

“That’s sweet in a way…”

“I know. I just…I feel like something bad is going to happen if I don’t go back but at the same time… If I do go back… I’d feel like I’m letting Hunter, Wiki, and Dominic down. I can’t… I couldn’t do that to them.”

“Eliza, there’s a time and a place to think about yourself—”

“And right now isn’t one of those times,” she finished for him. “I’m thinking about Brian right now. So I guess I’m going to use up my ‘Frequent Flyer Miles’ and go see him a lot, but he’d feel like shit if I moved back.”

“Well if anyone was ever in a pickle…”

“It’d be me, of course. I haven’t been this conflicted since Val tried to tell me that Brian loved me.”

“Wait, what?”

Eliza smiled. “When I first moved back to Huntington…didn’t I tell you this story already?”

“Uh, hell no!” Thomas cried and made himself comfortable on her bed.

Eliza started to holler at him but he held up his hands and removed his shoes. She relaxed.

“Fine. So when I moved back to Huntington, Brian was dating this girl, Amber.”

“Oh! The bitch you slapped?!”

“Yes, that one. So Brian was dating her and I had kind of broken up with David. Apparently everyone saw that Brian and I had feelings for each other except us. Well, Amber did some shady shit and I thought Val was in on it. She and I weren’t ‘friends’ for a while. She told me what happened and I didn’t want to believe her…but I was so torn.”

“Wow, that blows.”

“Welcome to my life,” Eliza said, shrugging.

Thomas watched her turn around to finish what she was doing but the doorbell went off. Freezing, Eliza’s eyes got wide as she realized Adam was already there. Quickly, she put the picture frame back on the shelf and sniffed underneath her arms. Thomas made a face at her.

“What? He’s tattooing my sides, Thomas. My arm is going to be up the entire time and I don’t want him smelling my pits.”

“That was so fucking attractive,” he muttered as Eliza grabbed her coffee cup and they made their way downstairs.

Opening the door, Eliza immediately hugged Adam. She introduced him to Thomas and they shook hands before Adam hefted his huge suitcase into the living room.

“I didn’t really think this through,” she admitted. “I figured the couch and a chair would be the best place.”

“As long as I’ve got an electrical cord and a table to put my shit on, you’ll get your tattoo, babe,” he said, smiling. “Matt told me you’ve already had it planned.”

“I drew it out this morning after he and I talked.”

“So where do you want it?” he asked with a smile.

She laughed, remembering the first time he’d tattooed her. The image of Brian holding her hand through the process as his eyes lingered on her exposed skin below her shorts line. She blinked a few times to come back to the present as Adam set up all of his gear before turning to her with paper in his hands.

“Let’s do this,” he said, winking.



“How does it feel?” Kelly asked.

“I feel like I can’t fucking move,” Eliza complained as she looked between her and Hunter.

“This is why you don’t get a huge tattoo on either side of you at the same time. I bet it felt great getting the other side done while you lay on the freshly tattooed side, didn’t it?” Nisa quipped.

Eliza flipped her off and whirled around in her office chair.

“How are you going to shower?” Dominic wondered out loud.

Nisa hit him in his stomach, but she wondered the same thing.

“I guess I’m gonna do PTA for a while.”

“’PTA’?” Wiki asked.

“Pits, tits, and ass,” Eliza said, slowing herself down.

Dominic choked on his sip of Gatorade, making everyone laugh harder. In the midst of the laughing, Eliza heard a noise from behind her, and whirling around, saw a green bar across the screen of her computer. Using her feet to propel herself backwards, she scooted across the room to the computer and answered the call with her webcam. Brian’s face popped up on the screen, smoke billowing around him.

“Hey,” she said with a smile.

“Hey,” he replied, and Eliza could tell he sounded tired.

It looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a few days, his hair was all over the place, and dark circles were forming underneath his eyes. She frowned as he lifted his cigarette back to his mouth and after a few seconds breathed out the smoke.

“Brian, what are you doing?”

“What do you mean? I’m in the studio, writing new songs, keeping to myself…”

“That’s just it, Brian. You look like shit. When’s the last time you saw the guys?”

“Like…”

“When I was there?” she asked, a bit sad.

“Yeah,” he finished, a grimace gracing his features.

“Brian, baby, you’ve got to get out of this shit,” she said out of exasperation.

“How do your tattoos look?” he switched subjects.

Sighing, she stood up and pulled her tank top up so the clear plastic wrap was visible. In flowing script on her right side, from armpit to hip bone, “foREVer” was written. When he nodded, she turned to her other side, where in the same script, “fiction” was branded.

“They look amazing.”

“Thank you,” she said, clearing her throat. She picked up her pack of cigarettes, extracted one, lit it, inhaled, and flicked away the ashes before speaking again. “Brian, I want to move back to California.”

“No.”

“I don’t think you underst—”

“No, you don’t understand, Eliza! If you fucking came back to California, it’d be because of me, right?”

She looked away from the screen and shrugged.

“It would. If you came back here and shit went south with your band, how do you think I’d fucking feel? I’d feel like it was my fault. You’re in New York doing what the fuck you’ve always wanted to do and if you came back here because of me, you’d be fucking it up. For Christ’s sake, you’re going on tour with KoЯn this summer, Eliza! Your band needs you now!”

“And you need me, too!”

“If you came back to Huntington now, it’d be the biggest regret of your life.”

Eliza realized he ignored her statement and she blew out a plume of smoke, staring at the screen.

“Actually, it wouldn’t be the biggest regret of my life, Brian.”

He stared at her for a long moment before speaking.

“Eliza…If you moved back now, you’d just be flying back to New York all the time, you’d be focused on your music while I was focused on mine. Your head would be three thousand miles away and it would be bad.”

“Brian—”

“STOP FUCKING INTERRUPTING!” he hollered, making her pause.

Rubbing his hands over his face, he sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to yell, but Damnit if you’re not making this difficult. Eliza… if you move back to Huntington, I’m changing the locks on the doors. You don’t need to move back right now, okay? Wait for the time to be right. Until then, stay the fuck in New York…”

Before Eliza could say anything, Brian had ended the call and gone offline. She sat there, mouth open, just staring at the computer screen wondering what the fuck had just happened.