Wanted

Eliza slowly stepped into the glow of the fire from the shadows.

Brian’s smile was soft as he noticed how nervous she looked, coming closer to the fire.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, we’d planned on you getting over here in a little while, but apparently you found the arrows earlier than we’d expected.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Everyone, princess.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning.

“Maybe this will help you,” he said as he closed the space between them.

He lifted his hands to either side of her face and pulled her so her body was resting against his. Ever so slowly, he lowered his head until their lips were barely touching. Carefully, he began kissing her, to gauge her reaction. When she started to relax and kiss him back, he pressed into her harder. When her hands snaked their way around his neck and tugged on his hair, he pulled back. Her lips were frowning from the sudden feeling of being left alone and her eyes were still closed.

“I’m sorry for being such an ass,” he said.

Her eyes slowly opened and she looked at him. He was frowning and her mouth curved into a small smile.

“I’ve got something I want to show you,” he said, next. “Sit on the bench and I’ll be right back.”

She watched his frown fade into a smile and he turned away before jogging back to the house. Eliza slowly walked to the bench and sat down on it, stretching her legs out, so her left side faced the house and her right side was warmed by the fire.

Hearing the door shut a few minutes later, she watched Brian kick sand as he made his way back down to where she was sitting. He had a beer in one hand and a book in the other.

“Want it?” he asked, motioning toward the beer.

“No, thanks,” she said, and smiled.

Scooting forward, Eliza made room for Brian to sit behind her. When he made himself comfortable, she leaned back into his side. His left arm rested on her stomach and she saw the book he was holding. Leaning her head back, she watched him take a swig of beer.

“Go ahead,” he said, setting his beer down on the arm rest.

Lifting her head back she looked at the book that was now resting on her stomach. Slowly, she traced the outside of it. It was black with white music notes covering the front. “Right Here” was written in red on the right side of it and she took a deep breath before opening it.

Scooting backwards, she leaned more into Brian as she flipped through the pictures of her and her friends. Each page was filled with all kinds of pictures from parties to random times at people’s houses, from as early as the nightclub where Eliza first came in contact with the band again. Tears pooled in her eyes as she looked through the pictures. Eventually, she came to an all black page with no pictures on it. Stickers lined it and in the middle, she could easily recognize Jimmy’s chicken scratch that said “True Love”.

Taking a deep breath and feeling Brian’s hand on her knee, she flipped the page and was greeted by tons of pictures of her and Brian. Some of them were whole, and others were cut to show just the two of them. Smiles, laughter, crazy faces, and gazes of love gleamed back at her. In every single picture, she and Brian were side-by-side, holding hands, his arm around her, or they were leaning into each other. There were three whole pages of nothing but pictures of them. At the last page, she flipped it, expecting more pages, but she was quick to discover there was nothing but the back cover where more chicken scratch was written.

“’Remembering Sunday’,” she murmured almost inaudibly, running her fingers over the writing.

“This was in my box of stuff from Jimmy’s house,” she heard Brian say, quietly.

Lithely, she sat up, faced forward, crossed her legs and closed the book, setting it on her lap. She glanced sideways at Brian and smiled at him through shimmering eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, swiping at her eyes.

“Can I read you something?”

“Sure,” she said and shifted so she was facing him.

He lifted up a little bit, pulled some paper out of his back pocket and stuck his left hand in his pocket. Unfolding it, he cleared his throat. His eyes shifted to her a few times before he cleared his throat again. Confused, Eliza cocked her head to the side.

“’Eliza’,” he said, reading. “’I vow to you to always be there. I vow to love you no matter what happens, and to listen before I think. I vow to always have you as my first thought when I wake up and the last one before I fall asleep. I think I’ve loved you since high school but I just didn’t know what it was until recently. I don’t think anyone will ever love anyone as much as I love you right now. I vow to you to be a faithful and devoted husband. When I look at you, I see forever and there’s no one else I’d rather spend forever with.’”

Finishing, he folded the paper up, placed it back in his pocket and took a swig of his beer before he looked at Eliza. The amount of love he saw in her eyes at that moment outweighed the amount of tears on her face and he knew he’d picked the right time to read his vows to her.

“Eliza, those were my vows that I wrote before. Hell, I was so nervous the night before asking you to marry me that I wrote those to get my mind off of the proposal. There isn’t much that’s changed to this day in my vows, but I thought you should know how I feel. I love you, Eliza, and even though I may be a dick and I may act like an asshole, I never want to be parted from you ever again. These last few months since…”

“Brian,” Eliza said, interrupting him. She scooted towards him and placed her hand on his cheek. “You lost your best friend. I know what it’s like to lose someone, baby. You were confused and angry and extremely upset.”

“That doesn’t excuse the way I acted toward you.”

“No, it doesn’t, but it validates it. If it had been for no reason, then I may be mad, but there was a reason, Brian. Losing someone you love is hard. You and Jimmy had been best friends for so long that you two were brothers.”

“It’s not just these past few months, Eliza. I’ve been such a dick to you for so long. At every chance I’ve fucked up our relationship and I’ve made you hate me and I’ve given you every reason to walk away. I just…before I asked you one final question, I just wanted you to know the truth. I do love you, Eliza.”

“I know you do,” she said, her bottom lip quivering.

“So, I just have one question for you, I guess…”

Eliza’s eyes moved back and forth between his, wondering what he could possibly be thinking.

“Do you still love me, Eliza?”

Pulling her hand back from his face, Eliza’s jaw dropped. That was the last question she’d really expected from him. How could he really think she didn’t love him?

“I know that I’ve put you through a lot, and if you say no, I’ll understand, I promise, but—”

Brian’s words were cut off by Eliza shooting forward and locking her lips with his. She tried to put as much of her emotion into that kiss as she could, and she ended up gripping his neck for support.

When she finally pulled away, she stared into his deep brown eyes, lit by the fire behind her.

“How could you really think that I didn’t love you, Brian? I’ve always loved you! I don’t think I could fall out of love with you if I tried.”

“Eliza, I don’t…I’ve said some fucked up things to you, I’ve done some fucked up things to you…”

“And you’ve always come back and said and done some amazing things, too, Brian.”

Brian blinked and looked down. He took a swig of his beer and looked at the fire. When he looked back at Eliza, he realized she wasn’t sitting beside him anymore. Looking up, he saw her standing to the side of him and held her hand out to him. Taking it, she pulled him up. He took the bucket of water from beside the fire and threw it on the flames, making sure they were out before Eliza grabbed his hand again and pulled him towards the house.

He willingly followed her as she navigated her way through the house, up the stairs, and into the bedroom. Everything was still the same that she could see, but she didn’t pay too much attention because her mind was focused on just one thing.

When she was close enough to the bed, she turned around to face Brian. She opened her mouth to say something, but at the look in his eyes, she stopped. She didn’t have any more time to think because he descended on her, kissing her with all the feelings he could muster. Soon, both of them were kissing each other with the most passion they could put into a kiss and were holding on to each other tightly. Eliza’s fingers gripped Brian’s hips, earning a groan from him and they fell together onto the bed.



Katie and Val picked up their towels and shook them free of sand. Grabbing their cans of beer and their speakers, they slipped on their shoes and made their way inside of Val’s house. Laughter came from the living room and they set their things down before going to investigate. Matt, Brian, and Zacky were sitting on the couch playing video games.

They were quiet for a few seconds before Zacky and Matt started screaming at each other. Brian laughed before taking a swig of his beer. Val and Katie shared a glance, wondering where Eliza was.

“Didn’t everything go right last night?”

“She never came back,” Val replied. “Hey, Brian! Where’s Eliza?”

“Haven’t seen her,” he replied shortly, not looking at the girls.

Confused, they both turned from the living room and headed back to the kitchen. Katie grabbed her phone and called Eliza. It rang several times before going to voicemail. Frowning, Katie pressed ‘end’ before sending a text to her friend.

“I’m sleeping. What?”

Katie showed the text message to Val who frowned at the reply. Looking at the time, Katie realized it was well after noon and didn’t understand why Eliza was still sleeping. She replied back and waited the few seconds for Eliza to respond.

“I’m sleeping. Talk to you later.”

“I guess she wants to be left alone,” Val said, frowning.

“I guess so,” Katie said, setting her phone down. “Now what do we do? Brian won’t tell us anything and Eliza is being cryptic as fuck.”

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see if she’s coming with him to Johnny’s tonight.”



Eight o’clock that evening, everyone was sitting around a table in the back of Johnny’s bar, laughing and enjoying themselves. Johnny and Zacky got up and began a game of pool. Wiki and Katie got up to dance on the floor in front of the DJ booth.

Matt looked at his watch again and he and Jason Berry stood up to play a game of pool with Zacky and Johnny. They became so absorbed in the game that they didn’t fully understand why Katie screamed.

All their heads lifted at the same time to see Brian walking in, a female holding his hand. Glancing from the clasped hands, they followed the arm up to see Eliza, her bright pink hair pulled behind her head into a low ponytail. Her eyes were shadowed and brilliantly shining with the smirk that accentuated her lips.

Her long legs were tanned and lead to super high heels, making Katie smile wider. Squealing, she ran over to her best friend. At the same time they hugged, one of Shades of Grey’s songs came over the speakers. Immediately, Val jumped up from her seat and moved to the dance floor to join the girls and Katie tugged on Eliza’s other hand. Before she let go of Brian’s, she leaned up and kissed him. Reluctantly, he let her go.

Glancing at her, he made his way to his friends. After hugs and ribbing from a few of them, he sat down on a barstool to watch the pool game unfolding. Nodding his thanks to the waitress who brought him a beer, he watched as Eliza moved around with her friends. Glancing beside him, he saw Matt take a seat on the empty barstool.

“So,” Matt began, taking a swig of his own beer. “What the hell happened?”

“I told you earlier,” Brian said, smiling.

“Syn, you didn’t tell me shit earlier!”

Brian laughed and took another sip of his beer. He glanced around at his friends who were all now looking at him.

“We’re officially back together.”

The sounds of the cheers brought the girls’ attentions to the back of the building. Curious, they all stopped their dancing and migrated to the guys. Each girl moved to their respected guy and when Brian leaned down to kiss Eliza, more cheers went up.