Rush Of The Past

With Alex, the days and nights mixed together smoothly. My body and mind couldn’t tell sunlight from moonlight – everything was mashed together in one long blur that made me feel better than I ever had before. Forget the shitty relationships I’ve had beforehand, and forget the fact that this wasn’t even an official relationship yet. It’s amazing how you can only know someone for a little over a month and before you know it, they’ve already become your best friend. It’s an odd feeling, something that left me disoriented in a great way. I didn’t want him to leave, but I knew that tour for their new album was just around the corner… And by “just around the corner” I mean four days away. He had to leave me alone with Julia. While that wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever thought possible, it was something that didn’t seem all too exciting without him. His fear and hatred for cats suddenly turned around right before his eyes and his love for music was creeping its way into my living room. His voice was soft and stern and he could play the guitar like no other. We sat there with the moon speaking through the shades as he strummed the six-string lightly and we both hummed along to everything that he knew from Nirvana to All-American Rejects. My favorite was when he sang Jimmy Eat World ever-so lovely with my head on his shoulder. Sometimes I smiled watching his hands slide up and down the neck of the guitar, sometimes I’d stare off into space, other times I’d either close my eyes until it was just his voice that I’d hear. My favorite was looking at the pure joy on his face when he was playing.

The music stopped and suddenly, we were back to reality. Stuck in the real world all over again. The world that only revolved around us wasn’t there and we were both thinking the same thoughts, but neither of us wanted to mention those words. My eyes started to close as the sadness hit me like a tidal-wave. I had spent the past eight days with this little darling and I didn’t want to let him go at any cost. Why would I? It’s like I had already grown accustomed to waking up to him sleeping by my side, curled up against me with a sweet look on his face. He looked so at peace in his sleep and it was something so familiar after such little time.
“So,” I sighed, “you have to leave tomorrow.” I bit both of my lips and stretched my legs out, not knowing how to say it more nonchalantly than I just did. There was a hint of sorrow in my voice, but I hoped he couldn’t detect it, but at the same time, I wanted him to hear it because I wanted him to know that I did care about him leaving.

“We have the next twelve hours together, El.” His smile was purely empathetic. I looked down at the carpet and started trying to twirl it around my finger, but it obviously wasn’t long enough to do so. Still, I tried to make it work so I didn’t have to think about him going. Alex snapped me out of it by grabbing my hand and lifting my chin up so my eyes could meet his with his other hand. “I’m gonna miss this.” I nodded and flashed a shy smile. Somehow, I was blushing and it wasn’t anything that I should’ve been blushing about in the first place.

Alex pushed a loose strain of hair behind my ear and just looked at me, making me uncomfortable, yet I felt safe when he did so. Normally someone staring at me, not moving their eyes or making facial movements made me feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin. Alex made all of that different. Maybe it was because, in a weird way, I actually liked his face and his big, brown eyes.

“I’m gonna miss this too.” I assured him. Before we knew it, we were half-asleep with my hand still laced together with his. He jolted awake and scooped me up in his arms, carrying me all the way to my bedroom. I could tell he was more tired than I thought he was originally by the way he stumbled and yawned every other second. He placed me on my side of the bed and shut the light off before tripping his way over to his side. I was too tired to even pull up the blankets, but he did that for me before cuddling right up next to me. “Do you absolutely have to leave?” I whined like a five year-old and kicked my feet a little, trying to act stubborn.

“Sadly,” he sighed before leaving a kiss on my temple. “It’s not like I want to, but I have to. I kind of have a job to do, ya’know?” He started to chuckle and from his laugh, I started laughing also.

“Whatever, Alex.”

“Whatever, Eleanor.”

“I’d rather you stay here, though.” I smiled into the crook of his neck. He was stroking my arm that lay across his stomach.
I could feel him grin back at me in the darkness. “Secretly, I’d rather stay here, also.” I was thinking these selfish thoughts, and even though his words sounded genuine, I knew he had to go do what he loved. He was a rolling stone and there was nothing anyone could do to change that. I never would try to change that, though; it’s something that I didn’t stand for. I knew that he had a passion for what he did and that he wasn’t in this business just to be in it. He was in it because he truly loved what he and his friends were doing on a nightly basis. I respected each one of them for it and I also respected the crew that toured around the country and world with them because they loved being on the road and loved instruments and bands and music just as much as the guys in All Time Low did. I knew that soon I would be departing from Chicago myself. It was my time to go around the country with the guys from Boys Like Girls, taking pictures of them on their tour and writing about the band and what I learned about them in that two months.

I was initially nervous about the journey that I was about to take, but it felt like it was the perfect fit for me. And it was a good way to spend my time away from home, though I would miss Julia, Bat, Spider, and most of all, Alex. It’s weird how attached I was after such little time and that thought was hard to get out of my head, but it was true. Throughout my entire life I had the worst trust issues known to man, but this was so easy. All of my walls broke down too fast with him; maybe it wasn’t good, but it felt like it was.