To Be Alone With You

Finals week of spring semester was upon us, the resistance of my college education beating against me like a thousand angry fists. I couldn’t wait to be free again, to spend time with my band like I’d never entered the god forsaken system of higher education. We’d been putting in so much time, saving so much money, hoping to spend the summer touring.

And, as it were, that dream was finally coming true.

“Hey!” Josselyn exclaimed as she came through the door, looking a little disheveled after taking her first final. “Sorry I’m late, you know how ethics was killing me. To the bitter end, I guess. I have some news to tell you!”

I raised my eyebrows, clueless as to what it could be. “So do I!”

“You first,” she insisted.

“We just got the OK to go on tour!” I exclaimed, unable to create any sense of dramatic pause. “This summer! The whole west coast! All of us!”

“You want me to come?” she asked after a moment of shocked silence, not entirely what I’d been expecting.

“Of course,” I quipped, not missing a beat. “I couldn’t do it without you. I need you there!”

She smiled softly. “That’s great John. Of course I’ll be there for you.”

“What was your news?” I asked then, hoping for something equally as exciting as mine to share in with her.

The smile turned a little sad, faltering before returning to a strained version of what it was before. “Nothing, nothing important right now,” she insisted. “Let’s just be happy for you right now, okay?”

And as we celebrated, I wish I could have known. In hindsight, I wish she could have told me what happened to her smile that afternoon. Because there was no way of knowing what she was about to give up for me.



“Hey John, it’s me. I just wanted to let you know I’m in San Francisco for a few days. I wanted to tell you last night but things obviously got a little crazy. I got a call from Wired asking if I would be interested in a job, so I’m going to have an interview. I shouldn’t be gone for too long, but I’d really like to see you. I have some things I need to talk about, I guess. So… call me back I guess. We can work something out. Bye.”

San Francisco. Josselyn had gone to San Francisco, just when I felt like I needed her to sort out what the hell was going with us.

“Agh, damn it.”

I couldn’t get that current out of my head, the warm, long forgotten electricity I’d gotten when we touched for the first time in a long time. I couldn’t get her eyes out of my head, her lips, her hair, her voice, her laugh…. Suddenly the only thing occupying my mind was Josselyn and I couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

She was Josselyn Stevens, the girl who broke my heart. The girl I was supposed to be bitterly pitted against for the rest of my life. Not someone who I couldn’t stop fucking thinking about while I tried to distract myself with copious amounts of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I didn’t even fucking like Pabst Blue Ribbon, but it was all I had left.

“But I’d really like to see you.”

Her words rang in my ears over and over like a gong strike. Like she was standing right there whispering them in my ear, sending shivers down my spine. I decided that night at the overlook to forgive her, to let it go without any answers, to let us have a fresh start. But I didn’t think I realized that a fresh start meant fresh feelings.

And I couldn’t even do anything about it except stew, now that she’d taken off. I just had to sit there and wait, talking myself in and out of insanity, only taking breaks for cigarettes under the sweltering Arizona sun.

Someone was knocking at my door as I stood up for my cigarette break for my mental health, and I knew it could only be one person. Garrett. Demanding that I attend to him after the blowout between Kennedy and me. It was only a matter of time before the guys found out, but I wasn’t quite expecting him so soon. But I was expecting him at some point, so I had no loss of pride when I went to the door and squinted into the sun, only to find him glaring back at me.

“We need to talk,” he muttered, helping himself through the door.

“I’m fine, actually,” I insisted flatly, trying my hardest to make a joke of it. “But thanks for your concern.”

“You may be fine, but a little thing called The Maine may not be so fine, John,” he snapped, glancing over his shoulder at me as if to scold me. Kennedy had gotten to him first. Damn.

I hadn’t wanted to leave Josselyn alone with him, but it wasn’t my place to get in between them. I’d just been doing what Josselyn wanted, to distract her from all the chaos going on in her life – which I worried I might be partially responsible for. But at the end, it seemed like it was Kennedy who was at the root of her problems, and then he displayed to me why.

I’d never seen him like that, my friend and bandmate of so many years. I’d always known Kennedy as the level headed one, the kind one, the one who would always listen before acting so rashly. But then his hands were on the collar of my shirt and I swear to god I thought we were going to fight. But I left, hoping that Josselyn could talk some sense into him. Clearly she hadn’t.

“Kennedy’s overreacting,” I muttered, following Garrett into my house. “All of this is so insane, I don’t even want to deal with it.”

“We can’t keep avoiding it, John!” Garrett cried, flopping down on a chair at the breakfast bar. “Do you know how long it’s been since we all practiced as a group? I’m getting sick of sitting in a basement with Pat and Jared while they dick around waiting for either of you to show up!”

I sighed. “Gare, I thought I wasn’t welcome,” I stated. “I thought that Kennedy was with you guys the whole time and that all of you were pissed at me anyway. Do you how many songs I’ve written waiting for this whole thing to blow over?”

Garrett groaned, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “Kennedy hasn’t come to band practice in weeks thinking that you were gonna be there. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I don’t want this to come down to a communication problem.”

“Maybe if someone would have called me this whole time that Kennedy has been making mountains out of molehills, rather than just assuming I was being an asshole?” I seethed. Garrett had some nerve coming over and trying to accuse me of being at fault.

“Making mountains out of molehills?” Garrett questioned skeptically.

“He can’t get mad at me when he’s the one trying to date my ex-girlfriend in the first place! Don’t you realize how ridiculous that is?”

“It’s Josselyn,” Garret sighed bitterly. “It’s always been Josselyn, hasn’t it? Fucking up your life? I tried to get you both to stay the fuck away from her and neither of you listened, and look where we are now.”

I could feel the white heat of anger boiling in my chest, pumping through my veins as I clutched at the counter across from Garrett. “You’re really accusing Josselyn of being at fault here?” I growled, looking at him through narrowed eyes. “You have no idea of the half of what’s she’s been through, why the hell she’s even here. Me and Kennedy are really the least of her problems. And at the end of the day, she isn’t mine and she isn’t Kennedy’s, she’s hers. And Kennedy is the one making this about possession now. I gave that up a while ago.”

“Either way, She’s tearing our band apart and I think you’re all insane for getting into any of this!” Garrett cried, pointing his finger at me. “And why don’t you go tell her I fucking said so?”

It was almost as though the clouds parted above my head, the sun shining down. “Kennedy, that’s it!”

“What’s it?” Kennedy asked confusedly, but I was already off to my room. “John, come back!” he called after me, but I didn’t hear.

“John, you’re being ridiculous! We need to fix this!” But I was already packing my bags. I was already booking a flight. I was already preparing what I would say.

Because whether Garrett liked it or not, I was going to fly to Josselyn and tell her how I felt. I was going to fly to Josselyn and tell her everything, and not expect anything in return.



It had been a long while since I’d been to San Francisco, but god damn was it a beautiful place in my opinion. I swept in and out of the steeply pitched hills and array of row houses on plenty of tours with The Maine, but I couldn’t exactly place the last time I’d been to the glittering city. I’d only been back there for a few hours and I already felt myself falling in love with the place, my long forgotten wanderlust kicking in as I hopped on trolley cars and wandered through China town, praying that Josselyn would finally answer her phone.

The near-wintry wind whipped off the bay and chilled my bones as I stood at AT&T Park, waiting for Josselyn answer her phone for what felt like the millionth time calling. People came and went around the park in coats and scarves, not from due to baseball season being long over. I looked out of place, standing in my t-shirt in jeans, in such a rush and having not thought it through. But at that moment, I didn’t entirely care. I just needed Josselyn to pick up her phone.

“John?” her voice finally came after what felt like hours of ringing.

“Josselyn!” I exclaimed, now not knowing quite what to do with myself. “Hey, I got your call! What are you up to right now?”

It was six o’clock, plenty after hours of operation for most business. She had to be done by then. I was depending on it.

“Just leaving the Wired offices,” she replied, her voice more chipper than I’d last heard it the night before. “I think it went really well!”

“Really!” I exclaimed, excited for her but still deeply nervous for what I’d hoped was about to happen. The Wired offices were just a few blocks up from the Stadium, just close enough for me to reach. “Tell me about it!”

Josselyn laughed. “I guess I have time for that,” she hummed, a wisp of the wind catching in the receiver, sending it crackling. “I think I might walk around a little bit before I head home, maybe get something to eat. I think AT&T Park isn’t far from here, I’d like to see a little piece of baseball history.”
My heart nearly stopped in my chest.

“Yeah!” I agreed, running a hand nervously through my hair. “I’ve never been there. Go and take a picture and send it to me, help me be a tourist with you. And tell me all about your day on the way.”

So she did. I paced back and forth at the corner of Third and King, waiting to catch a glimpse of her in the post-work crowd milling about downtown, listening to her talk about her day. Wired was interviewing her as a new writer on their staff and she loved their offices and the editor, all the people she met with were amazing, that it would be a perfect fit. I was amazed that she was telling me all of it, just as if we’d never fought, just as if we’d never stopped being best friends. She told me about her concerns for permanently leaving New York and then laughed for getting ahead of herself. All the while I hummed along my agreement, my heart pounding in my chest. It was only a matter of time until she appeared.

And suddenly there she was, her smile evident through the throng. She was dressed much more appropriately than me, in that leather jacket of hers and a scarf tied neatly around her neck. Her lips moved in time with the words coming through the phone, painted that same dark red I’d always known on her. And finally she reached the corner, her legs peeking like stems from beneath the hem of her dress. My vision of her dipped between the cars as they passed between us, our bodies only separated by one thin strip of city road.

“Josselyn,” I hummed, entirely interrupting her train of thought. “I need you to not freak out. But look across the street.”

“What?” she questioned abruptly, and I could see her glancing around in confusion from where I stood. And finally, in a break of traffic at the light, she spotted me. Her lips spread into a grin and mine couldn’t help but do the same in return.

I was moving across the street before she could take a step off the curb. I was running through the people trying to cross before traffic resumed, pushing through them like a fish downstream. And before she could say anything more, I was scooping her up in my arms and pressing a kiss right to her deep red lips.

That familiar electric chill quivered down my spine, as I felt her kiss back, right there on the corner of Third and King, the lights of AT&T Park glowing against the bay. My skin pricked at the grazing touch of her hand on my cheek, lips ablaze at her response. Everything all at once fell into place.

And as we broke apart, I could hear her voice in barely a whisper, saying, “Took you long enough, O’Callaghan.”