Love Will Never Tear Us Apart, but Life Might

To be perfectly honest, I really wasn’t in the mood to go or do anything right now. My mom just basically admitted that she hates me, Val is dragging me away from Brian, and I’m supposed to be writing new songs for my band sometime this week. “Val, I really don’t think this is a good time…” I began.

“Oh c’mon, Sammie, what else would you possibly be doing now?” Probably wallowing in my depression. My lack of an answer proved her point, I guess. “Exactly. So, what’s the big deal then? Besides, this will not only make you feel better, but you’ll be spending time with me. I mean, what could possibly be better than that?!” We both shared a laugh, and by the time we reached the car, I finally agreed to go along.

After being in the car for ten minutes, my curiousity was beginning to get the best of me. “Guys, really, where are we going?” I asked impatiently.

“Oooh someone’s getting a little antsy,” Janet teased.

“Well, duh! I didn’t know we were going on a road trip!”

“Ok, how about a clue then?” Melissa chimed in.

Cassie continued, “Let’s see…today is October 1st, right? So, this was something that we had scheduled for today.”

Oh, great something to do with planning?! Well my guess would be that it has something to do with the wedding…all the invitations have already been mailed, the wedding planner already finalized everything, so all that’s left is…the dresses! Whoa, I would’ve totally forgotten about this meeting today.

“We’re going to get the dresses!” I shouted.

“Haha took you long enough,” Cassie laughed.

“But that’s not a surprise.”

“Well,” Val said, “we figured you most likely might forget so…”

I gasped, “So you used my weakness against me?! That’s so mean!”

“But it did get you in a better mood, right?” Melissa pointed out.

“Huh, I guess your right. Hey! We’re here,” I declared as Val pulled into the parking lot.

The store, Linda’s Bridal, was owned by one of Val’s friends, so we got a discount! “Ok, who’s the lucky bride?” Linda asked with a big smile as she met us at the enterance of the store. All the girls pointed to me and I smiled, “That would be me. I’m–.”

“Sam Hartman-soon-to-be-Haner. I know, Val filled me in.”

I glanced over at Val who tried to look innocent. “Val! What did I say about telling people I don’t know stuf fabout me before I meet them?!” Val looked a little shocked, kind of how I looked a minute ago, but then just laughed it off.

“Anyway, Sam, are you ready to see everything?”

“Hell yeah!” I shouted.

She smiled, “Alright, everyone close your eyes.”

We all did and when we re-opened them five of the prettiest dresses ever were hanging on the rack in front of us. I already knew what my dress would look like. Here’s a picture.



However, Cassie made me wait until this very moment to see, as she called them, “the best bridesmaid dresses ever!” And I definitely have to agree. Here’s another picture.



“So what do you think?” Linda asked as she got the dresses ready to go.

“They’re….they’re beautiful and couldn’t have been any better!” At first I felt as though I was at a loss of words, but luckily they came out right.

As we headed back out to the car and said goodbye to Linda, Val kept laughing to herself as if she just heard a hilarious joke. “Val, really, what the hell is so funny?” Janet asked.

“Oh, nothing, it’s just…ok, I guess I’ll tell you. I wanted to go get some buckets of paint!”

“Why…?” Cassie asked.

Val shrugged, “Seriously? Have you seen the walls on the inside of our house?! They’re all so plain!”

“Yeah, but why do we need paint right now?” Melissa asked.

“Uh, I wanted to surprise the guys and I just so happen to have Matt’s credit card, because the way I see it, it’s his house and we’re gonna help him make it better. So he’ll pay for it and we’ll supply it!”

“Haha alright, that part makes sense, but where the hell are you gonna find a paint store nearby?” I pointed out.

We all looked around, until we saw that there was a Sherwin-Williams right next door to Linda’s Bridal. “Wow it looks like someone planned ahead,” I laughed.

“I always do!” Val replied with a mile as we walked over to the paint store.

For a paint store, this building was pretty huge…almost as if this was the ‘Sherwin-Williams’ Deluxe or something. There were shelves upon shelves of colors, and each set of shelves nearly touched the ceiling. I’m almost positive that every color you can imagine would be somewhere in here. Pig pink? Of course. Neon carrot? Most definitely. Magic mint? Sure. Laser lemon? Hell yeah. Any other outrageous color name? You bet.

Basically, this place has it all – even display rooms and blank drywall pieces to test out certain colors. Janet and Val ran ahead of Cassie, Melissa, and I, clearly being the most enthusiatic ones. “Note to self, never let those two loose inside a ginormous building with…paint buckets,” Melissa laughed.

So we ended up spending over an hour in the store testing colors and picking out a bucket for almost every room in the house. Good thing Val snatched Matt’s credit card when he wasn’t looking. Anyway, Janet found a color called ‘Flesh’ and was for whatever reason interested in it. She began climbing up the ladder to see the buckets of Flesh. “What are you doing?” I asked, leaning against the ladder.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked in disbelief, “I want to see if this so-called flesh color really matches the color of my skin!”

“You would…”

Cassie came over by my side and started laughing when she saw Janet balancing on the ladder while trying to grab a bucket of her new favorite color. “Don’t fall!” Cassie laughed as she pretended to shake the ladder.

“Oh my God I’m falling! I’m falling!” Janet shouted dramatically, but then caught onto the ledge of the shelf last minute. “I hate you!” she shouted to Cassie, who just stuck her tongue out in response.

“Um, can you like keep it down or something?” some preppy voice asked from behind us. I turned around to see a bleach blonde bimbo glaring at us with an annoyed expression as she twirled some of her hair between her fingers.

“Why? We’re the only ones here,” I replied.

“Yeah, but I’m like trying to concentrate on something!”

“What exactly?” I asked looking around for something that she would be concentrating on.

“I’m watching the season finale of the OC on the computer over there and you guys are like so loud, I can’t hear it!”

“Oh, I had no idea that’s what you were doing. We’ll definitely be sure to keep it down now,” I said with a totally fake shocked expression. She didn’t pick up on the sarcasm, I guess, because she just walked back to her computer. I shook my head – some people can really be stupid sometimes.

I turned around to see Janet attempting to lift the bucket over her head to read some label on the side. Apparently, the bucket didn’t have a lid on it because only seconds later Cassie’s scream filled the building as the flesh colored paint spilled all over her. “JANET!” Janet slowly glanced down sheepishly and then shoved the paint back on the shelf, jumped down the ladder, and began to run as Cassie chased after her. The prep employee ran over to see what kind of trouble we caused now and stared at the floor in disbelief.

“There’s no way I’m cleaning that up.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you,” I said as I walked past her, “but you are the one who works here. You have a nice day.”

“I’M GONNA KILL YOU!”

“WHAT?! HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE FUCKING CAN DIDN’T HAVE A LID?”

“YOU BETTER RUN FOR IT, JANET!”

“NOOO HAVE MERCY!”

Janet and Cassie’s shouting could be heard throughout the entire place. Val and Melissa stacked all of our paint buckets up on cart, providing perfect seating for us three to watch Janet and Cassie’s show.

Finally, once both Cassie and Janet were covered in paint, we all got back into the car and sang along to ‘Critical Acclaim,’ cause it was on the radio. Once the song was over, Val’s cell phone started buzzing, so she finally decided to answer it after 4 rings. “Hello?” she said, turning down the music a little. After realizing it was Matt, she laughed, “Hey my little neon carrot!”

There was a pause on the other line before Matt replied, “Neon carrot? Since when did I become a…carrot?”

“Since right now! I’ll explain everything to you once we get back home.”

“Ok…so you got the dresses and everything, right?”

“Of course we did. That is why we left in the first place!”

“Right. So I guess I’ll see you in a little bit then.”

“Yep. Love you!”

“Love you too.”

Since everyone else in the car went silent once Val picked up the phone, we could all hear how confused Matt sounded and began laughing. “Oh God I can’t wait to see his expression when you call him that again!” I said. The rest of the drive home consisted of random chatting and laughing at the most random things.

I was the first person to walk through the front door, and as soon as I was inside I was engulfed in a pair of tattooed arms. “Uh, hey Brian,” I laughed at the sudden greeting.

“Sammie! You have no idea how much I missed you…it was terrible, don’t you ever ever leave me alone with them again,” he shouted, referring to the other guys.

“HEY!” they shouted back defensively as they entered the foyer. “And I hear that Val gave Matt some weird nickname. How come I don’t get one?” he complained.

Once he released me from the extremely tight hug, I paused before saying, “Don’t worry, I have a name for you too…it’s atomic tangerine!”

Brian’s noise crinkled up in distaste as he said, “But that sounds so…scientific. Ew, it reminds me of chemistry class!”

I sighed, “That might be true, but c’mon, Matt’s a freaking carrot and that’s a vegetable.”

“Vegetables are pretty nasty,” he laughed, accepting his new nickname.

Jimmy entered the room next and asked, “Why the hell are we talking about vegetables and science?”

“It’s a surprise,” I told him, making him all excited – but his smile dropped when he saw Val and Melissa bringing in the paint buckets.

“That doesn’t look like a lot of fun,” he pouted.

“What’s not a lot of fun?” Matt asked entering the room.

“Why do you guys keep coming in here one-by-one and then ask questions about whatever someone just said?” Janet laughed.

“Because that’s just how we roll,” Jimmy said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Suddenly Matt said, “Oh hey, by the way have any of you guys seen my credit card?” Val and I exchanged a glance before we started laughing, waitng for him to figure it out.

“I think those two know something about this missing plastic card of yours,” Brian said very seriously.

Matt looked back and forth between the gallons of paint, which definitely costed mucho, and the dresses that Cassie managed to carry in all by herself. “What method of payment did you use for this?” he asked curiously, “And why the hell did you buy all these paint buckets?”

Val looked at me, expecting me to answer, but I gave her a look back suggesting that this was her idea, so she can explain her brilliant plan and all the reasoning behind it. “Ok, here’s a little story,” she began, “There once was a huge house with a ton of furniture and stuff in it, but all the walls were plain white. One day, some of the girls that lived there decided to go buy some paint for each room to give the house some life. And, since it was her boyfriend’s house that she was decorating, she decided that…he should be the one to pay for it,” she finished with an innocent smile.

“So, you stole my credit card to buy all these paint? But why? I happen to like the extremely plain white walls.”

“Oh, you’re just upset that I came up with the idea first!” she retorted, while sticking her tongue out.

“Relax, Matt, I’m sure it’ll be tons of fun.”

“Actually, running around the house attacking everyone with paint does sound pretty fun to me,” Jimmy added with a little evil smile.

After finally convincing the guys, we all got changed into some junky clothes and white jumpers like the painters wear. There was only one problem though, we only had 9 painter jumpers, and there was 10 of us. “Well, Johnny,” Jimmy said placing his hand on Johnny’s shoulder, “it looks like you’re going to have to wear the alternative suit.”

“Why me?” Johnny whined, knowing what the ‘alternative suit’ would be.

Brian laughed, “Uh because you’re the only one that can fit in it, and sorry but you are the tiniest band member.”

Johnny just rolled his eyes and put on the alternative suit aka the Bob the Builder costume that we got him for his birthday. “This is completely ridiculous! I’m not painting in this,” he continued to complain.

Zacky wrote something down on a sticky note or something and then secretly placed it on Johnny’s back while he was pretending to comfort Johnny. Hmm, I wonder what he put on there?

“Alright, here’s the deal,” Val said once all the paint cans were open, “All five of us girls picked out colors for each of the rooms and here’s what we came up with: foyer (Antique Brass), dining room (Asparagus), the den (Navy Blue), the family room (Mahogany), the kitchen will be some wallpaper, the guest room(s) (Timberwolf), Matt’s room (Sunset Orange), Brian’s room (Plum), Jimmy’s room (Electric Lime), Johnny’s room (Blizzard Blue), and last but not least, Zacky’s room (Granny Smith Apple).”

“NO WAY!” Zacky shouted once his room’s color was announced.

“No way what?” Matt asked confused.

“Dude! I got Granny Smith Apple – that’s like the best crayon color in the entire 64 count crayon box that is sooonot up in my room.” We all bursted out laughing cause we just found out that Zacky has a secret stash of crayons in his room.

“C’mon guys, these huge ass rooms aren’t going to paint themselves!” Cassie declared, throwing paint brushes and blue Scotch tape to each of us.

“It doesn’t really matter who does what room, just make sure you move the furniture out of the way first,” Val added, shaking her head.

For some reason, all of us rushed to the stairs so we could each paint our own rooms first. Brian and I won the ‘race’ and he began moving all the furniture to the middle of the room while I took down the posters, pictures, and window treatments before I put on the blue tape. “Honestly I’m surprised you guys haven’t done this sooner,” he laughed, “I mean the five of us have only been living here for 3 years. I don’t know why Matt didn’t get the place painted in the first place.”

“Well, my guess would be because he admitted he liked the plain white walls.”

“Let’s hope he was just kidding…”

“The world may never know.”

I walked over to the boombox and pressed play, not really caring what CD was in here. “Will the real Slim Shady please stand up please stand up please stand up?” blarred out of the speakers.

“Is that Eminem?!” Brian laughed.

I sighed, “Yes sir, it looks like Janet was in here again…”

“I thought she didn’t like rap?”

“Just him. When she lived in Michigan she would drive up and down 8 Mile looking for his old house, and then she figured out where his current house was in Rochester Hills and sneaked into his house just to meet him. He thought it was the funniest thing ever, too.”

“That’s so something that she would do.”

“Oh, God, now this song’s gonna be stuck in my head all night,” I complained.

“Blame Janet.”

“Oh, I will next time I see her!”

As soon as we finished our room, I must admit I was slightly exhausted…hey, painting takes way more energy than you might think! Our room looked kick ass, if I do say so myself. I mean, purple is both of our favorite colors, so this dark purple color was perfect, hence why I picked it. Just as I was about to sit down and take a break, someone screamed, “NOOOOO!”

Thinking that someone got hurt or something like that, Brian and I ran down the stairs to the kitchen. “What the hell happened?” I asked.

“Why the hell are you guys here?” Brian asked upon seeing Atreyu raid the kitchen. All the cabinets were open and Brandon was staring inside the fridge and then looking back at me and Brian.

“Y-you guys don’t have any beer!” he said, as if someone died.

“That’s why you screamed? Jeez, alcoholic, much?” I replied, still shocked. Brian, on the other hand, had a different reaction.

“N-no, you can’t be serious,” he gasped as he ran over to the fridge to see for himself.

“Dude, we checked the fridge, pantry, cabinets…Matt’s room,” Dan said.

“Wait, why Matt’s room?”

“He’s been known for hiding the best or last beers in his room in the past and on tour,” Brian explained.

Alex came over and stood next to me saying, “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t freak out either.” Oh yeah, I forgot he doesn’t drink anymore…

“That does make me feel better…and at least I know I’m not an alcoholic!”

“Hey, why is everyone screaming?” Matt asked as he entered.

“There’s no beer in your house!” Brandon said.

“What are you guys doing here– WHAT?!” Then he repeated everything that Brian did and admitted that he definitely didn’t have a secret stash. “This is tragic,” he said.

“Clearly, there’s only one solution,” Brian said, exchanging a glance with Matt.

Matt and Brian smiled, “Make Johnny go get some more!”

“Aw why are you guys being so mean to Johnny today?” I asked.

Brian shrugged, “It’s just what we do.”

“So, any particular reason why it smells like paint in here?” Alex randomly asked.

“Val and the girls decided they wanted to paint the house,” Matt explained, laughing a little.

“JOHNNY!” Brian shouted, still stuck on the whole must-drink-beer-now mode.

Johnny came running down the stairs. “Joh–. I mean, Johnny the Builder we need some more booze!” Matt said.

Johnny rolled his eyes, “Fine, but only because I really really really need a drink.” Matt, Brian, and Brandon shared a laugh as they watched Johnny drive off.

About 25 minutes later (way too long for the guys to wait), Johnny came back struggling with the cases of beer. “Budweiser, my favorite!” Brandon shouted helping Johnny with the load.

“Hey, short shit, I’m Dan,” Dan randomly said.

“What did you call me?!” Johnny gasped.

“Short shit? I mean, that is what your name tag says…”

“What name tag?” Johnny asked, but then realized that Zacky did something. He started running around in a circle trying to see the name tag, but he just ended up looking like a dog chasing his tail.

He gave up after about 60 seconds, caught his breath, and then said, “Anyway, while I was out I got the greatest idea EVER!”