Frank Iero: P.A.

I lie there rigid, digesting Gerard’s words.

Just one night.

What does he mean by that? I’m sure the answer will become apparent soon. The problem is, I don’t think I want the answer.

Things between Gerard and I are changing, and I’m fearful of what they’re changing into. I’m not, well, him. That’s what I keep telling myself, and I want so badly for it to be true, but I can feel it shifting out of my control. Soon I won’t be able to hold back, to keep in control – a huge part of me knows that, while my stubbornness fights it at every chance possible, as hard as possible. One day, whether I want it or not, I will end up giving in; I know it. Giving in isn’t the issue here, though. What is troubling me is that I don’t want it to be now, not so soon after Mikey. When I give in, if I admit to being what I fear I could be, I want Gerard to feel what I feel; he can’t be under the influence of his grief and his loneliness. This thing, whatever this thing is, causes me so much pain as it is now; I couldn’t handle the potential and highly likely rejection and the humiliation that comes along with it. That would pain me more than anything else, that unrequited love – not that I love Gerard. I don’t. Not at all. Not one bit.

Gerard’s fingers lightly trace circles on the scorching skin over my heart. The tender gesture sends sparks of electricity through my skin and causes me to shiver as the impulses reach and move down my spine.

“Cold?” his raspy voice asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer before he pulls the covers over our shoulders.

I shake my head, the pillow rustling in the silent room. How can I tell him that I’m not cold, but terribly nervous, that my nerve endings are on high alert from his touch? Sparks of awareness travel through my body, and there’s no way I can deny it any longer.

I’m attracted to Gerard Way.

I’m attracted to Gerard Way! Fuck...

That doesn’t mean I’m, well... like him. Nor does it mean that I like him. All it means is that I acknowledge that Gerard is an attractive man. I could still be straight. I think.

My heart hammers wildly beneath his fingers that continue to trace circles. I didn’t think it was possible, but he shifts even closer to me. Every inch of his chest touches my back, the curve of my ass is pressed into his pelvis, our legs intertwined. His lips graze my curve of my shoulder, moving further over my skin until he is pressing feather light kisses to the crook of my neck. I take in a sharp breath as he exhales onto the sensitive, damp skin. His hand moves down lower, caressing lightly over the taught skin of my abdomen. My heart beats faster as he nears the waistband of my sleep pants. Thankfully, he stops there, resting his hand on my hip.

Gerard and I are lying so close together that not even air could pass between us. He nuzzles at my neck, then presses his lips to my collarbone. The kiss makes my skin tingle far more than any left on me by a woman. He holds me tightly to him, moving his hand back to my heart, making me feel safe when, ironically, I should be doing that for him. As I lie there in his arms I think about it, really think about it; if I wriggle enough he’ll loosen his hold, then I’ll be able to roll over and hold him. Doing that would surely comfort him after recent events; he wouldn’t feel like he’s all alone, surely? But I can’t bring myself to attempt it. It’s too intimate. It would symbolise too much. We are just friends, and I can’t let him think I want more than that when I don’t, especially when he doesn’t either.



I awake to the sensation of Gerard peeling himself from me. Sweat slicks my back after my night wrapped in his arms. I roll over as he sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He reaches down and grabs his pants from the floor, tugging them up his legs and standing as he buttons and zips them up. He walks over to the wardrobe and takes a fresh shirt out of it (I had the foresight to bring some clothes for Gerard as well) and slips it over his head. The door of the wardrobe is slid shut and he turns to me. His face is stony; void of emotion, like last night – hell, a few minutes ago – never happened. We lock eyes for a moment, staring deep into each other’s souls, and then he blinks once, pivots, and leaves the room.

There was something definitive about the way he left, I think to myself as I lay there staring at the door. It was like he was telling me that he wasn’t coming back, and I don’t just mean to the bedroom. He’s not going to do what he did last night again. We both know it shouldn’t have happened. Mikey’s recent death and his funeral were obviously the cause of it all, and that’s a poor excuse for two people to come together like that, but it also oversteps the boundaries between employer and employee, and the boundaries between friends and lovers. If – and that’s a massive, gigantic if – Gerard and I ever attempted to be more than friends, it couldn’t be in this situation; I couldn’t be his employee, and it couldn’t be so soon after this kind of tragedy. We’d both need to have clear minds, determined minds that know what they want and make decisions based off those wants. And my mind is far from clear.

I’m confused. I’m scared. I barely know who I am anymore. I can’t make a decision of this magnitude just yet, if at all. I need more time. I need more courage. I need to know where Gerard’s head is at.

I stay in bed for a while, contemplating everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours and putting off seeing Gerard for as long as possible. The room is silent apart from the occasional rustling of blankets and pillows as I shift about. In the rare times my thoughts lapse and my mind becomes a blank I listen to the sounds around me. There is the frequent honking of horns below my window from the New York streets packed with works caught in peak-hour traffic; no birds, no wildlife of any sort. A jackhammer buzzes angrily in the distance, and is probably the cause of the all the drivers’ frustration. Occasionally there’s a loud whistle from someone hailing down a checkered cab, but there is always the hum of thousands of people simultaneously in conversation. It’s all chaos three floors down, but up here it’s strangely calming.

When I hear movement in the room next door, I know that Alicia is up and ready – I won’t say awake, because I know she would have hardly slept – to face the first real day without Mikey. Her problems are far worse than mine, and when I hear her bedroom door open and close it encourages me to get out of bed. I go to the wardrobe and grab a clean set of clothes and head for the bathroom.

Since my visits to the apartment have become more frequent and extended, Alicia has graciously said to “use anything” I need in the bathroom. I’m grateful for the offer, but I’m very careful with what I use. The thing that worries me most is that I’ll use a product of Mikey’s; the last thing I want to do is upset Alicia because I smell like him. I know she wouldn’t be angry at me, but scents have the ability to stir up memories in people, and I don’t want to do that to her. As the warm water flows over my body I pick up bottle after bottle of product, reading labels and sniffing in search of feminine scents. It’s a bit of an insult to my masculinity, but it’s a necessary sacrifice. When I’m satisfied that I’m clean and smell like a flower and not Mikey, I switch off the water and go about drying and dressing myself.

The kitchen is empty when I enter it and I hear muffled voices coming from the living room. I tiptoe to the doorway and listen carefully for who’s talking. It’s Ray and Alicia.

“You should really eat something,” he says to her, sounding worried. “I could make you breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry.” Alicia’s voice is hoarse and absent of emotion.

They go quiet and I imagine that Ray is sitting there trying to come up with a way to coax Alicia into eating, while Alicia is probably sitting there looking vacant. I peer around the corner and see them sitting together on the couch, looking just how I thought they would, although Ray is looking at Alicia as he thinks. Gerard is not in the room at all, I notice. This has me worried; it’s not that big of an apartment, so if he were here I would have seen him. I take a step into the room, feeling the slightest bit of relief that I won’t have to deal with seeing Gerard just yet, but my worry significantly outweighs my relief.

“Morning,” I greet them. Ray smiles back at me, but Alicia stays with her eyes fixed on the wall ahead of her. I pretend to look around the room. As nonchalantly as I can manage, I ask, “Gerard not about?”

Ray shakes his head. “I woke up just as he left. He didn’t say where he was going.”

This isn’t good.

“How long ago was that?” I try to ask the question calmly, but even I hear the panic in my voice.

Ray’s eyebrows furrow. “Uh, forty minutes or so.” He pauses, his head cocked to the side while his eyes look at me intently. “Is everything okay?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Fine, fine.” I head back to the kitchen. “I need food.”

When I’m safely out of sight in the kitchen, I brace myself against a bench and lower my head. I suck in a few breaths to steady myself.

This is my fault.

I don’t know how, but it has to be. I should have done one of two things last night: stopped him immediately, or encouraged him to do more. I did neither, and that has embarrassed him/made him hate me, which is why he has run off. When Mikey was reaching the end this was what I feared, that Gerard would cut himself off from everyone. I just never imagined that I would be the reason for it, though.

I straighten and fix myself a bowl of Cheerio’s and a cup of coffee. I decide to eat in the kitchen to avoid Ray’s questions that I know he’ll have once he sees how worked up I am, and so I don’t have to see Alicia look so numb. The silence, however, doesn’t stop the uneasiness I’m feeling. After four spoonfuls of cereal and two small sips of coffee I can stomach no more. I put the remains through the garbage disposal and wash up my dishes for lack of a better distraction. Once I’m finished I find myself pacing the linoleum floor anxiously trying to rationalise where he may have gone; if he doesn’t come back soon I know I’ll end up going looking for him.

Starbucks? MOMA? The Met? Central Park? Ellie’s house? The mansion, for fresh clothes and a shower with his own products? The cemetery?

Alicia suddenly appears in front of me, but she’s like a zombie and doesn’t seem to notice that I’m even in here. She heads for the bedrooms, but comes to a halt in front of the fridge. I watch her carefully, looking for some way to help. She stares at the fridge, long and hard. Her bottom lip quivers, she chokes back a sob, then tears run down her cheeks. She hugs her tattooed arms around herself, eyes still fixed on the refrigerator. I follow her gaze and notice a photo of her and Mikey stuck to the fridge with two coloured letter magnets – an A and an M.

“Oh, Alicia,” I breathe out as I move to her and take her in my arms.

The second we make contact she starts to sob loudly. I rub her back soothingly and try to hush her crying. Ray hears the commotion from the living room and comes into the kitchen. I exchange a worried glance over her shoulder with him. We both know that this is only the tip of the iceberg; the crying and sobbing could go on for hours. I hold Alicia in my arms for a few more minutes with Ray watching on a few feet away, then he comes over to place a hand on her shoulder and together we guide her to her bedroom.

“That was hard,” Ray says an hour later when we both flop down on the couch, completely worn out from our efforts.

Alicia cried and cried. We stayed with her until she had calmed down enough to get out coherent sentences and then left her alone to cry with the small shred of her dignity that remains. Gerard still hasn’t come back – it’s been more than two hours – but this is the first time I’ve thought about him since the incident in the kitchen. Sitting with Alicia has been a big distraction, but now that we’re all too exhausted to converse, thoughts of him flood my mind once again.

Is he okay? Is he with friends? Will he come back soon? What more could I have done to stop him from leaving?

“You’re worried about Gerard, aren’t you?” Ray’s voice asks, bringing me back to reality.

If I say anything, I’ll cry, so I simply nod and stare straight ahead at the blank television.

“He’ll come back soon,” Ray replies gently, touching my forearm lightly. “Have a little faith.”

Have a little faith.

I think all my faith left this world when Mikey did. How can one have faith in anything when someone so young and innocent is taken long before their time? You can’t. I don’t have faith that Alicia will stop crying and be happy again. I have no faith that I’ll ever think of Ray without thinking of Mikey first. I have no faith in Gerard walking through that door again. And most of all, I have no faith that, if he ever did come back, I’ll get to see that light in his hazel eyes again. It’s all gone, just like Mikey.