Merrily We Fall out of Line

Alan Ashby sat on his bed, twirling his fiancé, or now ex-fiance’s ring between his fingers. He was still in shock as to how it had come to this. Less than 24 hours ago Alan and his fiancé Sophie were on top of the world with Alan now home for a week break in between Of Mice and Men’s Europe tour which they had just finished, and the few small shows that would start in a weeks time.

The shock slowly starting to wear off, and the anger building in Alan’s body, he threw the ring across the room. Then, standing up without thinking, he forced all his anger into one punch placing it straight through the bedroom wall. Groaning in pain, he slid down with his back against the wall, not knowing what to do with himself anymore.

”Are you seriously doing this, Alan?” Sophie sighed, pulling away from her fiancé and sitting upright on the bed. She ran a hand through her thick black hair. Fighting with Alan was the last thing she wanted to do, especially when he had just gotten home from touring.

“Do what?” Alan also sat up, looking at Sophie. “I’m just saying that I would like to spend some time with my fiancé before I leave.”

“I already called in sick yesterday to spend time with you and they’re not happy with me for that.”

“One more day won’t hurt.” Alan stated, as if was an obvious solution. “I leave in a week and I haven’t seen you in almost a month.”

Sophie groaned in frustration. “Are you actually being serious right now?”

“Why is this such a big deal?” Alan asked, also growing frustrated.

“Because you’re trying to guilt me into staying home with you! Do you know how nice it would be for me to be able to do that?”

“I’m not trying to guilt you into it!” Alan defended. “If you really wanted to be home with me, you would.”

Sophie was ready to snap at this point, she had had enough. “Stop, Alan. I can’t loose my job all because I want to stay home and actually see my fiancé who’s away 7 to 9 months of the year. I would love to stay with you and watch a movie or maybe even finally get the chance to start planning out wedding, but this job is all I have when you are away and it doesn’t just suddenly stop when you decide to come home.”

“Don’t play that bullshit, Sophie.” Alan growled. “Don’t fucking act like this is all fun for me and you get to play the victim.”

“I’m not!” Sophie yelled, throwing her hands in the air and standing up. “Just forget it, Alan.”

Alan also hopped off the bed, standing up. “No!” He yelled. “You can’t just throw that shit at me and expect me to leave it! How long have you felt like that?”

“Felt like what, Alan?” She retorted. “I fully accepted how shit I was going to feel when you went away and I was fully willing to put up with that because you love what you’re doing. The making me feel like my job is inadequate part? That I’m not going to sit back and take.”

“I never once said that!” Alan defended, again. “This whole thing is bullshit, Sophie.”
Sophie raised her eyebrows, knowing that this was going nowhere and sick of feeling this way. “Is that really how you feel?” She asked, biting her lip. “Well you can take your ring and shove it, Alan. I’ve got to go to work.”

With that Sophie threw her ring on the bed in front of Alan, grabbed her bag and walked out the door.

Alan stayed in that same position all night, rethinking the fight over and over again in his head. Trying to piece together what went so wrong. His mind ticked over with thoughts of how or if he could fix this. On one hand he was mad at himself for letting it get to this, but on the other he was hurt by the fact that Sophie had walked away so easily.

It was around 10pm when Alan heard his ringtone start to go off on the nightstand. Slowly picking himself up off the ground, he made his was over to where his phone sat. He hoped with every bone in his body that is was Sophie. Austin’s name flashed across the screen causing Alan to sigh.

“Hey.” Alan tried his hardest to put on a happy front when he answered the phone, but he failed miserably.

“Care to tell me why your girlfriend is crashing on my girlfriends couch?” Austin asked his best friend. Alan had partly hoped that Sophie would still come home tonight, but clearly that wasn’t an option to her.

He sighed. “We got in a fight, she left and hasn’t come home.”

“How bad?”

“Her engagement ring is on the floor and there’s a hole in my bedroom wall.” Alan answered.

“Shit.” Austin sighed down the phone. “Have you spoken to her since?”

“Nope.” In all honesty, Alan didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to sit around and wallow in his own misery. But he knew for a fact that Austin was the last person on earth who was going to let him do that. Austin had seen how happy Sophie had made Alan over the past four years and he wasn’t about to let his best friend loose the best thing that had happened to him, that was for sure. He knew Alan was just going to sit around feeling sorry for himself, so Austin was ready to kick his ass backing into winning Sophie back.

“How are you going to get her back?”

Sighing again, Alan shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea.”

Lucky for his best friend, Austin had been devising plans from the minute he found out what had happened. He informed Alan that he would be over as soon as possible, and that they were going to fix this. No matter what it took.