A Few Heartbeats Away From Disaster

I woke up after 30 minutes of sleep and was mentally exhausted. I layed in bed listening to my Panic! At The Disco alarm as the events from last night came rushing back. The only good thing that came from last night was the 4 new songs staring at me from their tacked positions above my piano. I looked at the floor across my room and saw my phone which laid in 3 seperate pieces at the base of the wall. I had thrown it yesterday after everyone had gone to sleep and Mike still hadn't stopped texting and calling.
After I got home from my conversation with Mike I went straight to Alex; he was in his room assessing his wounds. His black eye and swollen lip were still visible on his face, but the blood from his nose was gone. His body was covered in blue and black spots along with red and white scratches. He assured me that he was okay and after a while of talking he laid down and I sat at his desk.
"Sing to me." He asked. Usually I would refuse but he looked too broken to be denied his simple request. I started an old song that I had written-
"I'm addicted to things that are broken, cause there's no such thing as a lost cause, and while you're standing in the depths of Death Valley, I'll be there, just breathe..." I sang to him until he drifted off to sleep and when I looked down at him I knew- I knew that I was still the same monster I was a year ago. I knew that I had promised Mike but I couldn't turn to him and I needed something. So I locked myself in the bathroom, grabbed my bag of razors from the back of the toilet and.....
"Karmen shut your damn alarm off I can hear it in here!" I jumped, suddenly coming out of flashback mode, when I heard Jenna pounding on the wall that seperated our rooms. I looked down at my arm and saw that, while the bleeding had stopped, the wounds I inflicted last night weren't completely scabbed over. I could hear Mike's voice in my head telling me to call him, that he would fix everything, but I couldn't do that to him. I couldn't drag him down with me.
I got ready for school in a flash since I only had one class today, and left without talking to any of my roommates. I left my phone in it's position on my bedroom floor, afraid that if I put the battery back in I would be overwhelmed by Mike's texts and calls. I got to school rather fast and walked to my Music Rendition class. The teacher just told everyone to work on their big project and not bother him.
I felt sick to my stomach upon hearing about the big project. The year long project was to remix any song of our choice, record it with our own insturmentals and vocals, and create an original music video for it. I had been in love with this project all year, but now it was just a painful reminder of Mike. The song I was remixing was Cemetary Weather by Isles and Glaciers- Mike's side project band.
"You good? You look like you're gonna be sick." I heard a voice say as a familiar short and skinny brunette came said walking behind my desk and sitting at his own. I had made one 'friend' in college since I started 6 years ago, his name was Justin Hills. We were both minoring in Music Composition so we had a lot of classes together. He was majoring in Human Social Services which is closely related to Psychology so we had classes together there too. We weren't really friends but sometimes he would come over and hang out with me and the others so it was better than nothing.
"Yeah I'm... I'm good." I said back. He didn't look convinced but he slid his desk over to mine anyways. For his song he was doing a cover of 'If It Means A Lot To You' by A Day To Remeber- which was one of my favorites. Justin was one of the only people I had met in all of my music classes with decent taste. We sat and talked for the rest of class and didn't really get any work done. We were packing up when he turned to me and said-
"So have you heard your ship name?" I immediatly got the sick feeling back. I tried to warn him that it was a sensative subject but Justin wasn't too keen on signals. "It's great. 'Mimen'. Like wow, I think people are getting a little less creative with every relationship."
"We're not dating." I said. He gave me a curious look as we walked out of the classroom. "I mean we are but we... It's complicated. I'm kind of doing that thing that I'm really good at where I push people away and I am hella good at it." I said trying to laugh it off.
"Wow. I'm sorry, hun. You'll figure it out though. You didn't push me away right?" He said bumping into me with his hip. "That's a shame though. He seemed pretty serious about you in that interview." I stopped in my tracks in the middle of the parking lot.
"What interview?" I asked. I hadn't heard anything about an interview.
"Yesterday. It was during the day like, 10 in the morning? He got asked about you and- you should probably watch it Kar here use my phone.." He said tapping something in. I looked at the screen and saw he was typing the name of the interview into youtube. When he found it he handed me the phone and shoved his hands in his pockets.
The interview was by a youtube channel I wasn't familiar with and it had all the guys being interviewed by a girl- about 17- with blue and brown hair. The majority of the interview was just talking about what their plans were for this year- if they planned on doing Warped Tour, if there were any new albums to expect, any underlying tours; the usual interview stuff. About halfway through the interview the girl turned her attention to Mike.
"So Mike, there's this picture going around of you and a new girl?" She half asked, half stated. I could see Vic perk up when he saw the smile form on Mike's face. I loved how close they were, how much they cared about the other.
"Yeah that's Karmen. She's my girlfriend." He said with a huge grin on his face. The interviewer motioned for him to go on. "She's, uh. Hm. How do you describe her? She's amazing. She's a little broken, hell she's a lot broken, but she's the kind of broken that's begging to be fixed. She's strong. She's been through a lot and I mean she's still going. She's independant. She want's someone to face everything with her, but she's prepared to do it on her own. She's beautiful, but you knew that already. She's mysterious and caring and loving and.. she's perfect." He said looking up at the interviewer.
"He hasn't stopped talking like this since he met her. It's kinda weird." Jaime said sarcastically. Vic punched his arm and shot him a death glare and Jaime shut up right away.
"You sound pretty serious about this girl, didn't you guys just meet? Are you prepared to kill old habits?" She asked trying to politely skirt around the question.
"You mean am I gonna stop whoring around?" He asked smiling, the interviewer blushed and nodded. "Yeah we only met a few days ago but there's something about her that just... I think she's staying around for a while. And yes I am one-hundred percent prepared to stop being the player that I was because I would do anything to make sure that she doesn't get away." Vic playfully nudged him and the interviewer 'ahhh'-ed. They said their goodbyes and the screen went blank. I wiped away the tears in my eyes and handed Justin his phone back.
"Thanks Justin. I should uh... I should..."
"Go get him." He said pulling me into a quick hug. I hugged him back and hopped in my car, speeding away.
How could I have pushed him away like that? He was so determined to make sure that I didn't go anywhere that he openly talked about how serious we were in an interview only hours after we officially started dating! The way he talked about me when the interviewer asked- I had never in my life heard someone talk about me like that. Hell, I've never heard anyone talk about anyone like that! Mike really cared and here I was dismantling my cell phone so that I didn't have to talk to him.
I pulled into my driveway and practically ran to the front door. I had to get inside. I had to put my phone back together and call Mike and apologize and fix everything that I had messed up. I quickly used my key to unlock the door, which was hard considering my hand was all shakey, and barged in. I was definitly not expecting what I saw.
Sitting on the couch was Kellin, beer in hand and casually lounging around. This wasn't new that was how Kellin usually was, but the person he was talking to is what sparked my interest. He turned around the second he saw me and smiled- no matter how terrible I was to him he was still happy to see me. His hair fell in his face but he didn't care enough to move it. He had flowers in one hand and a beer in the other and it was so stereotypical I couldn't help but breathlessly laugh a little when I dropped my keys on the floor and without thinking blurted out-
"I love you."