Breaking Hearts Still Looks Pretty Cool

It wasn’t as awkward as I had predicted. In fact, it was even quite nice. That’s what I told myself over and over after I woke up entwined in Mikey’s arms the following morning.

Maybe Annabelle was right. This moving on thing did not seem to be so difficult; perhaps it was best for everyone.

“I could get used to this,” Mikey’s voice sounded, muffled somewhat from his face being buried into my hair.

“Me too,” I commented. It was true; it wouldn’t cause me any problem or pain to wake up to Mikey’s sweet face every day. I would certainly get used to it.

A knock resounded throughout the room, and Mikey groaned in irritation.

I giggled like a little girl; being with Mikey seemed to remind me forcefully of being in high school, and during our final year of high school we almost never stopped laughing.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” I asked,

“No,” Mikey laughed back, “it’s probably one of the guys, and you know that they’re just going to-“

The door opened forcefully – “Come in anyway,” he finished, making no effort to loosen his grip on me.

“Mikey, we need to talk about what I said the other-“ Gerard’s voice permeated the room, and it seemed like the sound took positively ages to register in my ears.

My breath caught in my throat; even after my pathetic and feeble attempt to move on, the sound of his voice catching me unawares made my spine tingle and my heart palpitate; I could hardly even remember where I was. Suddenly I was wondering what he was thinking, what he needed to talk to Mikey about, what my hair looked like, and most importantly, what it felt like to see me there with his own brother.

‘He doesn’t care, he won’t care’ I reminded myself. He had effectively given Mikey permission for this. The memory of Mikey’s harsh words from the previous day resounded in my head.

‘HE DOESN’T EVEN WANT YOU’

I bit my lip and tried to forget what I was feeling.

“Oh,” Gerard’s voice, as usual, was impossible to interpret.

Mikey drew himself up to a sitting position in the slow way a contented, sleepy person moves; the way he moved his arms from me was reluctant. I mirrored him, clutching the covers for some sort of comfort and carefully looking at the hotel’s pristine cream carpet.

“Hey Gerard,” said Mikey, and the sound of pure joy in his voice was enough to turn my stomach. How could I be so selfish? I was trying to learn how to live without Gerard, and Mikey was only my second choice, my consolation prize. To him, I was the number one, the only one he wanted and the only one he could see; the tone of his voice was far easier to decipher than his brother’s. The guilt washed over me in unstoppable waves, each one greater than the next.

I supposed that that was something I was going to have to learn to live with, too.

“H-Hi,” Gerard stuttered, and I dimly wondered why he sounded so shocked. I was trying my hardest to detach myself from what was going on, but his sheer astonishment was not hard see.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Mikey asked sleepily, rubbing his eyes and carelessly throwing his arm over my shoulders.

“Nothing, nothing,” he sounded distracted, and I couldn’t resist the urge to look up at him. It was a mistake; his breath taking face was as distracted as his voice was, and his beautiful eyes were not meeting Mikey or my gaze. I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to work out what he was thinking. The fraught look on his face reminded me of the time when he had showed up at my house one Sunday morning...the morning after the night he and Annabelle committed the ultimate betrayal. I had never found him too difficult to read after we fell in love, but in the intervening years I wondered if perhaps I had lost my touch; or maybe I was just doubting myself.

“So, you two did get it together in the end then...” Gerard commented, breaking my increasingly errant train of thought,
“Yes,” said Mikey proudly, and I thought I caught a note of defiance in his voice. I momentarily cursed him for being so much easier to read than Gerard, and for putting every single emotion he felt right out there.

I kept silent, there was nothing I could think of to say when my head was full of a slide show of memories from when Gerard and I were together, mingled with thoughts from the past few weeks; the vision of his face looming closer to mine as we were sitting on my bed on the top level of the tour bus...interrupted, as ever, by the sound of Mikey’s voice.

“I’m so glad it turned out you felt the same, C,” he said happily, and tightened his grip around my shoulders. I kept my eyes down.

“You’re quiet, sugar,” said Gerard. I felt like he had hurled a dagger at me when he used his old, joking nickname, and if possible, Mikey’s grip grew a little tighter. I could tell that he wasn’t keen on Gerard re-adopting this way of addressing me.

“I’m...just tired,” I mumbled dismissively, completely missing the potential innuendo that Mikey capitalised on by chuckling suggestively and winking unhelpfully.

“Right,” Gerard was back to sounding ambiguously distracted, “well we do have a sound check in a couple of hours so you’d better get up,” I hadn’t heard him sound that harsh in a long time.

“Right,” Mikey agreed, apparently ignorant, “I’ll see you later then,”

Gerard lingered unnecessarily around the doorway, “yeah,” he said eventually, wrenching the door open, “see you later.”