Breaking Hearts Still Looks Pretty Cool

“Your boyfriend is AMAZING,” Reagan enthused. The show had drawn to a climactic end, and I felt like standing there watching one of my favourite bands from the very side of the stage, surrounded by all of the people I loved most in the world, it was the perfect close to what may just have been the best time of my life.

“I mean,” said Reagan, just as Green Day came off stage and congratulated who they dubbed ‘the best support band ever’ “not only has he been able to provide us with backstage passes to actually meet Green Day, but he was incredible onstage as well, and so was Frank, and Ray, and all of them...you must be so proud to be a part of it,”

“I’m hardly a part of it,” I ducked my head modestly, “It’s enough just to be on the sidelines,

“Trust me, Connie,” she said seriously, “they love you so much, you’ll always be a part of it. Especially Gerard.”

I smiled at her, and felt oddly compelled to hug her tightly to me, “thank you,” I whispered into her ear, “for downright forcing me to do this, because if I hadn’t, then,” I broke away from her and glanced over to Gerard, who was talking enthusiastically to all three members of Green Day, “I wouldn’t have gotten everything I ever wanted”

I watched the scene playing out around me, feeling as though it was more akin to some sort of happy dream sequence; there were Johnny, Ana and Sinead, chatting to Frank, Ray, Bob, Mikey and Annabelle as if they were all old friends; Gerard and Green Day were still in deep conversation, and Gerard seemed to have just informed them of something, because they all jumped on him in a huge group embrace, and I thought I heard someone say ‘good luck.’ Reagan caressed my arm in a sisterly way, and I felt close to tears with the sheer happiness of it all; as corny as it sounded in my head as I thought it, it seemed like love was radiating from every pore of my being, and that it was permeating the very atmosphere around me. I had never even known true, complete, unstained happiness like this and it was overwhelming. A single tear that represented all of my joy in one drop escaped my eye and slid stealthily down my cheek.

“Why are you crying?” asked Reagan, sounding momentarily worried,

“I have never been this happy,” I told her, and I wondered if perhaps the feeling was something to do with the intoxicating euphoric atmosphere that lingered after the triumphant show.

Gerard approached us at that point, and carefully wiped away the solitary tear with his thumb, “why the tears sugar?” he asked,

“Tear,” I corrected him, smiling uncontrollably at the very sight of him standing so close to me, “I am just so happy right now. My life could not get better.”

“I hope it can,” he whispered, and he pulled me into a hug so tight, he lifted me off the floor a little.

“Now Reagan,” he said in a gentlemanly manner once he set me back onto my feet, “I want to know everything that my girl has ever gotten up to at college, I don’t know how much you know but I have some catching up to do,”
I wasn’t even left alone for a second, because Billie, Mike, and Tré practically ran over to me, bestowing on me a group embrace just as they had Gerard.

“That was amazing, guys,” I congratulated them, “Truly, it was simply triumphant. You are amazing,”

They exchanged grins, “You look happy, C,” observed Billie, and I did not think that I was ever going to get over the fact that Billie Joe Armstrong had just referred to me by my most intimate nickname,

“I am,” I agreed, “this is quite possibly the best day of my life to date, I don’t know if it can ever get any better,”
“Oh I don’t know about that,” said Tré with a knowing smile,

“The night is definitely still young,” added Mike, and they exchanged significant smirks.

“Ok, what am I missing?” I asked.

Green Day definitely always had seemed to have some sort of inside knowledge or wisdom that they exploited to full effect; in fact, whenever I had spoken to them they presented a multitude of enigmas for me to chew over.

“You’ll soon see,” said Billie, and he grinned as though it couldn’t get any better, as well, “there’s definitely something about tonight,” he said,

“Why is it that you guys always seem to know something I don’t?” I asked, deciding that this would definitely be my last chance to grill them about it.

“Because...” began Billie,

“People confide in us?” suggested Mike,

“Or maybe we just know everything?” finished Tré

I rolled my eyes; I shouldn’t have expected anything concrete for a response.

“I will tell you this though,” said Billie, “there are some things that you just can’t see when you’re too close to a situation. As soon as Gerard mentioned you and what happened and how amazing and beautiful he thought you were, I could tell that he was in love with you and that he probably always would be. When I actually saw you I really began to understand why. And then, when I saw how Mikey acted around you, I could tell that he was falling for you too...what is it with you and those Ways, Connie? I swear, if you could find out your secret, bottle it, and sell it to fangirls, you would be a very, very rich woman,”

I chuckled; even though it was hard to believe that they had managed to find out all they knew only through intuition.

“And now, Connie,” continued Billie, “I can tell that Gerard is in it for keeps this time, and I’m pretty sure you are too. You are both great people, and you deserve each other.”
“Thanks, guys,” I said, because I knew the sentiment was felt by all of them.

“It has been great getting to know you on this tour,” said Tré, and from the final way he hugged me, I could tell that this was our goodbye...for now, or at least I hoped.

“I am so glad we got to meet you, and that you came,” said Mike, also embracing me like a family member, “and we will see you soon,”

“Definitely,” added Tré

“Without a doubt,” said Billie.

Hugging Billie was an odd thing, because there was a point in not too distant time, when I had considered him to be just about the hottest thing on earth.
“See you soon Connie,” he smiled, “I’m really glad we’re friends.”

I tried not to let my jaw drop at the thought that the members of Green Day actually considered me to be their friend.

“Now get over to that boy of yours!” called Tré as I walked away, over to the cluster that was my collection of best friends walking sedately back to the changing rooms,

“And good luck!” called Mike, “have a good night!”

“Why do I need luck?” I called back,
“You’ll see,” replied Billie, and they all looked similarly smug.

“Hey, Sugar,” said Gerard when I slipped my hand in his, “Nice goodbye with Green Day?” he asked,

“I love the alliteration,” I replied, “yeah, it was good,”

I reached up and brushed his untidy hair out of his eyes; it was only so crazy because he had literally leapt straight into the tiny dressing room shower straight after the set; usually everyone else would have moaned at this blatant ‘lead singer syndrome’ behaviour, but tonight nobody batted an eyelid.

“Where is everyone headed now?” I enquired. We had reached, at last, the surprisingly mild sidewalk outside. Overhead, the summer night sky was a shade of inky blue that was gorgeously clear, and even in the city you could see the odd speckle of starlight.

“Well, I have to jump on the redeye right now,” said Regan emotionally, “I’ve got to get home to the other coast, my folks are expecting me,”

I nodded sympathetically, and broke from Gerard so that I could give her a hug, “Bye Reagan,” I murmured, “have a safe trip, and call me, ok?”

“I will,” she assured me, “It was nice meeting all of you guys,”

“You should definitely come and stay this summer,” jumped in Frank quickly, “I mean, seriously, you can stay with me,”

“Looks like Frank has a little crush,” Gerard whispered in my ear. I grinned at the prospect; Reagan and Frank would be cute together.

“I am so tired,” said Sinead, “and I have to get home too,”

“I’ll come with,” said Ana, and they both wrapped me in similarly emotional goodbye hugs.

“If I don’t see you guys this summer, I’ll implode,” I told them both, “so call me, ok?”

Johnny was the next to go,

“Guys, the show was out of this world,” he said, “but I have to go and meet my beautiful boyfriend, so I guess I’ll see you when I see you,”

He hugged me tightly, “bye, sweetheart,” he whispered in my ear, “call me, ok?”

“I totally will,” I assured him, “have fun with Eric!”

He grinned at me over his shoulder, “Oh I will,” he winked suggestively.

“Lovely,” I said ironically, and then turned back to the others. Here we were, the original group. Billie was right about there being something about tonight; it was like there was magic in the air; or maybe that was just the feeling I got when Gerard’s arm was around my waist like it was.

“Shall we leave to go to the hotel that was booked?” suggested Frank, “that’s where our stuff is, so,”

It wasn’t far away, and the night was beautifully hot, so we took a slow walk there, regaling each other with memories from the tour and interpretations of the perfect night itself.

“You know what, Connie?” said Gerard, just as we reached the hotel which was a beacon of yellow lights in a relatively dark side street.

“What?” I asked, standing to face him and instinctively placing my hands on his chest.

“Why don’t we just leave now, and go straight home? I want to get back to Jersey tonight, I don’t want to wait?”

As he said the words, they sounded perfect; ‘straight home’ with Gerard sounded like the best thing possible. Of course, my definition of ‘straight home’ was ‘straight home to Gerard’s home’ because I felt at home whenever and wherever he wrapped his arms around me.

“Let’s do it,” I said.
Ray had either overheard this conversation or anticipated it, for in under a minute he had zipped away and returned, bearing half of our luggage. The other half took considerably longer to arrive, born by Mikey and Frank, who apparently were nowhere near as strong as they sometimes liked to pretend.

“I’m pretty sure the label rented us that car, in case we needed to get anywhere,” said Mikey, curiously nodding at his brother as he tossed him the keys.

“Have a good drive,” said Frank, and as he looked at me uncharacteristic tears rose up in his hazel eyes.

“What’s up, Frankie?” I asked in alarm,

“Nothing,” he said thickly, “it’s just you’re so beautiful and so grown up and...”

“Frank,” I said slowly, “we’re the same age,”

His mouth fell open slightly, “You know what I mean,” he was still slightly teary, “I’ve always looked at you as my little twin sister and now you’re-“

“Going home early?” I suggested as a possible end to that sentence. I hastily wrapped him in a hug, “I know we’ve spent every day together recently,” I told him, “but there’s no need to fret...I will see you tomorrow?”

He nodded, rubbing his nose and eyes, trying to pull himself together. “Yeah,” he answered, but his voice still sounded emotional.

To my abject shock, everyone else appeared to be displaying a similarly sappy show of emotion on their faces.

“Bye,” said Annabelle, pulling me into a tight hug. I could feel her tears dripping onto my shoulder, “I am so happy you’re finally as happy as you can be...almost,”

I didn’t bother asking her what she meant, because Frank was reaching out for another hug.

After hugging everyone else goodbye (and Frank a good few more times), Gerard and I climbed into the smart black car, and he started up the purring engine with a wide smile on his face.

“What was all that about?” I enquired, bemused, and as we drove away, they were still all stood there on the sidewalk, watching us go and waving like some bizarre farewell party, and I distinctly saw both Annabelle and Frank blowing their noses and drying their eyes on respective handkerchiefs.

“I have no idea,” smirked Gerard, but the breath he took in after that was juddery and nervous.

The homecoming drive was a fairly quiet one, because Gerard and I were used to just enjoying being in the presence of each other.

After we crossed the state line, I turned sleepily to him and asked, “if you need to switch with me, I don’t mind driving if you’re tired,”
“It’s fine,” he smiled, and we kept on driving.

From that moment on, the expanses of dark road flashed by at an unprecedented rate; soon, we were meandering through the outskirts of a town I knew very well. So well, in fact, that my stomach flipped over in excitement at the final realisation of it: we were home.

It was a surprise, however, when Gerard pulled over outside of a fairly impressive apartment building that definitely was not either of our family homes.

After he shut the engine off, and turned to look at me under the dim street-lamp light filtering through the passenger window like moonshine, I couldn’t help but ask: “Why are we here? What is this...” I trailed off,

“Well,” began Gerard, pulling the keys out of the ignition, “if you look up to that window there right on the very top floor?”

“Yeah,” I answered slowly, looking up to the sky,

“That is the apartment I put a deposit down for last week...well my mom did on my behalf, but that’s not the point,”

“Wow,” I murmured. So Gerard had gone on a detour to show me his new place.

“I’m hoping very much that you’ll live here with me,” he said so quietly that I might have dreamed it, “until you go back to college, of course, I know that you won’t want to commute for your final year,”

I was shocked, and I shook my head vehemently just to make sure that I was still awake and lucid, “You want me to live here with you?” I checked, just looking for confirmation,

“Yes,” said Gerard slowly, “I definitely do...will you?”

“Yes,” I answered, because nothing had ever felt so right to me, in my whole life. Excitement exploded in the pit of my stomach, mingling with the butterflies that were always present whenever Gerard was around.

He smiled openly, and I would have been hard pressed to think of a time when his grin had been wider.

“That makes me so happy, Connie,” he said, but he didn’t need to, because every emotion was in full display on his perfect face. He was no longer a closed book to me now, he had opened himself up, to love and to me, and nothing could ever ruin what we had.

“This is why you wanted to come back tonight,” I stated, finally realising the significance of everything...although everyone crying as they said goodbye remained a perplexing mystery.

I had to agree, that the introduction to our new shared home was destined to be a whole lot more magical by night than by day.

“In a way,” said Gerard and he shot me a crooked smile, with just a hint of nervousness. What did he have to be nervous about?”

“Ready to spend our first night in our new, ever so slightly unfurnished apartment?” he asked,

“Absolutely,” I answered; I had been wrong about my happiness earlier, it had just expanded.

“Can you do me a favour?” he asked, as we both climbed out of the car.

“Anything,” I grinned. I meant it, I would do anything for that remarkable man who stood in front of me, love etched in his every feature.

“Could you just grab the majority of this luggage?” he asked, and I knew that my face visibly fell.

The ‘majority’ of the luggage was too much even for three men to carry! Although, of course, Frank and Mikey were varying levels of weak.

“Um...ok,” I said, confused once again.

“Brilliant,” Gerard seemed nervous again, almost distracted, as he very carefully spent 30 seconds selecting a particular bag of his, and then grabbed another for good measure.

“See you up there,” he said cheerfully as he headed towards the door, “it’s apartment 20 on the top floor, I’ll leave the door open for you,”

I muttered darkly under my breath as I carefully unloaded each of my three mammoth suitcases and Gerard’s small remaining one out of the car, realising that I was probably going to have to make two trips.

I dumped two suitcases in the entrance hall of the building, and picked up the other two; as I headed for the elevator, however, I was met with imminent dismay. There was a hastily scrawled, untidily proper up note against the shiny silver double doors with messy, almost illegible writing that said ‘out of order.’

“Great, just great,” I hissed to myself, “I have to walk up the stairs – to the very top”

It seemed almost as great as scaling Everest to me, walking up those hefty stairs. It was with a great sigh of relief that I dumped the two pink cases that belonged to me outside apartment 20’s door. Despite my mild annoyance at Gerard for leaving me to deal with most of the luggage by myself, especially when he must have known that the elevator was out of order, I couldn’t help but feel a very real pang of excitement when I looked at what was about to become my front door; mine and Gerard’s own first front door. I made a mental note to take a picture of it in the morning light, and then skipped down the stairs as fast as I could to retrieve the final lot of luggage, my largest, heaviest suitcase (I could hear the heels of some of my shoes knocking against the side) and Gerard’s smallest one.

By the time I got to the top, I felt like over an hour had past. A quick check of my watch, however, told me that it was only 115; I had taken 15 minutes.

I pushed open the apartment 20 door, which was slightly ajar, and shuffled the cases in, forcing them across the wooden panelled floor with my knees. Once I was in, I saw that Gerard had definitely not been joking about the unfurnished part; there was a single futon couch in the corner of what was clearly the spacious main living area, complete with a small set of spiral stairs that I was sure led to a roof terrace. The kitchen area, that was situated towards the back of the large open plan living space, had room for a table and chairs, although there was also a breakfast bar, complete with two high stools that reminded me of a coffee shop I liked to write my essays in in New York City. Everything seemed strangely new, and clean.

“Gerard?” I called out softly, “I love it...where are you?”

There were three doors leading off of the main room. I briskly crossed the room and opened the first one, on my right hand side, and inside I saw that the room was averagely sized bordering on small, and totally void of Gerard; the second bedroom.

Through the door in the middle, I could work out the vague shadowy shapes of a shower, bath, and basin.

“I’m guessing you’re in here then,” I said quietly, moving to push open the door to what I knew would be the master bedroom. I sort of hoped that there would be a bed in there.

What I saw was much better.

It seemed that every inch of the wooden floor was scattered with deep red rose petals, creating a beautiful pattern across the floor that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. The room was dimly illuminated by candles that were placed in the corners of the room, and on the window sills; in the dark and flickering light, the red of the rose petals almost looked close to black. It suited Gerard perfectly.

“This is perfect, Gee,” I gushed, realising that tears of sheer appreciation and delight were welling up in my eyes. I couldn’t believe the lengths he had gone to to make our first night in our new home as romantic as possible.

“But where are you?” I called out.

The door opposite me, which I soon realised was a walk-in wardrobe, opened and Gerard came out, grinning all over his amazingly beautiful face.

“Why did you do this?” I asked, “It’s amazing,”

“This moment is...everything,” he murmured, “look down,”

I looked down, and saw nothing but a mass of rose petals at my feet. And then I noticed a rose petal that was a lot darker and less red than the rest, with squared off edges. In fact, it looked like a little black velvet box more than anything else. I bent down to pick it up, and it was only when I straightened up again, holding it in my hand that I realised that Gerard had dropped from my eye line; he was now kneeling on one knee on the floor.

My heart rose to my throat and stopped.

“Open it,” he said, and I recognised a catch in his voice that told me he was about to cry. Sure enough, he had tears in his eyes.

I did as he asked, and there, nestling in a silken black lining, was the white gold, sparkling diamond ring I had always dreamed of receiving. Even in my dreams, the moment was not as perfect as this.

“Gerard,” I choked out, tears now freely falling down my face; the emotion in the room was so fervent that it was overpowering me.

“Constance Mance,” he said, clearly bent on doing this properly,

“Gerard Way,” I replied, and I dropped to my knees; I couldn’t bear not to be on his level, close to him.

He stayed on the one knee and he kept my hand held tightly in his.

“You are the one,” he said, his voice shaking and a rare tear escaped his eye, “you are the love of my life and now that I have you back again, I am never, ever going to let you get away. So I’m asking you to do me the honour, someday at least, of being my wife...”

I gasped, simply because his words were so beautiful. My hand that was holding the ring shook, causing the diamond to cast brilliant shapes across the ceiling.

“Y-yes,” I sobbed, trying to wipe away some of my happy tears with one hand, “of course,”

I had been wrong about Gerard’s smile too; it could get wider, and as he slipped the band onto my ring finger he kissed me so passionately that I never wanted him to stop.

“I know that we’re still young,” he said seriously, holding both of my hands and keeping our foreheads leaning against each other’s, “so we don’t have to actually get married yet...but I wanted to make that commitment...we will, one day, hopefully not too far in the future,”
“Shh,” I murmured. We did not need explanations to ruin the beautiful moment.

“That will go down in history,” I told him, “as one of the most romantic proposals of all time,”

“I try,” he said modestly, and pulled me to lay down with him on the rose-petal strewn floor.

“Damn,” he said, “I thought that the rose petals might make it at least a bit more comfortable,”

I giggled a little and nestled into his shoulder, inhaling his scent deeply and marvelling at the fact that I would be doing that every single day for the rest of my life.

“This is it, isn’t it,” I said, and there were no words on earth that could express adequately how deliriously ecstatic I felt to be there with him – my fiancé.

“What?” asked Gerard, turning onto his side to face me.

“The end,” I clarified, “the end of heartbreak,”

“It sure is, Sugar,” grinned Gerard in response, “it’s just you and me ‘til the end of the line now,”

And then he kissed me, he kissed me like he never had done before; or maybe it had just never had the same special significance until now.

The end of heartbreak, the start of us for real. Everything could be perfect now.