Status: This story is the sequel to Washed Out Rock Song and is currently active.

Washed up Rockstar

Chapter Five.

“Remember when we drove to the border,” I was laughing as I spoke, “And Garrett forgot his passport so we had to come all the way back?”

“We were so pissed at him,” John laughed. “And Pat made Garrett pay him back for all of the gas because of it.”

I started laughing even harder. I felt my eyes start to water up and my stomach was aching from laughing for the past half hour.

We sat on the bed of John’s truck passing a champagne bottle back and forth, reminiscing. Except we were doing way more talking than actually drinking and the champagne bottle was still close to full. We each sat on a side of the truck facing each other. John’s legs sat underneath him in a pretzel style position and my legs laid straight in it front of me, almost touching the other side.

John’s laughing slowed to a stop before he spoke again. “Remember when we climbed the fence to the school pool?”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking back to that night. We got drunk and jumped in the pool in our underwear until security chased us out. “That was a good night.”

“It was,” John agreed. “We had a lot of great nights back then, didn’t we?”

I nodded and sighed, looking down at my dress. “Yeah we did.”

We were silent for a minute, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence this time. It was nice.

“Leah,” John finally said. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I looked up at him.

He sighed. “For how things ended.”

I thought back to the night John and I broke up. I felt my stomach in knots just thinking about it. But he wasn’t the one that did anything wrong. I told him to leave, I’m the one that pushed him away.

I bit my lip. “That was a long time ago.”

He nodded slowly, looking up at the sky. “It was. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it sometimes.”

I was glad he was admitting to thinking about it, because I thought about it too. Not all the time, just every now and then. Running into him the other day was the first time I had even talked to him since that night, if I wanted some closure it would have to be now.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, looking at my hands clutched around the heavy bottle. “That night. I’m the one that made you leave.”

He shook his head. “But I left. I could have tried harder, and I just left.”

It was clear that John had beat himself up about this before. He was always the one trying so hard to make our relationship work and when it didn’t he blamed himself, when he should have been blaming me.

“It wasn’t your fault,” John said.

I shrugged. “Let’s just agree to disagree.”

Neither of us said anything else about it. The nice silence was gone and I was back to feeling uneasy sitting next to him.

“When do you leave?” John asked.

I took a drink from the champagne bottle. The wedding champagne was starting to warm up now after being out in the nights warm air for too long. “Tomorrow,” I answered.

John nodded. “Let’s do it again,” he said, looking at me.

“Do what again?”

“Let’s go swimming.” I watched a smile grow on his face, it was like the short conversation about our break up didn’t happen at all.

“Yeah right,” I laughed. “Like right now?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Right now. I’m dead serious. Kira is at least half drunk right now and Kennedy could care less if I’m here anymore. He’s just happy I showed up.” He smirked. "Let’s go.”

I didn’t say anything. I bit my lip again. I didn’t do this type of stuff anymore, I grew up. But the same time I kind of missed it, being a reckless teenager.

“Come on, Leah,” he said, trying to convince me. He stood up and held out his hand to help me up.

“Fine,” I sighed and grabbed his hand.