Hurricane

"I'm not going to lie to you, I'm having a hard time caring about Shannon's whereabouts right now, Jay," I said once I was in Jared's car with him. I hadn't even bothered to change back out of the sweatpants that I'd put on as soon as I'd gotten home.

"You're full of shit," he responded coolly, and he was right. If I hadn't cared I wouldn't have come and we both knew it.

"Where are we even going?" I asked, and Jared shrugged lightly.

"Shannon's old hangouts. I'm sure he's told you, but before you came along, Shannon was much more of a party guy," Jared said, and I nodded. He had told me. I hadn't really thought anything of it. We'd had all of those discussions. I knew he'd been a pretty heavy drinker on and off. I knew he hadn't made all of the best decisions. I even knew that a big part of the reason that Jared had even started the band was to try to help Shannon get back on his feet. It was kind of just a coincidence that things ended up going as well as they did.

"You're really concerned about him, aren't you?" I asked, really realizing it for the first time.

"Yeah," he replied shortly, and we rode the rest of the way to the small bar in silence.

I didn't recognize the bar we pulled up to. It was on a side of town that I rarely ventured to. As we stepped out of the car, Jared eyed me carefully.

"You have a fake I.D., right?" he asked, and I nodded. "Good. Listen, I need you to stay behind me, okay? Last fucking thing I need right now is you getting eaten alive in there while Shannon is still nowhere to be found," he said in a more serious tone than I'd ever heard him use. "I don't know how familiar you are with the bars down here, but they're not like the clubs uptown. They're full of dirty old men who would love the chance to take advantage of a pretty young thing like you," he said, and I was fully aware that he was treating me a little bit like a child. Usually I would've been offended, but right then I couldn't help but be little appreciative. "Anyone asks, we're together, okay? Hold my hand, make it convincing," he said, reaching for my hand. I couldn't do anything more than nod. Suddenly, I was terrified. Seeing my normally easygoing and playful best friend this serious was majorly throwing me off, and making me suddenly much more scared about where Shannon could be.

As soon as we crossed over the threshold into the bar, I knew why Jared had been so cautious. The second the door closed behind us, there were catcalls and literal shouts of the phrase 'fresh meat'. Jared led me to the bar, where he seemed to know the bartender. There was a short conversation before he confirmed that he hadn't seen Shannon.

We visited three more places with the same results. Jared was getting obviously annoyed and I was getting more and more scared by the second. After one last place where no one had seen Shannon, we went back to Shan and I's apartment to see if maybe he'd turned up there. He hadn't, but there was a message on the answering machine.

"Evie. Evie, Evie, Evie. I'm so fucking... fucking sorry."

"Fuck," I whispered, tears rising in my eyes.

"He doesn't sound good. We have to find him," Jared said, heaving a heavy sigh, I guessed to steady himself.

"Where else is there to look?" I asked, and he sighed heavily again.

"I honestly have no idea."

He called their mom and other friends of Shannon's while I called the few friends whose numbers I had. We both came up empty. By this point, it was coming up on four in the morning and Jared suggested we try to sleep; it wasn't going to do anyone any good if the two of us were so burnt out that we couldn't even think. He took the couch and I settled into Shannon and I's bed.

I'd been laying there for about three hours completely sleepless when the phone began to ring. I jumped out of bed and ran into the office to pick it up. Jared was there beside me in seconds.

It was the local hospital. The nurse informed me that Shannon had been in a bar fight, gotten his nose broken and a gash in his eyebrow that required two stitches, and then jumped off the bar and broken his arm. He had then had to have his stomach pumped because they were afraid he might have had alcohol poisoning. He had technically been arrested, but since he had injuries and needed to spend the night in the hospital, the bar had dropped the charges. He'd gotten lucky this time, she told me. She also said that I could come pick him up whenever I was ready, he was just a little groggy from the stomach pump and had a massive hangover. Apparently he was screaming my name and demanding to see me and threatening to light the hospital on fire. They'd had to strap him to the bed until a family member came to sign his release. I relayed everything to Jared and I could instantly see the anger rising inside him.

"Fucking idiot!" he yelled, and I nodded. I went back to the bedroom to change my clothes, and then Jared and I got back into my car and headed to the hospital. I could hear Shannon from down the hallway. We rushed to his room and he silenced himself as soon as he saw me.

"Eves," he said quietly, pulling hard at his wrist restraints with his good arm.

"Hi, Shan," I said, trying to keep my distance. He didn't look good. His face was pale and there were deep purple bags under each of his eyes. There was a bandage over his eyebrow and his nose was swollen up to about twice it's size. His arm hung limply in a cast at his side.

Despite my deep instinct to run to him and baby him, I was also still so unbelievably mad at him so I hovered near the door. Jared crossed into the room and looked him over. The exchanged a brief hello and a few words, but the whole time Shannon's eyes were locked onto me. It was clear that he could see that I was still mad. Jared left the room a few moments later to sign the required paperwork, and I almost went with him, but Shannon called me back into the room.

"I'm sorry," he said simply, and I could tell there was a lump in his throat.

"Me too," I said, and he shook his head very slightly.

"You've nothing to be sorry for."

"I know. I'm sorry that you're such an ass," I said, with much more venom in my words than I'd intended there to be. The words made him physically flinch, and seemed to stop him from saying anything else.

Jared came back a minute later with a nurse to take off Shannon's restraints. We exited the hospital silently, and rode the whole way home that way too. I wasn't trying to be cold to him, but I genuinely wasn't sure what to say. I was still so mad at him for the accusations he'd made the day before, and now I was even more mad that he'd reacted the way he had. Jared asked me if I needed him to stay, and I told him he could go, he needed sleep. He left the apartment silently, and then Shannon and I just sat on the couch for a long time doing everything we could not to look each other in the eye. I didn't know what to say and it was obvious that he didn't either. I didn't know where we went from there.