Back Into Your Arms

We went back to the hotel to shower and get ready.

I waited for Mel to finish getting ready. Scrolling casually through my Twitter replies. I always read every single one of them, though I never replied to them.
Mel came out of the bathroom, looking more glammed up than I had ever seen her before.

“Do me a favor and zip my dress up, I can’t do it” she complained as she made her way over to me. I nodded in agreement.

I was about to zip the dress up when I noticed she had scars on her back. Scars that looked like they must have been terrible wounds back in their days.

“What’s wrong?” she asked me as she waited for me to zip up the dress.

“I’m sorry” I whispered as I quickly zipped the dress up.

She turned around confused. She then realized what I had just seen.

“You saw the scars”

“Yeah”

“They’re all over my body, so if you can’t handle them-” she was beginning to argue, probably feeling insecure but I stopped her.

“I don’t care about the scars, I- I just never got to see you after the accident, I never saw the damage it had done to you, my mind was never able to fully register the seriousness of the accident until right now, the scars are deep, you could have died”

I felt nauseous just thinking about it, imaging Mel at the young age of 17 going on 18, in a coffin. That could have been her story, but thankfully, it wasn’t.

She gave me a sad smile as she embraced me tightly. Her head to my chest, her arms tightly around me.

“So, you really don’t care about the scars?” she whispered. I couldn’t help but laugh a little at her worry. Why would the scars matter to me?

“I have a secret to confess”

She pulled back and looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

“Secret?” she squeaked.

“I have four fake teeth, I knocked them out when I was drunk back in the days of my youth”

“No way, four?”

“Four”

“Goodness John, how drunk did you get?”

“Drunk enough that I hardly felt it, so what do you say, will you still accept ME in despite of my fake teeth?” I asked her flashing her a smile.

She laughed.

“Scars and fake teeth, goodness we are something else, we are broken people, but I guess I’ll have to take you as you are my dear”

“I certainly don’t care about your scars my lady, shall we go? The rest are probably waiting for us”

She smiled and nodded. We went downstairs to the lobby, thinking everyone would be there already but sure enough we were the first one’s there.

I had been wanting to talk to her about Kristina, but the timing just never felt right. Why bring up my wicked ex, there was no point, surely Kristina didn’t know about Mel yet. So, I decided to just leave it for another time. We were going to sit down and wait but there was a piano in the lobby and that caught our attention.

I gave her a look and she understood. We made our way to it. I took a seat and she sat next to me. I began to play Into Your Arms.

I saw Garrett approaching us confused as to why I was playing on a lobby piano.
It was then that the security guard approached us.

“That sounded great, would love to keep hearing more but I need to keep this job, so I unfortunately need to ask you to stop playing”

I nodded.

“Thanks man, you can actually listen to our music on Spotify, wouldn’t want you to lose your job”

“Spotify eh? Are you like in a band?”

“Sure are, we are a band called The Maine” I heard Pat answer. I looked over and Pat had arrived.

“Nice, I’ll check it out, are you guys from Maine?”

“Nah, we’re from Arizona”

The guy looked confused but nodded.
We laughed as we made our way out of the hotel.