Vegas Boys

Banner by Jon Walker (lawlz). <3

My heartbeat thundered in my ears, crying out in denial--but the rest of me was completely still and quiet, awaiting the blow. "You're...you're leaving?" I repeated stupidly.

His expression melted into one of heartwrenching sympathy, and he shifted closer to me. I could tell he was trying to let me down easy as he said carefully, "Yeah. I'm going to Maryland, to record with the band. Kels--Kels, we got signed."

Through all the sadness in his face, a glimmer of hopeful excitement endured as he revealed this last part to me.

"You--you got signed?" All I could do was repeat his words, the words I couldn't comprehend. I knew I was gaping at him and that my shock hurt him, that he wanted me to be happy for him--that I should have been happy for him--but I just wasn't capable of it. "But what did you--why didn't--I mean--when?" I finally managed coherantly.

What little smile there had been in his face faded, and he looked away again to hide the shame in his eyes, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. "A couple of weeks ago," he mumbled reluctantly. "Right before I moved out. I told my parents I was going to record an album instead of going to college, and they kicked me out."

I just sat and stared at him until his ashamed gaze met my hurt one.

"And you kept this from me?"

Brendon lowered his eyes a little.

"That's what it was about, wasn't it?" I realized suddenly. "The fight with Spencer..."

He looked away again, guilty.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered, unable to mask the pain in my voice.

"I didn't know how." He was hoarse, remorseful. He was sorry. It was too late.

"Just like you'd tell me anything else," I said accusingly. "It's not like I wouldn't understand, Brendon. It's not like I wouldn't be happy for you."

Slowly, he turned to look at me again, with these pleading eyes that broke my heart and almost made me forget that I was the victim here. "I know. I know you would, Kels. I was just...afraid. And I shouldn't have let you stay. But I didn't want to give you up so soon." He seemed to suddenly remember something important--his whole face lit up and he gushed desperately, "We still have time, Kels. We're not leaving until after we graduate--we still have time...."

I quickly calculated the time left before graduation: less than six months. I felt like a cancer patient being diagnosed. Six months to live...

My eyes stung with tears, and I blinked them away angrily. "I don't understand--" A few tears escaped anyway, and I reached up and wiped them away gruffly. "I don't understand how this even happened. Who signed you?"

All the color drained out of his face, and he stared down at the bedspread, where he was picking at a loose seam again. "It's a long story," he said wearily, "but basically, Ryan put some of our songs up on the internet, and...well... Pete Wentz heard them, and he--"

"Pete Wentz?!"

Dark eyes never leaving the comforter, he nodded glumly.

"The Pete Wentz?! Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy?!"

He still wouldn't look at me; he sighed and said, almost bitterly, annoyed now, "Yes, Kelsey, the Pete Wentz. He liked our songs so he came out here and we played a few for him, and he signed us to his label."

I didn't say anything as I struggled to process what he was saying to me. Pete Wentz? Pete Wentz had heard Panic!? And liked them?

Pete Wentz... I was losing my boyfriend to Pete Wentz. How strange all of this was.

Brendon took my silence to mean the worst, and finally, he looked up at me again, a pleading in his eyes as he studied my face for my reaction. "Kels?" he murmured, so quietly that I barely heard.

I bit my lip and thought hard. I just couldn't get past that one tiny detail.

"Pete Wentz was at your house?" I asked incredulously.

Brendon was sheepish. "Well...Ryan's house, actually."

"And you kept this from me how?" My cold, sarcastic tone hardly disguised the hurt and sadness underneath.

He gave me that careful little smile, the one he always used on me when he was about to tell a joke he knew I wouldn't like--amused, but silently asking for mercy. "With lots of hard work and determination?"

I got up out of bed and turned my back on him as I started pulling on my clothes as quickly as possible.

"Kels..." I heard the rustling of sheets as Brendon untangled himself from the covers and got out of bed as well. "Kelsey, please--"

"No," I said simply as I zipped my pants up.

"Kelsey--" He touched my bare shoulder, but I shrugged him off as I sifted through the pile of clothes on the floor for my shirt. "I didn't mean to hurt you, I just wanted to wait until the right time--"

"Oh, okay, I see," I snarled viciously, whirling around to face him with my shirt bunched up in my fist like a dangerous weapon. "You just wanted to get in my pants first!"

His face reddened--not with embarrassment, but with anger. "Yeah, because I was the one begging--"

"You were acting! You had me right where you wanted me!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Kelsey!" he shouted--his voice was louder and clearer than any I had ever heard before, and it filled the small space of the apartment and seemed to shake the very walls. "You're the one who pounced on me before we even got through the door! You're the one who practically dragged me into bed with you! You're the one who needed me--"

"Yeah, well, you sure as hell didn't put up much of a fight!" I yelled right back. I wasn't being fair, and I knew it--but I was hurt, and I had to take it out on someone. "You didn't stop me--"

"I tried."

I just stood there and glared at him for a moment. Then I yanked my shirt on over my head and grabbed my purse off the bedside table and stalked out of the apartment without saying another word.

I was so stupid. Mom had been right all along: I had let myself trust Brendon, against her advice, and he had hurt me, just as she had said he would. I had let him in, and he had wrecked me. She wanted to take me back home with her, and I had said no, that I wanted to stay here, with him...but he wasn't staying. He was leaving me. Just like everyone always did.

He was just like Mom and all the other selfish people in my life. He wanted me to be his girlfriend when it was convenient for him. It was fine for me to fill up his empty weekend hours, but there was a whole wide world out there, and he had been offered something better. He was leaving me.

I felt so dirty and used. I slept with him. I gave myself to him. How could I have been so stupid?

After fighting him for so long, my worst fears had finally come true.

These angry, painful thoughts plagued me all the way down to the parking lot, and my thoughts were racing almost beyond comprehension and my heart was pumping twice its normal speed by the time I found my usual parking space empty. I had completely forgotten that Brendon had driven me to his apartment in his car last night: my car was still at home.

This was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I burst into tears, bawling hysterically and shouting incoherant profanities at myself out loud. Brendon's car--that stupid goddamn car that I had wasted so much of my life in, oblivious--was right there in front of me, and I kicked it in a rage. I was so frustrated. Why did I ever come here? Why didn't I go home last night? Why did I have sex with him? Why didn't I listen to Mom all those times she warned me about Vegas boys?

I heard footsteps behind me, and I stopped crying long enough to see Brendon coming towards me with a grim look on his face. As he saw me there, falling to pieces in the parking lot, his face was screwed up with some painful expression, and he choked out, "Kelsey..."

I wiped my eyes hurriedly, determined not to let him see me hurting any more.

"Please don't cry..." he whispered.

All of a sudden, his arms were around me, and I pushed him off hysterically. "Don't touch me!" I screamed, and I couldn't help it, the tears were streaming down my face again. "Don't you ever touch me again!"

He winced visibly, his brown eyes deep and pleading. I could see that I was breaking his heart, but I didn't care, because he had broken mine first. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed--he was trying not to cry--and then said quietly, "C'mon...I'll take you home."

I didn't want to go anywhere with him--I never wanted to so much as think about him ever again--but I didn't really have a choice but to get in the car with him. I fought hard to keep from crying as I put on my seatbelt. I stared out the window with purpose, determined not to look at him.

Brendon was completely silent all the way out to my house. He could have disappeared off the face of the earth entirely and I wouldn't have known the difference until the unmanned car wrecked in a ditch somewhere.

As the car came to a stop in the street out in front of my house, he spoke for the first time. "Kels?" he said softly, his voice breaking.

I ignored him at first, but it was clear that he wasn't going to go on until I acknowledged him, so I finally said, "Yes?"

I forced myself to look at him, and my heart gave a little jolt of mingled shock and horror and sadness: his eyes were red-rimmed and watery, his lips twisted into something between a frown and a grimace, and his whole face was blotchy and red. I had never seen him cry before.

He took a deep, quivering breath to compose himself and then said, with a calm poise that didn't match the devastated look on his face, "You said...you said earlier that you had something to tell me. Do I ever get to know what it was?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, sorry," I snapped bitterly, all the pity I'd felt for him draining away to be replaced with angry resentment and self-loathing. I opened the car door and got out, sticking my head back in through the door to snarl, "I guess I just forgot to mention it: I love you."

I slammed the car door in his face and stalked up the front walk to my house before I could see his reaction to that.

-----

Dad was waiting for me inside, no doubt intending to give me hell for not coming home last night. But he must have seen the anger and hurt in my eyes, besides the tears, because he stepped aside and let me hurry upstairs without mentioning it to me. It was probably for the best--I would have just cried harder and raged at him about how I had given myself to the only person I'd ever truly loved just to be thrown away. He didn't need to hear about how I'd been used and abused and abandoned again.

I stomped upstairs to my room and slammed the door behind me. The roses Brendon had given me for our one-month anniversary were still in a vase on a table by the window that used to face his window, when he still lived at home, and I wasted no time in crossing the room and hurling them at the wall. The vase shattered, and water went everywhere, the slightly wilted roses lying among the shards of glass on the floor.

Dad heard the crash and yelled, "Kelsey?" up the stairs. I stumbled over to the door and opened it wide enough to shout that I was fine. I closed the door again and collapsed into a heap on the floor, my back pressed against the closed door. It wasn't until I went to push some hair out of my eyes and found that my face was all wet that I realized I was sobbing hysterically.

A rose floated in the puddle of spilled water, flanked by huge pieces of sharp glass on either side. It was dried up and brown, and the impact had knocked most of its petals off. It lay unmoving on the floor with its lost petals all around it--broken and deflowered and alone, just like me.