And She Made the Shape of My Heart With Her Hands

“Hey, this is Pat and you’re watching another one of our summer tour updates. In fact, it’s going to be one of the last ones, because tonight’s our second to last show, which is in Providence, Rhode Island.”

I looked up from my phone and the stupid little game I was barely playing on it. Pat’s brown chocolate drop eyes flickered over to me as we both exchanged a sweet smile to the other.

I listened in as Pat explained briefly what we were doing, which mostly included hanging out and somewhat preparing for the show later on. Of course the update would be nothing without Pat doing or saying something completely stupid yet hysterical. He caught a couple band members walking by, whether it was from my brother’s band or another’s, and he chatted randomly with them while still recording.

“And then- Oh!” Pat paused and turned the camera around to film Jared. “It’s Jared! Yay! Here Jared, have fun,” he said while passing the camera to his light redheaded friend.

“Uh… Hey. This is Jared, obviously.” Jared chuckled a little and started talking, eventually walking over to Kennedy to film with.

“Hey,” Pat said sitting down next to me, getting my attention.

I tore my eyes away from Jared and Kennedy and smiled sweetly at Pat. “Hi.”

“Um, well… I was… thinking… and… uh…” Pat sighed and then looked me straight as he said, “I wondering if I should maybe mention something about you and I.”

I furrowed my brow a little and opened my mouth a little to ask something, but Pat stopped me.

“I mean in the video,” he responded as his eyes flashed towards Jared and Kennedy conversing goofily with each other.

“Oh…” I licked my lips quickly and squinted my eyes just a little. “Um… Should we? I mean… Like I don’t want to be a big deal here or anything,” I admitted.

Pat let out a little laugh. “A big deal? Cara, you’re Garrett’s sister and now you’re my girlfriend. It’s like you’ve got a double relation with The Maine now or something, you know?” He chuckled a little and I smiled slightly. “And plus, the video’s supposed to be an update and I don’t remember if you and I were dating when the last video was made,” he mentioned.

“Well, okay,” I said softly. I added a small smile to Pat.

“Okay! Uh, now I think I’m going to turn it back over there to Pat and Cara,” Jared said, turning the camera’s view over to film Pat and I sitting on a set of brown steps.

Suddenly Kennedy popped up in front of camera. “And for those of you that don’t know this already, Cara’s Garrett’s sister. She and Pat are,” Kennedy finished the sentence with a wink and a small click noise with his tongue.

My eyes widened only a little as I noticed that Pat, too, was slightly frozen.

“Heh. Sorry, guys,” Kennedy apologized.

“Uh, it’s okay,” Pat replied with slightly a croak in his voice.

“Um, yeah,” I responded as I swallowed the nervous lump rising in my throat.

“Hi again,” Pat greeted as he took the camera in his hands once again. “So… yeah. This is Cara Nickelsen.”

I froze up as the camera’s little recording eye caught on film every little movement and sound I made. I waved with my fingers using my decent hand. “Hey,” I said softly.

“Great job, Kennedy! You made her all nervous and stuff!” Jared comically scolded.

I started to go red in the face a little as I smiled sheepishly at the camera. “Uh, yeah. I don’t really have anything to say except that you all should go watch or listen to The Maine. They’re, uh… fly? Pimp?” I giggled a little. “I don’t know. Just check them out and tell your friends,” I added a bit hastily.

Pat, Jared, and Kennedy all chuckled. “Alright, well we have to get going now, so we’ll catch you later.” Pat shut the camera off as the plastic eyelid of the overused gadget closed up. “Well that was fun,” Pat said to me with a cute smile plastered upon his lovely face.

“Is the van unlocked?”

“No,” John answered me, still typing away at the laptop.

I sat there silently, expecting John to give me the keys or tell me where they were. After a few moments of just staring at him expectantly, I sighed, the annoyance seeping through.

He slowly turned his head and met my eyes. “What?” He dumbly asked.

“Um,” An annoyed yet still amused smile crept up on my face, “the keys, John?” He just looked at me. I furrowed my brow a little when he didn’t respond with anything. “Where are they?”

He blinked and, without looking away from my face, pulled the dull silver keys from his pocket. John’s long arm reached up to me, the keys making metallic clinks and clonks against each other as they dangled in the air.

I reached my broken arm towards him and grabbed the keys from his fingers, the purple plastered cast grazing John’s hand. With the keys still clutched, I stared at the boy in front of me skeptically. “What was that about?”

“What are you talking, Cara?”

I relaxed my face and sighed. “Ugh. Nothing, I suppose. I guess it’s just you being… you.”

He chuckled amusedly. “Sure.” And with that, he continued typing and I was left to wander off to the van to retrieve my ‘purse’.

I walked casually through the dimly lit corridors and eventually met a white welcoming door that led outside. I pushed on it, still moving along with the door. I squinted my eyes and scrunched up my face a little as the sunlight hit my face harshly and my pupils contracted to small. When the brief blackness and spots of various colors evaporated from my eyes, I started walking again.

I soon advanced a group of boys joking around with each other. Amongst them were my brother, Jared, Trevor, John Keffe from Boys Like Girls, and some other guys I wasn’t sure who were. They were probably with one of the other bands as crew set up, merchandise handlers, or just simply friends.

As I was just about to walk by the group, I heard one of the unfamiliar voices say to the others, “Hey, look. It’s a girl. She’s cu-”

“Dude, that’s Garrett’s sister. Just stop,” Jared informed the bunch, mainly the strangers though. “She’s taken anyhow.”

“Yeah. You don’t want to mess with her, man. Garrett beat the shit out of Paul when he was about to-”

Before the drummer of Boys Like Girls, John, could finish or before Garrett could open his mouth, I let out a small laugh as I advanced the group.

“Speaking of the devil,” John muttered with yet a friendly smile.

I giggled lightly. “Shut up. That’s totally not true about Paul and my brother,” I informed the unfamiliar faces.

“Yeah, it is! Paul and Garrett were going at it when poor Cara here tried to break it up,” John falsely explained while moving his eyes to my cast. “You can obviously see what happened to her.”

Those of us that did truly know what happened, Jared, Garrett, Trevor, and I, let out a couple laughs each.

“No. That’s definitely not true.” I put my uninjured hand on my hip. “I fell backwards while Paul happened to be there with me. Garrett thought something incorrect and snapped at him, but nothing violent happened,” I corrected John with a small smirk his way.

“Yeah, but you have to admit,” Jared started, “Any longer without saying anything, and I could see Garrett getting nasty.”

“Wow. You’re very overprotective of your sister,” one guy informed with short black hair and a face that looked like it needed to be shaved soon.

“Humph,” Garrett grunted.

“Yes! Yes, he is!” I chirped happily while flinging my arms around his neck and letting myself hang from him. “He’s just modest, right, Garrett?”

“Uh…” He said while trying to balance himself and not let me fall. “I guess so,” he admitted.

“Aw!”

With my cry of joy, my brother nicely dropped me back to the earth without another word.

“Gravity, Garrett. Gravity,” I informed him with a small glare as I fixed my teal shirt.

“Yeah, yeah. Where were you going?”

I held up the van’s keys in front of my brother’s face. “So nosey,” I muttered as I turned on my heel and headed towards the van once again.

Once I had made it back from the van and managed to have a short conversation about the paranormal with Jared, people had started to arrive for the show, for it was to start in nearly two to three hours.

Yes, around three hours fans were arriving as excited as ever. It’s called dedication, not stalking.

Soon enough, those three hours whizzed passed, because The Maine was just about to get on stage and bring joy to all those overexcited teenagers.

Once those first steps were taken onto the stage, the audience went wild. Absolutely insane with screams. It was great. After waving to the fans and mumbling a couple greetings through the microphone, the music started up.

John flipped some of his caramel locks from his eyes as he grabbed a hold of the microphone and began to sing, “She's eighteen and a beauty queen
She makes the boys feel so weak
It's all for her, or none at all
She'll pick you up just to watch you fall.”

John kept singing as the crowd reached up to him from the floor, just begging and pleading for him to reach his hand out to just maybe touch their skin if they were lucky enough.

I knew that I, just standing here watching them all play, was excited and I could feel the energy. But could you imagine what they all felt playing up there on stage in front of all those people? I couldn’t imagine the adrenaline rush that they were experiencing at the moment. It must be amazing…

Maybe it could be compared to something like… Like kissing somebody.

I then tried to imagine the times Pat and I kissed after his shows and such. It wasn’t hard to remember. Not at all. I remembered those feelings I felt pouring through my body, dancing in my toes, and running up and down my spine swiftly.

Wow.

Suddenly I remembered the kiss where my back was up against hard metal, the van. I was outside and it was dark. It was after a show, of course. I remember I felt like a person that was dieting and just then happened to be eating a big chocolate chip cookie. It was like a cat being told not to tear up the carpet, yet there I was digging my claws through the material. Perhaps I could even go as far as describing it as a consistent smoker finally getting a hint of nicotine after a long day.

That kiss was not shared with Pat.

My eyes flickered back up to John as he kept singing out to the crowd, out to the sky and the clouds it held. I then rapidly shook my head and focused on the show, and not anything else.