"Love is Like A Glass Door..."

Time is slipping, and I’m frightened
It’s chasing me for days
My heartstrings are now twofold tightened
A puppet in your play

***

As we retreated backstage, the wordless sound of our fans screaming their approval chased after us in booming waves. As soon as we reached the lounge backstage, Joe whisked a bottle of water from a table nearby and swiftly opened it, splashing some on his face before drinking it. We were all exhausted after using up one-hundred percent of our energy to give the best performance possible. Tonight, in Stockholm, we’d given our last concert in Europe. Tomorrow, we were flying back to our estate in California- which I never considered as home- to celebrate Nick’s nineteenth birthday.

Promptly, we sagged down into individual armchairs with flushed faces. Nick took a moment to check his glucose level, and Joe doused his hair with the rest of the remaining water he had. I looked around us; a month ago, Penn Sutherland had interviewed us in a room similar to this one. I smiled to myself, remembering how rude her questions had been. I’d never thought we’d see her again, until Nick stayed behind, and before we could even move on to the next concert, the two were mooning over each other.

And then there was Connor.

There was this sudden burning sensation of butterflies beating against my stomach, and I could feel my face burn even more just from the thought of his name. By now, I’ve fully accepted my indisputable crush on him; now I’m just scared that no one else will- including Connor.

I rise from my seat, drained in more than one ways. At least my physical tiredness had made other people happy, and was productive. The constant emotional clawing at my heart was neither. I muttered to my brothers, “I’ll be in my dressing room,” and they waved and distractedly said goodbye. We were all absorbed in our own private thoughts, and I was the only one that vaguely noticed.

I wandered for a few minutes down the hallways until I came across the door with my name taped on it. Knowing it was unlocked I didn’t bother searching my pockets for a key, and slipped inside. After finding the lights, I plucked myself down on the vanity mirror seat. My reflection confronted me as I stared at the mirror, and after a few seconds I looked away from the flushed face and its endless questions, ashamed that I couldn’t answer myself.

Why doesn’t Connor want to talk to me? Where is he? What did I do? What did I say? Did something-? No. I could bear to think of anything happening to him, especially during this breach between us. Nothing happened, I tried to assure myself, but I wasn’t entirely convinced.

Something happened, my reflection retorted. And then it asked about the elephant in the room that trumpeting siren alarms in my head. Oh, my God, I almost forgot about Danielle.

***

It was then that night that I took a long, hard look at myself, figuratively and literally. Danielle meant the world to me; every time she smiled, I felt like nothing could hurt me. Every time she smiled at me, I felt like the funniest, most interesting person in the world.

But Connor McPhearson could do all of that and more.

My feelings played out in front of me like the two lines in a song that dances behind my conscious.

When I'm with you I feel like I could die
And that would be all right

With him, I could die and not even notice. With the way he laughed at our private jokes, it was impossible to die. And when he almost kissed me, I was ready to die. The thing is, back when it happened, I thought I would die from mortification, but now that I look back at my naivety, I realized it was secretly just bliss from the heady way he made me feel. I was ready to die and float up to a lustful heaven, despite the blasphemy.

And, when I was hurt, Connor was the only person in the damn world that could do anything about it. Thoughts about our single childhood summer spent together reverberated in my head. I knew from them that, without a doubt, that this was true. And now that he was gone, I could feel myself hurting all over.

But, so help me God, I’m not letting him go.

As soon as that plane touches down on American soil tomorrow night, I will be doing everything in my utmost power to get back to him, to tell him how I feel. All I can do now is cross my fingers, drown myself in emotional dramatics, and hope that I don’t chase him away. Calling doesn’t work anymore; it just pricks another hole in my heart to know that he wouldn’t pick up and lull me with that quirky but somehow thoughtful voice of his. I missed his voice. It was also tonight that I realized how much I’d taken granted for, and how much I was infatuated with him.

I don’t know how long I spent in there, alone with my reflection, confronting, plotting, and waiting. Fear and anticipation laced together and coddled inside my butterfly-infested stomach. It never left me as the time wore away to nothing. It never left me even when I left the room, following my brothers to the tour bus.

It only intensified when I felt the first tears I would shed for that boy begin to glide silently down my cheek as I stared out at the Stockholm night sky.

***

My thoughts couldn’t let me be.

Insomnia didn’t offer me any sleep, so I lied there in the darkness, staring at the bunk above me. I was afraid of turning the lights on -or getting out of bed, for that matter- in case it might break my halfway awake, halfway asleep spell. My mind lingered in the darkness, upwelling all sorts of thoughts and ideas that I wouldn’t remember in the morning. Nearly all of them revolved around Connor, and some about Danielle. I thought that thinking about him would lull me to sleep. At first, I thought about the jokes we made or about casual memories that only a person with a full-on crush would bother to remember. But then- somewhere around almost two in the morning, maybe- my mind started slipping and a hazy mist clouded it. My thoughts were haphazard and none made sense. It wasn’t long until I found myself imagining the way his lips would feel pressed against me. From what I remembered, they looked soft and inviting, almost seducing. I could feel that familiar rush of heat stabbing at the pit of my stomach, and I savored it as much as I cringed from it. Hours stretched by, and my mind still continued to wander in the vast and muddled bank of my thoughts. Every time they would carry me away to a lazy confusion, I would discover something new.

Not least of which was the realization that I’d already felt his lips before.
I jolted completely awake in the fumbling darkness, my halfway-awake, halfway-asleep spell shattered.

***

Nick.

It was three forty-one in the morning, and I was packing. My mind was buzzing with excitement to the point that I couldn’t even bother to go to sleep. Nights like these, I give up and stay awake, doing whatever to at least make it useful.

I was turning nineteen, and we were heading back home. I would get to see my friends- I would get to see Penn. I had so many things to look forward that I was counting the seconds while packing like I was preparing for the end of the world.

By almost five in the morning, I slip back into my bunk, making sure not to wake up the others. I couldn’t help but smile in the fumbling darkness, a sleepy happiness wrapping around me like my blanket.

Seamlessly, I floated off to sleep.

Joe.

I hadn’t gone to sleep at all. Anxiety was the strongest kind of stimulant I had ever experienced. My eyes were wide in the dark, and it wasn’t long until they adjusted to the dimness and could pick out the outlines of my sleeping brothers.

Well, Nick was sleeping, but I could definitely tell that Kevin wasn’t. His breathing was uneven and he shifted in his bunk more than he would regularly.

Finally, I hesitantly whispered out, “Kevin?”

There was a stirring. “Yeah?” His voice was clear and somber.

Not sure of what to say, I simply turned around to stare above me and said, “Never mind. I was just checking.”

I listened to the sound of his duvet crawling off the floor. “I can’t sleep,” my older brother admitted.

“Me neither.”

There was another uncertain pause before I thought of something and asked, “Kevin?”

He turned in his bunk, and our eyes connected. I looked away awkwardly. “Yes?”

I closed my eyes before taking a deep breath. I needed to ask this right, but I was temporarily tongue-tied. No, it was more than that; I was scared. Of what, I didn’t know, but I was also afraid that I would find out. A person’s conscious can be a nasty thing.

Eventually, I gathered up the courage and asked the fatal words. “Kevin, d-do you like- do you have, um, feelings for Connor?” Words flew from my mouth like a water spout. “I-I mean, it’s okay if you do since you-you’re my brother and all and it’s cool either way.”

The silence seemed endless in the dark.

After some time, I was sure that he was either completely shocked, completely disgusted, or completely asleep. It was a little bit more time before I could find my voice again and dare to ask, “W-well…Do you? Kevin?” There was a hair’s breadth of a pause before my brother, Paul Kevin Jonas, responded in an unrecognizably small voice:

“I-I think I do.”