Sunrise, Don't Set.

He didn’t have to tell me that.

That feeling comes and goes like the rising and setting of the sun. At first, like the sun, that feeling rises and shines gloriously – that feeling would consume you and your every thought. And then that feeling grows more intense as times goes by, much like the sun. It would be scorching hot by one o’clock PM; just like that feeling would intensify – if that feeling were still there. And then, also similar to the sun, that feeling would set. That feeling would pass. That feeling could be there one day and be gone in a matter of hours, just like the sun. The sun sets beautifully and silently; so quiet that it’s quite easy to miss, really. Next thing you know, there’s a black blanket coating the sky. That feeling would be like that, just like all other feelings at one point or another. It would fade, that feeling – it would fade almost as unnoticeably as the setting of the sun, unless you pepper the exit of that feeling with denial, then it wouldn’t really be silent, would it?

He didn’t have to tell me that. He didn’t have to tell me about that feeling he has for me. That feeling would come and pass.

Just wait for that feeling to pass, Peter. Just wait. He’ll get over it.

But what if I don’t want him to get over that feeling? What if I want that feeling to stay forever?

Shut up, Peter. Shut up.

He’s messing with my head.

***

“Hey, Pete,” Patrick greets cheerily. It’s been a whole week since we’ve last seen each other, one whole week since he’s told me about that feeling. He’s looking at me intently, I can tell. I can feel his eyes boring holes into my forehead. I’m careful to avoid eye contact. Looking into his eyes could make the walls I built around myself self-destruct.

“Hey,” I say, keeping my eyes on my bass guitar. “How’s it going,” I mumble, chewing on my bottom lip. I did mean for it to sound like a declarative sentence rather than a question. Maybe he’d see my reluctance for conversation if he noticed the deliberate replacement of a question mark with a period. It’s supposed to sound uninviting.

He didn’t get the point.

“Good, actually.” He purses his lips, but I only see that from the corner of my eye. I’m looking over his shoulder, pretending I’m doing something only bassists do. “I’m excited for the new record.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “How have you been?”

“Fine,” I mumble much too quickly, but in a tone of finality. I need to end the conversation now.

At least he got it. “Oh, okay,” he says softly, almost breathless. “I’ll talk to you later. You seem busy,” he mumbles sadly. Disappointment colors his voice and I try not to wince knowing that I had caused it. He gets up from the amplifier he had been sitting on and I am left to stare at his shadow as if it would restore the friendship we had before things got awkward.

I know we can’t ever have that friendship ever again.

***

It’s after midnight – at least that’s what the clock says. I went to bed at eleven yet I still haven’t gotten even just a wink of sleep. Literally.

Joe is sleeping on the bed next to mine. The hotel room stays quiet and my eyes stay glued to the ceiling, my hands folded over my tummy. Lying in bed awake is something I am quite used to.

Joe stirs in his sleep, his eyebrows furrowing. I let my head tilt to the left so I could turn the bedside lamp on and look at him properly. His eyebrows furrow again.

“Joe?” I hear my voice say dryly. When you haven’t used your voice in several hours, your throat tends to feel tight and dry and your voice becomes hoarse and rough.

Joe’s eyes flutter open. He yawns; scratches his knee; and yawns again. He looks at me with questioning eyes. “Why are you still up?” he asks sleepily.

“Can’t sleep,” I reply stiffly. I keep my eyes on the ceiling. “Bad dream?” I turn my head to look at him again.

He nods. His eyes are distant; his face is thoughtful. He was trying to catch a dream, I was sure of it. Suddenly his face brightens up with realization but darkens again. “Our band broke up,” he says quietly.

My forehead crumples as my eyebrows furrow. “I don’t remember our band breaking up in the studio a while–”

“No, no,” he interrupts sharply. “Not in real life. My dream.”

I nod. “Do you remember why?”

He purses his lips. “You got into a huge fight with Patrick.”

My eyes instantly dart to the ceiling at the mention of Patrick’s name.

Silence. Joe turns the bedside lamp off.

“Joe?”

“Hmm?” comes his mumbled reply.

“How hard is it to tell someone ‘I love you, too’?” I ask.

He flicks the lamp on again. He leans on his elbow and looks at me inquisitively. “It depends if you truly do love that person,” he says in a curious tone.

I nod. “Does that mean that if you don’t really love the guy, it would be hard for you to say, ‘I love you, too’?”

He ponders on that for a minute. “Probably. Or maybe it’s just something else entirely that’s stopping you,” he says slowly.

Like the thought of a huge possible fight between me and Patrick resulting in the band’s break up.

“Shall we speak hypothetically?” Joe offers.

I shake my head. “No, no. I get it now, thanks.”

He nods and turns the light out again. I put the covers over myself and let a million peaceful thoughts fly in my mind. Sleep at last…

“Pete?” Joe whispers in the darkness.

My eyes fly open. I roll to my side to see Joe better. As if on queue, the moonlight sheds a spotlight on Joe’s face. It’s a dazzling scene, really. A natural spotlight.

“Yeah?” I whisper.

He smiles slightly, half his grin hiding in the darkness and the other half illuminated by the moonlight. “It’s not that hard to love Patrick, you know.”

He turns to face the wall, leaving me drowning in thoughts again. Not dreamy reveries that send you to sleep but troublesome thoughts that keep you awake.

I spend the night with eyes wide open and the same thoughts running on repeat in my mind.

***

The clock boasts nine o’clock AM. My body disagrees; says it’s past nine AM and well into the eleven o’clock PM time frame. Twenty-four hours awake does a lot of things to the way you think. In this situation, my lack of sleep only distorted my internal body clock even further. Time is always a debatable subject for me. It could whatever time it feels like; it could be whatever you want it to be.

My head drops to the table surface. The table is cold, but my body isn’t functioning properly therefore I cannot react to the temperature. Fuck the temperature. I just want my sleep.

Patrick returns to the table, two coffees in hand. For several seconds, he just stands there, looking at me in the weirdest way imaginable.

“He didn’t get much sleep,” Joe says, stuffing a sandwich into his mouth.

He nods understandingly and takes the seat diagonally across mine. He puts my cup of coffee in front of me.

“Thanks,” I mumble. I get up from the table reluctantly and I lean on my left elbow. I use the stirrer to distract myself by stirring my coffee. I let the smell of coffee waft in my nostrils.

“So what are we doing today?” Andy asks.

“Tracks three and five, I think,” Joe replies.

“And vocals for the seventh,” Patrick adds.

I sip from my coffee as I sit back and listen to them talk about the record. Mostly the conversation is composed of Joe talking about the second track, Andy elaborating on the eleventh track and Patrick praising Ryan Ross for the solo in the second track.

I let my eyes wander around the room. My eyes then rest on Patrick Stump. He looks back at me. He smiles.

My walls self-destruct.

***

After a long day in the studio, we find ourselves back in a coffeehouse. Andy and Joe had called it a night, so now it was just me and Patrick.

With our coffee in hand, we sit on a table located on the far end of Seattle’s Best. We sit across each other and say nothing for several minutes.

“This is awkward, isn’t it?” Patrick says quietly.

I look up at him. I nod. “Yeah, kinda. But I’m dealing.”

His eyebrows rise. “You’re dealing?”

I nod slowly, reluctantly. Had I said the wrong thing?

He blinks behind his glasses and leans his back on the backrest of his chair, appalled. “Wow,” he says flatly.

I could only look at him.

“You’re dealing,” he says. “And what about me?”

I stare back at him, surprised. My eyes widen.

“You think I haven’t been dealing with the fact that my best friend hasn’t been talking to me properly for the past couple days?” he spits, his eyes two spheres of molten anger.

I could only wordlessly stare back. My gaze drops to the floor.

“Pete…” he starts. I look up at him slightly, but I leave my head bowed. He shakes his head with a look of disgust written clearly across his face. My eyes lower to the ground again, almost as if I was apologizing to him. He scoffs and gets up from his chair. He quickly walks to the door without a glance back at me.

After a couple seconds (my brain is malfunctioning; everything is happening in slow motion.), I finally get up from my chair and have enough sense to chase Patrick.

Through the glass door, I see him in the open parking lot, leaning on a light post, his head bowed. The bright white light looks like a stage light focused on Patrick. He looks like an angel basking in the overflowing, glorious light of heaven. But he’s crying.

I swiftly walk to him. I put a hand on his shoulder gingerly. He shrugs it off quickly, a sob ripping from his lips. “Go away please,” he chokes out, backing away, looking at me with accusing eyes and tear-stricken cheeks. He walks and walks and he keeps walking. I don’t think he has an exact place to go––I think he just wants to keep walking; like he could walk his problems out.

“Patrick,” I lowly mumble to myself. A strange wave of various emotions washes over my body the very second I say his name. His name triggers a dozen different reactions in me. Suddenly I feel awakened. Suddenly I feel awake. Suddenly everything is rewound to the first day I met Patrick. The young Patrick and young Pete that I see before my eyes are smiling at each other.

The young Patrick says, “We’re friends now, right?” His voice is high-pitched and his question hangs in the air, resounding in the silence. I look at my young self and young Pete is only smiling with bright, gleaming eyes.

Every happening between Patrick and I since that day to this date replayed in my head, a million scenes per second. It’s like I’m drowning in the ocean––some feelings deeper than the others but all suffocating me. The scenes in my head are accelerating, leaving behind a trail of a throbbing migraine and dizziness beyond any jet lag, any lack of sleep, any stupor can cause. Now the scene revolves around me and Patrick again. Patrick is still walking away, and I am still standing on the same spot. Reality slaps me hard in the face as I realize that it isn’t Patrick that is the problem.

It’s me.

My legs automatically start walking in Patrick’s direction, speed continuing to build up. Finally I’m behind Patrick, an arm’s length away. I grab his arm urgently and he spins to face me.

“Pete, just stop, okay?” he says, tears still flowing down his face. “This is so hard already; you don’t have to make it harder. Do you think it’s easy for me to think back to the times when we could talk without our conversations being awkward? Do you think it’s easy for me to be madly in love with someone who doesn’t love me back? Do you think I don’t think about the risk this is putting our band in?” His questions slip from his mouth like silk could slip through my fingers. “I know it’s hard for you to accept your best friend loves you,” he says through violent sobs, “and I can understand why. I’m sorry if I’m making things hard for you; I’m sorry if you can’t cope. I’m sorry that I can’t be the one for you and I’m equally sorry for trying to be. I’m sorry I’m trying to make you love me. I’m sorry things can’t ever be normal between us again. I’m sorry I can’t understand why you don’t love me too. I’m sorry I don’t stop trying. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” His sobs increase in violence. His tears could create a pool we’d both drown in if the ground hadn’t soaked his sadness. His sobs grow quiet in the tune of decrescendo as his gaze falls to the floor. The tone of his voice is considerably softer and his voice turns tender. “I’m sorry I fell in love you with you, Pete,” he whispers.

I wrap my arms around his shaking shoulders. He sobs into my chest. For a moment, we’re both silent. He’s crying and I’m rubbing circles on his back with my thumb. This feels so natural. Even the way tears are trickling down my cheek feels right.

“I know you won’t love me,” he whispers against my chest. “But that doesn't change anything. I love you very, very much. Still.”

A minute or two passes wasted in silence. I’m still rubbing circles on his back with my thumb, but his crying has almost stopped now: only a couple barely audible sobs here and there.

“I love you, too, Pat.”

He looks up at me through glassy eyes and smiles. I smile back at him. His crying stops now altogether and he leans on my chest, content. He breaths out through a smile, relieved.

“Finally.”