Chapter 12
TWELVE
“What the fuck was that?” I snap, holding my hand to my hurt eye.
Fuck, she got me good.
If I wasn’t so annoyed, I’d be impressed.
“ That ,” Markus says with an infuriating grin, “was karma, my friend.” Adam sniggers and walks back towards his room.
“Where are you going?” I yell after him. “If we’re all up, we might as well go get some time in the studio or the gym.”
“You promised extra resting time, Drill Sargent. I plan on resting.” Adam rolls his eyes while flipping me off over his shoulder.
His attitude since Melody came back has been really fucking annoying. Up until yesterday, Adam agreed with nearly everything I said or did. Melody comes back into the picture, and suddenly he forgets everything we’ve worked for? I call bullshit.
I tighten my grip on the sheets around my waist, suddenly aware that I’m naked in the hallway. “Wait, guys,” I call, running my free hand through my hair.
Adam stalls, and Markus looks at me with reserved interest, huffing, “What?”
“Can we talk?” I need to explain. I know they’re both pissed off about the roofie. I know they want to know what the plan is. But I can’t… How do I… We all just need to get back on the same page.
“What is there to talk about, Reis?” Adam snaps.
“We found the girl we’ve all been head-over-heels for again after six years, and learned some really interesting shit.
Like how instead of telling her why we left, we just up and left her.
Didn’t fucking know that. Did you?” Adam turns and snaps at Markus, who puts both hands up and shakes his head.
“‘ I told her we had to go. I explained. She didn’t care. ’ Those were your words, no?
” His anger is aimed directly at me now.
I hang my head in frustration and sorrow. He caught me there. I did say that when we were on the way to Tulsa for the bus. Adam had looked at me so full of hope that she might show up and stop us. I couldn’t dash his hopes. I lied to them all and said I’d clued Melody into the fact we were leaving.
I said what I needed in order to get them here. To get us here.
“Damn it,” I mutter under my breath. “Did she tell you?”
“Did she tell me?” Adam asks frustratedly. “She didn’t have to tell me. I heard the fucking pain in her voice when she accused Markus and I of abandoning her.”
“How could you do that to her, Reis? To us?” Markus rubs his temple and closes his eyes.
“You didn’t hear what she said! How many times do we have to fucking go over this?” I explode at them in anger. They stay silent, but the looks on their faces tell me that I’ve lost them. Sighing, I run my hand through my hair again. “You didn’t hear how…fucking awful she talked about us.”
“Was she just talking shit to talk shit? Or was there something deeper going on?” Markus clarifies.
“Does it matter?” I scoff.
“Actually, you stupid prick, it very much does.” Adam clenches his fists at his sides. “You told us what she said, but why did she say that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t really care. I didn’t think you guys would either, seeing as she said that we were nothing to her, after years of daily hangs and the bond we’d built.”
“I swear to fuck,” Adam says softly, looking up at the ceiling and shakes his head.
“Reis…” Markus crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head. “You’re typically a smart guy. How did you not think to dig deeper into this?”
“Or did she really not mean anything to you?” Adam adds on gruffly.
“Shut up, Adam. You know how I feel–felt–” I add quickly after I realize what I’d said. “ Felt about her.”
“You say you felt something, that you trusted her, but then you overheard one thing from her defending herself from a catty, jealous girl, and took it as gospel. Not only that, but then you manipulated us to believe she truly didn’t care about us.
We moved hours away from her because we trusted you.
How fucking stupid are we?” Adam snaps. He strides closer to me, pointing an angry finger at me.
His eyes are so full of fire and disgust, pointed directly at me, that I feel myself shrink back.
“You can’t blame all that shit on me!” I slap his hand away from me. I’m going to deny, deny, deny. But, I can’t ignore that his words have given me some kind of pause. A small, nagging feeling in my chest that makes me question everything.
“I can and I will.” Adam stands up straighter.
“I can blame you for all of the bullshit that went down. I can blame you for manipulating us and using our trust against us. I can blame you for all the pain I’ve gone through.
But I can’t blame you for my own actions.
I should’ve gone to Mel and asked her myself.
I should’ve asked more questions and I didn’t.
” His head drops and the sadness is clear in his voice.
“That’s something that I’m always going to have to live with.
That I was too much of a pussy to actually fight for who I love.
That won’t happen again, you can mark my words. ”
Adam turns and stomps off, not stopping until he slams his bedroom door like an angsty teenager.
“That’s not on me,” I argue defensively, shrugging my shoulders.
My skin feels too tight. A bead of sweat starts to run down my forehead even though I’m not wearing clothes. I swallow the lump in my throat that’s making me feel like I’m going to throw up.
“Are you sure about that?” Markus asks, narrowing his eyes.
“So you agree with Adam?” I snarl angrily. Great; just what I fucking need. Can no one see my side? Can no one see what I’ve done for us all?
Markus nods. “I do.”
“Fuck you.”
Markus shrugs, unbothered by my anger. He steps closer to me and his stare pierces me. I know that whatever he’s going to say next is going to fuck me up.
“You realize that not only have you potentially wasted six years of happiness, while working towards the fame and wealth we have today, but you’ve completely broken us all apart.
You screwed us all over because of the insecurity of an eighteen-year-old, who didn’t want to have an awkward conversation and had severe possessive tendencies.
” Markus shakes his head, dropping his arms before stepping closer.
“You know, we all trusted you completely; Melody did, too. I have no idea how you’re going to fix this, but I suggest you do it fast.”
Markus turns and walks to his own room, shutting the door quietly. He didn’t even look back as he walked off. Just dropped the mic like he didn’t just piss me off, break my confidence, and make me feel like I’m going to die from guilt all in the same moment.
“You both don’t know anything!” I yell down the hallway. Stomping to my room, I take the sheets from around my waist and throw them on the bed. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep now. My heart’s beating so hard; my senses are all on high alert because I’m fuming with anger.
“Great, just…fucking great,” I mumble. If I can’t rest, I guess I’ll go to the gym.
Pulling on clean gym clothes, I’m grumbling the whole time.
They don’t know. They’re just fucking blinded by her, and think that she can do no wrong.
My mind plays her words over and over, the tone of her voice in my memory having changed through the years. The whole memory is so tainted with my embarrassment and hurt that I don’t really know how she truly sounded anymore.
Did she sound scared? Was she short? Did her voice shake? I can’t remember.
The shirt slides over my head before I run my hands through my hair, taming the dark locks.
Heading into the bathroom, I brush my teeth.
Looking at myself in the mirror as I brush, I’m shocked with a few things.
One, how fucking strong Melody is because my eye is already dark.
That hit was perfect, and two punches in less than twenty-four hours was bound to leave a mark.
Touching the bruised skin, I smile softly. She marked me .
Granted, the mark was in anger. But for the next few days, I’ll look at my face and think of her.
Of how she came into my room with the anger of a million fighters and decked me.
Of how her lip curled as she told me off.
Of how her eyes flared with anger, and for a millisecond, drifted over my body like she might be interested.
I won’t lie and say that I didn’t check her out either.
It’s crazy how much I seem to have aged in the last six years. I barely resemble the guy that convinced his best friends to leave in the middle of the night with him to New York City with nothing but a broken heart and a dream.
There are wrinkles on my forehead that are starting to stay, little crows’ feet around my eyes, and dark circles that never seem to go away.
My face has chisled down, the subtle softness gone from years of anxiety, stress, late nights, too much caffeine, working so fucking hard just to survive, and then hope to thrive .
I’ve given everything I have to this band, to my brothers.
All for them to turn on me and scream that I’ve fucked them over while everything I’ve ever done has been for them .
Splashing my face with cool water, I try to keep the memories at bay. The good times with Melody. The secret moments I was able to steal with her while the others were distracted; the small touches, the lingering looks which made me think she might actually like me.
“No! She said we were nothing. She was just using us,” I tell myself, but I don’t quite believe it anymore.
‘One, two, three,’ I count, pushing the bar up over and over to work my chest and arms. I have the weights heavy enough so I can push the bar quickly, but not so heavy that I struggle. That’s the next set.
I reach ten and push the bar up onto the holder, sitting up for a rest period before I add more weight.
Do they not trust me anymore? After all we’ve gone through together? I think, pushing myself up to add another plate on both sides of the bar.