Walls

After a long day of moving and packing, Alex and I were sitting in the middle of my now empty apartment eating Ramen out of plastic cups; Jack had left a while ago when Matt had called him, but Alex had insisted that he stayed until sound check in an hour despite my wishes to be alone.

Despite me very obviously brushing off personal questions all day, Alex kept prying. Well, prying wasn’t the word. He didn’t seem to want to force the answers out of me, but he was very insistent to know answers at the same time.

I guess it made sense; the questions he would ask were simple, non-prying, ‘get to know you because we’ll be spending the next few months together’ questions; yet I would avoid and dodge them to the best of my ability. I couldn’t even explain to myself why.

Maybe it was because I had spent the past eight months literally doing nothing but work, sleep, eat if I was lucky, and repeat. It was an endless cycle, one that involved a lot of solitude which I had loved since the cycle began. Maybe it was because I’d lost the one person closest to me and I still felt as if it was my fault because I was off with him when she was dying and I had failed to protect either one of us. Maybe it was because I had literally lost every single person I loved as a direct result of that event and it was all my fault. Maybe it was a mixture of everything.

“Let’s play twenty questions!” Alex interrupted my thoughts and I realized that I had probably been completely zoned out for a while now. “I’ll go first!” Alex exclaimed, not even giving me the slightest chance to deflect his question. “Favorite color.”

Looking down, at the solo cup filled with ramen in my hand, I brought my chopsticks to my mouth and chewed slowly, buying time for myself.

Swallowing, I answered, “Jade.”

It was probably the worlds simplest question and even that made me anxious.

“Mine’s green, your turn.” He replied, smirking as he shoveled another chopstick full of ramen into his mouth.

“Uhh,” I thought out loud before coming up with an equally simple question. “Hometown.”

“Baltimore.”

“Mine’s Wilmington, North Carolina.” I said, looking down into my cup again.

“Favorite song?”

“Hm, that’s a tie between Shrink the World by Yellowcard and Futures by Jimmy Eat World.” I replied without hesitation.

“No way, mine’s Futures too!” He exclaimed so excitedly that I couldn’t help but laugh at him. I was becoming increasingly more comfortable around him for reasons that I didn’t know. But what I did know is that the more questions that were asked, the more comfortable I was answering them; which was a big step for me.

“I like your laugh. I don’t think I’ve heard a genuine laugh from you yet,” Alex said in complete seriousness.

“I sound like a cackling witch. You should get your hearing checked.” I replied, smirking in his direction before awkwardly coughing and continuing on the previous game. “Favorite thing to do?”

“Being on stage is my favorite thing in the world. How about you?”

“Crazy nights with my sister,” I answered without hesitation.

“Really? You don’t seem like much of a partier.” Alex responded, a quizzical look upon his face.

“I used to be,” Was my reply, my heartbeat speeding up at the sudden personal information that was being shared.

“What changed?” He inquired, setting his solo cup and chopsticks on the floor and placing his elbows on his knees, staring directly at me.

“Everything,” I answered, feeling my cheeks heat up under his gaze, not used to having so much attention on me. “Your turn,” I whispered.

“What were you running from the day yesterday when you ran into me?” He asked, his eyes still drilling a hole into mine.

Freezing, my eyes got wide as my brain raced to find a way to deflect this question.

“Uh, I think it’s time to leave for sound check,” I said, standing up and turning my back on Alex as I walked over to the trash bag by the door and throwing my cup and chopsticks away. I stood by the door waiting for Alex, praying he wouldn’t bring the question up again.

“I’ll get you suitcases if you go hail a taxi,” Alex said quietly, obviously noting my harsh reaction to his question.

I turned around confused, “Why? I thought we weren’t leaving until tomorrow,”

“We aren’t, but considering you have no furniture, I though you could spend the night at the hotel and go ahead and get all your stuff set up on the bus,” He trailed off.

“I’ll be fine here for one night, Alex.” I said, honestly just wanting one more night completely to myself.

“You don’t have a bed or any food,” Alex pressed on.

“In case you didn’t see when we emptied out the refrigerator, all I had before was ketchup, it’s not that big of a difference.” I said, crossing my arms over my chest stubbornly.

“All your blankets are in storage and the heats turned off. Not to mention that fact that there’s nowhere to even lie down except for hard wood floors.”

“I’ll manage?” I said, my statement coming out as more of a statement as I began to realize that he was right.

“Exactly. Now I’ll take the suitcases, you go get a taxi,” Alex said, smirking.

Rolling my eyes, I walked over to the counter and placed my keys in the center before turning around and grabbing one of my suitcases, sticking my tongue out at Alex as I passed him.

Once situated in the taxi, Alex turned to face me. “I’m sorry if that question earlier freaked you out. I’m just a curious person.”

“It’s fine, I just don’t want to talk about it,” I replied, my eyes intently watching the busy streets of lower Manhattan as I avoided looking at Alex.

“I can understand that; just know that I’m here if you ever need to talk about anything at all.”

“I probably won’t, but thanks.” I gave him a tight lipped smile before reaching into my pocket for the money; but Alex beat me to it.

“It’s on me,” He said smiling before getting out of the taxi and popping open the trunk.

Rolling my eyes, I followed his lead by getting out of the car and grabbing a hold of the suitcase he had already placed on the ground.

“The tour bus is around back, but you need the passcode, so just wait for me,”

“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”

“Good,” He said.

When he got my other two suitcases out, I followed him into the building.

When we had somehow managed to get through the building, out the back, and to the busses, I had counted myself lucky that we hadn’t run into anybody yet. What I hadn’t accounted for everyone there was to run into being on the bus.

When Alex finished putting two of my suitcases in the undercarriage of the bus, he grabbed the last one with my essentials from my hand and motioned for me to follow him onto the bus.

When I stepped on the bus, there was no one in the front area with the two couches, television, table, and little kitchenette area. Looking around, this bus was nicer than my apartment.

“Well, this is the front lounge slash kitchen. The door over there is the bathroom. No pooping allowed and five minute hot showers tops; bus rules.” Alex informed me before he began to lead the way to the bunk area of the bus.

The bunk area had three rows of two bunk on either side and as we passed them, Alex would point and say a name.

“Flyzik. Colussy. Zack. Jeff. Grieco. Our random shit bunk. Danny. Nano. Zack. Rian. Vinny. Your bunk.” He pointed to a top bunk and I internally groaned. “Jack. Me” He said as he pointed to the bunk directly across from mine.

“Sorry, newbie’s get the top bunks. And I get one because I was late to bus call for the fourth tour in a row and this was my punishment.” He said with a laugh. “We can put the stuff in your suitcases in the storage in the back lounge. Trust me, you won’t want all of your stuff with you in your bunk. I tried that once as a protest to Jack always stealing my things. Oh, and remember to label your toothbrush.”

I watched him nod to himself as if reassuring himself that he didn’t forget anything. I, on the other hand, was trying to swallow all of the new information being thrown at me without becoming too overwhelmed. I took a moment to process everything, took a deep breath, threw on a smile, and met Alex’s eyes before speaking.

“Well, to the back lounge then.”

“To the back lounge!” He yelled before trudging forward.

I followed him meekly as my ears registered all the noise coming from the lounge as we approached the door.

When Alex threw open the door, I saw all ten guys laughing and drinking and just being crazy.

What had I gotten myself into?

Notes