No Pads… No Helmets… Just Memories!

The rest of the night slipped from my fingertips with ease as I effortlessly fell asleep curled into Alex's side. That next morning Alex had been up for an hour at least just looking down at my sleeping form as I was miles away in land less harsh than the real world. The heat radiating off of his bare chest seeped through the fingers that still sat on his ribs from when I had been aimlessly tracing circles on the exposed skin. His arm was still carelessly slung around me as he lightly ghosted the pads of his calloused fingers over a smaller bruise on my upper thigh. His other hand occasionally finding its way to brush fallen strands of hair off my face or to lightly caress my swollen cheek. The same position I was sound asleep in when Zack entered the room that morning.

"Hey Alex have yo-"

"Shh!" Alex hushed pressing a finger to his lips quickly hushing his friend so not to wake my slumbering form.

"Whoa... Uhm Alex...?" Zack tested with an aware tone.

"Yeah?" Alex whispered leaning his head forward to examine if my features had faltered since Zack had entered.

"You might want to put some cloths on before anyone else gets here..." The bassist spun his index finger in a circular motion to the scattered articles of clothing strewn across the floor before bending down to throw Alex his shirt.

"Actually she was wearing the shorts... Just the shirt is mine-"

"LA LA LA LA UGH!" Zack puffed uncovering his ears, "I don't wanna know the details!" He whined.

"Dude!" Alex huffed before hushing himself as I tossed lightly in my sleep-burrowing deeper into Alex's side- "we didn't do anything..." He continued in a whisper, "She had a bad dream! We’re barley even friends again."

Zack looked down at my peaceful face as I slept. My features were soft and calm, almost as if when I was dreaming the pain of the world couldn’t touch me. I wish my features always looked as pure and wholesome as they did when I slept, in a way that if you didn't know a thing about me you wouldn’t suggest anything were at all wrong, a quality a conscious me never quit possessed.

"Wake her up..." Zack sighed looking down at the plastic white toes of his converse.

"Why?" Alex quipped in a protective tone as his grip tightened on my sides causing me to whimper in a now lightened sleep, "This is the first peaceful sleep she’s gotten in the three nights of her being here!"

"She’s going to wanna be awake when Rian gets back..." He warned leaning in the door frame, a look of guilt fluttering over his serious features.

"From where..." Alex asked guardedly as I slowly began to rejoin the real world, still not aware of the discussion occurring right in front of me.

"The airport..." Zack sighed avoiding his friend’s eyes as if he were telling me myself by the scared expression that overcame Alex's features. His grip tightening around my bruised waist protectively bringing me to a sharp awakening. Alex's face draining of color as I groaned his name trying to sit up. "Marc and I will be downstairs when you guys are ready..." Zack sighed as my eyes began to adjust to the light seeping through his windows.

"What’s he on about?" I grumbled rubbing my eyes as I rolled onto my back, my shoulders still pressed to the base of Alex's ribs.

"We have to join him and Marc downstairs soon..." Alex chuckled brushing my hair from my eyes to assist me.

"Marc is here?" I sheepishly smiled.

"Yeah he’s down stairs!" Alex laughed looking down at me.

"MARCY!" I dragged with a sleepy slur as I moved to crawl over Alex but he caught my hips.

"Hold up eager beaver!" He chuckled sitting up and pulling me into his lap. I looked up at him as he took the opportunity to tug his shirt back over his head. My eyes fell back down at our conjoined laps, my knees on either side of his hips as I sat more so on his thighs. "Can I ask you something?" Alex nearly whispered as his tone caught my ear bringing my eyes back to meet his sleep depend orbs.

"You’re going to no matter what I say anyway..." I shrug awkwardly trying to make the most of his uneven tone.

"I’m being serious Jase..." He sighed tugging down on the shirt covering my body so my lower half was less exposed.

"So was I..." I quipped biting my lip, not really liking where this conversation was going already.

"What are you going to tell your parents?" He whispered as if half hoping I wouldn't hear him. The question catching me off guard. The past three days I was oblivious to the fact my dad and Julie had yet to return from there business trip in Cincinnati-which I would later find to be due to the snow-but had rejected any thought as to how or what I would tell them that had popped into my head. I chewed on my lip as I fiddled with the collar of Alex's shirt. A mixture of stalling and thinking was stirring itself into a messy stew of confusion as it boiled in my brain. "Jasey...?" Alex called lightly as his hand lifted to encase mine in his to halt my method of stalling.

"Nothing." I answered flatly as my blue eyes remained trained to my lap.

"What?"

"You heard me..." I spoke up though my tone shocked me as it came out no louder than a whisper, my eyes gliding up to lock on Alex's confused brown ones, "I won’t tell them anything."

"Then how are you supposed to explain your face...?" Alex motioned lightly to the discoloration that blotched my warm completion.

"I tell them I fell..." I whispered shrugging lightly, "clumsy me I guess!" I rolled, scratching at the back of my neck.

"Pretty hard fall don't you think...?" He pleaded with me, sending his most sympathetic eyes which only made me more annoyed at the discussion.

I simply narrowed my eyes at him as I pulled my hand from his and away from his chest. "They don't need to know anything." I coldly spat.

"Jase-"

"No Alex!" I snapped smacking his hand away as he moved to cup my jaw and splitting his sentence, "I don't want to tell them."

"They have to find out somehow..."

"Well fuck Alex, how exactly do you suggest I do just that?" I yelled sarcastically. "Hey dad, hey Julie, sorry that over the weekend Rian and I let the boys throw us a giant 17th birthday party with underage drinking and possible drug use!" I started as my tone held onto its sarcastic attribute even though as I went along the whole thing became more real and less of a distant memory and I was surly on the brink of tears at that point, "oh right, and a boy I’ve already rejected hundreds of times got drunk and tried to rape me but I mean HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASEY!" The last part I knew I was crying. I doubled forward into Alex's chest as I tried to hide the tears that had pooled in my eyes. not wanting him, or the world to see me cry. As they we’re both surly getting sick of seeing the same scene.

"Okay..." Alex hushed wrapping his arms delicately around my back to gently tug my closer, "maybe don't say it like that..."

I couldn't help but stifle a chuckle at his composer as if he was already so adapted to my constant falling apart at the seams in a moment’s notice. I shut my eyes as I nuzzled my nose into his warn chest, breathing in the calming scent of his shirt as he sighed.

"You have to tell them something..." He exhaled causing me to sit up and wipe the stupid tears from under my eyes with my wrists.

"Why?" I pouted as he caught my hands and lowered them from my face to be replaced by his own.

"They deserve to know what happened Jasey..." He sighed swiping his thumbs under my eyes to rid the areas of my left over tears. For a while I sat in his lap silently... Not really sure of what to say or do. Was it really his place to tell me what they needed to know? He wasn’t the one that was almost raped! But there was something about the way he said it that had me thinking. "Want me to talk to them with you?" He asked. I looked up at him as my eyes rolled over his features to see if he was kidding or not.

"Alex, I can’t ask you to do that." I whispered not trying to give off just how torn I was about the whole situation. This wasn’t me, this wasn’t who I was. I was never one to cry about everything that happened to me. I had been beaten bloody by my own mother and never shed a tear, why was I crying now? Is it true that with age your fears become more real and pain becomes less bearable? Or maybe it was just that what had happened had given me Alex back, the thing I desired most, my friend. Was it that my fear of being so alone without him scared me more than letting him in, or was it just me stalling for what I knew would come in the hours to follow.

"I know we aren’t necessarily friends again, and I don't blame you if you just don't trust me but I’d-"

"Alex..." I cut his statement short as I looked up to meet his gaze, "I’ve been hiding away at your house for three days now because the mere thought of going home makes me want to curl into a ball and disappear" I told him, "clearly I have some form of faith in you because as odd as it may be I apparently find something about you comforting."

"Why do you sound so surprised by that?" He asked placing his hands on my hips.

"Because I am." I told him watching how his thumbs made circles over my hipbones, much like they did the day things between us made a sudden shift to being non-existent. It was true. To be blunt. The thought of Alex and I being friends again scared the total and utter shit out of me.

Everything about the situation scared me, and I never learned to cope well in situations where I didn't have control over things. I’d rather have no hand at all than not have the upper one. Even then I knew that much. I hated not knowing how to feel. But that was just it. I knew I was scared but I didn't know why. I couldn’t quite pin what was putting me on edge, maybe it was the situation in its entirety that had put such a strain on my brain.

"Let me help you out here..." He sighed rubbing his hands up and down my sides as they drifted from my hips.

"Why do you even want to?" I questioned sincerely. I was genuinely curious as to why anyone in their right mind would willingly venture deeper into the pitiful mess that was my return back to Baltimore and all the events that followed in my heavy footsteps.

"Because I want to make this right..." He sighed. I looked up into his eyes. His knowing brown eyes.

He wasn’t jumping through hoops to ring me back in as his friend. His buddy. His pal. I was none of that. I was a necessity.

To the band.

He and I both knew all too well that he wasn’t doing this because he wanted to, or so I thought. He was doing this to keep me here. And by here I don't mean in his lap, or his life even. But Rian's. Alex new just as well as I did that all that came out of my return was a string of messes, arguments and an unsettling amount of tears. I choked on my throat knowing I had to clear the air, and cut the tension. And cut it clean. "None of this can ever be 'made right'" I sighed.

He sat motionless as I looked down on my lap, conjoined with his with such ease I felt at home even in a simple place like his lap. I avoided his eyes as I crawled off of him and started for his door as neither of us made a sound. No matter how safe Alex had made me felt those three days, it couldn’t be done. It only felt so warm because my only other alternative was so polar opposite.

He knew. He knew well that when I left Baltimore those years ago, the timer started. Much like the timer when a victim has a heart attack. There is only a small space of time for the person to be revived before too much damage is done and they become a lost cause. My timer had run out far before I knew it. I was gone for so long, my place in this town slowly growing smaller and smaller as the days passed till it was nothing more than insignificant gap in time.

Just like with a heart attack victim who went unnoticed, my time had run out, too much damage done to return to being the same. I would only be a passing memory, a small figment in time that was surfaced by a certain scent or maybe a song in passing, just something that came to mind when it wasn’t occupied by more important things.

That’s what I was. I had no place in this town anymore. Maybe it was a coincidence, or a twist in fate that those specific series of events occurred to bring me to terms that I no longer belonged here. That all I did was cause conflict and issues.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs and ventured into the living room I instantly wanted to break down. Alex was putting himself in a place to fight for Rian's behalf. But when I looked out on Marc and Zack, I couldn’t help the tug that I knew I had hurt them. The strain on me washed over them. Two innocent people caught in my cross fire of conflict. Zack I had known. Was always like a brother to me.

But Marc. Marc I had no ties to, I dragged him in and cut him up. I knew I should have turned and walked out. Going across the street to the house I once called home. To pack my things and leave before anyone else had to suffer. To bring as much distance and blame it on Riley, and not myself. But the lack of sleep and the toll of the over dramatic tears had taken their toll.

Silently Marc rose to his feet when it was clear I had no intentions of moving at all. His feet light, and soft as they puttered across the hardwood floor to stand before me. His arms stretching out to wrap around me as I collapsed into his chest. But this time, no tears. Even as his warm sent enveloped me, casing me in its calm aroma, I no longer felt at home. But in the same instant, I didn’t feel a lot of things I had been.


I was no longer scared, or upset about anything. Because now I knew I had no other option than the one that would come that night. When I would pack my bag and skip town. Maybe for a few days or a week. Anything to be away from constant reminders that I no longer belong or had a place in that run down town till I could get a flight and get out for good. I could no longer stay there knowing what I did. That I hurt everyone around me by simply breathing the same air as them. I was well aware of the holidays in the days to come. But I had a feeling they might be more enjoyable with me absent from the cheerfulness of a place I didn't belong. It was decided. By night, I’d be gone.

Notes