Just Another Reason I Could Never Forget You

The night carried on as expected. As each member of each band arrived, they brought friends with them and somehow it began to feel crowded in the house. I was at ease, acutely aware of how much this felt like a Saturday night back home before any of my drama caught up with me. The only thing missing was Marissa to keep me from going too far off the rails, but I did have John, who was both keeping pace with me and looking out for me at the same time. I was already past the stage where I struggled to keep my hands to myself, and had instead turned a little more than sloppy. John didn’t seem to notice, probably just as sloppy himself.
We were currently stood in the kitchen, quite possibly my favourite place in any party ever, in conversation with Halvo and Nick from A Rocket to the Moon, Justin’s other band alongside Brighten. I hadn’t seen either in a few months, not since before the summer tour. Again, I knew the pair mostly in passing, but they knew me as an actual person, as opposed to say, Jess from The Summer Set who knew me purely as ‘that girl who follows John around’ (believe me, I’d heard her call me it when she couldn’t remember my name. Thankfully, she got a rather curt ‘Holly’ from Kennedy, whom she had been speaking to). Nick and I both gravitated to kitchens during parties, so I had probably had more conversations with him than the rest of the band, but he certainly didn’t know anything I would call important about me.
I turned away from the conversation for a moment, trying to decide what I was drinking next. Each person who had arrived had brought more alcohol than was really reasonable, so we were all up to our eyeballs in beer and liquor and I hadn’t helped matters when I’d made my beer run earlier. Every single person had brought something different and I know your mom tells you that you shouldn’t mix your drinks, but, dammit, I’ve never taken my mother’s advice in my life. I grabbed for a bottle of Captain Morgan, drunkenly singing one of Nick’s demo’s in my head as I did so. I was already wasted, leave me alone.
When I turned back, John and Halvo had disappeared, leaving me alone with Nick. I shrugged, hopping onto the small amount of spare countertop next to him, as I always had done at parties; I didn’t trust myself on my feet when I was that drunk.
“So, how’s it going, Santino?” I asked, taking a long drink as I looked over at him.
“Busy,” he chuckled. “But, I hear, not as busy as you’ve been.” He wiggled his eyebrows and I rolled my eyes at him.
“It’s been a long time coming and you know it. Don’t act like you aren’t ecstatic for us.” Okay, so maybe our tipsy conversations in kitchens had made us more than passing acquaintances, enough that we were both capable of making jokes at each other’s expense, but that could be the alcohol talking.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t,” he shrugged. “I’ve just been told it’s funny to make jokes about your sex life now that you actually have one.”
“Everybody needs to stop talking to Kennedy immediately,” I huffed. “He gossips like a fucking schoolgirl on crack.” Nick laughed loudly next to me, but didn’t offer a rebuttal.
“It’s not the only thing he’s been gossiping about. I hear you have a thing for lead singers.” I groaned loudly, taking another long drink as he continued to laugh at me. Kennedy was going to suffer when I next saw him.
“What the fuck did the little dickhead tell you?”
“Not much,” he shrugged again. “Just that you and Alex Gaskarth have been at each other’s throats for weeks because you used to screw and you’re more like Annabelle than any of us knew.”
“Really? You’re gonna compare me to Annabelle?” I scoffed. It wasn’t entirely inaccurate, but hearing it from Nick was a bummer. He seriously didn’t like the girl anymore. “Urgh, fuck me, I guess I was a bit like Annabelle,” I conceded. “But I didn’t do relationships, and Alex was the most long-term shit I’ve ever done and literally millions of people know that fucking story in some capacity so, I’m 0 for 1 at this point.” I took another long drink, scowling as I did so.
“Yeah, he did kind of mention something about the guy’s album or something,” Nick replied, scratching his chin. He was tipsy (or a little more than), so I imagine he didn’t feel any shame in asking me about all this, but he did look at least a little like he was trying to find a way to ask me about this without sounding like an asshole. “How long were you guys together?”
“Six months.”
“Is that it?” He asked, shock clear on his face. I frowned, knowing it wasn’t that long, but it had always felt like it was forever to us. I’d thrown myself in at the deep end and I’d been drowning there the entire time. “And this was, what? 3 years ago?”
“Two and a half,” I responded, defensively, as if the six month difference mattered. It was still a ridiculously long time ago. I didn’t want to admit that it sounded ridiculous when you said it like that.
“I guess it ended badly.”
“You could say that,” I scoffed. “He cheated on me, I moved 2000 miles away and somehow fell into John’s path.”
“That sounds like Alex.”
“Yeah, fucking tell me about it.” It felt strange to still be so connected with Alex while talking to someone I thought of mostly as ‘John’s friend’, and yet he seemed to know far too much about Alex as a person. I would assume they’d crossed paths, maybe Warped or something along those lines, but I’d never thought to ask before. “If there was one thing everyone in school knew, it was don’t get involved with Alex-fucking-Gaskarth. So, of course, I just had to.”
“You’re a stubborn kind of girl,” he laughed. “I like that.”
“Bite me, Santino. Just like me stubborn streak always has.”
“On the ass? No thanks.” I glared jokingly at him, but couldn’t shake the unease that had formed as a ball in the pit of my stomach at his words. Had Alex and I really been making ourselves a bigger deal than we needed to? He was my first love, so I knew I had some issues I would never resolve about us, but did normal people really brush off six months like it was no big deal?
I gnawed my lip as Nick turned away momentarily, suddenly in desperate need of a cigarette. I glanced over at him, seeing he was now talking to someone else and deciding to go for it. I headed to the front of the house, aware of how crowded the back was and in need of at least a little solitude while I smoked. I mean, I loved the crowds, I really did, but I needed a second to breathe.
I lit up the moment I sat down on the porch steps, still mulling over my conversation with Nick. Was I really that fucking pathetic? I didn’t hesitate to dial Alex’s number as I pulled my phone from my pocket, something in my head telling me it was perfectly acceptable to call him when it’d be 1am where he was.
He didn’t pick up and I took another long drag, scowling at my phone as his voicemail kicked in, hanging up. My thumb hovered over the ‘redial’ and I felt the pressure against my thumb before I had chance to think it through.
“Hello?” He answered, a little groggy sounding, after something like the third ring. I kept quiet, taking another long drag as he waited for me to answer. “Hols? Is that you?” I felt my chest flutter ever-so-slightly at my name coming from his mouth, a reaction I put solely down to the alcohol in my system and his confusion.
“Did you ever think we’d end up this way?” I breathed, throwing what was left of my cigarette into the drain.
“Holly...” he sighed, sounding much less hazy than he had only thirty seconds before. I scowled, kind of wishing I had another cigarette. He was going to refuse to answer and I didn’t have time for that crap. Why the hell else would I have jumped right in like that?
“No, I’m serious. Did you ever think when we got together that we’d be this way? The breaking up, the fighting, all that crap. Like, did you think that three years down the line one crappy little six month relationship from high school would still mean so much?”
“We could have been together 6 days and it still wouldn’t have been a ‘crappy little relationship’,” he snapped lightly. “I just... I don’t know what you want me to say. I told you I was trying to stop all this.” My mouth ran on ahead of me, not registering the small pool of guilt I felt at his words. I was making this harder than it needed to be, calling him out of the blue and demanding answers, but he at least seemed to know where my train of thought was going.
“I want you to say that you fell into our relationship and you knew, deep down, that this was it. That you knew nothing would be the same again, that being together was fucking earth shattering and you just... you knew we’d love each other forever, even when we hate each other. “
“Are you okay, Hol?” He asked quietly, knowing my outburst was more about me than him.
“I’m fine. I just feel like no one around here gets it, you know? They hear we were together for 6 months and look at me like I’m crazy for being so upset for so long.” I shook my head, not sure how Nick had gotten to me so much. Maybe he was just the latest on a long list of people who didn’t get it and maybe I was more than just a little drunk, but I’d definitely taken it to heart more than normal.
“You know, we got together and I spent the first couple of months insisting you were just another girl, that I could call it quits whenever I wanted and it wouldn’t mean anything,” he told me softly. “And then somewhere between Christmas and Vegas I realised I was fucking head over heels for you and I stopped faking like I’d be okay if we ever ended. I don’t know if it was Jack’s nagging or just... you, but I knew that nothing would ever be the same again, that I’d loved you since we met almost. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes, but I have one more thing to ask,” I replied quietly. “Why me?”
“Why me?” He responded almost immediately. “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine, Rae.”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “At first it was because we were so alike and you just got me on just about every level, but I remember the first time I thought that I might love you. I was on your porch at Christmas and you stopped kissing me to tell me off for bitching about my mom because I was being a spoiled brat,” I laughed quietly at the memory, shaking my head a little. “And the way you just did things for me without even noticing it was out of your way, you know? Every time you told me off, or picked up my books for class without being asked or laughed at my stupid jokes, I remembered how much I loved you.” Alex didn’t respond immediately and I had to listen hard to hear his breathing, and I felt like maybe I’d crossed a line, but the alcohol currently pickling my brain stopped me from apologising. I wasn’t sorry for having loved Alex as much as I had back then.
“For me, it was when we’d wake up on a morning,” he told me finally. “I felt like sometimes I clung to you, always had my hands on you, but it was me going in for it, not you. And then we’d wake up and you were always on my side of the bed, with your arms around me and your legs all twisted around mine and you’d just… smile when I pulled you in closer. And when we got up, you’d head straight for the coffee but you’d always offer me the first drink even if you were barely functional. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it when you told people off, or you’d run off and do everything for yourself, all your independent crap, but I feel like I was the only person you let that guard down around sometimes and it felt… I don’t know. I loved you for it.” My heart swelled for a moment at his words, before it deflated as the guilt washed over me once more. I had no right to be having this conversation with Alex.
“The other day, I felt so guilty, like the way we spoke to each other was the same as fucking cheating on John and we hadn’t even gotten this deep. I think I need to stop this just as much as you do,” I sighed. “I mean, I’m always on your ass about just being friends and here I fucking go dredging up old feelings. It’s fucking bullshit. I’m fucking bullshit.”
“You’re not bullshit.”
“I’m sorry, I woke you up. Go back to sleep.” I stood up, spreading my spare arm wide in some sort of drunken attempt to steady myself. It worked, but only because when I keeled to one side, my outstretched arm touched the side of the house and kept me from falling.
“No, I’m okay,” he assured me. “I wasn’t asleep.”
“I’m so drunk,” I replied, changing the topic and stumbling toward my next destination, determined to sit myself on the grass by the side of the kerb. I huffed lightly as I did so, giving up and falling slowly back until I was laid on my back in the grass.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” He asked. I didn’t miss the hint of concern in his voice, but I did choose to ignore the slight racing of my heart. I was pretty sure he was sick of my rambling by now, but the voice that told me to be quiet was drowning somewhere in the alcohol I’d consumed thus far.
“I... don’t know,” I told him, slowly. “We were drinking beer in the kitchen and then I... lost him.” I frowned deeply, confused as to how I had ended up on the street, by myself, calling Alex. Had he gone to the bathroom and I had simply wandered off? That didn’t feel right. I was sure he had been gone a while. Had I been talking to Nick or? I had probably gotten bored and decided I wanted to go home but couldn’t find John to take me. “I think I was talking to Nick when he left.”
“Santino? You know too many singers.”
“Halvo left with John,” I pouted. “Nick was all I had.”
“He’s a singer too, Hols,” he replied, laughing ever-so-slightly. I grinned, grateful he finally sounded like he was okay with me. I was seriously doubting he approved of me until just then. “You want me to call him?”
“Who? Halvo? No.”
“John. You should go home.”
“No,” I whined. “Don’t leave me alone, Alex.”
“Okay, I’ll stay with you while you wait.”
“Good.” I looked back up at the sky, noticing how clear of a night it actually was. “Can you see the stars?”
“What? No, I’m in bed.”
“Alex,” I whined again. “Come look at the stars with me.”
“Hol, come on, you’re really drunk. Let me call John for you.”
“I know I’m drunk, that’s why I called,” I snapped at him. “Just go look at the stars and don’t spoil John’s night.” He sighed into the phone and I beamed as I heard him shuffling out of bed.
“Okay, I’m outside, but there aren’t any stars. I think you’re forgetting that the stars are rare in this town. Light pollution and all.”
“I can see them,” I countered.
“You live in the fucking desert.”
“We still have street lights.”
“I didn’t know you had streets.”
“Fuck off,” I laughed. My phone beeped and I pulled it away from my ear, seeing John’s face on my screen. “Okay, I gotta go. Speak tomorrow!”
“Uh huh. Bye, Holly.” I quickly answered John’s call and disconnected from Alex, ignoring the mild annoyance in his voice. I suppose I had just forced him out of bed and then promptly left him.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I cooed into the phone.
“Shit, Holly, where are you?” He asked, slurring a little through his panic. “Nick said he turned away for a drink and you were just gone.”
“I’m watching the stars with Alex,” I giggled, looking up once again at the flickering lights. I absolutely adored the stars, even if I never got chance to sit and watch them normally. John and I always had something that would stop us from just sitting and taking them in.
“Alex is in Maryland and, considering you were here five minutes ago, I’d say you aren’t. Where are you?” He seemed less panicky, but still not impressed with me.
“I’m outside,” I replied, pouting. “Watching the stars.”
“Out front?”
“Out front,” I confirmed.
“Okay, I’m gonna call us a cab and go back to your place. Alright?” I hummed in agreement and disconnected the call to allow him to call for a cab.
Sorry cutie – John called. I promise I won’t wake you up and leave you next time xoxox

Notes

No one tried to guess what stupid thing Holly would do next. Boooo.