“Shit!”

Moira barely had time to catch herself as her foot caught on the corner of her nightstand. Her bed braced her fall but didn’t keep from knocking off her laptop bag with a loud thud. She winced at the sound. Even with padding, there was still a small part of her that was terrified to open up the bag to see her precious laptop, her entire career really, smashed to pieces.

A familiar set of footsteps ran down the hall at the commotion, and she didn’t even have to question whether or not it was her brother before his head was popping around her door frame.

“You okay, Moira?” Alex questioned, worry clear on his face as he ventured in to at least help her off the floor.

“Yeah,” Moira sighed, grabbing Alex’s hand as he helped her back up. “Just wasn’t paying attention.”

Alex let out a soft chuckle as his lips turned up in a slight smirk. “You always were a huge clutz, MoMo.”

“Alex, please,” Moira groaned, rolling her eyes at the of use her old childhood nickname, “I thought I told you to stop calling me that.”

Alex just shrugged, a lazy smile resting on his lips. “I’m your older brother, it’s kind of my job to give you shit-”

“If you keep calling me MoMo, I swear to God, I’m dropping out of this stupid tour.” That got Alex to shut up real fast, and with a satisfied smirk, Moira grabbed her laptop bag off the floor and went back to the last minute packing that was practically a Gaskarth specialty at this point.

While she continued her packing, Alex lingered for a moment longer in the room, not really caring if he was overstaying his welcome as he picked up the framed photo on the edge of his sister’s nightstand. It was a photo taken two summers ago with the entire family on vacation, and Alex had honestly forgotten what had Moira so happy in that photo, only that it was something that had happened while the photo was being taken, but he couldn’t help but smile at the sight of his sister actually smiling.

God, Alex almost forgot what that even looked like on her.

Placing the photo down with a bit of a frown, Alex cleared his throat for a moment before saying, “Thank you again for filling in as our tour photographer, by the way. Tom felt bad for quitting so last minute on us, but-”

“But family comes first,” Moira finished for him, zipping up her last duffle bag and looking back at Alex with a look of understanding. “I get it. Besides, I also know you and the rest of the boys wouldn’t mind paying me the ‘friends and family’ discounted rate when it comes to actually paying me for this-”

“Oh shut up,” Alex interrupted with a laugh, wrapping up his little sister in a hug and trying to ignore the way his heart broke as Moira flinched at the contact. Moira hated the realization too, but nevertheless, she still forced out a laugh of her own and playfully shoved her older brother away. The two siblings looked at each other at that moment, one searching for a sign of what went wrong while the other prayed the tears brimming at the corners of their eyes went unnoticed. It felt like time stood still as they searched each other’s souls, and it wasn’t until the voice of their mother traveled upstairs that they were broken out of their trance. The room was suddenly uncomfortable for both of them, and Alex nervously rubbed the back of his neck and made a mention of heading downstairs before he left Moira alone to finish what needed to be done.

Moira felt a little weightless in that moment, her body warm yet numb as she stuffed the last few random socks into her large duffle bag. Alex was getting close to figuring it out, she could feel it, and she couldn’t figure out what to do. Did she like keeping this large, ugly secret from her brother? The one she’d never kept a secret from since they were kids? The one who literally almost dropped out of a big tour because of a broken heart? No, of course not, it pained her to keep this secret, but even after almost six months after the incident, Moira was still afraid. She had no way of knowing how this was going to affect Alex, or how he was going to look at her after this. Would he hate her? Would he still love her? Or would she be disowned, not just by Alex but by her parents as well? Moira Gaskarth would be a tarnished name, hushed whispers would follow her wherever she went, and no one would ever want to be around the pathetic former sister of the frontman of All Time Low. And the fans, oh god, they would tear Moira to shreds. They would never forgive her for ruining their idol this way, for tarnishing the band’s reputation even. She would have to delete all her social media, all her digital portfolios, her galleries, every single trace of her would have to go. She’d have to change her name, her hair, her clothes- hell, just go off the grid and live as a hermit on the side of the road. Or even better yet, maybe she would just have to erase the entire problem by just making sure she was dead-

No. Moira let out a long, shaky breath and ran a hand through her short, semi-tangled hair. She couldn’t let her thoughts get the better of her, she wouldn’t let herself spiral like this. It’s why she made the choice in the first place to keep all of this to herself. She had been doing just fine on her own with her thoughts and emotions these past few months, she can handle this herself. She didn’t need another person to come into her life and help take care of the problem. She could do this.

“Moira?” Her mother called up the stairs once more. “Are you okay up there, sweetheart? You and Alex have to leave in five minutes.”

I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.

“I’ll be right down!” Moira called back, zipping up her last bag and slinging it over her shoulder. She wasn’t fine right now, not by a long shot, but maybe if she kept telling herself she was, then maybe she’d start to believe it.

Right?

---

The flight from Baltimore to Houston was, admittedly, pretty uneventful. Alex took the time to catch up on some much-needed sleep on his end while Moira took advantage of the plane’s wifi and rewatched John Mulaney’s comedy specials on Netflix. Four hours later and the Gaskarth siblings have gotten off the plane, grabbed their luggage, and were stood outside on the pick-up curb of the IAH waiting for their ride to pick them up. Alex had already reminded Moira that they were skipping the hotel and going straight to the rehearsal space first to meet up with the rest of All Time Low, especially since the entire band agreed to fly out to Texas early to finalize everything and the Gaskarths were already running late. Moira was more than aware of this, and she completely understood why Alex was in a rush to get to the rehearsal space, she was just sad that they couldn’t go straight to the hotel first because that meant she could go meet up with the boys in Waterparks while Alex got down to business with the rest of the ATL boys.

And so she mentioned the idea to Alex, who just laughed and ruffled up Moira’s already messy hair.

“The rest of the guys miss you too, ya know,” Alex pointed out, a light teasing tone in his voice. “Especially Jack, he keeps talking about how he can’t wait to see you again…”

Moira winced at the mere mention of Jack, and a huge wave of guilt crashed over her as she tuned out the rest of her brother’s words. Not only had moving back to Baltimore ruined any and all plans of her visiting the guitarist in LA, but she had also been ignoring most of Jack’s calls and texts as well since then as well. Of course Jack missed her and kept asking about her, but Moira couldn’t help but feel like Jack might also be mad at her as well.

“Jack’s just saying that because I bailed on the LA trip in March,” Moira joked, hoping that chuckling along with her joke would distract from the fact that she was suddenly very uncomfortable and beyond anxious. Alex, of course, picked up on the sudden shift in his sister’s mood, and it wasn’t even her usual nervous tick that gave her away. He immediately wanted to know why she had suddenly acted so weird at the mention of Jack, one of her favorite people in the whole universe, but before he could get to the bottom of that issue, there was something else he wanted to know that he’d been meaning to ask now for months.

“By the way,” Alex started, “why did you bail out on the LA trip?” When he didn’t get an answer, Alex decided to press the matter further. “I mean, it’s just that for as long as you’ve been out in Arizona, you’ve looked forward to driving out to LA to visit Jack. Hell, being closer to Jack was one of the deciding factors in you going to ASU for college. I know that you were back in Baltimore during the usual time of the trip, but you still could have gone out to visit-”

“I didn’t have the money for a plane ticket, Alex,” Moira snapped, catching the older Gaskarth off guard a bit. Noticing that, Moira mentally put herself in check and then plastered a sly smirk on her face, adding, “Not all of us are rich and fancy rockstars who can fly across the country at a moment’s notice after all.”

Alex noticed the way Moira was trying to lighten the mood, make him forget how she completely snapped moments ago, and if it were a different day, Alex might have tried to humor her. However, today was not that kind of day, and if he was being honest, he was growing tired of his little sister keeping him in the dark on what seemed like every aspect of her life now. “Yeah, but money necessarily isn’t the biggest thing that would have stopped this trip. You could have asked me and Lisa for the money, or Mom and Dad even. Jack probably would have paid for your ticket too if you had just asked, so really Moira, why did you decide not to go out to LA this year?”

In that moment, Moira swears her heart stopped beating. Alex wasn’t fooling around this time, he didn’t even try to hide his frustrations with her while he pressed further into the LA trip. The thing was, Moira didn’t even have a decent excuse, not one that she could tell her brother anyways. Her palms were suddenly slick with sweat, something that wasn’t caused by the Texas heat, and once her heart decided to start working, it’s erratic beating was deafening to her ears. She was beginning to spiral, she could feel it, and as she scrambled for the words- any words, really -to say, a honk caught the attention of both siblings as they watched their uber pull up to the curb. Never in her life had Moira been so relieved to see an uber driver, and never in Alex’s life had he been so disappointed. He was so close to a breakthrough with Moira, he was so sure of that, but now it felt like he was back at square one, back to the night where his parents called him out of the blue saying that Moira was home and that she wasn’t herself, and that maybe seeing her favorite older brother would help bring her back.

Suddenly Alex wasn’t watching his younger sister put her belongings in the truck and climb into the backseat of an uber. He was watching the girl he found curled up on the bed with bags under her dead, dull eyes, a girl with a choppy, uneven bob she did herself and who hardly smiled as he walked into the room. The girl in front of him then was the same girl in front of him now, and he hardly knew who she even was anymore.

There was a reason why Alex hated phone calls; nothing good ever came from them. In this case, a phone call told him his sister was back, when in reality, his walked into her room and found his sister dead. The girl he found that day was a shell of who Moira used to be, and all Alex wanted was to get his little sister, the real her, back. At this rate though, Alex couldn’t even tell if there was a chance at getting her back, and the just the mere thought of it shattered his heart into a million different pieces.

This was going to be a long summer.

Notes

Hey everyone, I'm back! Sorry it took so long to get this next chapter out, I was dealing with all my finals for school and the new job I just picked up, but I should be more consistent and frequent with the posting now :)