Blow Me A Kiss Before She Goes

I sat down on my bed, staring into space. My mind refused to process what just happened, because what happened was that Gerard and I broke up even though we were never officially together. How messed up was that?

“Frank?”

I sighed inwardly. Great. Of course Ivy overheard everything and of course she was there to lecture me.

“What was that all about?”

My head turned slightly in her direction. “Why do you bother asking when you probably heard every word anyway?”

“Frank, you have to stop this, whatever it is that you are doing.”

I knew that. “I’m not doing anything,” I snapped.

“Look.” She came deeper into the room. “I know this sucks and you don’t know exactly how to handle everything.” She motioned with one of her hands. “And honestly, I have no idea what is going on in Gerard’s head either, but you guys can’t keep doing this. I hate that you guys are putting yourselves through this, but if you are willing to live with it then that’s your issue, but I won’t let you hurt Adam. He doesn’t deserve this. I’ll tell Gerard the same.”

I guess golden boy wasn’t so golden in her eyes anymore after all. “Don’t worry about it, Sis. Gerard just ended it.” I dropped back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. I’ve barely known him any time at all, but still I let him have such a big effect on me. I needed to get back to my old self. I used to be carefree. Now almost everything I thought or did revolved around him.

“Oh,” was her only response. I heard her move and then she was lying down on the bed beside me. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

I snorted. “Please, you have been against the two of us getting together from the second he and I met.”

“It was never about the two of you per se. I simply took into account the circumstances like the fact that you have a girlfriend and broke Gerard’s heart.”

“See, there you go again.” I said accusingly, propping myself up on an elbow and glaring down at her. “You haven’t been on my side once throughout this whole situation. It’s Gerard and it’s Adam. What about me?”

“I’m in this too, you know? I was in love with Gerard too.”

I fell back down with a sigh. I didn’t forget. I’ve never forgotten. I was jealous of my sister’s relationship with Gerard right up until I found out about him and Adam. Now I suddenly missed that unfounded jealousy. At least with Ivy I never had anything to worry about, because Gerard wasn’t into girls. Adam was a whole different story. I would never admit it out loud, but he was hot and then he had that whole nice guy thing going for him. This must be what Gerard feels like with Lisa in the picture. There was nothing to be done about any of that now.

“You should feel bad, because all of this is your fault. You brought him here.” I stated, but there was a hint of humor in my voice. I didn’t blame her for any of this. All she’s been trying to do is help and keep everyone happy.

There was a pause before she replied. “You’re right. Dammit! Then again, how was I supposed to know that we were both going to fall for him? Besides, I never would have dreamed that you and I would have the same taste in boys.”

“You’re telling me.” I rolled my eyes. “There’s something about him, though…”

“Everything?” she offered with a smile.

“Yeah.”

“When you think about it, it’s his damn fault. Why couldn’t he suck like half the people I know?” Ivy asked in slight annoyance.

I had to laugh at this. “That’s hardly fair.”

“Let’s stop talking about him.”

I glanced down at her bemused, because she was being so Ivy.

“I’ll meet someone better and you already have someone better. Fuck him.”

I burst out laughing. “I love you, you know that?”

“I do,” she said with a broad grin. “But it’s always nice to hear it.”

**

I was annoyed. No, I was pissed off. A better description would be to say that I was fucking livid. Despite promising me that he wouldn’t let the band down, Gerard hasn’t been to a single band practice since and we were backstage preparing for our gig without him. Instead of being excited, everyone was irritated. I could tell. Scary was moody and no one dared to go near her. Everyone else handled their emotions better, thank goodness, and were simply silent, sitting around anxiously. It wasn’t right.

“Hey, are you ready?” Lisa asked.

I nodded. “Yes. I am.” I shook my arms a little bit in an attempt to relax. “Yes, I am and I’m excited.”

“Good, because I know you’re going to be great.” She offered me a reassuring smile.

I barely noticed this, seeing Gerard come into the room. How could he possibly have the audacity to just show up like nothing was wrong?

“Excuse me.” I gave Lisa’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before stepping around her and marching right up to Gerard. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Frank.” He was taken aback by my sudden hostility.

It was irrelevant why I was mad, whether it was because he let the band down or because he let me down, it didn’t matter.

“You fucking dick! You promised me.”

“I can explain…”

“You know what? Screw you! You don’t deserve to be in this band and you don’t deserve to know any of the people here. They are all better than you and they deserve better.” I wasn’t holding back and I probably said some things that would have been better left unsaid, but I didn’t care. In my opinion, he had it coming.

“Frank.” He looked stunned, but at the same time guilt stricken. “I’m so sorry.” The apology was sincere enough, but I disregarded it completely.

“Go. You’re no longer welcome here.” I was hurt and disappointed. I always thought I could count on him no matter what. I guess the better you got to know someone, the clearer their flaws became. I turned away from him even though I was itching to punch him in the face.

“Hold on.” It was Bob’s voice that forced me to turn back to my ex-best friend. “I’m not going to lie to you, man, what you did wasn’t cool and we’re all mad as hell at you, but the show starts in like ten minutes and regardless of how fucked up this is, we would still like you to go on stage with us.”

Bob, what the hell are you doing? I glared at him. He had no right to speak for everybody.

“Are you sure?” Gerard checked. “I can go.”

“Just do the damn show with us,” Scary growled. “I fucking hate you and I seriously want to kick your ass, but whatever.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Traitors, all of them!

“We’re better with him,” Scary said close by my ear. “Relax. We’ll deal with the issue later.”

“I don’t want to.” I stormed out of the tiny backstage room we had been shoved into and down the hall.

**

Gerard’s POV

I ran after Frank, because he obviously wasn’t okay and I knew that it was entirely my fault. Maybe I could have handled the whole situation differently. No, I definitely could have handled it better.

“Frank!” I called after him, but he ignored me.

I eventually caught up to him and grabbed a hold of his shirt.

“Get off of me!” he hissed, shoving me away.

“Frank, I’m sorry.” I tried apologizing again.

“Fuck you, okay!” he snapped, glaring at me. He was hurt and now he was lashing out. “I fucked up. I didn’t tell you about Lisa, yes, but this is bullshit!” he yelled upset. “When are you going to be done?” he demanded angrily.

I stepped forward and put my hands on his shoulders. By some miracle he didn’t shake me off.

“When are you going to stop getting back at me? You win, okay? You hurt me!”

That stung, like someone had hit me in the face. He thought I was doing all of this to hurt him. I never realized… My grip on his shoulders tightened and he started to fight against me.

“I know I was an asshole, but you’re taking it too far. And I fucking hate you.” Angry tears ran down his cheeks. “Congratulations, I’m a mess and it’s all your doing! Are you satisfied or would you like to have another go, because I’m open!” He shrugged me off and turned away from me.

Sorry wasn’t going to make this better, but it was all I had. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“I apologized until I was blue in the face and you still gave me a hard time. Now one apology from you is supposed to make it all better? Are you going to tell me now that you only did it to take care of yourself? When I did that I was the bad guy.” Frank shot down my apology with very valid arguments. “Well?” he demanded still upset. “Let’s hear it, this grand apology of yours.”

My shoulders slumped and my gaze dropped guiltily to the ground. “I don’t have one. All I have is an excuse, but you already made it clear that it wouldn’t be good enough.”

“You were right, Gerard,” he said, angrily wiping away his tears. “This friendship isn’t going to work and we should just end it now.” He looked me dead in the eyes as he said this. “We have a show to do.”

He turned away from me, heading back in the direction we had come from. I felt bad. He was right, I had promised to stick with the band and I had let everyone down. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, keep my distance from Frank to get a grip in my emotions and also to not make things worse with Adam. He didn’t need any more reason to think that there was anything going on between me and Frank.

Without realizing it, I reached out and grabbed Frank’s hand, preventing him from going anywhere.

“Don’t,” he said threateningly, glaring at my hand.

“I’m sorry.”

I sighed deeply and then met my eyes. “I know you are.”

The tension between us picked up again, but it was a different type of tension this time and we both hurriedly pulled our hands back. We returned to the others without saying anything more.

“Finally, we’re about to go on!”

“I’m sorry for letting you guys down. I promise it won’t happen again,” I apologized loudly to everyone hoping that they would be able to forgive me. Frank’s words earlier had hit home about them deserving better. It was true. I shouldn’t let my personal issues get in the way of their dreams or even my own.

“Hey, did any of you see Lisa?”

My attention turned to Frank who was standing in the middle of the room, looking hopeful.

“She was here a minute ago,” Ray responded, looking around for her and then shrugged. “She probably went to find a place to watch the show from.”

“Probably,” Frank muttered, grabbing his guitar from its case and getting ready to go on stage.

I could tell that he wasn’t too sure about this, but there was no point in asking him about it. Instead I decided to focus on getting ready for the show myself. I didn’t have an instrument, but it always felt like that left me more vulnerable to the crowd. I wanted to put on the best damn show of my life to prove to everyone that I still belonged in the band. It was one of the good things I had going for me and didn’t want to lose it yet.

Notes