Early Sunsets over Monroeville

I can’t stop shaking when I get home. I strode confidently from the building, down the street and into the cab but as soon as I sat down the tremors began. Miraculously, I didn’t cry until I got home. I think I may have just messed everything up. Ending relationships is a good talent of mine because I may have just ended three at once. If only I could get paid for fucking up, I’d be rich.
When I got home I fell to the kitchen floor and have been lying here shaking for three hours now. What if Katelyn covered up every trace of her inability to get pregnant? What if she swore her doctor to secrecy? What if Frank never checks? He could just believe that his wife is grief-stricken and that’s why she threw a fit there. Maybe he believes that she lost the baby because she put on a very convincing show. And maybe now this will lead him to hating me forever. Maybe Mikey Chapman will hate me forever too and I’ll have to go back to having two friends and a brother.
I roll over and look up at the birds pecking the brain. “I wish birds would peck out my brain so I don’t have to feel,” I croak aloud. It takes all my strength to rise off the ground and search for that bottle I’d opened before rushing off to Frank. I drink it all relatively quickly and then smoke to try and calm my stomach. This much vodka this quick on an empty stomach is a very bad idea.
I lie on my kitchen floor again and watch as my eyes lose focus and regain it again with the waves of intoxication.

Mikey calls over at midday the next day. “How’re you doing Gerard,” he says, waking me. I’m lying on my kitchen floor he can probably tell I’m not in the best of moods, though I do seem to sleep on the kitchen floor a lot.
“Really great, I ruined everything.”
“Wait, you went over?”
“She told him that she had a miscarriage.”
“Bitch,” Mikey says on a sharp intake of breath.
“Yea. So I called her out, in front of Frank and her sister. And the other Mikey. All without evidence. I probably looked like an insanely jealous asshole who wanted to ruin a marriage so I could butt fuck Frank.”
“Your way with words is beautiful.”
“Not helping.” I pull myself off the floor. I think I’m going to fucking vomit all over my apartment. I just hobble over to the couch.
“Well what do you want me to say?” He sits down beside me, “fuck bro, you smell like death.”
“Thanks.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing, what do I ever do. I’m just going to rot away here while Frank and his wife work through her “miscarriage” and do their lawyer thing to negotiate a better deal. Maybe they’ll adopt just so Frank could still wear his lame-ass, dorky dad t-shirts and they can live a happy life away from their loser artist.”
“Fucking hell, Gerard.”

I spend the day nursing my hangover with bottles of cider. Mikey stays for about an hour and then sends me into the shower while he goes off to work.
I lie on the couch and think. That’s all I do all day. I just think. I think about ways I could possibly fix this, none. I think about all the possible scenarios of how Katelyn could save her own skin, I come up with twenty six. Granted, the one where she covers her trousers in blood so it looks like the baby exploded out of her, isn’t very likely. Neither is the one where she makes a three month old foetus corpse out of play-dough. They’re far too horror movie-esque for Katelyn Iero.
After several hours I get up and start a new painting. It was just going to be two figures being drawn apart by a giant witch but of course it ended up being myself and Frank being drawn apart by Katelyn. She’s wearing a cream dress trimmed with gold. At first Frank and I are naked and then I realise how fucking creepy that is and I paint underwear and socks on. Because of the ever increasing amount of beer, the last parts look kind of weird. Like the socks look really odd and for some reason Frank’s are thigh high. Also looking weird are Katelyn’s teeth and the dark purple background of the painting which I’ve dotted with sheep. I’ve gotten very good at little sheep. By five am the piece is complete. I’ve never worked so fast on a canvas like this that I’m actually trying to make look good. I think anger and heartbreak fuelled it.
I put down my brush and crawl onto my couch where I quickly pass out.

A knock. It wakes me up immediately from a nightmare about a man eating fungus I accidentally unleashed on Manhattan while trying my hand a botany. My head pounds the second I stand up. “Fuck,” I groan. There’s another knock that pierced through my skull. “One second!” I groan, stumbling to the door. Mikey probably sent Ray or Bob to come cheer me up.
“Um, hi, Gerard.”
“Mikey?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course,” I stand back and let the ginger Mikey into my room. He stops two paces in, staring. I left the painting up from last night. Oh fuck. Oh Fuck.
“Oh,” he looks kind of amused.
“Um, that…” You can even see how the navy underpants I gave us was painted on top of realistic dicks. “I’m not as perverted as this makes me look.”
“Right. You forgot Frank’s stomach tattoos,” he walks past into the main floor space where thirteen bottles lie on the floor from when I tried domino-ing them. I’m really giving off a terrible impression.
“I had a rough night, okay? Want to sit down?”
“Understandable. Yea, sure.”
“So… why…?”
“Why am I here? I need to, uh talk to you about the whole Katelyn thing. Frank kinda broke down when you left.”
“Shit, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t think it’s all down to you. But I obviously went straight to comforting Frank but Katelyn and Liza swirled off. After a while I went to check in on Katelyn and she was furiously deleting shit from her emails and Liza was searching in a stack of papers for something. So I believe you. When I asked her what she was doing she said she was cancelling a payment to you but I’ve a fucking business degree so who does she think she’s lying to. And yea last night Frank did look up her records and nothing there.”
“I’m telling the truth. I overheard her on the phone to Liza. I was going to let her tell him because I didn’t want to ruin their marriage…”
“Their marriage was going to be ruined sooner or later.”
“I just wished it wasn’t me who did the ruining.”
“Yea that must suck.” There’s a pause.
“What does Frank think now?”
“Eh, last I heard they were fighting. Full on screaming at each other. So I don’t know. I don’t think Frank is too keen on “talking things out” now, but Katelyn is incredibly manipulative and it won’t be the first time she’s made him feel guilty for something she did.”

Mikey left after a half hour. I sit on my couch nervously. I can’t eat or walk or lie down or anything. I just want to know what Frank thinks. I wish I could go over and prove it, but how can I? I wish I’d recorded it or something at the time. I guess I was just fucking stupid enough to think that that bitch would come clean. I can’t believe I left it as a “my word against hers”.
Bob pops up after a while with a burger and chips from McDonalds. He apologises that he can’t stay but he left the bar unattended. He runs back down the stairs before I even reply.
I go to sleep at the humane hour of midnight in my bed with only two beers drank. I feel very proud of this fact, I haven’t really slept as anything other than a drunken mess on the floor recently. Being drunk alone isn’t even that fun.

I wake up at eleven forty seven and decide to have breakfast. I put two slices of bread in the toaster and start scrambling my eggs. After a few seconds my phone rings in my room and I have to run there really fast so my eggs don’t stick to the pot. I’m sick of being the guy who can’t even scramble eggs.
“Hey, gee.”
“Frank?” My heart starts pounding and the handle of the wooden spoon shakes as I do. “What’s- How’re you?”
“Not the best I’ve ever been. I’m a good lawyer but not as good as Katelyn so she just cheated me out of the apartment. I’m at Mikey’s and we’re wondering if you’d like to come over and help me celebrate my singleness?”
“I’ll get in a cab now.”
I fold the eggs into the toast and eat it as I jog down the stairs and out into the sunlight. I’ve just realised I haven’t been outside in two and a half days. That’s probably unhealthy.
Awkwardly, I give the cab driver instructions to Mikey’s and then finish my toasted egg sandwich, even though the butterflies it collides with in my stomach threatens to send it back.
I believe it’s very lame to skip unless you are a five year old girl. Even so, I skip up to Mikey’s gate.
“Hi gee!” Frank says when he opens the door and I absentmindedly launch at him.
“You could have told me earlier!” I complain before letting him go. “I honestly thought you’d believe her and hate me forever!”
“Well that’s extreme,” he says, rubbing his arm. “I couldn’t tell you, there was no time. We had a massive fight and then spent all day completing our divorce.”
“Wait, you’re divorced? Already?”
“Yea.”
“What? I thought they take ages to file?”
“Not really. We’re lawyers, we make the process longer so we get paid more. Want some coffee?”
I shake my head incredulously. “You’re weird Frank Iero,” I laugh as we walk into Mikey’s large kitchen where he’s eating much nicer looking scrambled eggs.
“Thanks.”

ThE eNd

Notes

yo! You know what sucks, emotions. Anyway, here's the FiNaL cHaPtEr, hope it wasn't worse than you anticipated. I have had requests for a sequel but i honestly just don't know what i'd do. So i think it's best to leave this here in case i ruin it. Thank you for all the lovely comments, it's rad to see people reacting to every chapter XD. Um i'll be taking a break from Frerard fics because i do have 5 OTPs and i'd like to write them and if I don't write Jalex (All Time Low) soon i think my friend will ignore me XD. Sorry to my darling Rosie for not ending with a massive make out scene like you asked.. Thanks so much for reading guys! If you liked this you may or may not like my other fics (there's six up here) and yea give them an ol' read if you really want. I have like seven more ideas so i'm off to get to right away and pretty please let me know what you think of this story :* xoxo