Rip Her To Shreds (3/4)
There’s a comment on one of Peyton’s blogs, some obnoxious link to a pure volume account and it’s not something Peyton would normally oblige, but she’s self-destructive enough at the moment not to care.
A trip to Vegas later, and she’s got a new band and a fucking protégé that she can’t look in the eye.
*
“The skinny one wants to fuck you,” Trish says.
Peyton lets loose a put-upon sigh, but Jo just looks back. “Nah, he doesn’t. He wants to impregnate you. What are the odds that, y’know, if you do fuck, he’ll latch onto your vag and wonder why sunshine isn’t pouring out?”
Trish laughs, but Peyton just rolls her eyes before shooting Jo a dirty look. “He wouldn’t know what to do with me.”
They’re at the studio and it’s easy enough, laid back watching the kids fuck around with this weird techno shit that Trish isn’t sure is anything worth recording and Andrea strides over, pulls up a seat beside her. “Who are we talking about?”
Jo leans over, makes a show of stage-whispering, “Ryan Rossy.”
Andrea quirks a brow before scoffing, snorts out on the air, “Yeah, because I know Peyton’s new pets by name.”
“The one that looks like he’s fucking bulimic.”
Andrea glances behind them through the glass of the booth. “That kid looks more like a chick than I do.”
Peyton laughs, grins. “That’s not hard.”
Trish laughs too, manages to reach over and grab at Jo’s wrist. “I have to piss, c’mon.” Jo just rolls her eyes, but gets up to follow anyway.
Andrea rocks back in the chair and turns in time to see Peyton staring at Ryan through the glass of the recording booth. Ryan’s staring back, wide-eyed and open mouthed and Andrea pulls her glasses off, clenches fingers over the bridge of her nose. “Please, Peyton,” Andrea says, “don’t.”
“What?” Peyton’s head swivels back, and she gives Andrea a look that doesn‘t really say anything. “We won’t fuck.”
*
Only thing is, they do.
And yeah, okay, it’s hard and fast and awkward and Ryan’s a baby, has no idea what he’s doing. He comes too quickly and Peyton doesn’t come at all.
“Sorry,” Ryan mumbles, and he sounds spent, tired and put off and maybe a little embarrassed. Peyton can’t stop herself, she rolls away from him, turns to face the wall and Jesus, she’s not sure why, but something in her chest feels raw and gaping in all the worst ways. Like the skin of her chest is in tatters, pulled open and apart and she clenches a hand over her heart and tries to put herself back together.
She’ll wait until Ryan’s asleep to get up and pull on her jeans with shaking fingers and quivering lips and when she gets outside she’ll find the first public toilet, lock herself in the stall and cry until she fits right in her skin again.
*
Peyton’s got a million flaws, a thousand cracks in her armor, and maybe the worst one, the one that’s the biggest sucker punch of all, is her inability to see when something’s breaking down (falling apart).
Just, with Jeanae, this time around she hears the crack.
*
Her ring tone is shrill, piercing and it cuts through the silence like the butcher’s knife in Psycho and Trish sits up in bed, gropes around the table, and holds her cell phone open against her ear.
“’Llo?”
The silence is only broken by stifled sobs and Trish knows these by tone, by desperation and broken heartedness and she’s pulling on her jeans, her t-shirt before Peyton even slurs out the, “Trish.”
“I’m coming,” Trish says. “Are you at Jeanae’s?”
Peyton doesn’t need to say yes, and Anna’s sitting up in bed, rubbing bleary eyes and Trish can’t even bring herself to say goodbye.
*
Peyton’s sitting in the driveway, legs curled to her chest and Trish wishes it wasn’t here. She hates Jeanae’s house, with the family car out front and the doghouse on the porch.
Peyton’s silent when she gets in, curls into the front seat, but she’s sobbing by the first set of traffic lights, tears staining a t-shirt that Trish doesn’t think is hers.
“Peyton…”
She draws back into the seat, wishes words came as easy as music, because right now, Trish needs Peyton scripting her, telling her what to say.
“Why’s it hurt so much?”
“Peyton…”
“No.” And she’s staring back with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Every time. It hurts every fucking time and it’s not supposed to, it’s meant to stop and get easier and just…” Peyton clenches her eyes shut. “It doesn’t.”
Trish doesn’t know what to say, but half-way back to Peyton’s house, she starts singing Stupid Cupid, low and heavy under her breath and she thinks maybe Peyton appreciates the sentiment.
*
The bitch of it is that Peyton hears it first.
“There’s a rumor floating around,” Jo says, and she’s managed to find an old ribbon somewhere on the floor of the bus, is wrapping it around her fingers and successfully avoiding Peyton’s eyes.
Peyton pauses, but figures fuck it, because they both know where this is headed. “There’s always rumors.”
“Anna’s sleeping around,” Jo says, and Peyton stares at the floor, sneers something fierce before she looks back up at her.
“Anna’s a slut.”
“Yeah,” Jo nods. “You knew?”
Peyton doesn’t reply, but maybe she doesn’t have the time, because the door is flung wide and Trish tumbles in, laughing with whoever’s on the other end of her cell phone and when she sees Peyton and Jo’s stony faces, she pauses, purses her lips.
“I’ll call you back,” she says, and she flicks off her phone, drops it into the pocket of her hoodie. “Who died?”
“No one,” Jo says, and she’s managed to tie the ribbon around her wrist, bow-it one handed. “You want to go out tonight?”
Trish shrugs, hands deep in her pockets and lips curved. “Sorry, Anna and I are going to dinner.”
Jo maybe cringes, a tiny thing that twitches at the corners of her eyes, and she chews the inside of her lip before saying, “You sure? I got like, fucking A-grade pot.”
Trish just laughs and Peyton wonders if this is for real. “Seriously. Anna got reservations at some weird local Vietnamese restaurant. I’m sorta insanely looking forward to it.”
“Okay,” Peyton says, and Jo shoots her a desperate look. “Have fun. Get pissed for me.”
Neither of them say anything else, but later that night, Trish storms through the open doors of the bus, ignores Jo and Andrea and Peyton and flings herself into her bunk without another word.
Peyton sighs, drops her trashy magazine that she maybe wasn’t really reading anyway and creeps into the bunk area on the tips of her toes. She pushes aside the curtain enough to slip in through the crack and Trish doesn’t roll to face her until Peyton’s squashed against her side, her face in her neck and her arms tight around her waist.
“You’re my best friend, okay?” Trish isn’t crying, but she’s blinking a lot and her breathing’s shallow and Peyton moves to hold her hand. “My best friend in like, ever and always, alright?”
Trish nods, sharp and tense and Peyton’s fingers clench in Trish’s and she buries her face deeper in her neck. “She’s not…she’s not worth it and tonight we’re going to make best friend bracelets and eat as many tubs of ice-cream as we can and watch The Notebook until we both cry which should only take like, twenty minutes and then we can go and egg the bitch’s house. Okay?”
Trish only half-laughs, and Peyton sniffles, can feel the crinkles in her forehead and this, this is all wrong - makes her ache in all the wrong ways and she clings to Trish’s hand and says, “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t, you’ll, fuck, you’ll break my heart if you do.”
“But Jeanae’s done such a good job of that already.” Trish’s tone is cutting as she pulls away, moves herself over and doesn’t look at Peyton, not for real, just clenches her eyes shut hard enough that it looks likes the lids are trying to swallow the bulbs. “Fuck off, Peyton. Please.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs, and she pushes herself out of the bunk. “Okay.”
*
The pills were never meant to be a lifejacket, her fucking parachute, but Peyton feels like she’s freefalling and she needs something, anything to slow her down, to fight against the gale (against her).
Andrea’s standing in the doorway, lips pursed and fingers clenched against the door handle and Peyton’s in the middle of a fairy circle, pill bottles and tablets littered around her like her own sort of magic dust.
She wonders if she could fly away.
“Hi,” she says, and she makes a path, shifts some of the pills out of the way so that Andrea can pull herself in, sit in the circle with her.
Andrea doesn’t say anything right away, but she bites her lip, rock back before placing a hand on either side of Peyton’s face, on either cheek. “This doesn’t look like the girl who was going to take over the world with us.”
Peyton laughs. “I have a different haircut.”
“A different everything else, too, huh?”
Peyton’s eyes are bleary, fogging over at the edges, and she stares at the floor, at the circle of pills and feels the crushed capsules in her hand. “It’s not waiting up for me.”
“What’s not?”
Peyton blinks, stares at Andrea with wide eyes and there’s something about it that is resigned, too much so, and Andrea just wants to hit her. Make her fight back.
“Nothing, forget about it,” Peyton rolls her eyes, laughs. “Stupid.”
“Not-“
Peyton gets up and leaves.
*
Peyton used to wonder what people were thinking when they tried to kill themselves. She finds out when she’s on her own in a Best Buy parking lot that it isn’t much.
She tries to kill herself one frosty day in February, Hallelujah on the stereo like some over-dramatic surrender and she closes her eyes with no intention of opening them again.
She would have left a note if she thought she could explain it.
*
The hospital light is cheap, one of those sallow bulbs that talks in hazy glows and flickered Morse code as opposed to strength or light. Andrea sighs, tries to get comfortable in the waiting room chair that’s only padded enough to fill the frame - not intended to be anything supportive or fuck, she doesn’t know, but Jo’s quiet next to her and Trish is pacing, back and forth like a pendulum. Her cheeks are red, rosy, ruby, whatever, lips quivering and the bags beneath her eyes are swollen, heavy and Andrea doesn’t even know how the girl’s still moving.
Trish growls, forces a hand on either side of her head and just, she rocks, back, forwards before ripping out an arm and punching the bland hospital walls and Jesus, that’s gonna bruise.
“Trish-“ Jo starts, but the girl just swivels on the spot, her knuckles bleeding and her breath low and heavy, the soundtrack of heartache and none of them say anything when Trish growls something inaudible and stomps out of the room.
The silence is stifling and Andrea almost can’t breathe, struggles in the space and she undoes the zip on her hoodie, tugs at the collar of her t-shirt before slouching down in the chair, watching the wall with half-lidded eyes.
There’s sobs from a few seats over, stifled and coarse and they’re choked out into the air like something to be ashamed of and Andrea clenches her eyes shut. She glances over, looks towards Jo who sits hunched in on herself, legs pressed tight together and fingers clenched over her kneecaps.
Andrea sighs, because fuck, Peyton, this isn’t fair. She gets up, brushes off her jeans and wanders over, moves too deliberately, and when she sits down next to Jo, the girl doesn’t even look at her, but her cries become all the more repressed, choked, desperate.
Silence settles too firm against Andrea’s tongue, and she can’t think of anything to do, words stilted and caught in her voice box and it takes her a minute, but she reaches out a hand, clenches her fingers through Jo’s and stares straight ahead, counts the marks on the wall.
She can feel Jo’s eyes on her, wide and glassy and almost ridiculous and Andrea says, “Just until Mark gets here,” and tries not to swear when Jo’s face crumbles, falls like the Wailing Wall and just, Jo, she cries.
*
The suits and the fans, they wait for no one, so they head to England without Peyton, fly off for tours and press and Jesus, Jo isn’t sure how they’re gonna do this.
The lights are hard backstage and the sound of Andrea on the Xbox are piercing, gunshots and the skid of tires on digital concrete. Jo and Trish are sprawled on the floor playing cards.
“Peyton--” Jo tries, because they’re three days into the tour and no one’s brought it up. “She’s…she’ll be alright, yeah?”
“’Course,” Andrea says, and she shrugs, goes back to clicking the keys on the Xbox control and Trish, she shoots cow eyes at Jo, wide behind her glasses.
“Yeah,” Trish says.
Later that night, when Andrea’s asleep and Jo and Trish are up watching Friends re-runs, Trish will say, “She’s all I’ve ever wanted,” without ever taking her eyes off the screen.
Jo will sigh, roll over and wrap an arm around Trish’s waist. “I know.”
*
Peyton flies over with a therapist, all sallow skin and dark sacks beneath her eyes to match the emotional baggage and the suitcase dragging behind her.
Trish is sorta pissed that Andrea gets the first hit in, because Peyton’s flat on her back before she can get through the door. Andrea resists the temptation to jump her, just stands over Peyton like a villain or a hero, Trish isn’t sure which.
Peyton doesn’t cry or yell or fight back, but she touches fingers to her bloody lip and quirks a half-hearted grin. “Thought you were a vegan.”
Andrea sneers, “I only don’t kill animals with a brain.”
There’s a laugh from Peyton and Jesus, Trish hadn’t realized she’d missed that (had really). “Okay, like, I’ll give you that given the circumstances.”
Andrea nods. “Damn fucking right, you will.” But she holds out a hand and pulls Peyton up off the floor. Peyton turns around to look at Trish and just, Trish, she can’t right then, so she does the only thing she can. She turns around and leaves.
*
Peyton won’t talk to her and good, Trish supposes, because if she did, well, Trish wouldn’t talk back. She doesn’t want Peyton’s stupid jokes or dumbass donkey laugh, would much rather just play Guitar Hero with Jo or read comics with Andrea or sing songs that are most notably not the blues or any of Peyton’s fucking melodramatics.
She doesn’t want Peyton, not ever, not again, and when they stop at a hotel that night, each in different rooms, Trish isn’t thinking about Peyton. Isn’t thinking about the contrast miles of tanned skin made against the bleached hospital sheets, isn’t thinking about how Peyton, how she hasn’t smiled with all her fucking horse teeth in a while (toolongtoolongtoolong).
She still isn’t thinking of her when Peyton slides a piece of paper under the door.
Fix me.
Trish, she picks up a pen, writes on the back, I don’t know how and throws it in the bin.
*
“So,” Jo says, “so, Peyton’s like, alive and shit.”
Trish rolls her eyes, but doesn‘t move from where she‘s sprawled on top of the bed because, seriously? “Wow, Jo, how’d you ever fail high school observational science? Seriously, that deduction just…” She widens her eyes comically, parts her lips. “Wow. Way to blow my mind.”
Jo just grins. “Figured that’d send you on a bit of a loop. I’m fucking good like that, Trish, fucking incredible.”
They’re playing on the Xbox, fucking Mario Karts or something, both long, slow and languid here on the bed. The motel is nice for some skeevy bed and breakfast type, a proper TV and bed linen that isn’t big, ugly and floral and whatever, but it’s pretty comfortable.
Something blows up on screen and that would be more of a surprise, but Jo isn’t even pretending to be fully involved, is only half-playing really, keeps looking at Trish, chewing her lip. Trish hears Jo heave out a breath beside her, feels the shift of the mattress and she clenches her eyes shut when Jo says, “She’s all you wanted, right?”
“Fuck off.”
“No, seriously,” Jo says. “I feel like I’m stuck in an episode of The Young and the Restless and the only way for the series to end is for you both to suck it up and go make-out in front of Anna or Jeanae or something.”
Trish blinks, but she’s sorta smiling now, something that spills across her face like milk on the kitchen tiles (Jo wishes it was genuine). “I don’t think real life works that way.”
Jo scrunches up her nose and throws a turtleshell at something on screen. “Real life doesn’t work that way because real people are fucking retarded. Life would be so much cooler if we were all like fucking Wolverine. That guy knew what he wanted.”
Trish pauses, blinks, and dies, her cart (it was the blue one) flickers off screen. “Fuck, Hugh Jackman’s hot.”
Jo grins. “I’d bang it like a screen door.”
“Mark?” Trish asks, eyebrows halfway up her forehead and she grins when Jo finally just throws the controller down on the floor and smiles back.
“Fuck it, he can watch.”
And Trish laughs.
*
Trish isn’t sure how Jo managed to drag both Andrea and Dirty out of the room, but the bitch is sorta sneaky like that and Trish is left feeling wide-eyed and stupid when Peyton shuffles in, awkward and pale and her tattoos look starker because of it, eyelashes like permanent marker against the tops of her cheeks.
Peyton doesn’t even sit down, moves only enough to lean her back hard against the wall and dig her hands into the pockets of her spray-on jeans. “So…” she says, and she’s talking to the floor, to the spaces between the tiles. “So, this isn’t-” she stops herself, starts again, “hi.”
“Hi.” And she plucks at a few loose threads on the back of the sofa, scuffs the toe of her shoe.
The silence settles like an old rug on new floorboards and Trish bites her lip, blinks too hard and tries to think of something better, easier and maybe Peyton’s doing the same, because when her eyes flicker up, Peyton’s are there to meet them.
“I-” Trish starts, but she pauses, thinks better of it, and just shifts on the spot, redistributes her weight in a way that just makes her want to leave. It’s awkward and fuck, it’s wrong and Trish hates it.
She bites her lip again, feels ridiculous and sighs, lets go, “Jo thinks we should be all Wolverine and Jean Grey and just like, fucking make-out or whatever.”
The quiet is back and Trish hears the support act fucking around on stage, someone drop a glass bottle, a car fails to start. Peyton stares, eyes wide.
“I’m Wolverine, right?”
Trish gapes, forehead crinkles. “Fuck you, I am totally Wolverine.”
Peyton just giggles, that stupid donkey thing that always (alwaysalwaysalways) makes Trish smile. “I don’t even ship the fuckers.”
And it’s sorta hilarious, because fuck off, neither does Trish. “Jean’s such a fucking whore.”
The grin bleeds across Peyton’s face, easy in a way it hasn’t been in too long. “Totally.”
*
Trish wakes up with a leg wrapped around her waist and a breath against her collarbone. Something smells like instant-soup and she can taste bad beer in the back of her throat and when Peyton snuffles, snorts in the air like there’s a pig in her throat, Trish just smiles, clenches a hand against Peyton’s sharp hip and feels, for the first time in a year, like normal.
*
Thing is, not all conversation comes easy.
(Thing is, not every girl is emphatic, knows what to say, do, think, feel. Trish never felt like a real girl, is so fucking useless at comfort and delicacy, but really, Andrea and Peyton are just as bad as her, can’t sit in a circle and talk it out, let it out.)
Thing is, none of them can say, are we alright now?
“We should see a movie or something,” Andrea says, and she’s leaning back on the couch, arms behind her head and eyes at the ceiling. Together, do something together.
“Is there even anything on?” Peyton’s on the floor, picking at loose strands of carpet and Jesus, Trish thinks, this is ridiculous, maybe really this is some daytime soap because it feels unnatural beneath her skin, between her eyes.
“Lunch then,” Andrea says, “museum, carnival, lunch, whatever. Just do something. I’m fucking bored, man.”
Peyton’s eyes flicker up, too-many half dancers in her irises and none of it’s whole. Trish looks at the floor.
“Where the fuck is Jo?”
Peyton just shrugs, and Andrea shakes her head. “Don’t think she got out of bed this morning, Trish.”
“There’s an idea.”
Andrea blinks, nose scrunched and eyes half-lidded. “You’re kidding, right?”
Trish just grins, shrugs tired shoulders and moves back to the bus.
That night, Trish won’t sleep (will have caught that from Peyton) and will make herself write you’re okay? On the back of the ‘get well’ card her and Jo never sent. She’ll move between the bunks to Peyton’s, and slip it under the pillow and then she’ll go back to bed.
She won’t find it again until the next morning, tucked beneath her mattress with the words I’m getting there scrawled on the other side.
And that’s good enough for now.
*
“I totally got a message from Ryan Ross.”
“Like, oh my God,” Andrea says, but she hasn’t taken her eyes off the comic book in her hand, flips the page. “Seriously? Did he like, totally ask you, like, out or whatever?”
Peyton flips her off, but Trish is decidedly less interested (not that Andrea was either), but she looks up from where she’s sprawled on the floor with her laptop. “You always have a message from Ryan Ross. He wants to give you head, that’s what little boys do when they want to give chicks head, they send them weird messages that you can almost hear them heavily breathing in.”
Peyton blinks, quirks an eyebrow. “That’s…surprisingly accurate.”
Trish just shrugs. “Been there, done that.”
“What? Wanted to give me head?”
It wasn’t meant to be like, having a go or even serious, but Trish stops, flushes so fast and bright that Peyton blinks again, pauses, and opens her mouth. “Jesus, serious?”
“Fuck off, Peyton.” And Peyton gapes, because fuck, the girl didn’t even pretend to say ‘no’ and Andrea and Jo are both quiet now, watching like the gallery to Peyton’s fucking Greek tragedy play of a life and Trish slams her laptop shut, moves out of the room faster than Peyton ever thought she could.
Andrea slams the comic book down on the table, growls something along the lines of great fucking job at Peyton before storming out after her and Peyton’s left open-mouthed and stupid like a fish on concrete.
“Jesus, fuck,” she says, and Jo’s not even looking at her anymore, is staring up at the ceiling like it’s intermission at the theatre and Peyton’s the bad filler act. “What the fuck is her problem? Jesus, it’s not like I-fuck.”
Peyton’s on her feet, pacing awkwardly and her sidekick vibrates somewhere in her pocket and she doesn’t even think before she tears it out of her pocket and pegs it at the wall. It shatters like glass (like a sidekick would if you threw it at a wall) and when she turns around to bitch it all out to Jo, she’s met with a fist to the face.
Jo‘s glowering, standing taller than Peyton ever remembered she was. “Fuck you.”
“The fuck, Josephine?” Peyton pulls herself to a stand, gets herself up in Jo’s face with heavy eyes and clenched fists. “Someone shoot something feral in your vag or what?”
Jo glowers, breathing heavy and coarse in her chest and Peyton blinks, breathes. “Fuck you for working hard for Trish.”
Peyton stops, unclenches her fists, because, “What?”
“You tried to kill yourself, Peyton, and you come back and you work hard for Andrea and Trish because they’re in your face or maybe you just give a shit more but I - I’m here too, I’m always here and you just.” Jo stops, her fingers are still moving, twitching and her eyes are still wide and teary and fuck, Peyton thinks. Fuck.
“Jo, I-“
“No, I don’t want…you’re not allowed to say anything now because I…I’ve just spent a billion years fuming and you didn’t notice and now that I’ve said something you can’t.”
“Okay,” Peyton says, and she pauses, lips parted and arms either side of her waist and then she just, she leans in and kisses her.
It’s not magic, not anything, not really, but Jo doesn’t pull away and she doesn’t cry and she doesn’t burst into song or monologue or do much other than press her lips back and wrap her fingers around Peyton’s arm.
Peyton pulls back first, rocks back on her heels and stares at Jo with half-lidded eyes and pursed lips. The smile’s only half real, half make-believe.
Jo clenches her eyes shut, fumbles with the words. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”
There’s a shrug half-way to Peyton’s shoulders, but she stops herself, slouches instead. “It’s all I’m good for, huh?”
*
Thing is, thing is, the album isn’t done, not finished.
Peyton and Trish go back to the studio and it’s not as easy as number one, but not as hard as it had been and Trish doesn’t think recording this fucking CD will be anything she’ll look back on in good humor.
“Here.” Peyton shoves a notebook at her. “Try again.” And she pulls herself up off the floor and leaves the room.
Trish flicks it open, reads, please put the doctor on the phone coz I’m not making any sense blame everyone but me for this mess, and slams it shut.
She sighs, and opens up garage band.
*
Warped Tour is sorta a big deal, and Trish supposes it’s rare to get an all girl band shredding their way across the main stage. She supposes that’s sorta awesome in itself.
“This’ll be amazing,” Jo says, and she’s smiling, full and real and her guitar is tight in one hand and her can of beer in the other. She’s stoned, but it’s a good trip and Andrea overlooks it for the time being.
“Amazing,” Trish agrees, and she bites her lip, can hardly suppress the grin that bleeds across her face.
Peyton’s back in the bus, but she ducks her head out, bad hair ironed straight and eyeliner smudged beneath big, dumb eyes. “Better be,” she yells, and it takes a minute, but maybe she smiles too.
*
If Peyton could sum up Mikey Way in one word, she thinks it’d probably be ‘no’.
(If she could sum him up in more, it’d probably be: shouldn’t, couldn’t, does, will, yes, fuck, forever, maybe, no, no, no).
No.
*
“You’re sorta beautiful,” Mikey says, because he’s ridiculous like that and Peyton’s better, is well (she is, she is, she is) but this isn’t right. “Like, always are, but tonight especially, y’know?”
He gives her a bouquet of daisies, carnations, daffodils. “Roses are over done,” he says.
“Yeah,” she grins, but it’s not all there. “You’re really-”
He cuts her off though. “You don’t have to say it.”
“What?”
Mikey sighs, growls a little in the back of his throat, and he folds his arms behind his back, scuffs the toe of his stupid shoes on the dirt under foot and won’t meet Peyton’s eye. “Sweet. Like a brother, yeah?”
She pauses, blinks and something’s wrong under her skin, is shriveling in all the worst ways, and when she leans in to kiss him, maybe it grows and maybe it shrinks. She puts a hand under Mikey’s chin, makes him look at her, before she leans in, presses her lips gently against his. “No,” she mumbles, and she looks at him, up through the fans of her eyelashes. “Not like a brother.”
Somewhere between that spot (moment) and Mikey’s bus, she drops the flowers.
It doesn’t matter really, not when they’re fucking in his bunk anyway.
*
Peyton and Mikey are both sorta ridiculously flat and small and are made up of bad hair and more issues than they can count on all their fingers and toes. Maybe it’s a perfect match, Trish isn’t sure, but right now it’s a picture of two and Trish sits on the bench by the catering van and watches them make-out.
There’s a giggle somewhere behind her, and Jo’s staggering out of their bus, spots Trish and tumbles over. She stops when she sees Peyton and Mikey.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
It’s times like this Trish sorta wished she smoked. “I know, huh?”
*
It’s not a habit, this sitting on the My Chemical Romance bus roof in the middle of the night, but Peyton thinks she could put it down as one of her less self-destructive tendencies after this tour.
Mikey’s sprawling on his back, awkward limbs maneuvered on angles Peyton doesn’t think she’s ever seen before, and he‘s looking skyward, to the heavens and Peyton‘s looking at him. He reaches up a hand, moves to tug her down beside him, and she doesn’t fit properly beneath his arm, never has, so they never lie properly together. Peyton always leaves space between which is so not…it’s not her. Not really.
“Lie down,” he mumbles. “I can’t impress you with any of my clichés if you’re sitting up.”
Peyton does lie down, far enough away from Mikey that they’re not in each other’s skin, but close enough so that they’re maybe breathing the same air. “Clichés, Mr. Way? I thought you were a more original man than that.” She grins, moves into his space a little. “Those boys are a dime a dozen.”
Mikey laughs. “Oh, sorry,” he mumbles. “Would it help if I told you I moonlight as a particularly romantic poet?”
“Hm,” she hums. “Just.”
He doesn’t really say much else for a minute, but she sees him biting his lip, rolling his eyes up towards the moon. She grins, and he says, “Is it true that you tried to kill yourself in the parking lot of a Best Buy?”
The smile drops from her face, slides down her neck, chest, legs and it hits her feet with a thud. She rolls away from him, clenches her eyes shut and breathes hard because maybe no one’s asked her that directly before.
“I don’t know,” she says finally and then there’s silence. Mikey, he’s a good guy, perceptive in a way most guys aren’t, and he doesn’t push it, but Peyton does.
“I tell people I just wanted to sleep.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. But I think on some level I didn’t want to be, like,” she thinks, opens her eyes, “I wanted to die too. I wanted someone to give a shit and she did, but not enough.”
Mikey puffs out his cheeks, breathes out hard. “Trish?”
Peyton furrows her brow, says, “No, Jeanae, some girl from back home. She was. I thought I was in love with her.”
“And you weren’t.”
“And I wasn’t.”
It’s quiet again, and Peyton lies back on the roof, smiles at the sky. “I like the moon tonight.”
Mikey’s quiet, but he lies back with her, takes off his glasses and turns around to face her. “I think you could actually be more fucked up than me and my brother combined.”
“Awesome,” Peyton says, and she leans over to kiss him.
*
Trish might go and fuck Gerard Way, and it’s not like, fuck off, it’s not like it’s a revenge fuck, even if it sorta is, because the thing is, thing is, every time Peyton and Mikey highjack their bus to fuck around in, Trish is left bitter and stupid and angry and when she staggers outside one night to fume and be angry, Gerard’s out there throwing up and hung over and Trish thinks fuck it.
They sleep together and it’s not as ridiculous or unattached as Trish thought it would be. Gerard draws on her back, on her chest and her boobs and her belly and it’s nice and it feels like something real (even though she knows it’s not).
“This isn’t like, it’s not a relationship,” she says, and Gerard grins, says, “I know.”
“I’m gonna wake up tomorrow morning,” she says, “and I’m gonna go back to my bus and this probably won’t happen again.”
“Yeah,” Gerard says. “Same only, y’know, this is my bus so I won’t really leave.”
Trish pauses, looks at Gerard’s honest face and says, “You’re a good guy. You probably shouldn’t forget that.”
He blinks, and it looks like it isn’t something he’s heard in a while. “You’re beautiful,” he says. “And you’re in love with your bassist.” Trish starts, and Gerard says, “I won’t say. I don’t really care to be honest. Roll over, I want to draw on your legs.”
She quirks her eyebrows, casts half a grin. “You want to draw on my ass.”
He laughs. “Guilty as charged.” But she rolls over anyway, lets his long fingers, the nib of the pen, touch her as he draws vampires on the small of her back.
*
Everything ends, and at least Summer gives her the warning bells, directs her to the finish line.
Peyton doesn’t need to watch the replays (for once), because this time goodbye definitely feels like goodbye. This doesn’t change the fact that her stupid, fucking heart is broken, and she can only hold the pieces in her clenched fists, hold herself together between short fingers and big, leaky eyes and that night she pops too many pills, goes to the only open bar she can find and fucks her way to oblivion.
She’s sick of this.
*
Continue.