Page 44 of On The Edge
“I swear to fuck,” Adam says softly, looking up at the ceiling and shakes his head.
“Reis…” Markus crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head. “You’re typically a smart guy. How did you not think to dig deeper into this?”
“Or did she really not mean anything to you?” Adam adds on gruffly.
“Shut up, Adam. You know how I feel–felt–” I add quickly after I realize what I’d said. “Feltabout her.”
“You say you felt something, that you trusted her, but then you overheard one thing from her defending herself from a catty, jealous girl, and took it as gospel. Not only that, but then you manipulatedusto believe she truly didn’t care about us. We moved hours away from her because we trusted you. How fucking stupid are we?” Adam snaps. He strides closer to me, pointing an angry finger at me. His eyes are so full of fire and disgust, pointed directly at me, that I feel myself shrink back.
“You can’t blame all that shit on me!” I slap his hand away from me. I’m going to deny, deny, deny. But, I can’t ignore that his words have given me some kind of pause. A small, nagging feeling in my chest that makes me question everything.
“I can and I will.” Adam stands up straighter. “I can blame you for all of the bullshit that went down. I can blame you for manipulating us and using our trust against us. I can blame you for all the pain I’ve gone through. But I can’t blame you for my own actions. I should’ve gone to Mel and asked her myself. I should’ve asked more questions and I didn’t.” His head dropsand the sadness is clear in his voice. “That’s something that I’m always going to have to live with. That I was too much of a pussy to actually fight for who I love. That won’t happen again, you can mark my words.”
Adam turns and stomps off, not stopping until he slams his bedroom door like an angsty teenager.
“That’s not on me,” I argue defensively, shrugging my shoulders.
My skin feels too tight. A bead of sweat starts to run down my forehead even though I’m not wearing clothes. I swallow the lump in my throat that’s making me feel like I’m going to throw up.
“Are you sure about that?” Markus asks, narrowing his eyes.
“So you agree with Adam?” I snarl angrily. Great; just what I fucking need. Can no one see my side? Can no one see what I’ve done for us all?
Markus nods. “I do.”
“Fuck you.”
Markus shrugs, unbothered by my anger. He steps closer to me and his stare pierces me. I know that whatever he’s going to say next is going to fuck me up.
“You realize that not only have you potentially wasted six years of happiness, while working towards the fame and wealth we have today, but you’ve completely broken us all apart. You screwed us all over because of the insecurity of an eighteen-year-old, who didn’t want to have an awkward conversation and had severe possessive tendencies.” Markus shakes his head, dropping his arms before stepping closer. “You know, we all trusted you completely; Melody did, too. I have no idea how you’re going to fix this, but I suggest you do it fast.”
Markus turns and walks to his own room, shutting the door quietly. He didn’t even look back as he walked off. Just dropped the mic like he didn’t just piss me off, break my confidence, andmake me feel like I’m going to die from guilt all in the same moment.
“You both don’t know anything!” I yell down the hallway. Stomping to my room, I take the sheets from around my waist and throw them on the bed. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep now. My heart’s beating so hard; my senses are all on high alert because I’m fuming with anger.
“Great, just…fucking great,” I mumble. If I can’t rest, I guess I’ll go to the gym.
Pulling on clean gym clothes, I’m grumbling the whole time.
They don’t know. They’re just fucking blinded by her, and think that she can do no wrong.
My mind plays her words over and over, the tone of her voice in my memory having changed through the years. The whole memory is so tainted with my embarrassment and hurt that I don’t really know how she truly sounded anymore.
Did she sound scared? Was she short? Did her voice shake? I can’t remember.
The shirt slides over my head before I run my hands through my hair, taming the dark locks. Heading into the bathroom, I brush my teeth. Looking at myself in the mirror as I brush, I’m shocked with a few things. One, how fucking strong Melody is because my eye is already dark. That hit was perfect, and two punches in less than twenty-four hours was bound to leave a mark. Touching the bruised skin, I smile softly.She marked me.
Granted, the mark was in anger. But for the next few days, I’ll look at my face and think of her. Of how she came into my room with the anger of a million fighters and decked me. Of how her lip curled as she told me off. Of how her eyes flared with anger, and for a millisecond, drifted over my body like she might be interested. I won’t lie and say that I didn’t check her out either.
It’s crazy how much I seem to have aged in the last six years. I barely resemble the guy that convinced his best friends toleave in the middle of the night with him to New York City with nothing but a broken heart and a dream.
There are wrinkles on my forehead that are starting to stay, little crows’ feet around my eyes, and dark circles that never seem to go away. My face has chisled down, the subtle softness gone from years of anxiety, stress, late nights, too much caffeine, working so fucking hard just to survive, and then hope tothrive. I’ve given everything I have to this band, to my brothers.
All for them to turn on me and scream that I’ve fucked them over while everything I’ve ever done has beenfor them.
Splashing my face with cool water, I try to keep the memories at bay. The good times with Melody. The secret moments I was able to steal with her while the others were distracted; the small touches, the lingering looks which made me think she might actually like me.
“No! She said we were nothing. She was just using us,” I tell myself, but I don’t quite believe it anymore.
