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The first time, they’re in the van. That’s where Ryan spends most of his time, now, driving from show to show, gig to gig, all over the country. Wherever someone wants him. Whether it’s a birthday party or an after school event, he goes. He needs the money and he needs the publicity. He needs anything he can get, because this is all harder than he ever thought it would be.
He needs someone with him, too, he guesses, when he glances over from the empty stretch of freeway unfolding before him to the girl in the passenger seat. He forgets her name sometimes. It sounds shitty, and he always feels that familiar gnaw of guilt when he realizes he doesn’t even know who he’s talking to, doesn’t even know anything about her. But he can’t help that his heart isn’t in it. It’s just, a mutually beneficial deal. A messy deal. They met in a diner, late after one of shows, with their dwindling audiences and increasingly sad venues. She needed somewhere to go, fresh out of high school and on the road, just like him, and he needed someone to fill the crushing emptiness he felt eating at him from the passenger seat, to fill the silence when his radio cut out and there was nothing but the hum of road noise outside.
Now, they’re talking, and he doesn’t really remember what it’s about. All he knows is that their conversations always wind their way around to music, because he doesn’t have anything else. And talking about music usually melds into talking about Min, because for all but the past few months, those two things were inextricably tied, knotted up in red string. His hands feel tied in it now, one resting over the open window, the other wrapped around the steering wheel. He feels the threads pull tight, and he can’t stop talking about Min.
Ryan goes on about how they used to play together, concerts for their families when they were six, jam sessions in the backyard or one of their bedrooms when they were eleven. They were supposed to play shows, school battle of the band events, all of it, when they were sixteen. Now, Ryan’s eighteen, and playing alone. Music still feels good, but it just isn’t the same, and he says as much. He misses turning to Min when a song fades out, grinning, feeling like they could own the world someday. He misses the easy teasing and the warmth of an arm thrown around his shoulder.
Realizing the girl beside him hasn’t said a word in ages, Ryan stumbles to a stop, a quiet heat rising to his cheeks. Something like shame burns in his chest. The warmth, the light that had bubbled up there gets stomped down, because he knows it’s not how he’s supposed to feel. It isn’t how he’s supposed to feel about Min, anyway, not when he has a girlfriend sitting hardly two feet away.
When she finally does speak up, he knows he won’t like what she has to say, not with remorse gathering in her voice, a resigned sigh starting the sentiment. He doesn’t even hear most of it, just waiting for the sting at the end. And, sure enough, it comes. He’s known it’s been coming for... a while now. Every time her eyes go blank when he starts talking about his music again, every time she spends his shows out at restaurants and arcades and parks, every time, he knows whatever is holding them together chips apart a little more.
“You know, I just don’t want to date someone who’s more into their ex-best friend than me,” she finally says, at the end.
All he can think to say is, “Min is still my best friend.” It doesn’t even strike him until after that the semantics shouldn’t be his top concern, whether Min is or was his friend. It should be that he’s losing his girlfriend—that’s what he’s supposed to care about. And maybe he does care, somewhere, but right now, he just feels sort of numb, holding the steering wheel a little tighter, wishing his radio worked so he could blast some music and drown out the uncomfortable beat of silence.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she says, but it isn’t accusatory, just tired. “Drop me off at the next gas station; I’ll find my own way from there.”
Ryan does. He pulls up under the harsh lights and watches her go, kicks himself for letting it happen, bringing it upon himself. Now, he knows it’ll feel empty again, in the van all alone. He knows the silence will creep under his skin, prickly and unsettling. He knows the shows will feel empty, with no one to celebrate with after.
He still can’t remember her name, and that’s the worst part. Guilt bites into his heart, frustration smokes in his lungs.
From then on, he doesn’t mention Min anymore.
—
Sarah has sharp edges, plays her own music, and that’s enough for Ryan. She came up to him when he was playing on the street, guitar case propped open with a couple of coins inside, the picture of a cliche starving artist. She laughed first, and he bristled, but it was only because he reminded her of herself, she said. It was only because she was just like him, a few years ago. They talk, drinking flat soda and snacking on chips outside a gas station, and they hit it off. So, they climb in the van and don’t look back.
Now, they split their time between Ryan’s cruddy gigs, and Sarah’s significantly more impressive ones. She sings in front of real crowds, in smoky livehouses and clubs where the excitement and energy are palpable in the air. The heat and crush of bodies, the rising cheers, the shaking vibrations from the speakers hung in every corner, it all feels like the best adrenaline rush. Faceless among the fans, Ryan cheers and shouts too, caught up in the excitement, heart pounding. She’s good; she’s really good.
And Sarah actually watches him play too, when she has the time. It’s nice, at first. She’s fun to hang out with, to be wild and young and free, to go to parties with and come stumbling back to the van with, the sun already in the sky. It’s even fun to argue with her, caught up in debates of whether true rock or punk is the better genre, of whether he’s too good to be playing at a bingo hall, of whether she’s getting too arrogant to be booking bigger stages.
Only, somewhere along the lines, standing in the back of packed shows, drink in hand, straining to see the stage, it loses its charm. He isn’t out here traveling the country to take a back seat and watch someone else’s rise to stardom. He isn’t out here to become a washed up never was while his girlfriend makes it big. The thrill of her shows gets boiled down into a pit of jealousy, of envy. And one night, his foot sore from a fan’s studded platform heel stepping on it, his ears ringing with someone else’s songs, his eyes watering from the flashing bright lights, he just can’t do it anymore. He leaves before her set is over, sits in the van and fiddles with the wires in his radio like he might be able to fix it. It’s a lost cause, he knows, unfixable.
That’s how everything is starting to feel these days. Unfixable.
Their arguments used to be fun, little more than sharp tongued banter thrown back and forth with fierce grins. It isn’t fun now, when she finally comes back after she’s packed up after the show. Ryan does the only thing he can think of, and that’s to be honest with her. She makes him feel like he isn’t enough, digs up his insecurities and lodges them painfully in his chest. She takes the fun out of his music, because it’s all about hers. She never stops partying, never takes a break, and sometimes he just wants someone to talk with, to hang out with. Someone to just be with.
Someone like Min, he thinks, but doesn’t dare let that thought go any farther.
She yells, when he’s finally gotten everything off his chest. Anger froths and boils between them, insults are traded, and right then, Ryan wants nothing more than to just go home. He wants to sit on the kitchen counter and call Min and talk to him until the sun comes up, listen to his voice, even distorted and cracked with static as it always sounds through the receiver. The wanting aches in his chest, sticks and barbs there, and he can’t shake it. Even the heat from the argument can’t burn it out.
Finally, when everything is aired out, all said and done, he drives to the gas station and stops, a sense of déjà vu flooding over him as the door slams shut and another girl disappears again. And this time, it takes all his will not to turn around and drive straight back to Powell Lake. A knot forms in his throat. The tendons in his fingers ache, for how hard he grips the steering wheel, knuckles going white. He can feel the red string tied around his fingers again, pulling him back.
Ryan just keeps driving, because he doesn’t know what else to do.
—
They’re in a cruddy motel, because it’s cheap and all they can afford. Normally, Ryan just sleeps in the van, sprawled out in the back seat or reclined in the front. He’s used to waking up to a stiff neck or sore knees. It’s part of the charm, he supposes, of life on the road. And more importantly, it’s free. It doesn’t cost a cent to park around the back of a gas station or convenience store parking lot, piled under old blankets on the cold days and rolling the windows down a crack on the warmer ones.
But he splurged, if he could even call spending money on a tiny, dirty room in a sketchy motel a splurge, because Ella wanted to, and maybe he convinced himself he wanted to as well. Now, his certainty in that wanes by the moment, the two of them together on the one double bed in the room. The frame and springs creak with every shift, no matter how small, and in the relative silence, it sounds deafening.
He’s sitting with his back to the headboard, Ella sliding into his lap. Her hands sink into his hair, her mouth moving from his, down his jaw, down his throat. His heart pounds in his chest, but not entirely for the right reasons. Nerves knot in his chest, and the sense of dread, the sense that this is all wrong and only getting worse, builds with every moment he lets it go on. It’s a dark weight, that dread, cold and sludgy in the pit of his stomach, crushing against his lungs.
He’s supposed to want this, he reminds himself as she presses a kiss just above his collar bone, the neckline of his shirt pulled down to make space. She’s his girlfriend. This day was inevitable. He knew it was coming. He wants this, he tells himself, as teeth scrape against his skin, the mark soothed after with a softer press of lips. But something in his chest twists, sharp and uncomfortable, and he knows it’s only a lie he’s trying to breathe truth into, something he wants to convince himself of.
Ella shifts in his lap, smooths her hands up under the hem of his shirt. Sucking in a sharp breath, Ryan tips his head back, presses the back of his skull into the faux wood headboard until it hurts. He grits his teeth, reminding himself again and again that this—what they’re doing—is normal, this is what he’s supposed to want. This is something he’s supposed to want to do with his girlfriend.
But he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t love her. He knows that. Hell, she probably knows that. They’ve only known each other for a few months; no one could form a real connection, a real bond that fast. Could they? All he knows is he hasn’t, and doesn’t want to, either. He doesn’t want to be in this crummy motel. He doesn’t want to be with Ella.
She pulls the shirt up over his head, prompting him to move enough to let her. He complies, mind lost entirely elsewhere. And with more skin bared, her affections trail down over his chest. He wonders if she notices, if she cares, that he’s hardly touched her at all. Beyond a few cursory kisses, her lips warm and insistent against his, he’s done nothing. Now, his hands are starting to tremble, anxiety threading out from his heart, through his veins, so he buries them in the threadbare sheets. Trying to hide the shake in them. Trying to hide his apprehension.
Genuinely, Ella deserves better than him. She really is a good person, kind and honest and warm. She deserves someone who wants to be with her, not someone like him, trying so hard to convince himself that he does.
Though, that thought is drowned out in a flurry of panic when her fingers sink below the waistband of his pants. All the convincing, all the reminders of what he should want and how he should feel, they all evaporate in a rush, gone off a sharp exhale forced from his throat. He can’t do it anymore. Feeling jittery all over, like there’s static prickling across his skin, he fumbles to get away. He pushes Ella back, careful at least to not be too rough, and blindly grabs for his shirt, lying in a rumpled pile on the side of the bed.
“Ryan?” she questions, surprise coloring her tone, but it all sounds vaguely underwater.
He manages to choke out an apology, yanking on his shirt, before he’s out the door. Everything seems like a blur, vision swimming, before he realizes he’s somehow made it outside, standing in the crisp night air, concrete sidewalk segments rough under socked feet. He forgot his shoes. He isn’t about to go back for them, so he just sinks to the ground around the corner of the building, back against the wall, and curls in on himself. Knees pulled to his chest, forehead resting against his knees, he sits and tries to remember how to breathe. Tries to quiet the nerves in his stomach and the panic in his head.
Emotions tangle in a knot in his chest, wants conflicting with what he believes he should want. It’s all a mess, and he can’t sort one feeling out from the next; it’s just one big murky ball, slowly eating at him. But one thing stands out, the only thread he’s ever able to keep tabs on. The one that ties him to Min. He realizes then, when his heart stops pounding so hard, when his breathing starts to calm and quiet, when everything still feels so pointedly wrong, that he knows how to make it right. Or, at the very least, take a step in the right direction.
His eyes mist over at the realization, tears gathering in the corners. He just... he just wants Min. With every single one of these girls, it’s always the same. There’s someone else he’d rather be sitting next to, someone else he’d rather be talking to. There’s someone else, and none of them can measure up. Min isn’t perfect, and they fight and argue sometimes, but it doesn’t matter, because they always come back around for each other, and that’s what counts. Ryan wants to go back to him now, but there’s a girl in a motel room waiting for him, and he can’t just leave her stranded. Still, he decides to go home, when he can. He’s done doing this without Min. He doesn’t want to play music without him, he doesn’t want to travel the country without him.
Ryan doesn’t want to be without him.
Though, a hand on his shoulder startles him out of his head. He flinches away, glancing up to find Ella standing at his side, a concerned tilt to her brows. “Are you okay?” she asks, and he’s reminded that she really does deserve someone better.
He sniffs once, nudges his glasses up to wipe at his eyes before he answers. “I just needed some air,” he says, quiet, a little embarrassed.
“That’s all?” she asks, skeptical but not pushy.
Ryan can’t help it. He spills everything, about her, about Min, about music, and about wanting to go home.
And that’s the end of things between them. That’s the end of things for Ryan, as a solo artist anyway. He gives Ella the van, because she wants it, because he doesn’t need it if he isn’t traveling all over Canada anymore. And he goes home. He goes back to Min, following the pull of the red string.
—
Ryan rarely wakes up early enough to see the pale blue of early morning spill across the room. He’s missed it again, gold and orange, warm colors of an autumn sunrise, paint the space instead. Crisp white linen turns soft and rosy in the splinters of light that creep in through the blinds. And when he finally brings himself to really look, focus, rather than just sneak drowsy glances from the crook of the elbow thrown over his eyes, he finds nothing but that—linen. The sheets are rumpled, the opposite corner to Ryan’s side turned back.
Reaching out, he finds they’re as cold as they are empty, not even holding residual heat anymore. He takes in a deep breath, heaves in out in a sigh, and buried his face back in his pillow. Facing the day still sounds too daunting and tiring, and he’d rather just lounge in bed a while longer where it’s warm, at least on his side anyway, piled under a blanket and quilt to keep the morning’s chill away. It’s nice that way, safe and comfortable. Though, he can think of one thing that would make it all just a bit better.
“Min,” he calls, the sound halfway muffled in his pillow, voice a little rough with the lingering edges of sleep. He only hopes Min hasn’t left the apartment yet.
“In the kitchen,” comes a familiar voice, filtering down the hall and in through the open door. The enticing scents of vanilla and melting butter drift in too, mouthwateringly sweet and rich. Still, food can wait a little longer.
“Come back to bed,” Ryan says, loud enough he knows he’ll be heard, and ignored anyway. Once Min is up for the day, he’s up, and Ryan’s found there’s little he can do to change that. No amount of asking or whining brings Min back to bed, and he’s tried plenty of both, because mornings just don’t get along with him, and very little can compare to nuzzling into his boyfriend’s neck, still drowsy and pleasantly warm. Really, the only time Min indulged him was when Ryan was sick with a nasty flu last February. When Min wasn’t busy making meals or generally making sure Ryan took care of himself, he climbed back into bed with him. And all day, Ryan got to stay cuddled up with him, trying to nap the fever and chills away.
Now, Min refuses, just like always. Instead, he just makes a peace offering. “I’m making pancakes,” he says, and it’s starting to feel a little silly, calling across the apartment to each other. Still, Ryan stretches and sits up but doesn’t move to actually get up, still not fully convinced.
“With chocolate chips?” he asks, still skeptical but reaching out for his glasses on the bedside table, just in case.
“Yeah, in yours anyway,” Min answers, and that’s enough to have his stomach growling.
Reluctantly, Ryan untangles himself from the heap of sheets and blankets, parting ways with the cozy warmth. Instead, he stumbles towards the kitchen, only half awake, drawn by the sizzle of butter and the aroma of melting chocolate.
Their little kitchen unfolds around him, all dated checkered tile and mismatched cookware. As promised, Min is there, standing at the cooktop, spatula in hand. Ryan, the soft edges of a smile pulling across his lips, comes to embrace him from behind, arms wrapped around his waist, chin propped on his shoulder. Like it’s second nature, Min just reaches back and ruffles his hair, attention still focused on the bubbling batter in the pan before him.
After a moment, Ryan slips away, spotting a plate of finished pancakes waiting on the counter. With a yawn, he grabs one off the stack, ignoring the melted chocolate on his fingers in favor of taking a bite. They’re warm and fluffy and sweet, just as all things should be.
“At least use a fork,” Min admonishes, but it’s in that fond tone he always uses when he isn’t really all that serious, gaze soft and light. Ryan just brushes off the comment, shrugging. Instead, he finished off the pancake he’s holding and goes back for another one.
“Have I told you lately how much I love you?” he asks, when the realization dawns on him again, in their tiny kitchen in their tiny New York apartment, that this is everything he wants. Lazy mornings, good food, and playing evening shows, all with his favorite person.
“Almost every day,” Min says, glancing over at him with something warm in his gaze before he turns back to flip another pancake before the bottom burns.
Ryan hums in acknowledgment, wiping chocolatey fingers on a kitchen towel. “I seriously do love you,” he says, because it’s worth repeating.
Min smiles, bigger now, fuller, and that makes everything worth it. All the trouble they’ve been through, all the rough patches, from splitting apart after high school, to the infinity train, to their first measly shows together. All the struggles feel worth it if he gets to have this, now. It’s perfect, and he wouldn’t change a thing.