Chapter Text
I hate you because you're a mountain
Something I have to overcome
I hate you because you're a monster
And you turned me into one
***
It’s bullshit, is what it is.
You know he’s doing it on purpose, know that every word on the line, every word out of your mouth is a love letter to someone else. That’s low, right? It’s low that he’s using you like a microphone to read his diary entries out, it’s low that he kisses you and sleeps in your bed and writes songs about the sun, the centerpiece of his whole entire solar system and, well. It’s just not you.
He tells you it is, but you know when he talks about you, when he really talks about you, it’s a picture a preschooler drew. Made of stick figures and crayon, squiggles for birds and zigzags for grass. ‘I love you,’ that’s the end of the sentence, that’s where it began, and it feels more like a lie the more you build on it without a ‘why’ or a ‘how’ to use as a jumping-off point. No structural integrity, just obligation-filled abandon and this stupid, bone-crushing, plane-crashing hope you don't want to part ways with just yet. And when he writes about Drew, it’s like this big impressionist painting you can’t make any sense of, with all this depth and imagery and shit he tells you not to think too hard about, that he poured small pieces of his organs into and still can’t come up with a good reason as to what for.
You know when you sing the words that come from his head, when you hear them on the radio or even just look at them on paper for the first time, that they’re written in a language you’re not supposed to understand. A door to the same house you bought but are still locked out of. A key you aren’t allowed to hold.
You feel like a fucking loser for it, feel like an electromagnetic frequency specifically sought out for passing his secret spy messages along and nothing else. It’s not art, though. Singing words you don’t mean. That’s got to be at least, like, step five on those stairwells your parents say not to go down once you get famous. You’re speedrunning it at this rate.
You don’t ever ask him about the love songs because you can’t, you shouldn't, you're reading too deep into this, it's nothing, Hailey, or it might just be because you don’t want to rock the boat.
Zander always said you never stuck up for yourself as much as you should've, never drew the line where you were supposed to or told a McDonald’s worker they got your order wrong. Then you got tougher, cleaner, less trusting, because you had to survive highschool somehow, and the band was counting on you to be good for it. And you were— you are .
This whole thing was always your responsibility, anyway; your baby, your party, your monster, your mess to clean up, ashes to ashes and all that. And that was fine. Peachy. You're a fucking adult, alright? You could handle it. Everyone knows you could, you can . But there was still this softness inside your bones too deep to ever snuff out.
So you let him kiss you on stage.
You said ‘yes’ into the microphone like he was proposing or something, signed your own death certificate in front of St. Louis and your parents and the seventy million people who saw the clip trending online. The next day, at Walmart, your photo was on the cover of something-something magazine– the next IT couple of 2026.
And you let him pull that shit on you in front of St. Louis , of all crowds, (he knows that it’s your favorite, you never shut up about it; you love The Blues, you love the Gateway Arch, you're head over heels for it, the whole thing, everyone knows you are) and you didn't care that he didn't give you a heads-up first or that your parents were in the crowd because you loved him , for fuck's sake.
And you still do .
You love his lopsided grin, and you love his kids watermelon toothpaste, and you love when he brings you coffee in the morning without asking. You love the way he writes, the way he puts pieces of himself into the pen, and you can just fucking hear it, you can taste it when you're listening to your music together, that there’s something inside. Something that wasn't there before, something light and beautiful and tender and sweet. Fucking magic , and it’s a part of him.
After the show in St. Louis, your step-mom brought you out for dinner, Italian. She took your hands and said, “He’s good for you, that Jake boy. I always liked him. I don’t think you could’ve met anyone better” and it was true. You were over the moon, head over heels, feeling like the main character in some kinda shitty y2k rom-com, and everyone was happy for you. Well. Everyone with an asterisk.
Your step-brother’s always been a hard sell anyway– you love him to bits but he doesn’t treat Luke well and he never really liked Jake and you in any font or format, not together at least. Zander’s just too skeptical to get past what– for all you were concerned– was ancient history by then. You figured he wouldn’t know anything about true love. Especially not yours.
So why would you listen when he said to keep a distance, that the songs weren’t about you (you really thought they were back then, you really did, you were so naive you actually, genuinely believed it) that there was a good reason he and Drew got on back in high school?
You told Zander to shut up, that Jake had changed, that if everyone were the same as they were four years ago, then the world would be on fire by now. Zander said it already is. He’s annoying.
Some time later, you and the band were headlining in bumfuck who-knows-where North Carolina, someplace on the beach with sandflies and palm trees. Geezers with sunburn in the crowd, and Jake had never sung by himself on stage before. Your band manager said that the set would sound better without accompaniment, and you were just getting over a cold anyway, so you decided, “yeah, I’ll sit this one out” “no problem.” You don’t like giving the staff trouble.
So you watched from the wings and maybe that’s when the glass first broke, seeing Jake glow, floating off his feet like a ghost untethered from this world— weightless and buoyant and free, his own little planet in peaceful, peaceful free fall through hundreds of thousands of galaxies at a time. He moved like– like a fucking beacon in a world full of moths; swarming, disgusting little insects drawn to share his light, his energy, his magic. And you want it too.
It’s not news that Jake’s special. You just didn't think that would make you feel so unspecial. ‘Til now.
The song he was singing was a ballad, for lack of better words. It wasn't slow per se, just… quieter. Sweeter, more sincere. A boat without a lighthouse in a directionless sort of sense. Lilting, kind of. Like a skipping rock quietly padding along on a lake; a dark, still lake– that kind of beat, at least– and it startles the birds away. But the fans fucking love it, you do too. Because it’s magic .
You remember the first time you read it on a paper, scratched-out lines and doodles of space and soccer balls, you remember Jake humming it beneath his breath, scrap homework and song titles scribbled in their margins. You remember how your heart would implode like a submarine sank to the ocean floor when you read the lyrics, when you would take an expedition across the insides of Jake’s mind and think what you saw in there was real, would ever mean anything.
You thought it was a magic carpet ride when all it turned out to be was a swan-dive off a six story building.
The song wasn’t about you. None of them were. Not any of the meaningful ones, anyway.
You realized it when you spotted some guy in the far back, glint in the sun, glitch in the matrix. You realized it with his stupid fucking hair and his stupid fucking lips and his sunglasses and his bangs and his outrageously expensive Treasurer Blacks you can still remember smelling on Jake when you were teens. You realized it when he noticed you, when he looked around to everyone else, like, ‘are you seeing this?’ and laughed, big and boisterous and wolfish. Loud. You were probably glaring at him. So what?
Four goddamn years and he’s… he’s like fucking PFAS . Those molecules that come out of factories and stick around forever, causing cancer and building up in the environment and whatnot. (And of course he’s in North Carolina. Of course he is .)
You turned to Jake, and that was when you saw it. His face, the face you fell in love with, lit up like trace blood under luminol. Lit like Drew had so effortlessly shined a light inside the dark room you spent forever feeling around for, trying as hard as you could to make a shape of.
He was glancing at Drew in the audience, shoulders loose like a puppet without its strings, limbs free, eyes glittery. A tumbleweed in the wind, light and giddy off his feet. Fucking terrifying.
Jake didn’t ever stare at you like that, he couldn’t. Love is a look on someone’s face, and you only noticed it once you saw it on your boyfriend’s, on Drew’s. Together. Apart. Away from you.
And all of the sudden, it wasn’t a coincidence he was here. It wasn’t a piece of the past you could just put in a small box and forget about, like Daisy or Lia or his exes or if they looked enough like you. It wasn’t a superlative when he said, drunk out of his mind, ‘I loved Drew, I mean, he was everything to me ,” and it wasn’t friendly like you thought it was. It wasn’t a joke, and it wasn’t fake, and it wasn’t in the back of your mind anymore.
That’s when it all fell apart for you.
***
You are the Sun
Bright and managing
To outshine everyone
***
You tried asking. You did. You got locked out of the house, sure, but you still knocked once or twice. Tried leaving a door hanger.
When Drew’s name casually comes along like litter tumbling in time with the wind, everything always just goes to shit. You could almost believe the word itself is an incantation of some sort, if Jake wasn't so incredibly… translucent about it. Light shines through, but nothing else – no information, no facts, nothing to hold on to – and you don’t know what to think, where the realities lie in this stupid battleship game you’re pretending not to play.
He’s like a leech reacting to salt– compulsing like he’s being exorcized, a turtle scrambling back inside its shell. Wherever it’s safe, wherever you’re not. Almost like he’s nervous. And that makes you nervous. Why’s he gotta act so guilty about this? What’s he got going on with Drew? This whole deal could just be you being you (and, well, you’re crazy ), but everything Jake does has a way of convincing you otherwise.
And that’s fucking horrifying.
(I mean, even just ‘Andy’, for fuck’s sake, nobody’s called him that since middle school, you guys can’t even watch Toy Story anymore, it would give Jake a seizure.) He’s got to know you know by now, anyway. He just doesn’t want to talk about it.
But that means you’re stranded in your imagination, standing over the edge of a rabbit’s hole that goes on for miles and miles and once you jump, you’re not so sure it’ll ever take you back.
And, well, you felt it before you realized it– them. Together. Like that .
You saw it, you tasted it, you just didn’t know what it meant . But you’re not fucking stupid. There was a story between them with every other page ripped out, there were memories of Drew’s head on Jake’s shoulder and shared drinks and silly things whispered in each other’s ears. You remember seeing Drew tell a joke and roll his eyes because he thought Jake wasn’t listening. And it was normal. Fucking fine. Friendship stuff. You know all about that.
But when they broke apart, it was like they'd both lost a vital organ. Jake, his brain, Drew, his heart.
Jake, for his part, didn't know where to go when Drew wasn't leading the way, didn't know how to hold his balance without that weight compressing in his chest. He was just sort of there, floating, skeletal, hopeless. And you forgave him, you took him back in, even though he said all that nasty shit on video, because, well… he picked you. He wanted the band bad enough to sacrifice a piece of his soul, a piece of his body, his reputation. And that was enough.
He stopped checking his phone, showed up early and left late, and his eyes– god , his eyes. If they’re supposed to be the window to a person’s soul, Jake’s were boarded up with blackout curtains.
He always seemed a little lost, a little off kilter; a line without a hook, a sentence without its punctuation (not knowing when to stop, when to pause or slow down). He spent lunch in the clubroom, said he didn't feel like eating. You worried about him. Everyone thought he'd never get over it. But he did. Mostly.
You understood it– he never wanted to open up, but sometimes you made him. He confided in you. Trusted you. So he cracked his head open like a coconut, and let you see everything inside. Or at least you thought. “I don’t regret it,” he said, anyway, “I would’ve picked you guys any day, of course I would. I just… I spent so much on that, on Drew, on the guys, and who I was, and it sucks. But I mean– I don’t side with them, Hailey. Promise.”
That was easy to digest. Jake’s always been able to weld sentences in this seamless, beautiful way, been able to fit ideas inside them, ideas that make you feel like they mean something.
So, you believed him. About Drew, about how he felt, about how it didn’t mean anything to him. “Just upset with the way the cookie crumbled,” and nothing else. Sure, fine.
But if sometimes he looked like a kite without a string staring miles out the car window, and if he can still pronounce the names of foreign cars that Drew would talk about, then… then, whatever , right? How were you supposed to know?
As for how Drew felt, well. He’s Drew. Impulsive and cold and careful and mean. His heart shrank three times its size that day, if that’s even possible; it was closed airspace– nothing in, nothing out. He got meaner, tougher, cleaner. Careful in a way that lies beneath the surface, calculating. Surgically careful, strategically careful. Overemotional and apathetic at the exact same time.
He started shit-talking louder, so everyone could hear. He started telling more jokes, smiling less, laughing never. He stopped seeing girls, closed himself off, boarded himself up, kept an iron grip on Henry and Liam.
And it wasn’t weird because Drew’s an asshole and it had nothing to do with what he felt for Jake. For your friend. Your now-boyfriend.
That’s what you tell yourself, anyway. But you know you’re shit at lying to yourself, for how much you do it. Because there was always something weird with the picture, something you wrote off and shoved to the side and overlooked because that was easier than trying to figure it out.
You knew it. You fucking knew it. You knew it because he scrolls through Drew’s instagram under the table at bars, you knew it because he’s got a birthday saved on his calendar app, ‘D.’ November 11, you knew it because he hasn’t deleted the pictures of Drew from his gallery yet.
You knew it. You knew it then and you know it now, but you don't say shit. You can't. Maybe you’re scared to face the music, maybe you think Jake would tell the truth if you asked, that this could ruin everything, ‘cause, logistically, it really, really should.
***
Sometimes Jake comes back late, he crawls into your bed and he kisses your forehead and says ‘I love you’ like he means it, but he doesn’t. Not to you, not now, not when you close your eyes and breathe him in and think you can smell Drew. Nasty and smoky and leathery, burnt plastic and Treasurer Blacks.
Like that’s even possible, like Drew’s not all the way in North fucking Carolina, probably on the beach somewhere stomping out sandcastles. And Jake wouldn’t do that to you. He wouldn’t do the things you picture him doing, he couldn’t. Not with Drew, not to himself, not against you– especially not against you – when he knows how it’s breaking you, rusting you, putting you in acid and eating you. No .
He might not look at you like he looks at Drew, he might not stalk your instagram or write songs about you, (and he might not even love you), but you’re his girlfriend. And that’s… that’s worth something. It is.
***
“You’re not supposed to get it, Hailey.” That’s what Sean says about the lyrics. He might as well just tell you that they’re hiding something, him and Jake both. You know they bounce ideas off of one another now and again, and it pisses you off because… well. Because! You don’t like playing monkey in the middle, nobody does. Sean was your friend first anyway.
You already know what the songs mean, you just want somebody to tell you’re not imagining it. Is that so wrong?
“Humor me,” you say to Sean, because maybe you don’t know when you’re beating a dead horse and maybe you can’t quit and maybe the floor feels like fly paper and you just can’t leave . There’s a metronome going tat, tat, tat on the desk where his laptop is, which he’s very pointedly staring at and not you.
Sean rubs the side of his skull, clicking rapidly on something with his mouse. The colors from his screen flicker onto the desk, his face. He’s trying not to acknowledge you. “Hailey. If you’re having relationship problems…” Slow, cautious, sighing.
You nip that in its bud. “I’m not,” you say. There’s no problem unless you make one.
Sean takes a too-long breath and sits back in his chair.
“Okay.” He looks up at you, decisive. “Even if you’re not having relationship problems, Hailey , I think it would be a good idea to, um, let Jake know how you feel and… uh. Communicate .” Sean sits forward, steeples his fingers like he’s proposing some kind of dramatic business deal or something. Showing you a Canva slideshow of 3 easy steps on how not to screw up the best thing you ever had. “This roundabout telephone game you’re trying to play is just going to damage your relationship. It’s not healthy, and I don’t like seeing you upset.” He sits back. “And, besides, it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s your business.”
“Well, what do you think?”
Sean gives you the look teachers give. Like when you answer an easy question wrong or try being a clown. But you’re not. You’re serious. And this is going to drive you up the wall until someone says something. Someone that’s not you. “ Hailey ,” Sean chastises, stern, lips pressed.
“Please, Sean?”
Sean looks so much older, so much soberer, so much more mature than you. He shakes his head and looks out the window. You’ve been friends for a long time, seen your fair share of speed bumps and potholes, but everything always works out for you. So, he turns back to his computer, fingers weightless on the keys, and says, “I think you should maybe… reevaluate .”
Reevaluate. Huh.
You stand a little straighter, a little stiffer. “Reevaluate,” you try out the word, the shapes it makes on your tongue, like that’d make it any more meaningful to you. What the fuck does he mean? Well, okay. You know what he means. Maybe that’s the worst part.
“Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Sean,” you say, because you can’t give him shit for telling you what you wanted to hear, or for not knowing what exactly to take from it. Reevaluate. Like, break-up reevaluate? Like, you-can-do-better reevaluate? Or, what-are-you-trying-to-get-out-of-this reevaluate?
Sean looks at you while you’re walking away. Worried, cautious. “I hope it works out for y’all,” he says.
You nod, and shut the door behind you. “Yeah.” Too quiet to hear.
***
I'm sitting in the passenger's seat in the dark
Thinking of how beautiful you aren't
***
You hear it through the headlines before anything, and maybe that’s what hurts the most. Maybe it's not that Jake’s cheating on you with the next-in-line to corporate nightmare 1000, or a dude, or the same crooked fuck who's been spit-roasting kindness out of you since middle school, but that the press got to them before you did. It's best this way, you can't wring their necks the way you want to, you can't take them by the shoulders and shake until rational thought knocks loose. Because if you start, you'll never stop, and if Jake knows how much you need him to keep his shit together, the more he'll pull at this loose thread.
You guys are together, okay? You’re a band– top of the billboards, touring the fucking country, TikTok famous, the whole nine yards. You're not going to let him scandal himself out of it. If it's not love, then at least it’s solidarity.
The pictures paint a picture, so to speak. It’s late at night, it's raining, and he’s got an umbrella and Jake doesn’t. He’s supposed to be in Tampa for a talk-show, it’s rainy there. You watched it live on Youtube. There’s a couple hundred thousand views on it now that it’s over. It was okay. He said nice things about you, and his sense of humor makes the world go round, everyone loves him. You don’t sleep well when he’s away, but Jake was flying home on Monday. Everything was fine. One and a half more days. That’s it.
Then Jake just had to fuck off to a nice little bar with Drew outdrinking him, from the number of empty glasses on their table (tucked all cute into a corner where the lights were low, where they thought the paparazzi wouldn’t catch the hand on Drew’s knee or the lips buried into Jake’s neck. Idiots. Fucking idiots.) The next few shots, they disappear down the back hallway, hardwood walls and yellowy lamps, and you’re not stupid, you know they fucked, right?
But it's hard to imagine it, imagine Jake, doing that. Jake with his hands, with his lips and his hair and his pretty smile and his body, and everything you guys worked for under his care. Entrusted to him. Even if he doesn't love you the way he loves Drew, even if he only fucks you on holidays and can’t tell you where he’s been some nights, he wouldn’t do that to you. He couldn’t. So you decide he didn't, because you can, and contrary to all the commenter’s beliefs, it’s no one’s decision but yours. But you’re not stupid.
You look back at the pictures. There's one with Drew.
He glows like snow in the sun, blinding, and you want to look away. You probably should, for your own sake, but it feels silly because he can't see you back. He has his sunglasses on inside, because he’s an asshole and of course he does, and he’s in work clothes. White button-up, black pants, black tie, dress shoes, European watch, thick silver rings. It’s like he got a fucking checklist.
He’s smiling down at himself– really smiling, smiling like he used to when he knew you were at your weakest, when he would crush your dreams like a trash compactor and get away with it. When he heard a joke out of Jake’s mouth and felt everything go a little less sharp inside his head, just like you would. It puts a sick feeling in your stomach.
It hurts to look at him, Drew. Tall, boyish, handsome, everything you aren’t. Where he’s sharp, you’re soft, where he’s too much, you’re not enough. Turns out he’s supposed to be next-in-line to this big automotive corporation. Bodes well. Fucking good.
You know Drew’s dad is going to beat him to a pulp for this— nasty man, Cuban, large. You've met him. Everyone who does wishes they hadn't. He's worse off than Jake is, you figure. Well, okay. They're about evenly matched. Probably just means they shouldn't have fucking done it, at least in your books.
But Jake looks light, looks like hydrogen, weightless in the atmosphere. And you think to yourself, ‘What the fuck?’
***
So I put rats in your locker
I take cuts of your hair
Because torturing you is a whole lot easier
Than pretending you weren’t ever there
***
It’s an hour later when your woodpecker phone starts poking inside your skull and picking at every loose thought like they’re free ants to catch, to eat, to kill. You turned your ringer off, like, twice, but it’s still spasming and seizing like a category 9 earthquake, so you decide it’s out of your hands at this point. You pad over to the bathroom and pick up the first call you get while wiping off the makeup you slept in.
“Hailey?” Jake. He’s left about 60 missed calls since three in the morning, when you woke up to your phone going off and everything you built together exploding like spoiled milk over social media and about 1,000 miles.
“Yeah.”
“I'm so sorry, Hailey,” no preamble, no testing the waters, “I didn't mean it, I swear. I'm so sorry, I- I wasn't thinking.”
“Obviously,” you croak, smiling, trying to keep the tone light. But it’s irreparable, it’s a car crash victim that you’ve got on the table, but there’s nothing you can do, so you just keep pumping, pumping, pumping, because you have to . You went to medical school for this, you spent all of your life for it, and you’re watching it die .
You stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror, smeared eyeliner and too-English lips. Teeth you wish were straighter. You’re not going to cry. You’re not. You knew this would happen, you shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up like this, it’s your fault, but he’s such a fucking idiot. He’s an idiot.
“Please, Hailey,” he’s breathless. Please, what ? Please forgive me for building you up like jenga blocks just so I can watch you fall back down, push your head underwater while the tsunami ebbs in? Please shut your eyes and your ears and follow me off whatever cliff I lead you down? “I can’t—” he goes, “baby, I'm with Kris right now–” that's the P.R. lady. She doesn’t like you. “I wish I could see you, I’m– my flight, we’re on our way right now, I’m at the airport. I'm sorry we have to do this over the phone, I just, I didn't want this to happen, I— I, fuck.” The more he talks, the more of yourself you lose. You want to turn off the phone, turn off the world. Stop it so you can get off for a second and get a goddamn breather. He’s going a mile a minute and you think you’re getting car sickness.” I shouldn't have done it. That’s it, I shouldn’t have done it. I’m so fucking stupid. I should’ve been honest with you, this is my fault. I can't believe I let this happen. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It didn't mean anything, I swear, Hailey. I only saw him once.”
You wish you had a script for this. There's not really a how-to on the best way to break people down like they broke you. Say something poetic, maybe. 'I'm your fucking shoes, Jake, I worship the ground you walk on and you wear me out and my soles are starting to crack and I'm just here, praying you don't throw me away, and I knew you were going to, but you can't . I can't take being your old pair. Why would you put me on just to drag me through the mud?' or something. You're not the songwriter, you don't know.
You start sobbing anyway– ugly and too-warm– even though you know you shouldn't, that he’s not worth it and all that crap. “What about me?” is what you say, is all you can come up with. Maybe because when you watched Shameless with him, legs in his lap, that’s what Fiona said that hit the most. Their mom comes back after abandoning them and tries to take their little brother, and she goes, What about me? You were my mother too.
You were my boyfriend too.
That last part sounds kind of silly, so you leave it out, but it's the only thing that can get its arms around what you're trying to say. Even if it’s pathetic.
Jake breathes, loud and breathless and wounded. Like it hurt him more than it hurt you. You have to put your phone on the counter so he can’t hear you crying, and Kris is in the background asking to be put on the line.
“Hailey, please ,” he begs, “I can’t– I’ve got to catch my plane, Hailey. I’m so sorry. You know me. It was just some stupid mistake. Please. I can't see you right now, but I need you to know I didn't do it on purpose, okay?” The water in your blood feels like it’s boiling, feels like it’s too hot and too cold and too tight, sweat dripping down your back. You drop to the bathroom floor, listen to Jake spouting nonsense on the speakerphone and half heartedly try to translate what he’s saying. “Please just tell me you know that, baby. You don't have to forgive me, but please . I'm so sorry, I didn't mean this, I never wanted to hurt you.”
You’re silent for too long. You’re shaking, spilling tears on a dirty bathroom floor 1,000 miles from your cheating boyfriend and the murder site which saw everything you ever wanted stabbed and bludgeoned in a shitty downtown bar. Yeah, you know they had sex. They probably had a lot more. You were just being stupid, playing pretend again. Like you always do.
It dawns on you that you’re single. That you’re being broken up with. That you’re nothing, that you never left a mark and never got a song written about you. That you’re just a crosshair, collateral damage in a car crash you knew was coming, but didn’t try to escape.
Jake rambles for a while, but it’s white noise. It’s instrumental, complimenting your arrhythmic breaths and sniffs and ugly sobs. You want to hang up. You don’t think you can get off the floor. Your legs are sweaty, they stick to the cool vinyl, you think you could melt here.
“I- have to go,” he says, after a while. “Kris says the team’s coming. We… we can fix this,” Jake assures you. He’s such a fucking liar. He’s a liar when he says that, he’s a liar when he tells you he loves you, when he tries to make sure you know it ‘only happened once,’ that he’s so fucking sorry.
Because once those paparazzi pictures came out, more did. There’s a twitter thread with timestamps and locations listed. One from Valentine’s Day weekend, when he flew out to see his mom, who lives in Concord now. Milo goes to BU, he plays hockey. Jake had his hand in the small of Drew’s back, drinking coffee and smoking Treasurer fucking Blacks. Some things never change. Like the fact that they’re both P.R. trained and still pull this shit in public.
There’s some from last year, November– Drew’s birthday– while the band was on break from touring and Jake was in Raleigh, apparently. Carolina. They had front row seats to a Hurricanes game, and Jake was kissing him every other minute, making Drew go red up to his ears and glare like he was trying to outperform the motherfucking sun. There’s a reply to that post with a picture Drew posted on his instagram that same day, Jake’s sleeve in the background.
You feel sick. You feel fucking naked without him, crying on your bathroom floor. You feel like a slug divorced from its shell. You blink through your tears– magma-hot and pulverizing. Burning. Your skin hurts. You feel dirty.
There's some pictures without dates, but it looks like autumn, when you had some time off and wanted to spend it with him, but he said he needed space to write. And it was fucking fine, you’re not codependent. He’s an artist, whatever.
You spent the week with Milly and Zander – Luke was out of town, funeral, maybe family reunion– and it was fun. You guys shopped, gossiped, watched some movies. It was fine. All the while Jake was at a park with Drew and either Henry or Liam (you don’t remember who is who) and someone’s dog. Jake’s tying Drew’s thick, plaid scarf, leaves in his hair, while Henry or Liam is laughing, just like the smash-hit he wrote. One of the most played songs you guys have on Spotify.
The dog is from one of your early album pictures, you didn’t know it was one of theirs. Fuck.
***
I will put my organs down on a plate
A take-what-you-want-from-me all-you-can-eat buffet
***
The P.R. people that aren’t on the plane come to you within the next half-hour, and the band manager says if you hang up on her one more time, she's going to call Sean to come visit, perform a wellness check or other.
Band manager, for fuck’s sake. Not Jake’s manager, she's yours too, and you tell her as much when she tries to talk you down. You don't usually give the team crap, but you're feeling like it today, because you're a doormat and everyone knows it and there are hot gossip magazines at every fucking CVS check-out with your boyfriend kissing your childhood bully all over the cover.
You can’t even go outside because there’s paparazzi flocking the gate, taking pictures through your windows and trying to get a statement. Milly caught a ride with the P.R. people by chance and now she’s drinking Jake’s beer in your living room while filtering through notifications you got. You don’t want to look. Like. Ever. God, what are your parents going to say? Your step-mom? She was so excited for you.
Your team has you at the dinner table with the band manager on FaceTime, talking strategy and media response and online privacy. Everything they say goes through one ear and out the other. They’re speaking too fast, talking too loud, telling you this will blow over soon, that all you have to do is not freak out and let the dust settle. You don’t know if you can do that.
They tell you that you aren’t alone, that this isn’t as bad as it could’ve been, that they’ve seen worse. Say it’s nobody’s business but yours and you have a right to keep it to yourself. You nod, even though you’re not so sure what it is that you’re agreeing to. Milly gets them off your neck when she notices your hands start to tremble. She tells them to give you a break, that this is a lot all at once, so they do, even though Milly makes more trouble than anyone.
“Hey, Hailey,” She approaches you, gentle and cautious. She’s short, but you’re sitting down, so she squats to meet your eyesight. You feel like a kid. “Next time I see Jake, you know what I’m gonna do?” She smiles deviously.
You scoff. “What?”
Milly fake punches the air. “Unh! That’s what.”
It’s stupid, but it makes you laugh, and Milly stands up while you’re wiping away your tears to ruffle your hair, and that’s what really makes you feel like a kid. You could remember her at fourteen, skin and bones with knobs for knees while running through hallways and getting yelled at by teachers. It was that or fighting people twice her size, ripping out girls’ hair and never apologizing. Headstrong and young, believing in things and believing loud. She’s grown.
Milly pats your shoulder. “You’ll get through this,” She says, and you’re not so sure when that fiery fourteen year-old kid became so mature.