All You Ever - Hunter Hayes
The words reverberated in her head: Don't let them change you. It brought back all those things, all those long, late-night conversations – over phone-lines or bowls of popcorn, either one – all the encouragement and fear. It made her freeze up, hesitate, sigh.
Don't ever let them pressure you into being a person that you're not. Live that fairy tale in your head, Marceline, go for it, never let someone tell you that it's not possible. But whatever happens, don't become someone else.
At first, she wasn't altogether sure what that meant, but after countless bar visits, media rants and a few tipsy accidents in the youth of the morning she'd begun to grasp the meaning in it. The cautioning, the anxiety, the plea. Had she changed? Was she now, years after first hearing that concerned voice – so quiet in the dimness of her room, so very frail and worried – had she changed? Had she become that person she'd been warned against?
She blinked slowly, sinking down onto the stool behind her, lights flashing, blinding her, turning the faces in the audience into blurry smudges. They were indistinguishable from one another, faceless, unknown. But they were here for her.
Shifting against the wood, Marceline cleared her throat, feeling suddenly uncertain. They'd been doing this for weeks now, every other night a stadium of people would peer up at her and she'd sing. But tonight, it was different. She felt… well… different.
"How about," she spoke softly into the microphone looped over her ear. "Tonight, we'll do things a little different. Yeah?"
The crowd muttered in confusion; off-stage, out of the corner of her eye, she could see some of the staff running around, whispering about her words. One of them waved frantically, trying to catch her attention as she kicked her heels up onto the props of the stool. She ignored them, instead, squinted, trying to make out individual members of the audience. Some of those closest, pressed up against the stage, eyes wide, uncertain, she could see them properly. But they weren't really people. They didn't… they didn't have faces to her. Not proper – memorable – faces, just features, mushy and softened by the lights.
Marceline leaned back on the chair, pulling her bass guitar – bright red and spangled – further onto her lap. One hand fiddled with the knob, then she pushed it off her knee and turned to the staff off-stage. 'Acoustic,' she mouthed at him, waving a hand to hurry him along. He ran a hand through his hair, expression frazzled, then raced to grab one of her other assorted red instruments.
She motioned for him to leave the bass and get off, running fingers lovingly over the worn ruby paint of her most treasured instrument. This one, this beautiful guitar, the colour of a sunset in summer, of apples in an orchard during harvest, of crackling fire on a winter evening, of all her favourite things – this one was special. More so than the rest of her collection.
"Psst!" Off to her left an irritated voice seethed. Keila. "What are you doing?" she hissed.
Marceline folded her fingers around the microphone and shook her head. "Just… just let me do this," she whispered in reply. "Consider it an early encore."
Keila threw her hands in the air and stalked off, grumbling to a frowning Bongo. Marceline returned her gaze to the undistinguished audience, now fiddling with the strings. "Let me tell you all a story," Marceline said lowly, her voice amplified around the stadium by speakers. "A story about a guitar." She splayed her hand, the pick in her hand catching on the strings. Blnnnnnng – it sang, the stand mic in front of her magnifying the sound. "This guitar, to be specific," she went on. "I got this guitar in my senior year of high school from my very best friend." She closed her eyes, remembering that afternoon. "A friend I'd known my whole life, who'd always been there for me, no matter what. Through all kinds of ups and downs, this friend was always right there. To slap idiots who put me down, to help me with my homework, to watch movies into the dead of the night when I broke my arm climbing the trellis under their window. Always. We lived next door to each other my whole life and when we finished school, we moved into the same apartment for college."
The audience was hushed now, entranced. Even the stage staff had stopped, in her peripherals, Marceline could see Keila, one hand over her mouth, the other clasped white-knuckled around Bongo's forearm. Marceline continued to pick at the strings, soft sounds – the slow, almost melancholy kind – drifting from the guitar to the microphone and out into the sea of upturned faces.
"This guitar was the most amazing gift I've ever been given," she said stiffly, the fingers of her left hand running underneath the neck of the instrument where she knew words were still written. Black permanent marker read: To Marceline, the most amazing person and talented musician I've ever had the privilege of arguing with. Still there, after all these years. Clearing her throat, around a lump she rasped, "I haven't seen my best friend in seven years. Not since we had a… rather heated debate in our second year of university. I don't even remember what it was about. Probably something silly and pointless and if I still had their number you can bet everything you own that I would've called to apologise by now. I called every number I could think trying to find them but… but I was a pretty big jerk. I don't suppose I'd be welcome now anyway.
"You're all here to listen to us play music. But I'm the songwriter, and half the stuff I write never gets released. Music is my… I don't know, my release I guess. This friend of mine, they always told me how singularly awful I am at communication. Well I finally took their advice. And if anyone in the audience has a recording device, you get that out right now and start it up. This is my lyrical diary, and these are some songs I was too scared to release. Personal things, songs that I really hope get uploaded to the internet and go viral because I need this friend of mine to know just how sorry I am. Even if I'm not brave enough to see them face to face."
She cleared her throat, risked a quick glance over at Keila, her eyes still big and terrified for her. Marceline sighed, shuffled on her seat and strummed a few chords. Then, acoustically – something she hadn't done since they got a record deal – she sang.
"You gave me chances and I let you down.
You waited for words that I couldn't get out.
I have no excuses for the way that I am.
I was clueless and I couldn't understand."
Marceline found herself staring out at those faces, those thousands upon thousands of people who'd paid for something they weren't going to get. She decided she didn't care. She didn't care one whit.
"That all that you wanted
And all that you needed
Was a side of me I never let you see.
And I wish I could love you
And make you believe it,
Because that's all you ever wanted.
It's all you ever wanted.
From me… from me…"
Be brave, she'd been told. Be brave and crazy and do stupid things. So long as you hit that target, reach that goal, accomplish your wildest dreams, then you've done well. But what have you got if you haven't made mistakes? She hadn't made the one mistake she wished she had. What if it wouldn't have ended in tragedy?
"How could I be selfish or lost in my pride?
Afraid to be forward or just too scared to try.
And now I'm without you and it took distance to see
That losing you means losing everything."
She should have taken that leap, regardless of what might have been. She should have. She regretted that more than anything. Marceline's eyes swept the audience, afraid to see disappointment.
"When all that you wanted
And all that you needed
Was a side of me I never let you see.
And I wish I could love you
And make you believe it,
Because that's all you ever wanted
It's all you ever wanted from me.
And is it too late and are you too far
To turn around and let me be… let me be…?"
They weren't. All their faces were rapt and Marceline closed her eyes. She scrunched them shut and concentrated on finishing the song. On being honest.
"And all that you wanted
And all that you needed
I'll show a side of me I never let you see.
I wish I could love you
And make you believe it.
Because that's all you ever wanted
That's all you ever wanted.
And that's all you ever wanted.
It's all you ever wanted.
From me… oh, from me…"
The last note rang out across the stadium and for a long moment there was absolute silence. Then the crowd exploded into applause. She smiled thinly at them. Apparently heartbreak was a thing. A thing very much appreciated by people.