Chapter 8: Perfection
Imperfection is the route to lasting longer.
It's the flaws that attract our attention. Absolute perfection is boring: there's nothing to examine, nothing to discover. This is true for perfect beauty or the perfect government or the perfect anything – we need the flaws. They make us stronger, keep us alive.
This, of course, is assuming that the imperfections aren't grave enough to cause everything we've ever known to blow up in our hands.
Ripping the flesh. Melting the skin.
Look down and see the white bone shining through torn muscle.
Ask yourself: what have I done?
Keltie's silhouette is visible through the shower curtain, her hands in her hair. The razor's blade swipes across my cheek, my eyes focused on her rather than on the shaving. She starts humming, her hips swaying to whatever she's singing, and I begin to smile. I flinch from a sudden sting. "Fuck," I whisper, quickly checking the damage. My thumb is glistening red.
Keltie draws the curtain aside and steps out of the shower. "You okay?" she asks, wrapping a towel around herself.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's not bad."
She walks over and takes a gentle hold of my chin, but it's a minor cut that will stop bleeding shortly. I look at her soft features as her brows knit together with worry. "Your fault," I say.
"How so?"
"Distracting me." I give her a suggestive look as my eyes dip down on her towel-covered body, and she laughs, giving my shoulder a push. Her eyes sparkle, her joy contagious, and my stomach reels and my heart expands: she's one of the most beautiful girls I've ever had the undeserved pleasure of stealing away from the nice guys. "I like it when you're happy."
"I like being happy," she shrugs easily. "I also like pancake breakfasts. In bed." She eyefucks me with the perfect amount of playfulness and naughtiness, and my cock responds in my boxers, definitely intrigued by the proposition. And for the first time in months, I wish I didn't need to walk out on her.
"I think it'll be more along the lines of pancakes stuffed quickly into my mouth as I dress," I tell her sadly. "But I'll come back as soon as I can. And then we can do whatever we want. Whatever you want."
"I want a pony," she says with a blank expression, but she bursts out laughing when I gently poke her in the ribs. She swats my hands away before I get the chance to tickle her, holding her falling towel pressed to her chest, and I get a nice glimpse of her pale ass when she walks out of the steamy bathroom.
"Nice view!" I call after her, and she flips me off as I laugh and turn back to the mirror to finish shaving.
I look at my reflection: the spot of blood on my chin, the circles under my eyes, the smile stretched on my lips. Every laugh covering up the crater inside me. Convincing enough?
I should be so lucky.
By the time I finish shaving, she's got toast ready. It's not pancakes but, well, she says I have no eggs, milk or flour, and I don't even know why she expected me to have a fridge with actual food in it. It's still nice, sitting in the kitchen with her, eating toast and drinking coffee, her in a pair of red panties and one of my undershirts, her shaved leg brushing against mine under the table, and she makes me laugh with all the stories about her fellow dancers that she didn't get the chance to tell me when we were fighting.
"I'll stock up your fridge," she says, "and make pancakes tonight. We'll have breakfast at midnight. We'll be rebels, Ryan." She sounds awed by the prospect and comically widens her eyes.
"We'll break down society with our midnight breakfasts."
"We will. We'll become pancake pirates."
"We will rule the world."
She laughs, white teeth, perfect nails, brown eyes, smooth blonde hair, soft lips, and she makes it so easy, this life, and I feel like a damn champion whenever I manage to make her laugh, and I say, "Move in with me."
She stops laughing. Her smile fades. "What?"
I put down the piece of toast, crumbles all over the round kitchen table, wiping my mouth and swallowing the last bit. "Well, I – I mean." What do I mean? "You like my place. Don't you? And it's big enough, and I like having you here, it feels more like a home with you in it, and maybe – Maybe we could. I mean, if you don't want to move in with a man you're not married or engaged to, I get that, but come on, it's New York and it's 1977, and no one's that old fashioned around here, no one will frown upon it. I think we're ready. Or I mean – I'm ready." I know I've started babbling somewhere along the way, nervously because I am nervous, because we've just managed to pull ourselves from the brink of a break up, because I almost messed this all up and lost her, and I've lost myself, and now these words are coming out.
"I don't... I don't know what to say," she whispers.
"Say yes. I mean. Yes would be nice."
Something flickers in my peripheral vision, but when I turn my eyes to the dining room doorway, there's nothing there. More like a ghost or an echo: two bodies. A beer bottle placed on the counter, and his fast, uneven breathing and wide eyes, and 'I'm not going to kiss you', right there. A million years ago. A thousand stolen kisses later, here we are.
This is not about him. This is about me. About Keltie. About what we need as a couple, as a team – me and her against the world.
"I need to think about this," she says but she's slowly breaking into an astonished smile, and that's all the answer I need. She needs time to think of an eloquent way to say 'fuck yes'.
"Okay. Alright." I finish the coffee quickly, seeing the clock on the wall – Vicky will be picking me up in the limo any minute now. "But just imagine this." I get up and clear my throat dramatically. "Here." I point at the window sill. "Here we'll, uh, we'll put some flowers. And over here we'll... Fuck me, I don't know, we'll get a tiny statue or some shit, like of a ballerina, you'd like that, and you can redecorate if you want, I won't mind."
"Are you sure you want this?" she asks, staring at me intently. She's smiling, radiating almost, and yes. It's a good move.
"I want you here."
I hold her gaze, seeing the unconditional love in her eyes, and long lost faith awakens inside me. Of something better. Of having that one person.
Before she gets the chance to reply, a sharp, determined knock echoes from the other side of the apartment. "That'll be Vicky," I groan like a kid. Don't want to go. No, Mom, I don't want to go. "Fuck," I swear, realising I haven't even gotten dressed yet.
Keltie seems to have realised the same, her eyes flashing over my form from the silver chain around my neck to the orange-green striped boxers I'm wearing, and the bruise on my chest was left by her, when she was starting to come, helpless, high-pitched moans and sharp nails and Ryan, oh Ryan, and just biting down somewhere.
Brendon does the same thing.
I feel nauseous.
"I'll find you some clothes," she says, kicking into motion while I hurry to greet Vicky, annoyed by her interruption when Keltie and I were in the middle of something important.
"My god," my manager says when I open the door for her. "You have a press conference in half an hour!" She lets herself in, eyes flashing dangerously, but Keltie and I slept in, and then we made love, but I won't tell Vicky any of that.
"Don't panic," I tell her as Keltie appears from my bedroom, a pile of clothes in her arms. Vicky stops in her tracks, her eyes following Keltie heading to the living room and dropping the clothes on the couch. She digs in, throwing dirty socks on the floor.
"It's my fault Ryan's running late," Keltie says, pulling out a white undershirt and tossing it to me. I catch it easily and pull it on.
"So it seems."
Vicky says nothing else. She probably thought Keltie and I were done for, just like everyone else thought. Knowing Vicky, she was trying to contain her joy that now she could mother me without Keltie's interference. But they all underestimate us – even I did. There's something genuine here. Love. There's love here.
Keltie looks over dress shirts, letting out displeased sounds when she finds a stain, making a face when the shirt clearly stinks of cigarettes, but she finds a clean shirt, a jacket and pants to match. She's got an eye for these things, like Jac did – but I'm not telling her that. No. No more accidental Jac comparisons. She's a million times more significant than Jac ever was.
I get dressed as my girls watch the ensemble getting put together, and Vicky goes through the pile to find a tie to match the blue corduroy suit. Vicky snakes the tie around my neck, fixes the collar and knots the tie, and Keltie – still in nothing but panties and a shirt of mine – watches, but that familiar flicker of jealousy isn't there. I see it written all over Vicky's face as she tugs my tie – mine – but Keltie smiles at me lovingly, and I find myself smiling back. This time, we'll be perfect.
"You could come," I tell her.
"Nah, that's alright. I'll clean up in here," she says, motioning at the mess and my clothes. "Right now, it looks like a bachelor lives here."
"Ryan, we're running late," Vicky says, heading out of the living room already.
"What will it look like when I come back?"
Keltie shrugs nonchalantly. "Maybe like we both live here."
I break into a smile, and the crater decreases in size. It's still the size of Texas, aching and throbbing and making it unbearable to breathe, but now it feels easier to handle. Easier to ignore.
It's only when we're in the back of the limo that Vicky asks, "Is she moving in with you?"
"Yeah." Yeah, she is.
Vicky huffs, crosses one leg over the other. "I thought you were fucking Brendon."
We get to the hotel in time, and The Whiskeys enjoy the complimentary snacks in the side room as we hear the members of the press taking seats in the conference room behind the wall. Vicky's snapping at Gabe for no reason, telling him what to say and what not to say to the blood hungry journalists, and I feel calm, I feel at peace.
Jon says, "This album will be the best music you've ever released. I'm sorry I gave you a hard time about it."
I drink the bland coffee from the white, boring mug and smirk. "You telling me that I'm an egocentric asshole is your definition of a hard time?"
"Hey, I hadn't heard the song yet," he says in his defence, but I get it. I went behind his back, changed the tracklist, added a concluding number to the album that he had never even heard of. Jon's second in command. It's his album, too. I get it. And it's not that I wanted the song on the album, it was Bob's doing – that night, when we met up at the studio to do one last song, Bob said that only over his dead body would he let that song end up as a B-side somewhere. A nine-minute catharsis, a mix of acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano and vocals. "It's the best song you've ever written, man. I'm glad it's on the album, even though you didn't consult me on it. But it's the apogee. It makes it all work, ties it all together." He smiles to himself slightly. "I doubted you for a second somewhere there. Really didn't have to."
"I don't know if – if I want to sing it live."
I sound like a stupid little schoolboy when I utter the words quietly. Ashamed of my own heartbreak.
Jon doesn't say anything for a minute or two, long enough for me to think that he's forgotten the subject. Then he says, "Well, okay. If you think it's too personal."
"It's not based on anything," I say feebly. Jon knows. Probably. Bob asked me what the song was called: 708, I said, my mind flying back to the hotel. Just 708. Could be anything. Random numbers.
"Time to shine!" Vicky then informs us, and I become aware of the excited buzz that's echoing from the Roosevelt Room, the journalists clearly waiting. One of the security men leads us out, the band first, then Vicky, and I linger around for two beats like she told me to, and only then do I follow them out into the conference room. Someone whistles, the hubbub quiets down, and I self-consciously tug my left sleeve as I head to the middle of the long table, the guys already seated. Microphones stand in a row, and a glass of water has been placed in front of me. Off to the side, Shane's crew is filming. I know Shane is somewhere there, and I know that Brendon is somewhere there, too. I was escorted straight to the back room, and I haven't seen either of them. Now I focus my eyes on the room of journalists instead of my lover or his boyfriend.
Or my former lover, really. Probably. I haven't had the strength to get that confirmed yet.
"Hey," I say into the microphone, and some of the tension seems to break. Two dozen hands lift right up towards heaven.
The Followers press conferences were easier because Joe wanted to answer every question and Spencer would often step in for me too. Now it's different: Ryan Ross & The Whiskeys. The album is coming out on the 31st of May, 1977. Six weeks to go and counting. It's not a band with supposed democracy. No, it's about me this time, and nine out of ten questions are for me. Patrick gets asked if it's true he worked in a book shop before getting discovered by me, Jon gets asked about how he and I came together, and Gabe gets asked how his name is spelled and if he actually has American citizenship. Vicky steps in when we get asked about tour plans, announcing that we will hit the major cities of North America in June, and in July we'll be off to Europe.
Most of the questions are about The Followers. Where have I been? ("Right here, man.") What happened? Comments on the bus crash? How has the music changed? Where have I been? What about the crash? How does my fame affect The Whiskeys? What kind of pressure do I feel? What life advice do I have? ("Don't let some musician who doesn't know the first thing about your life tell you how you should live it.") Where have I been?
I answer sparingly, refusing to reply to a handful of them. That sickening burn from The Followers days, however, is gone. These situations used to be a lot more daunting. They felt like charades, people dressed up as clowns prancing around bellowing the most ludicrous lies about the world and the meaning of life and music. This time I actually believe in the music and the people who've made it.
"How would you all describe the album?" someone asks, notepad and pen ready. I look out into the room as the guys take turns – "A lazy autumn breeze washing over a deserted beach," Gabe says – and involuntarily I look towards the camera and one of Shane's puppets behind it. Shane is standing by the wall, leaning against it, but he's not following the overly long press conference. He's talking to Brendon. My stomach drops. "A hurricane," Patrick says. I left Brendon deep asleep in our room five nights ago. We were fighting and then we fucked again, but nothing got resolved, and we're not fixed, him and I. I think it's over. Probably. I think so. But the thought alone is too much to bear, and I can't breathe and I can't see, so I don't think about it.
He called the other day, though. Keltie picked up. I wasn't home. Keltie said that Brendon had only been asking after a camera of Shane's, and I never called him back. Brendon seemed surprised to have Keltie pick up, she said, but not in a suspicious way – she said it just to make a point of how many people had thought that our relationship was over. Guilt trip me a little.
Brendon thought it was over, just like the rest of them.
Now he knows better, and now he's here. And he probably still wants to go back in time when nothing mattered except the thrill of forbidden touches, but I've told him that I want more. He knows that I want more.
Maybe it really was the last time I'll ever be inside him.
"I'd describe the album as," Jon says pensively, "a journey. But it's got real warmth to it, a pulse."
Brendon and Shane are talking, lost in the conversation, and I know the tilt of Brendon's hips and the curve of his mouth and the way he laughs just so, and Shane knows it too, staring at Brendon lovingly, and Shane reaches out to quickly and innocently brush a few hairs behind Brendon's ear, fingers lingering on his neck. Brendon's hand finds its way to Shane's hip, caressing.
Right here. In public.
All eyes are on me, no one is looking their way, but they're two fags in public, doing faggot-like things, and that's stupid. That could get them killed if they did it in the wrong alleyway dark at night. The touches are the kind you do accidentally, if – if you're so in love, so lost in the other person, that you just can't help it.
"Ryan?" someone asks, their voice having an echo like they're speaking to me from behind a thick, silky veil. "How would you describe it?"
I see myself standing up, going over to them, starting a fight then and there and possibly punching Shane, and then they'd all know, all of them – my band, Shane, these people with their cameras and words – and I'd wrap my arm around Brendon's waist, keep him by my side, flip them off, steal a car even if I try not to drive if I can avoid it, but with Brendon on the passenger seat I'd stay on the road, I would easily stay on it, and then I'd just drive, the destination unknown and insignificant. To me. Would it be insignificant to him?
But I do none of it.
"I guess the album is..." I say, trying to find the words. The sound of my voice seems to cut through Brendon's daytime fantasy of Shane because he starts and looks towards us, his hand dropping from Shane's hip, but I make sure to focus on my microphone before he sees me looking.
When I close my eyes, I see the sunrise greeting us, shining through the dirty windshield of the car we should be in, and he changes radio stations, sleepy and happy and smiling, and I reach over to card my fingers through his hair, the other firmly on the steering wheel.
"I guess I'd describe the album as a collection of the things I've seen and done these past few years. The thoughts I've had, the stories I've heard."
"So it's autobiographical?" someone pipes out excitedly. "Your Followers lyrics are famously abstract observations on the human condition."
I chuckle and lean closer to the microphone. "Don't we all suffer from the human condition?"
They take it as a yes, and I swallow hard, the crater inside me expanding once again.
What are Brendon and I doing? What are we doing?
"Thank you for the questions, but we're out of time," Vicky announces. "Wolf's Teeth on tape and vinyl available nationwide on the 31st of May. Thank you!" She flashes a stunning smile at the journalists. She's happy and proud.
The security men come over and hurry me out of the room when the vultures stand up and try to shout more questions after me. I'm escorted back to our waiting room, and the guys follow me, and Vicky starts organising a structured evacuation of the band plus me in order to avoid the fans and the press that will undoubtedly be swarming outside.
I sit on the couch and wait for her to give me orders. My muscles are tensed up, my fingers nervously tapping my knee as I gaze into space, seeing the two of them standing there, by themselves, looking so casual and intimate, and he and I could never have that because we hide in the shadows. That's where we thrive. That's where we belong.
"Ryan, your limo will be here in fifteen. Stuck in traffic," Vicky tells me, sounding highly displeased. Voices echo outside the door, and I recognise Shane's happy babbling, and then I pick out Brendon's voice, and I don't – I don't think I can do this. Don't think I have it in me.
"I'll make my own way home." She looks scandalised. "Vicky, I know how to dodge a few fans, take the staff entrance out. I'll grab a cab in the next street corner."
"A few fans? Hundreds have gathered out there by now, and don't think they're not keeping an eye on the back exits! The limo will be just a few more –"
The door opens, one of Shane's crew guys comes in with a camera on his shoulder. I jump up, look around as if to gather my belongings only to recall that it's all in my pockets. "Look, I gotta go. I'll call you."
The rest of my band looks confused by my sudden exit, but I hang my head and pass Shane in the open doorway. "Hey Ry –"
"Hi," I say, cutting him off, and I don't look at Brendon but still get a whiff of his aftershave as I pass him, and it's enough to make my skin crawl. I head down the corridor, figuring that eventually there has to be a door leading out or a dead end or someplace where Brendon and Shane are not co-existing, but he follows me. I instinctively know it before I even hear the footsteps, and doesn't he think that our lies are wearing thin? That it's getting too obvious right now, our shared absences? What did he say? That he's going out for a smoke when he can just as well smoke inside? That he forgot his wallet, his keys, his dignity?
"Ryan."
I come to an unwilling stop, seeing a hotel cleaner entering a room four doors down, calling out, "Huskeepin!" in a broken accent.
When I turn to face him, Brendon's got that soft smile on his lips, that one that he gives me as a hello, intimate and claiming like a lover's touch. But our eyes meet, and he stops pretending. Stops trying to be sweet. His lips thin into a line, and worry – that ever persistent worry – is pushing through. "You alright?"
I laugh. "No. Not really." Don't know what else he expects me to say. Clearly, neither does he. He looks uncomfortable standing there, and he was right. Things were easier when I just fucked him on any available surface, no regrets, no second-guessing, no hesitance. "I asked Keltie to move in with me." I can't bring myself to look at him.
"…You're marrying her?" His voice sounds oddly faint.
"No. God. Come on, it's the twentieth century. I can live with her without marrying her." I duck my head and worry on my bottom lip. This isn't about him. Wasn't about him. Wasn't meant to be. "And I think I want to live with her," I eventually conclude. She makes me want to be a better person. She gives me a focal point. She's what I need.
"Well." He clears his throat. One short cough. "What did she say?"
"She said yes."
She did. She's home – in our home – right now, cleaning up the mess that it is, transforming it into something new. And I won't bring Brendon back there anymore, no, and as for Chelsea... Well, we still have our room. It's still there. And he can lure me there anytime, he can get me to undress myself, he can get me inside of him, and he can get inside of me, and it'll kill me every single time, but I'll go, unless –
Unless.
I hold my breath and await his reply.
He scratches his cheek quickly, the initial incomprehension fading. I stare at him intently, trying to read something on his face, some grain of truth. "Okay," he shrugs. Like it's not a matter of any great importance.
"Okay? You're fine with that?"
He smiles sardonically, but the irony is lost on me. "It's not my business."
"But it – it is your business. I want it to be your business."
He says nothing. A stone fucking fortress that no one gets to enter, no one. Behind a door is another door, and I wonder how close to the core Shane is. How close any one of us fools has ever gotten. "I love Keltie but if you –" The words get stuck to my throat, and all the frustration that I've felt, that I poured into a stupid song and has since been building up again, is bubbling over. My pulse has picked up, and the sensible part of me is afraid of what the other half will say. "If you left Shane," I say weakly, a desperate shot in the dark. "If you left him. And if you asked me to leave Keltie, if you said that you wanted for me and you to – Then I would. I would."
"Ryan, now isn't the time to –"
"Don't change the topic, and don't pretend I'm not saying what I am!" I snap angrily because he's paled, he has that look of wanting to escape this situation but he doesn't know how. He'll say, 'Ryan, let's talk about this later', and then we never will, or he'll say, 'Ryan, I just want it to be the way it was', but it never will be. He's looking up and down the hotel corridor worriedly, but it's deserted, and where could we go? Him and I? Where can two fugitives go? "I can't live this lie anymore, be stuck in this – this circle we've created. I want you. I want all of you: your kisses and your smiles and your fucked up thoughts and the messes you make and the lies you tell. I want that fucking look on your face right now, the one of you trying to look for a quick escape, that fucking look that I hate. I want it too. All of it."
"All of it," he repeats with an empty laugh. "Because you think you love me."
I stare. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that – It means that you, and – and me, that – I mean that. Fuck. Fuck, I don't know!" he snaps angrily, rubbing his face with one hand. He lets out a deep sigh, shoulders slumping. "I can't give you all of me. That's the one thing I can't give."
"To me?" I ask, the wounds deepening each second. Why not me? Why? "Or to anyone?"
He looks like he himself doesn't know the answer. "Look, if this is about Shane and me again, then I'm not going to apologise for it. I have nothing to apologise for."
"Don't you?" I challenge him sharply, and he startles. But doesn't he? Can he really stand there and take zero responsibility for the fire that he's started inside me? I think that I love him? I more than think that. It keeps me up at night, my love, ugly and angry and hungry and pining, it's torturing me as we speak because he's right here – right here. And he's telling me that I can't have him. And it hits me then – only then. It's not worry on his face, concern for me or fear of getting discovered. No. Not at all. It's guilt. That's what it is. It's not exactly new; I've felt guilty, too. I've felt guilty because Keltie loves me. He feels guilty because he... doesn't. Because he –
"You know how it is, Ryan," he says, tone full of apologies. "It's a – It's a complicated thing with us. And Shane and I..." he drifts off, like he's struggling to explain it to me. He looks pained. "For a while we were drifting apart, but we've been... spending time together again. As a couple."
"You mean you've been fucking," I say, acid dripping down my throat.
"Amongst other things, yeah, but come on, you can't make that an issue. Think of what we're doing here," he hisses, motioning back and forth. I know they're fucking, and it's not just walking in on Brendon shortly after a round of sex or the condom he's made me wear. It's chemical. Something in the air. Something about the tension between the two of them that wasn't there before, them having rediscovered each other's flesh.
"What are we doing?" I ask challengingly.
"Having an affair." He says it promptly, like he's rehearsed it in front of a mirror. Hi, I'm Brendon Urie, and I'm having an affair. He's categorised it neatly, labelled it so that he doesn't need to analyse it.
"At first, yeah. What have we actually been doing this spring? Think about it. We fuck and we fight and we make up and we make out, and sometimes I feel like I can't even breathe because I miss you too much, and you – you. You tell me that you miss me. You fuck me and tell me not to forget, but even then you don't have the balls to specify what I shouldn't forget: that we're falling in love. That's what. That we're in love. And the second I say it, you run back to Shane and selective fucking memory kicks in, and suddenly he's the love of your fucking life again, and –"
"I never meant things to go this far, I –"
"But they have!" I bark, cutting him off because our volumes have steadily gone up. A door behind me closes, and Brendon folds in on himself, looking panicked and scared. The cleaner knocks onto the next door down. This setting is absurd. Humiliating. Yelling in a hotel corridor and disturbing the staff. I try to regain some composure. "Things have gone this far, and now I want all of you. Nothing less will do."
"But this is all I can give," he repeats through gritted teeth. He's not sorry. No, he never seemed the type.
"But you don't love him."
"Of course I love him."
"No! Not like – like this, in this fucking all consuming –" I say, not even knowing how to describe it. "No. You can't love him like that."
He looks like... like he pities me. Like he's sorry.
"We're in love," I say, the statement lacking all the punch it should have. I swallow hard, feel myself trembling. "Aren't we?"
He doesn't say it. He doesn't say anything – not that he ever would.
"Fuck," I swear quietly, not sure whether to laugh or cry, so I do neither.
"Maybe we should stop," he whispers. Colour has drained off his face, and he looks morose, attending a funeral he started. I knew those words were coming. I knew that much, but they still make me lose my breath. No, god, no, no, no – "I don't think I can do this anymore, Ryan. It's getting out of hand."
From the options of screaming and shouting and breaking down and punching him, I choose recalling history. Sticking to the facts. I've lured him into my bed, made him my own, made a liar and a thief and an impostor out of him. Sometimes, I'm all he thinks about. Sometimes, when Shane fucks him, he thinks of me instead. Because he wouldn't be this ashamed of me if he didn't feel something. He wouldn't feel guilty if I didn't make him question the basic foundations that he's built his life on.
He has to feel something because no one is that strong, no one is that good of an actor – not even him.
"Maybe we really should stop," I agree, as an ultimatum. Go on. Go through with it, then.
"It was fun while it lasted, right?" he asks, voice breaking. His eyes are wide and pleading.
"It was."
"Ryan."
"What?" I yell at him. "What more do you want? You fucking confused little boy!"
"You're leaving me no choice here!"
"Then say it!"
"It's over! Fine! It's fucking over between us! God, are you satisfied?" he spits out, voice wavering, and there it is: heartache. A momentary lapse. We stare at each other unblinkingly. I close the distance in two strides. Our mouths crash together impetuously, and I pull on the short strands of hair at the back of his neck, and god, his scent, his skin, and I kiss him hard, saliva and tongue and dominance, and he kisses back, hands on the sides of my face, crushing and pulling.
"It's over now," I manage to say when we stop for air, before diving in deeper. His pained whine getting lost between our mouths. It's over, it is, it really is –
He pulls back, tearing himself away. Our mouths let out a dirty, wet pop, and the ghost of his kiss lingers on my lips. He's heaving, lower lip shiny. My skin feels electric when he looks at me, and the air is heavy around us, musky somehow. It's over. I'm putting an end to this. I'll go insane if I don't.
"We're done," he says. "I swear to god." He pulls me into a fade-out-and-roll-the-credits kiss that's wet and slow and so full of desperate want that I melt into it, my hands gracelessly twisting in his hair.
"We're done," I agree against his soft lips and kiss him harder. His fingers dig into the small of my back and pull me closer.
But I'm still not the one who gets to take him home.
He's kissing me, but he's choosing Shane. He's choosing Shane and whatever primitive form of love they have.
When I manage to realise that through the haze of want and longing and pathetic yearning, I let him go, the sudden release making him stumble backwards.
He looks at me, eyes wide.
It aches. It all aches. I quickly get out a cigarette and a lighter, trying to suck in smoke before it's even properly lit. Hoping he can't see my hands trembling. Do anything. Anything that detaches me from this. "So it's over."
"I know." But he's not moving.
We hold eye contact, and I won't blink until he does. I won't. This is a vicious cycle, of never being able to keep him in my bed for long enough. The days were always numbered. And so the past is gone now. The past is over.
I turn on my heel and head down the corridor, my eyes locating an emergency exit door. I push it open, needing to get out, far away, now, right away, this instant, and an alarm goes off and breaks the deafening silence, his silence, his never-ending, deafening silence, and as I head down the alleyway, smoking with shaking hands, trying to suck in uneven breaths, mind spinning, nauseating, something inside me screaming, the hotel staff begins to evacuate the building.
The way home is winding and narrow and full of detours to bars. It's not my most graceful entrance, but Keltie will understand. She always does. And we'll sit on the couch and she'll hug me when I tell her that I just don't know anymore, don't know anything at all, and she'll lean in close and whisper, "I wish there was something I could do to make you smile."
Except this time I don't know if there will be anything she could do. Anything anyone could do.
"I'm sorry I'm late!" I yell from the door first thing. "I got lost." So fucking lost. I walk further into my apartment, but almost instantly trip on my feet, clumsily managing to balance myself. One of my jackets is lying in the middle of the floor. Next to it another. And another.
All the coats that were hanging in the coat stand when I left have been removed from the hooks and are now on the floor.
I slowly walk in further, confused but sobering up quickly, my eyes flying to the bedroom door – debris there too, sheets torn off the bed, my clothes discarded in piles, drawers hanging open, their contents emptied on the floor – a robbery, I've been robbed, I've been – And Keltie, where's –
"Keltie?" I call out.
No marks of a forced entrance, my door hasn't been kicked in, is there blood, what if there's blood –
The living room comes into view at the end of the hallway, and amidst the wreckage, the seemingly total destruction of my place, is Keltie, sitting on the couch, resting her elbows against her knees. I stop at the sight of her. The world stops at the sight of her. She looks up at me with red, swollen eyes, mascara streaks, hair in disarray, like it's been pulled on. No. No, I haven't been robbed.
I know.
"What's going on?" I ask feebly. I know, I know, oh god –
She wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands. Her breathing is ragged and irregular. "I only…" She stops, voice fading. She pulls herself together. Barely. "I only wanted to empty your pockets. Sort out some laundry." Her voice is rough in a way I've never heard it. Screaming. Crying. How long was I away for? "And I found this note." Her eyes drop onto the coffee table, the only place in the living room that isn't a mess. The offending object, a piece of paper, lies on the table innocently. Next to it a familiar looking key. I stand still, paralysed, so engrossed by the wreck that I can't look away. "Why would – Why would you have a note like this? Chelsea Hotel. Someone waiting for you there. Why would –" I know the second half of the note too well. 'I miss your skin'. So eloquent with words for once. "It didn't make sense to me. I thought that- that it didn't make sense. Any goddamned sense, so maybe it wasn't addressed to you. You had it by accident. That's what it is. Only an accident. But I had to be sure, I wanted to be sure so I..."
Demolished my place. Turned everything inside out. For more evidence. The pictures of Brendon cross my mind, but they're not on the coffee table, so it's safe to assume that the few Polaroids are still hidden behind a framed picture of Keltie and me. A desecration, I know.
"I found this key. It's a hotel key." She's speaking like she's having an out of body experience, stuck in a nightmare she can't wake up from. This isn't her life. This can't be her life. But it is because I made it so. "So I took it. And I went to the Chelsea Hotel."
The gravity of the situation doesn't really hit home with me until then. She went there. She saw everything. Everything.
"Keltie –"
"And your- your clothes! Your clothes are there! Your guitars! Like you live there, like you – Your cigarettes and your books, and toothbrushes and condoms, and –"
"Let me –"
"I don't understand!" she yells, crying, ugly and loud, killing whatever pathetic and shitty excuse I was about to offer her. "Oh god." She takes in calming breaths, and it slowly dawns on me that she's been doing this for hours, sitting right there, waiting, breaking down, picking herself up again. Trying to make it make sense. I don't dare approach her. I don't dare do anything. When she's stopped shivering, she looks up at me murderously. "Who is she?"
"That doesn't matter."
"Who is she?" she asks, but I make no reply. "Vicky? No? Then Greta. It's Greta, isn't it? Or is it someone I've never even met, some adoring fan? Or maybe it's a bunch of women! Maybe you've been doing it all along and I've been so stupid, so –"
"It's only been going on for the past few months. Keltie, it was nothing, it was a mistake, and it's over now, and –"
"A few months?" she asks in disgust. Six months. Roughly. Give or take. I already cut it down to a manageable amount of time for her, but even my lie is enough to repulse her. She stands up, grabbing her jacket, struggling to get it on. She was supposed to move in with me. We were supposed to be amazing. She was supposed to fix me.
"Let me ex –"
"Shut up!" she shouts across the room with a force that's exponential to the small-sized woman that she is. But she's not weak. She's never been weak. I know she's about to break down completely – she clearly has a few times already – but she's a ball of fury that I know I deserve. I know I've done wrong by her, but if she just let me make it up to her somehow, if she – "There is nothing you could say that I'd want to hear! Nothing!"
"Okay. Alright," I murmur, trying to appease her, get some damage control going. She zips up her jacket. I panic. "Don't leave me."
She looks up in disgust and surprise. "What?"
"I've been unfaithful, but this is a wake up call! I'll change! I'll be – be different, someone better. We can get through this!"
"I don't want to get through this! I want you out of my life, I want to –" Her eyes flash with anger and disgust, but most of all with indescribable hurt and pain that I don't even know how to make up to her. "Do you know what it felt like? Standing there, seeing this secret life you've been living with some other woman? And after all the lies and deceit and betrayal, all you've clearly done behind my back, this is your wake up call? This is where you decide you've gone too far?"
"You know what I'm like! I don't – I'm not good with people, I don't really see the big picture! I do stupid shit without thinking! And I – I need you. You make me better." My voice wavers, and I quickly wipe my cheeks. "You're the only person left that loves me for me. You're the... God, Keltie. You're the only person who's ever loved me for me."
She looks indignant. "And what about her? Doesn't she love you?"
I swallow hard. "…No. I don't think so." That's why Brendon feels guilty and sorry. The realisation of it is still only beginning to dawn on me, being too painful for me to fully acknowledge, but that's what it boils down to: Brendon doesn't love me.
Keltie's lips twist into a cruel smile that I've never seen before. It looks out of place and wrong. "Then you're the fool. God, you've killed us for nothing. For nothing!" The burst of anger seems to drain her, and she lifts a hand to her forehead, shoulders shaking as sudden tears rattle her. "I hope you never forgive yourself for this, that you never –"
"I made a mistake," I persist feebly, again, and I will say it again and again and again and again, until she believes me. Because I don't.
"Why did you do this? And with someone who doesn't even love you! When I do! So much that it hurts, that it –" She clutches her chest, sobbing suddenly.
"I know. Baby, I know, I just –" My mind is reeling, and I've spent so much time lying to her, too much time, and she deserves the truth. She will love me if I give her the truth. If she sees me being as open with her as she's always been with me, and yes, god, that'll make her stay. A sacrifice from me, the demolition of a wall. "I made the wrong call, but I finished it off." Adrenalin makes me shiver, but I force myself to have the courage to say it. "I finished it off. With him."
The truth. The ugly truth. The painful truth.
Oh, god.
The rules of physics disappear, the seconds dragging into sickeningly, sickeningly long hours in which Keltie's eyes widen, and she looks at me like I'm a stranger, like she's seeing some disgusting fucking thing – and I know she knows at least one gay male dancer so maybe she'll- she'll understand, but the little colour that her shouting has gathered on her cheeks fades away, and she looks so repulsed and appalled and shocked that I want to tell her that I can't help it – I tried, I did try – that there's just something wrong with me, and I don't know what it is.
"Oh, don't – God, don't," she manages to get out, lifting her hand to her mouth like she's about to vomit if she doesn't stop herself. "No, no, no, no –" She takes hurried steps, almost running towards the door, but I grab her arm. She turns around and slaps me without warning, her open palm hitting my cheek hard, stinging and burning. I let her go, mostly out of surprise. She looks deranged, eyes wild and furious. "Don't you ever touch me!" she screams, flat out screams.
The shame and guilt sting as much as my cheek does, and I don't stop her – couldn't stop her – when she walks out on me, on my mess, out of what could have been our home. I couldn't stop her even as desperation fills me, even as I watch myself lose that one last person.
She walks out with a sense of finality, carrying her broken heart with a lot more grace than I do.
So what do you get in the end? What have you fought for?
The smoke clears and the sun also rises, but hindsight is a not a wonderful thing. It's a useless thing.
I once told Jon that I can't make everybody happy, and it's true. That I chose myself. That I've kept choosing myself.
And a lot of good it's done me.
Torn pictures and open books have been thrown all over the living room, lying on the floor like ripped apart bodies of young men after the Somme, and I, their commander, feel the weight of their deaths on my shoulders. All the little deaths of memories and dreams and her smiles and his kisses.
I made the wrong call somewhere along the way. In my quest for perfection, I took a wrong turn. And now she is gone because she couldn't stay. And now he is gone because I couldn't stay. But my heart, it beats, pushing his ghost into every cell of me, as consuming as it ever has been. And if I could, I'd tell Keltie that I get it now. What it's like to be consumed by useless love.
I'm sorry, you know. I am so fucking sorry.
And the ground is battered, holed by bombs, shards of glass and bones under my feet, and the stench of it, god, the stench of rotting death penetrates me, and it stretches beyond miles, death and loss fading into black.
Don't go seeking perfection because it isn't worth it in the end. Seek imperfection. And when you find it, let it stay that way. Don't go changing it. Don't go changing him.
And what makes me laugh like a maniac and gasp for breath as I lie down to forget on my sheetless bed is that the gems of perfection that I thought I momentarily held in my hands were the very flaws that ensured our destruction. That with every touch, he was stepping away from me.
And I laugh because that is the funniest, most hilarious thing I've ever heard in my life.