Walk With Me

“Avenged! Sevenfold! Avenged! Sevenfold! Avenged! Sevenfold!”

The crowd screamed loudly for them, even louder when the pyro went off suddenly and a sound of bells appeared, alongside a riff from Synyster Gates. Soon Arin kicked the double pedal from that mouthwatering DW drumkits swiftly. She had always admired his speed in drumming.

“UGH!” Matthew yelled from his microphone and the fire went off again, bigger this time.

“Let’s take a moment and break the ice
So my intentions are known
See I have a pity of watching you suffer
I know the feeling of being damned alone
I’ve got a storybook of my own.”


They started with one of her favorite songs, Shepherd of Fire - because in that song, Arin played like a demon. She bit her lip everytime she listened to that drum track. Suddenly Arin saw her down there, among the sweaty crowd and he simply stopped playing. The band also had to stop abruptly and they were panicking. Confused of what was happening, Erika too, went speechless as she saw Arin ran towards her and pulled her up to the stage.

Without waiting any longer, Arin crashed his lips onto hers and kissed her passionately, in front of 15 thousand people and the band itself. She longed for his kiss, she had been waiting two years for this and now it finally came true –


“Erik!!”

Her eyes snapped open in a sudden jolt. She was holding her arms up, reaching for nothing and her beautiful brown Welsh Corgi breed – Rev - was licking her face. This damn dog! Just when I dreamt about something nice!

“Hey, Erik! Have you woken up yet?”

Erika suddenly realized that Jenna was in her room, fully dressed and waving at her.

“Jen -” she yawned. “ – how did you get in?”

“Uh, your room was unlocked. Come on! We’ve got a gig in two fucking hours. Get your lazy – ass - up!” Jenna pulled her hands and that instantly snapping her out of the beautiful dream earlier.

They shared an apartment for almost 5 months now. Ever since she graduated from UCLA, she confronted her mom about her drum passion and she wanted to pursue career as a drummer. Her mom didn’t actually dealt with it well, so she had to move out and live here with Jenna in Los Angeles. LA was the perfect place for her to start anew as there were so many record labels were built here. FOM was practically been selling off their acts in almost every gig here until they found a real record deal for them, but so far there aren’t any yet.

Erika’s Corgi followed her into the bathroom like always. She didn’t mind taking a shower with Rev watching her. She felt like the real Rev was there, listening to her singing behind the curtain.

Occasionally Rev would bark, almost as if he was joining as the background vocal to what Erika was singing.

“Good boy!” she exclaimed as she went out of the shower cubicle and wrapped herself in a large towel. Rev barked again and stuck his tongue out, panting. He wanted attention.

“Not now Rev, I gotta get ready.”

She dressed herself in a striped tank top and skinny jeans with a fedora hat on top of her head after putting on some metal makeup. Valerie and Michelle were the ones that taught her how to apply a heavy makeup like that. Never forgetting her first drumsticks, she went out of the door leaving Rev alone on the bed.

***************************************************************************************************

“Test, test.” Jenna fixed her earpiece and talked into the microphone as Erika was settling herself on the stool in front of these 500 people audience. They were screaming and clapping right after they had done performing their third song.

“What’s up guys!!”

The crowd replied in shouting and screaming. Erika heard some murmurs saying her name and sometimes Drew’s and even Jenna’s. But the crowd loved Jenna the most. She was beautiful and her voice was incredible.

“Alright! Chain Reaction how do you feel tonight?”

“Good!”
“Jenna marry me!”

“Haha. I will, babe. Later okay? Right now I gotta do this shit. Alright the next song is a rather slow song. A tribute to a friend of us. This song is about a person whom we missed the most. I didn’t actually know this person. But she was a dear friend of our band members, Erika and Drew. They wrote this song together way back. We wanted the whole world to know about her.”

The crowd murmured randomly and some of them already knew the name of the song that they were about to perform.

“This one is for you Emily.”

Drew started plucking clean on his strings, and Jenna started singing.

I think about you every single day,
And every time I see your face, I wake
And it brings me to tears
We hadn’t spoken in years

We were close when we were young and naïve
We grew up and we learned other things
You’ll always be sweet 16

And you will always be perfect,
You’ll always be beautiful
Our hearts, will never forget you
You didn’t belong here,
And it’s become so clear why heaven called your name.

I miss you, and it still feels like I know you
I’ve got pictures of us side by side to show you
But it feels like I owe you so much more
(Song courtesy of Tonight Alive - Amelia . These guys are pretty awesome.)


Erika’s eyes were flooding with tears as she smashed the drums and poured her heart into this song. Now she can finally understand how Brian felt everytime they played So Far Away on stage. To perform a song to someone who’s not coming back was more painful than just reminiscing the good times about them. It’s because that they can never listen to it. They can never know about the existence of these songs. These words are merely for tribute purposes and they will be left hanging just like that.

“Hey, you’re okay?”

Erika looked up, wiping the tears off her cheeks. Jenna was talking to audience and Drew was standing in front of her drum kits, looking at her.

“Yeah. I’m alright.”

Drew smiled briefly. He wasn’t the type to always smile but they shared a mutual feeling towards the Emily song. They both will found each other gazes in tears after playing it in front of a live audience like this.

They moved on to a song called Breaking and Entering, their most favorite song among the crowd and Erika can hear they already have memorized the lyrics. That feeling alone was amazing.

****************************************************************************************************

Arin rang the doorbell and waited. He came together with Brian because he knew the route to her house more than him. Arin had never been to her house before.

“Try again. Maybe her parents were busy fucking or something.”
“Dude, that was uncalled for.”

He tried again. But still no answer.

“We try again tomorrow?”
Brian shrugged. “I’ve got a date with Chelle tomorrow though. She’s been bugging me off about it last night. I can’t sleep.”
“Lucky you.”
“Fuck that. I was fucking tired and we didn’t even – ah why am I explaining this to you. Get married and you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

They were about to walk away from the door when it suddenly opened. They turned around and saw a man - around 50s, tall and looked a lot like Erika - stood in the door way.

“Can I help you?”

They blinked at him. “Must be her dad.” Brian whispered to Arin. Arin stepped further and offered his hand. The dad took it.

“Hi, you must be Mr Wesley. I’m Arin, Erika’s friend, and this is Brian.”
“Hey.” Brian shook his hand too.
“We’re looking for Erika.”

Mr Wesley raised his eyebrows and wondered when did his daughter made friends with people like them.

“Oh, she doesn’t live here anymore.”
“What?” Brian snapped. Mr Wesley was a bit startled by him.
“Uh, excuse me? She doesn’t live here?”
“Yeah, she moved to LA 5 months ago. Wanted to be a drummer. Fought with her mom.”
Arin and Brian looked at each other.
“Well, shit.” Brian muttered, hands on his hips.
“Um, nevermind. We’ll just - okay. Thank you Mr Wesley.”

They excused themselves and left the front porch quickly as Mr Wesley was frowning at them, in a suspicious way.

“How are we gonna find her now?” Arin ran his hand through his hair. Brian started the engine on his BMW and looked at him.

“Well, kid. That depends on your fate.”

Notes

A/N: i used a lot of Tonight Alive's songs in this story as Jenna character is originally the singer of that band and i think she's awesome. XD

p/s : i missed a paragraph earlier. fixed it! sorry for any confusion!