“Brian, are you fucking listening?”

He glanced up from his guitar and saw Zacky was staring at him. His Schecter 6661 solid on his lap.

“Huh? What?”

“That riff, you got it all wrong.”

“Wrong? My riff has never been wrong.”

“Yeah right. You go from D sharp to C minor, in the middle. Up to C sharp you twit.”

“Are you sure? Cause I wrote the licks to be in C minor rather than C sharp.”

“It sounded awful, dude. Why would you go lower? You need to raise the tone so I can follow you back with lower tones. Minor, flat – dude we’ve been doing this for years!”

Brian rubbed his face and ruffled his hair in a mess. Today was just the two of them putting their heads together to write the solos and riffs while Matt and Johnny will come later to work on the lyrics.

“Sorry, Z.”

“I’m starting to think that you regret this.”

“What? No I don’t! Hell yeah I’m into this song. I already have a name for it. It’s gonna be about soldiers coming home-”

“I meant the marriage.”

Brian stopped talking abruptly and froze in his seat. He shut his eyes and didn’t want to tell Zacky the truth.

“Nahh. So what did you say about the C sharp again?”

“Brian,”

“Maybe if I go from D sharp to G sharp it will blend well with-”

“Goddamnit, Brian!”

He glanced at Zacky. That rhythm guitarist was annoyed as fuck, he can tell.

“Just fucking tell me the truth! Are you sure you wanna go on with this? Your marriage?”

Brian let out a deep sigh. “I guess so.”

“You..guess so? Shit, I can’t even bring myself to propose to Gena and you guess you wanna go on? What happened to you dude? You used to not believe in marriage, in settling down. What changed?”

“Zacky, just drop this.”

“No. We’ve been friends for more than 10 years man. I always put up with your cocky shit, your sleeping around USING MY NAME until Gena and I fought like hell and now you don’t wanna tell me what’s going on in your fucking head?”

Brian swallowed the lump in his throat. He’d never seen Zacky this agitated before. Well, he’d seen a few but this was different.

“Fuck this, I can’t work with someone who’s mentally not here.”

Zacky got up, bringing his guitar together and ready to get out of there.

“Wait.”

Zacky stunned in his steps. He’d been waiting for this friend to open up. Brian hadn’t been focusing well and he should know that the writing process is always essential. Zacky turned his head slowly to him.

“Save me, Zacky.”

---

I played the view for over and over again. That figure of a woman somehow seemed familiar. I couldn’t get the rest of the video since I was in a rush when I breached in the security the other day.
“Damn it Addie, are you even listening to me?”

I glanced to my side. Andy was there, looking at me with a puzzled look stern on his face.

“What? What is it?”

“God, I don’t wanna repeat myself but lately I’ve seen you out of focus. Why, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing dude. Just thinking about this woman. Who is she and what was she doing at the prison?”

“Still with that video? Come on, she was probably just a visitor. We’ve got nothing on the prison. We have to start searching elsewhere. I lost my sight with the king and it’s all because of you!”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You dragged me in this case again! Jeez, Addie. Just get over it. Your shooter’s dead, the king’s here. So just focus on the king okay?”

After that Andy went out of the lab with a heavy sigh. I didn’t wanna let him know that I’m actually out of focus because Brian’s wedding will happen next week. God knows how my heart sank everytime I read about his upcoming wedding on the internet. I can’t avoid reading those because they were fucking everywhere.

So right now what I can do is trying to coop myself into work, sometimes doing side jobs like identifying fake foreigners ID and some petty shit like that. But still, I need to know who this woman is.

I replayed almost every video from every surveillance camera from the prison and I couldn’t pinpoint whether the woman made it to the visitor’s area or not. I didn’t see her figure in the visitor’s room, nor in anywhere near the cells. So she was there for whom?

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of my shooter being brought out of his cell by two prison guards and they were walking into an area where it didn’t have any security camera. Hm, that is fucking suspicious. Approximately 20 minutes later he came back, with the same two guards and he went into his cell again. What the fuck was that?

“Shit, it’s on the day he was murdered!”

But I saw nobody was getting into his cell except for him alone. Pretty much hours later when the guards came to pick him up for his hearing session in court, they went panic. They siren lamp was lit and several guards came running towards his cell.

Shit. He was poisoned?

~*.*~

I was starting to get really annoyed by the marriage news of Synsyter Gates and Michelle. Eventhough I don’t live in Huntington Beach but the news were quite worldwide that even my neighbor in this apartment knew about it.

Every night I tried not to cry, and wonder alone why did he make me fall for him and then left me hanging like a piece of shit. I know I did that to him in the early days of our acquaintance but this was way too much to take. No matter how much painkiller I took the pain still stinging in my heart.

I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom. Slowly I lifted up the hem of my shirt and saw a cotton bandage was covering my long-time wound. I peeled off the plaster and saw a small circle scar. It didn’t hurt when I move anymore but a sharp press could bring the pain back immensely.

My mind unraveled back to how Brian treated me so gently; he blew out cold air on it as if I was a little kid fell from a bicycle. His sweet words still ringing in my ear as if it happened just yesterday.

I looked up to my reflection. My view gone blurry as my eyes glassy from the tears. I can’t help but cry again. I wasn’t always this weak but it hurts so much that I can’t bear it anymore.

I searched for painkillers in the drawer and downed a few pills. It wasn’t for my wound anymore. It was for my heart. It helped me sleep through the night.

God, I hope you’re happy Brian.

Notes

A/N: short filler chapter so i thought i'd update two today XD