“Autumn! Could you grab me a Coke please?” Gus calls from the living room as soon as he hears me coming down the stairs. Already from my bedroom I could hear him and his friends swearing loudly at each other while they battled it out over an intense game of MarioKart.

Rolling my eyes, I grab one of the unopened cans of Coke Rhonda left for them on the kitchen table before joining them in the living room. I toss it over to Gus, who isn’t playing yet, before glancing around the room, hoping Dillon is already here. To my dismay, he isn’t.

“Looking for someone?” Gus smirks and I immediately feel my face heat up with embarrassment, although no one but him notices.

“N-No,” I stammer quickly, trying to recover myself, but it’s too late.

“He isn’t coming,” he tells me, still smirking. “He and Annie Richards got back together.” At this, I feel my heart drop just a little.

“STUPID FUCKING WHORE!” one of Gus’ friends, Ryan, exclaims, before hitting pause. “Annie Richards is a stupid fucking whore; he could do so much better.”

“Yeah, he and Autumn would be cute together,” another one of his friends, Kennedy, suggests, all whilst trying to hit the button on Ryan’s remote to un-pause the game.

“Yeah, Autumn isn’t a stupid fucking whore,” Ryan agrees. Unsure of how to reply to that, I glance over at Gus for back-up. He just shrugs.

“OTP! I FUCKING SHIP IT!” Kennedy yells, just as Ryan hits play, sending him speeding right off the edge of Rainbow Road. “YOU BLOODY MOTHERFUCKER!”

Relieved that the attention was finally off of me, I sit down next to Gus and bury my face in his blue plaid shirt. He chuckles lightly, wrapping an arm around me comfortingly.

“Awe, don’t let ‘em get to you, Tums,” he coos softly, making me feel like a small child. “They’re just being assholes.”

“I heard that, Barrett!” Kennedy calls, not taking his eyes off the screen. Gus just flips them off. I watch their interaction, always finding myself rather amused by the way he interacted with his friends, compared to how he normally acted.

While most of the time he remained rather calm and polite, he often just let lose whenever he was with his friends, which meant he said whatever the hell he wanted, and no one stopped him.

The race comes to a close and Kennedy turns grinning wildly at me. “Don’t worry, Tummy,” he says cheerfully, poking me in the stomach rather hard. “I only ship it because I love you and I don’t want you to die alone!”

“Gee, thanks,” I say sarcastically, rolling my eyes. He takes this as an acceptable response before returning to the game.

“So,” Ryan continues the conversation, having mastered the art of keeping up conversation while holding his honorable first place streak. “You guys are really going to California, huh?”

“Yeah,” Gus says. He does it so casually it makes me wonder if he even cares, or if he’s just really good at acting.

“And you’re living with your birth parents?” Dustin, Gus’ other friend, who had remained rather quiet since I’d seen him today, asks. When Gus replies with a simple “yup”, he continues, “Man, I thought they were dead!” Kennedy laughs so hard he spits out his Mountain Dew all over the coffee table.

“Shit, dude; now I have to clean that up – thanks a lot!” Gus exclaims.

“Welcome,” Kennedy shrugs.

“Have you ever even met them before?” Ryan continues, professionally ignoring the mess beside him.

“No,” I reply, as Gus gets up to grab some paper towels.

“That’s dumb,” Kennedy groans dramatically. I silently agreed with him. “What if they’re like, child rapists, or something?”

“I’m sure they’re not child rapists, dumbass,” Dustin tells him.

“How do you know? Maybe they gave up Gus and Tums because they were convicted child rapists who had to be locked up after they had them!” I roll my eyes at Kennedy’s ridiculous stories.

Just then, Gus returns with the paper towels to clean up the mess.

“I’m sure they’re perfectly nice people,” he says calmly, clearly having overheard the conversation from the kitchen. “They were just young when they had us, so they decided to give us a better opportunity by putting us up for adoption.”

“You’re no fun…”

Suddenly, the doorbell rings. When no one makes an immediate move to answer it, I get up and begin making my way to the door to see who it is. I’m shocked to see, when I look outside, that Dillon is standing on our front porch, his bleach-blonde hair shining like a fucking god in the light of the setting sun. I clear my throat before opening the door. When he sees me, he smiles sheepishly, hands in his pockets and his blue eyes glowing slightly.

“Hey…” He rocks back on his heels for a moment. “Can I… Can I come in?” I snap back to attention just then, realizing that I hadn’t done anything about him just standing there. I step out of the way of the doorway, silently inviting him in.

“I thought you were with Annie,” I blurt out, immediately mentally slapping myself as soon as the words leave my mouth. He laughs slightly.

“You heard about that?” I can tell I’ve turned bright red from the way he laughs even harder. “Well, we’re still broken up; don’t believe whatever the guys tell you.”I can’t help but feel slightly relieved by this. “Speaking of which…” He then begins wandering to the back of the house towards the living room where everyone else is. I follow, trying hard not to seem like a lost puppy, though I don’t really think it’s working.

“Autumn?” Gus calls, not tearing his gaze away from the screen. “Who was at the door?”

“Um… Dillon…?” As soon as I say this, Ryan pauses the game and everyone turns to face him.

“Oh!” Kennedy exclaims sarcastically, feigning surprise. “Look who actually bothered to show up.”

“Shut the fuck up, Andrews,” Dillon snaps back, flipping him off. “I want next game.” The guys just roll their eyes, before returning to their game.

“So,” Kennedy begins, “where’s Annie?”

“We’re not together,” he says right away. “I just went over there to talk to her real quick. I just said there was a chance that I might not be coming over. Besides,” he adds, grinning up at me, “I couldn’t just not say goodbye to my Tummy before she gets shipped off to Cali for the summer.”

“I FUCKING SHIP IT!” Kennedy screams. “DIE YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” he adds, launching a red shell at Dustin’s Kart. Once again, I feel my face heat up and the overwhelming urge to go die in a hole emerges, though this comment doesn’t seem to faze Dillon at all; he just laughs it off.

Meanwhile, locking myself in my room never sounded more appealing.

“I’m going to go upstairs,” I mutter.

“Awe! Tummy, don’t you want pizza?” Kennedy whines.

“I’m not hungry,” I reply coolly. “Besides, I have a lot of packing to do still.”

“Party-pooper,” Kennedy mutters, causing everyone (but me) to laugh. As I turn around to leave, I notice Gus give me a knowing look out of the corner of my eye, and while I’m climbing the stairs, my phone vibrates with a text from him: “Let me know if you need anything, k?”

~

Getting used to such naked, empty walls was bound to be impossible, but luckily since we would be leaving in just a few short days, I wouldn’t have to deal with it for much longer.

Laying on my bed and blasting My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade” on my docking station, which sadly would not be coming with me to California, I couldn’t help but reflect on what had happened downstairs; and of course, my stupid, young adolescent mind couldn’t help itself but constantly wonder “what if…?”

What if Dillon and I really did look good together? What if he broke up with Annie and started dating me? What if he never dated Annie in the first place, and dated me instead? What if Kennedy actually decided to keep hid goddamn mouth shut about it for once?

I loved Kennedy; honestly, I did. I have known him since Kindergarten, and even though he can be annoying at times, he’s still very much like a brother of sorts – the really annoying one who is constantly teasing you, but you can’t help but love.

And then, there’s the constant feeling I have whenever I’m hanging around Gus and his friends – or even just Gus on his own. The feeling of being the baby sister. I mean, Gus and I are twins, yet it always feels as if they’re all so much older than me; like they always feel the need to protect me; like I’m fucking helpless. These thoughts have always complicated my emotions, making me feel conflicted; should I feel loved? or should I feel used? useless?

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. I sit up, calling for whoever it is to come in. Time seems to stand still as Dillon walks in. He freezes for a moment, taking in the new appearance of the room. After all, it hadn’t been that long since he’s been in here; he and the rest of the guys were always making excuses to come in here, wanting to see my newest projects.

“Woa,” he finally breathes. “Are you remodeling in here, or something?” I shake my head.

“Nah, I just took everything down,” I mumble in reply. He laughs.

“Jesus Christ, Autumn! You’re only going to be gone for the summer; it’s not like you’re moving to California permanently!” I just shrug. “You’re not going to… get rid of any of it, are you?”I shrug again. “Oh, c’mon, Tums! You’ve spent months on most of those projects, and it’s taken you years worth of magazines to create that collage of all those bands…”

“I know…” I say, and he just looks at me.

“Well, if you’re planning on throwing any of it away, don’t; I’ll take it. And I’m pretty sure the guys will, too.”

“I don’t think I’ll be throwing it away anytime soon; I just… took it down.”

“But…why?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I guess I kind of just want to have a fresh start when I get to California.”

“So you’re just going to give up your passion?” I avoid eye contact by busying myself with picking at a lose thread on the comforter. “Autumn; you can’t give up art. It’s a part of you! You wouldn’t be Autumn Barrett without it!”

“Well, maybe I want to be Autumn Barrett without it!” I snap back suddenly, not meaning it in the slightest. However, Dillon doesn’t seem to realize it, as he looks absolutely appalled, as if he were a small child being told that Santa wasn’t real. His jaw drops; my dumbass comment had rendered him speechless.

He sits in silence for a moment, before shaking his head.

“Wow.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Wow. Who are you, and what have you done with the Autumn we all know and love?” I immediately feel my eyes fill up with tears; stupid emotions.

I haven’t changed; I don’t know what made me say that! I want to scream out, but once again, my social awkwardness when I’m around Dillon Strom makes it damn near impossible to speak.

“I should go,” he finally says, about to stand. Just as he’s about to go, something pops into my head.

“Dillon; wait!” I am able to blurt out. He stops for a minute, turning to face me. I rush over to my closet and find the shoebox I stored all my photography in. After digging in it for a few moments, I finally found what I was looking for. I run back over to him and thrust the photograph into his hands. “Here. I want you to have this.”

He looks down at it for a moment, cracking the faintest smile. It’s a photo I had taken of us not two weeks ago while the guys and I were all in Downtown Seattle, enjoying one of the first nice days since April. I had managed to capture the guys mid-laugh, clearly from something Kennedy had said, by the way he seemed to be laughing the hardest. The sunset over Puget Sound was the perfect background; all-in-all, it was one of my most favorite photos I’ve ever taking – aside from the one of M. Shadows. And I knew Dillon knew this.

“I… I don’t know if I can keep this,” he says, finally looking up at me.

“Yes, you can,” I argue. “My art isn’t just for me; it’s for everyone.” He gives me a small half-smile that makes my heart melt before engulfing me in one of the biggest hugs I’ve ever received from him. He kisses the top of my head before pulling away.

“Good luck in Cali, kiddo.”

Notes

A/N: Once again, thank you so much for all the positive feedback. It really motivates me to write this, which is something I really need to do more of.

On the bright side, I finished writing "Lost, Broken and Shattered" yesterday, and I've already promised myself I wouldn't start the sequel for that until I'm fairly ahead on this one, so expect more frequent updates.

Thanks again!

~WOLFY~