Just Before You Go

We were cooped up in a hotel room, the rain beating hard against the windows as if to rub the stir craze in our faces. Brian strummed at his guitar, pausing every so often to bend down and scribble notes into a book. It was Blair’s, there was no mistaking it’s black cover and slightly deranged coil binding. I’d sought refuge with Brian following Jimmy’s abandonment. He’d been disappearing with Blair for most of the past week, and our hotel stay over the past two days was hardly an exception.
I didn’t mind, really. But the loneliness got to me sometimes. I was supposed to be here with Jimmy but I felt like I was typically left on my own. Brian’s other half was a vanishing act as well, which meant that there was an opening for comradery.
We’d been scarfing down room service breakfast when Jimmy and Blair had shown up with belligerence. They’d blown in through the door like a hurricane, excitedly bouncing in place as they gawked down at Brian. Blair wasn’t what I’d call tall by any means, but in that moment she seemed to loom over the guitarist with a terrorizing intimidation. She and Jimmy were a force to be reckoned with—an irritatingly lovable force.
“Brian,” Jimmy stated enthusiastically. “Brian, you gotta help us.”
The guitarist furrowed his brows at the pair of them, which had me giggling from behind my toast.
“We need you to play,” Blair added with a grin.
Jimmy nodded, gesturing between the pair of them with his thumb, “Because we don’t.”
“Well I can,” Blair corrected with a confused glint.
“And I pretend I can,” Jimmy caught.
“But not like you can!” Blair finished with a stern excitement.
Jimmy nodded his head vigorously.
Brian gently sat his fork and knife against his plate, folding his hands into his lap as he blinked up at the team of hyenas, “It’s ten in the morning.”
They stared at him blankly.
“Are you guys high as fuck or what?” Brian asked with a half-laugh.
Jimmy’s eyes widened, “On life, Brian!”
“Yeah, Brian,” Blair grinned cheekily. “Get on the life drug!”
“Life drug!” Jimmy bellowed out loudly.
Brian looked at me knowingly, giving his head a subtle shake, “They’re high as fuck, right?”
I nodded.
Jimmy waved us both off, “What we are or are not is beyond the point.”
Brian and I were both working that sentence out, mouthing the words to ourselves with grave confusion.
“We need you to play something,” Blair reiterated, sensing they’d lost him in their wild approach.
Brian smiled up at his love, “What do you need?”
“It should sound like,” Jimmy explained, strumming in the air as he and Blair exploded into a chorus of poorly played mouth guitar.
Their screeching made absolutely no sense. Considering they were both accomplished vocalists, the sheer pitch at which they executed their makeshift explanation was enough that Brian and I were deafened. He finally laughed, which seemed to appease the terror that was Blair and Jimmy.
Brian had agreed to do his best to decipher their request; his only payment was that they leave. The room fell silent as soon as the door clicked behind their giggling bodies.
“God they’re annoying,” Brian groaned, a playful smile tugging at his lips.
I smiled, “Yes.”
Brian had grabbed his guitar from its case and pulled it into his lap. He eyed me suspiciously but didn’t press the issue. I returned to my book and he got to work on whatever it was he was doing. We stayed that way for the next five hours, each lost in our own little world of fiction.
And then Blair and Jimmy were back.
“I should have confiscated her key,” Brian laughed as the idiots outside the door fumbled to get through.
As they emerged, Jimmy looked absolutely appalled.
“Are you aware that your door is broken?”
Brian groaned, “No, it isn’t.”
“It is,” Jimmy maintained. “Tell him, Blair. Tell him it’s broken.”
Blair looked at Brian as seriously as ever, her voice steadfast, “It’s broken as fuck.”
Brian cocked a brow, “Are you two delusional? You guys should take a nap.”
“I don’t need a nap!” Jimmy argued. “What we need is for you to play your guitar, Guitar Boy.”
Brian looked to me for help. When it came to matters of Jimmy’s petulance, I had a tendency to bow out. Especially when he was backed by Blair Peterson. Brian was officially on his own.
“Want to hear what we’ve got?” Blair asked her boyfriend happily, leaning against the top of his guitar to plant her plump lips against his.
He weakened under her spell, “Obviously.”
“Jimmy!” she screeched, falling into a fit of giggles at her sheer volume. “Go get it!”
“We recorded it on my phone!” Jimmy informed his best friend before sprinting—literally sprinting—back out the door.
Brian looked at Blair with unfiltered adoration. The kind of adoration that had me swimming in jealousy all over again.
“What are you two on?” Brian asked her with a sly grin.
She shrugged, “A bit of this, a bit of that.”
“You’re being careful, right?” he asked her, a grim undertone laced with his concern.
She smiled, kissing him quickly once more, “Of course. Jimmy’s keeping an eye on me.”
“And who’s keeping an eye on Jimmy?” Brian laughed.
“I am,” Blair stated like it was obvious.
He erupted with laughter, shaking his head at the raven-haired beauty before him, “You’re ridiculous.”
She flopped onto the bed beside him, her eyes fixated on the ceiling before rolling to meet me. An undeniable scowl scrawled itself across her features, doubling me over with surprise.
She’d kept a noticeable amount of distance from me over the past few days, similarly to the way Jimmy had been expertly avoiding me whenever possible. We hadn’t really discussed the elephant in the room, but Jimmy’s stony silence had made it pretty clear that the talk was coming. I’d been doing my best to keep the peace in the meantime.
“I bother you, huh?” Blair said flatly to me.
My face must have flinched, because she quickly relented. She pulled herself back to her feet with a loud groan.
“I’m going to hurry Jim along,” she told Brian specifically.
And then she was gone.
Brian glanced over at me, biting at his tongue with an obvious ache.
“What did she mean by that?” I asked him, sensing no point in letting the tension sit.
He sighed, “Jimmy mentioned that you were still…upset…about what happened with Jimmy and Blair.”
I rolled my eyes, sinking further into the pillows to better hide my shame, “Of course he did…”
Brian frowned sympathetically, “He was asking how I felt about it. I don’t think he meant to out you or anything.”
“And how do you feel about it?”
He shrugged, “I don’t feel anything about it.”
“Really?” I pressed, in obvious disbelief.
“What’s there to feel?” Brian asked seriously. “It’s ancient fucking history.”
I sighed, “Yeah…But she slept with someone else…with your best friend.”
“Fuck, Aria,” he barked, scaring me back into my place. “What fucking good does it do you to hold onto shit like that? How do you even get out of bed in the morning?”
I opened and closed my mouth nineteen times in an attempt to answer him. Each time, I came up short. He softened a little, sensing my sudden embarrassment.
“Sorry,” he breathed. “I just…I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.”
I shrugged a little, “I’m not trying to do anything…”
“Listen,” he sighed, shifting in his place to face me with more ease, “whatever weird thing Blair and Jimmy have going on, I…I would never want them to not have it going on. I’ve known Jimmy a long fucking time. Longer than you have. She does something to him…She brings out this life in him that is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She makes him better. She can fucking tolerate him,” he added with a laugh. “And Jimmy cares about her…a lot. Which I think you know, Blair fucking needs. She doesn’t have a lot of good people in her life. She doesn’t have a lot of people that love her. Jimmy genuinely fucking loves her. It’s a good thing. Please stop trying to fucking take that away from them.”
“I’m not,” I argued weakly, barely audible past my horror.
How had I accidentally gotten myself in trouble? I hadn’t even brought this on myself…Had I?
“They got confused,” Brian told me, his lips pursed. “That’s all there is to it. They were pissed at us, they mistook their friendship. They made a mistake.”
“A big mistake,” I nodded.
He groaned, “Have you never made a mistake, Aria? Not a single fucking one?”
My cheeks grew hot and my stomach grew nauseous.
“If you try and get between them,” he told me but it sounded somehow like a warning. “I…I don’t think it’ll go the way you want. You need to find a way to let it fucking go. If you don’t, you’re never going to be happy.”
My heart sank. This wasn’t the typical heart-to-heart sentiment that I’d come to know and expect from Brian. This was riddled with an undying support for all things Sullivan and Peterson. I was an island.
He smiled sympathetically, “It’s not polite, but it’s true.”
Maybe it was. I honestly didn’t realize how much Blair still bothered me. But Brian was right…Jimmy was different around her. He was carelessly free. With me, he was bound and stiffened by his caution. Maybe my problem was less with Blair and the mistaken night they’d shared and more significantly about the things she offered that I couldn’t. I was threatened. I was weak.
“I’m going to go make sure they’re not dying,” Brian told me softly, setting his guitar back into its case.
He hesitated at the end of the bed, looking a lot like he desperately wanted to say something. He resisted the urge, though, and he was gone.
I really was an island.

Notes

Short...but important.

xx