Andy

Instead of becoming an emotional wreck, face contorting in frustrated, childish disbelief, Trevor cracked a grin and extended his hand towards me formally.

“Well... Emo Bitch Queen, I’m Trevor. That short fuck over there is Mike.”

While I was taken back by his quick behavioral turn around, I was by no means put down. I shook his hand, keeping a small, careful smile in place. I was wary of him, why he would go to all the trouble with the antics only to come out chipper and sweet, making me out to be the bad guy between us because of how hostile I'd been.

He dropped his arms by his side again, still with an easy going smile on his face, but eyes still alert as he studied my face. I ducked my head, allowing the fading emerald strands to conceal part of my face, hiding it from his analyzing.

Eva stepped around the front of her car to stand by Mike, her face white from surprise, cheeks a vibrant pink from embarrassment. She didn't know rather to scold me or to laugh. I just wanted to disappear, then... Even though to Trevor it was already water under the bridge, it was a an event I'd rather forget.

“Oi, it’s cool.” Trevor reassured me after I refused to come out of my hostile, reluctant state. “I was just jokin’ with ya. Wasn’t expecting you to fire back, honestly.”

My upper lip twitched involuntarily, trying to tug up into a smile without my permission. I tightened them into a firm line, not allowing any expression to give away what I was thinking.

Trevor buried his hands deep in the pockets of his baggy grease stained skinnies, leaning back a bit, looking awkward. I frantically scoured every thought in my head to come up with some friendly small chat, the stand-by information my parents had burned into my brain since I was young.

“So, uh, the weather’s nice?” I hedged sheepishly when no other questions or words peaked my interest. My words caught him off guard again. His expression swirling like an overcast cloud while he struggled to quickly comprehend and respond.

“Uh, yes, I suppose so... I mean, not like California is a sweltering ninety degrees every day, so...” He awkardly trailed off, scratching his neck, his tough-guy, Grand Theft Auto trash talker ego wearing off, leaving him the shell of who he really was: a weird guy with witty remarks and no experience with anti-social humans who wanted to talk about theweather of all things...

“Sorry...” I finally muttered. “I’m not good at socialization. I’ve made everything weird.” I groaned, walking away down the driveway, pushing back the long waves of green off my forehead with a frustrated sigh.

“Come on, Ash, Trev and Mike are weird all on their own.” Eva offered hopefully, but I couldn’t buy into it. I looked back at her, unable to humor her effort.

“Maybe so. But... I don’t know them. You do.”

“You’ll never know them if you don’t try.” Eva sang. Trevor looked at me again briefly the way a mechanic looks a vehicle he really doesn’t want to work on, and is frustrated with, but must make the effort to work with again.

I was that person in this small group of people. The one everyone had to go to great lengths to reach out to, even stepping out of the safety of their own safety circle to make the effort. In other words, I made people uncomfortable with my lack of ability to crack normal jokes and hang out. I don’t know what it is with me, but I’ve never had a strong grasp on just how to do that.

All the dread I felt in that moment, I knew I’d rather be in Pendant, hanging with CC or Jake. Playing music or listening to it, not slowly molding myself to a new lifestyle that I was reluctant to accept.

I floundered before sighing under my breath and forcing myself to walk back to her, wanting to just go home by that point.

Trevor made a great effort to talk to me, asking questiong that confused me or only required short and sweet replies, never the opportunity for me to actually expose myself to them the way I could with Andy.

I stuck to myself as we wandered into the garage, the air around us still tense and awkward. Trevor warded it off, and began rambling about the terrible experience he’d had changing his bass strings, and then a quick tale about a date he’d been on the night before, and how it’d gone south after he’d jokingly called his date’s moonstone necklace ‘an old lady thing’ and it turned out that it had belonged to her Grandmother, given to her before she died.

Trevor nervously scratched his neck again as he finished the story. “How the hell was I supposed to know? Hell, we were having a great time, even thought she was ‘the one’ joking around and whatnot, and all it took was one slip up comment and just like that...” He reached out into the air in front of him, turning his hands into anguished fists, “She walks out, shouting at me as she goes not to call her.”

“Girls are the shits.” Mike commented, squatting on an overturned apple crate. My eyes flashed to him and he met my gaze briefly before darting elsewhere. Sighing, I dropped onto the sagging, stained up, torn-cushioned orange loveseat slouched against the wall beside the garage door. I crossed my arms and knees, leaning back against the lumpy upholstery, waiting for something to happen that I could immerse myself in.

I noticed the small collection of shitty instruments around the garage. The Les Paul junior, resting atop a broken keyboard stand, the strings torn from the headstock, coiled up into unatural knots.

“Changing strings?” I wondered, it was a genuine guess, as it wasn’t too obvious that that had been the effort. I stood up and walked towards it, further examining the mess.

“Er, yeah...” Trevor responded from behind me, another wave of awkward silence settling in.

“You do know how to change guitar strings... Right?”

“I mean, yeah, sure, of course. As any great musician does.”

I heard the overplayed pride in his voice and scoffed, pointing at the D string tuning knob, one of the few he’d bothered to restring. “You strung it the wrong way. Try to tighten the knob to tune it with an electronic tuner, and you’ll just be untuning it more.”

“Oh...” He trailed off, no longer having a witty comment for every event. “Did not know that.”

“I’ll fix it for you.” I say without really thinking. “I mean, if you want me to. It’s a learning experience for you to do it.”

“Pshhh, I know how to do it.” He said a little too defensively. “I’m just taking my time with that one.”

“Uh huh.... Good luck with that.”

I retreated back to my spot on the couch. It wouldn’t do me much good to push the subject, as Trevor would only get defensive and continue to defend his ability to fix and play instruments. I’d leave him be.

Plopping back down, Eva was fiddling with the other keyboard across from me. The ivory had peeled up on several keys. “Don’t any of your instruments work?” She wondered absently, hitting the keys with brute strength, only getting a fuzzy sounding chime in return.

Trevor was getting annoyed with how much his knowledge was being questioned. “You’re just not doing it right!” He cried out, offended. He stalked over, and began to play Fur Elise, the keys screeching an out of tune protest instead of the beautiful tune everyone was familiar with.

“See? Beautiful.” Trevor insisted.

“If that’s beautiful, I’m probably deaf.”

“Beethovan was deaf.” Trevor persisted ignorantly.

“Yeah, but the difference is, your playing made me deaf.”

Trevor playfull tackled her, shaking her shoulders in a mock attempt to try and kill her. She was laughing too much to take notice of the actual annoyance in his expression. Heaving a sigh, he perched his hands on his boney hips, “Well excuuuusssee me, we don’t all come from a wealthy family, miss Halican, AKA: Miss Millionaire.”

“We’re not millionaires.” Eva scoffed, shoving his chest back playfully. “We just convieniently have everything you don’t.”

He narrowed his eyes, his lips turning up in an amused, yet annoyed smile. “Bitch.”

She did’t get offended, only laughed harder, so I could only figure that this was their normal behavior. Bickering and poking fun at one another. I got caught up in reading them that I wasn’t actually seeing them. More like a ghost sitting beside them, observing, but in no position to join the conversations.

“So did you ever learn The Edge?” Eva asked him, toying with his microphone stand.

“That damn Tonight Alive song?” Trevor groaned. “It was a pain in the ass, but yes. I did.”

“Really?” She wondered skeptically. “You should play it.”

He pursed his lips, but didn’t turn down the challenge. He went for his other guitar - a light, mint green Squire Stratocaster, the Fender Strat’s cheaper, unloved younger brother. He adjusted the strap on his shoulder, flicked on his amp and played a few test chords to warm up, then to began to play the intro.

I’d never heard the song before, but I could admire the effort put into it. Halfway through the intro riff, Trevor halted “I don’t know the lyrics. You sing.”

Eva groaned, but didn’t turn down the opportunity. “With the mic?” She groaned, looking at the stand faithlessly again.

“With the mic.” He confirmed with a wicked laugh. My assumtion was that as much of a social butterfly as Eva seemed to be - she wasn’t one who liked crowds, or singing in front of people. I could understand why she felt that way, as I too had, and had been pressured into doing it in front of a bunch of emotionally unstable funeral guests. I shivered at the thought.

Eva continued to grumble under her breath as she lowered the mic to her height, turning it on and making sure everything was working. Trevor launched back into the pick/strummed intro before she was even ready.

“Wait- shit- You said you’d stay, I said I’d wait. All those words we spoke in vain. I still recall the bitter taste, I guess some things never change. And then I think of yesterday and every promise that you made, I never thought that I’d be the one that you would break...” She paused dramatically to breathe while the brief guitar riff played.

“And I with fight until the day the world stops turning. And if I fall to ashes, I will just keep burning. But tonight! I need you to save me! I’m too close to breaking, I see a light, I am standing on the edge of my life.”

Eva was having a terrible time keeping up with the music. Trevor was playing too fast, and she was trying to sing the original vocals. I didn’t know rather to be concerned or amused. She glared at him as he played the chorus back into the second verse.

“So this is how it all turns out. You’re the hero I’m let down. I should have known that you couldn’t stand up for me and be a man. I still have dreams of you at night, I can’t tell the dark from light. I never thought I’d be the one you leave behind.” One quick breath.

I watched Trevor play, and dispite his lack of knowledge in actually caring for his instruments, he was quite good at playing, better than I had anticipated.

“-And I with fight until the day the world stops turning. And if I fall to ashes, I will just keep burning. But tonight! I need you to save me! I’m too close to breaking, I see a light, I am standing on the edge of my life.”

A look of relieved bliss crossed her face as Trevor slowed his playing for the bridge. Mike was laughing his ass off across the garage, sitting on a children’s tricycle. Eva took one deep breath and threw it out into each note with all the effort she could muster.

“With each step I hold my breath! And I’m tangled in your spider webs again! How could I fall?! and I wonder if you even cared at all!” She was looking pretty worn and tired of singing by that point. If it wasn’t bad enough that she had to reach the high notes, but that she also had to battle the mic not working properly. The max volume didn’t seem to be working, so Eva had to sing twice as loud just to be heard, not to sound good because she had to throw her vocals so far out of her range just to keep in time with Trevor’s playing.

“One more chorus!” Trevor shouted at her cheerfully, she scowled at him in a deadly fashion, gripping the mic in white knuckles, heaving for breath, preparing for the last bit.

“And I with fight until the day the world stops turning. And if I fall to ashes, I will just keep burning. But tonight! I need you to save me! I’m too close to breaking, I see a light, I am standing on the edge of my life.”

Wheezing for another puff of breath, she choked out the last words. “Standing on the edge of my life.”

Trevor was too busy laughing to notice the fit Eva was in. She hunched over, palms planted on her knees trying to catch her breath. “Jesus... I think I broke a lung.” She wheezed. “Can’t you play in time?!” She shouted at Trevor in irritation, but he ignored her.

Something told me he’d done it on purpose.

~~~


“What time were we supposed to be back?” I asked Eva. We’d already been at Trevor’s and Mikes for almost an hour. She pulled out her phone to check the time. “We still have an hour.”

“What else is there to do?” I wondered.

“What? Not impressed by my insane skill-” Trevor mocked, leaning against Mike’s drumkit, his weight addition enough to send cymbals and drums skidding across the floor, one small one rolling out the garage door, and down the tilted driveway. Mike lunged after it, only reaching the garage door in time to see a brown sedan crush it in the street. The sound of aluminum and steel folding in on itself froze him in place, one hand held out helplessly towards his broken drum.

“My bad...” Trevor said apologetically, laughing sheepishly when Mike turned to give him a death glare.

Notes

Seriosuly loving Wretched and Divine.

Song Eva sings is The Edge by Tonight Alive