All I knew was stagger, fall, stagger, fall as I tried to make my way back to where the buses were. Austin was thoroughly confused when I pushed him away, but luckily he didn't question me. He backed off, but called out to me after I ran out of the bathroom, carrying the bottle of alcohol with me.

Why was I drinking again? Only bad things happened when I drank, but yet again I was demonstrating my lack of self-control and amplifying the fact that I had no purpose in life. All I did was ruin things - everything in my life I managed to destroy - kill - except for this job. But even then, I managed to nearly mess that up a few years ago.

I needed Vic. I knew that his bus was around the beginning of the lot and I just wanted to hold his hand. I hiccupped as I inhaled to try and calm myself down, but this only overwhelmed me even more - now I was a drunken, hiccupping embarrassment to myself even more than before.

I finally found Vic's bus and instead of knocking, I walked in without notice. Mike was sitting on the couch, his lips attached to a random girl's. He noticed me and immediately pushed the girl away so he could stand up and take a couple of steps toward me.

"Sam? he asked, instantly taking notice of the alcohol in my hand. "What are you doing?"

What was I doing? I looked down at the bottle and held it out to Mike, hoping he would take it away from me. He reached out to grab it, but my nerves kicked in when I saw the lines of his palm tattoo coming closer. I let go of the bottle and withdrew my hand, quickly. Once I realized what I had done, I clasped my hands over my ears in anticipation of the sound of the glass shattering. I didn't want to hear it - I couldn't deal with the memories that were associated with the cracking, I couldn't stand the faults that came along with the broken glass. My palms itched and burned as I waited for the noise.

The sound never came, though. I opened my eyes, which I had clamped shut, and saw that somebody had caught the bottle. They were setting the bottle on the counter, while another body entered the room over by where the bunks were.

"Samia, what's wrong?" Vic asked as soon as he saw me standing near the front of the bus. He stepped into the room a bit more, his eyes flashing over to the foreign alcohol bottle that Mike had just finished setting down.

I released my head from my firm grasp and walked up to Vic, immediately collapsing into his arms and letting the tears flow. My sobs were obnoxious to my own ears - hiccups interrupting my attempts to take in a breath between my cries. My sobs filled the entire bus, and forced Tony and Jaime to come and see who was crying. Questions flew around the room, all of them asking if I was okay, if I was hurt, but I ignored them all.

I looked up into Vic's eyes and managed to say, "alone." He nodded, and began to bring me over to his bunk. He stopped to grab a water bottle before we climbed in. I got in first, pushing my back all the way against the back wall. Vic climbed in as soon as I finished adjusting myself. I watched as he got in and laid flat on his back. He was about to turn onto his side to give me more space, but instead I rolled myself over so half of my body was laying on top of his. My chest was pushed up against his and I lifted up my left leg so my thigh was resting over his waistline, my knee reached his right side and my foot bent around to the middle of his legs and I wedged it between his knees. He maneuvered himself to cuddle up to me in response. He placed his left arm around my shoulders and under my head so I could bury my head into the side of his chest while using his arm as a pillow.

I clutched onto his chest with my left hand - taking a handful of his t-shirt into my fist for a brief moment, just while I inhaled his scent and got used to feeling of his body against mine once again. I released his shirt and reached across his body to grab onto his right hand. I pushed our palms together and let out a loud sigh at the comfort and warmth that it brought to me. I ran my hand all along his, just turning it over in my grasp and studying every individual line with the touch of my fingertips. I read over the story that his hands provided me with - I felt the callouses and small amount of scars from his years of playing guitar. I felt the softness of the middle of his palms. I knew that he had a sensitive side to him, a side that was different from the musician side of him. I knew that he had something that he was keeping a secret, too. And I wanted to know everything about him. But I also knew that it wouldn't be fair for him to tell me everything that I wanted to know when I wasn't willing to tell him anything in return...or was I?

I found myself actually contemplating the idea of telling him about who I was. I was contemplating the idea of actually having a legitimate bond with Vic, one that exceeded the parameters of a friendship.

"I..." I opened my mouth, ready to say something about myself - anything - but I didn't even know where to start. "I'm not supposed to be drinking alcohol."

"Oh," Vic breathed. "Why?"

My nerves were kicking in. I should have known that it wouldn't be as easy as I would have liked. I knew that he would ask more about it, but hearing his voice reminded me of how real this all was. How open and vulnerable I was about to make myself. So I sopped. I shook my head to tell him that I couldn't tell him why, not yet. Or maybe not ever. The idea of being connected to somebody again frightened me, especially with how I managed to destroy the last person I was connected to.

"Samia," Vic spoke in a whisper.

I looked up to meet his gaze, my words were failing me and I was afraid of opening my mouth in fear of my memories escaping my lips. Our eyes were locked and whatever he was about to say was forgotten. I couldn't resist the temptation of his lips. He bit on his bottom lip as his eyes glanced down at my slightly open mouth. I watched as he released his lip from his grip, allowing it to slowly plump back up into its original curves.

I pushed my lips up against his, exhaling from my nose as I did so. The relief and warmth that washed over me at the feeling of his lips both relaxed me and also sent my mind on high alert at the same time. Just friends don't kiss like this. Just friends doesn't feel like this.

I pulled away from the kiss before anything else could happen. I felt horribly dirty for the events that occurred so far that night. Just moments before I had kissed Vic, I was being fingered by Austin. I honestly didn't know what I was doing anymore.

"What do you mean?" Vic asked.

Had I spoken aloud? Vic's confusion on his face told me that I had, in fact, stated my thoughts out loud. I just hoped that I hadn't said anything about Austin out loud.

"We're supposed to be just friends. I don't feel like just friends."

Vic smiled a bit at my rambling. "Drunken words are sober thoughts," Vic reminded me.

"But I shouldn't have these feelings. It’s not fair.”

Vic furrowed his eyebrows. “Not fair? How?”

I shook my head again, not wanting to explain the shit that was falling from my lips, but I stopped myself from holding back. I opened my mouth again, making sure to avoid Vic’s gaze as I explained myself. “It’s not fair to you. I kill everything I love, Vic. I don’t want that to ever happen to you.” I almost started to cry again, but when Vic saw my trembling lips, he handed me the bottle of water that he had grabbed and twisted the cap off for me. He held it up to my mouth as I sat up just a bit to take a drink. He aided me by holding the bottle to my lips and pushing it up so the water could fall into my mouth. He pulled away after a second and I nodded, letting him know that I didn’t need any more.

I let the water sit in my mouth until it turned warm. I liked the feeling of the cold temperature against my alcohol-numbed teeth. I swallowed down the liquid – it sat uneasy in my stomach for a moment, but the feeling faded once the water settled in. I was growing tired as the alcohol was weighing me down, and for a moment I wished that I could get up and drink some more for a little “pick-me-up”. I wanted to hang out with the guys and drink and have fun just hanging out, but in my altered state-of-mind everything would rush back to me. My life was backwards – when I was sober, it was an escape from my past and my worries, but when I was drunk, everything seemed to bombard me.

“Dead,” I mumbled as I allowed my head to rest on Vic’s chest once again. He rubbed his left hand over my should-blades and let out a ‘shh’ noise. “I killed them. It’s all dead.”

Vic sighed as I continued mumbling random things. I didn’t care that they didn’t make sense to Vic, hell, it hardly made sense to me. But it felt good to let these things out – to a certain extent. The death was weighing on my mind, and everything I said the word out loud it seemed to alleviate the bloating in my brain, allowing me to think a bit clearer every time I admitted to it.

“Sleep it off, Samia,” he told me. “It’s okay.”

I wanted to shake my head in protest, but I couldn’t get my body to move. My eyes slowly closed as Vic pressed a gentle kiss to the side of my head, into my hair. “No,” I mumbled. “Nothing is okay.”

-

“I’m going to hear you beg, you slut. You’re going to want this, whether you like it or not. No one’s here to listen to you but me. So you better make it count.”

I cried as he placed his fingers inside of my mouth, his other hand held a sharp piece of metal against my palms, which he had tied to the metal bedpost so they were facing up, vulnerable and scarred.

“No,” I whined.

His hand met with the side of my face and he used his other hand to push down on the stitches that were on my hands from my previous wounds. I cried out, begging him to stop the pain.

“That’s it, baby girl. Beg.”

I awoke breathing heavily with tears running down my face. I almost sat directly up, but remembered that I was in a bunk and doing that would make my head hurt even more than it already did. My hangover hit me harshly, and the crying wasn’t helping the aching that was throbbing behind my eyes. My dream, no nightmare, no…memory was preventing me from ceasing my tears. I looked around, expecting to see Vic lying beside me, but he was gone. That only made me panic more. Why did Vic leave me alone in the bunk? Had I scared him off with my rambling? Did I accidentally say something about Austin to him when I was drunk?

I felt my chest tightening to an uncomfortable degree, and I couldn’t catch my breath no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t get the air into my lungs, and I began to panic, breathing in heavier and harder to try and get the oxygen to my brain. My body was shaking, my palms were sweating, and I felt like I was going to die. I had been getting panic attacks for the past couple of years, ever since my life changed, but I thought that there was for sure no way that I was going to be able to survive this one.

The curtains were pulled back and Vic slowly climbed into the bunk, unaware of my panicking until he finally settled in and heard my breathing. “Samia!” his voice was frantic, but not too loud. I was thankful for that – I didn’t want any more attention.

“I’m going,” I paused to take a breath, “be the first person,” another breath, “to die,” breath, “from a fucking anxiety attack.”

Vic let out a small chuckle at my words, but I could see that he didn’t know what to do.

“There’s nothing,” I said, as if I was reading his mind. “Just give me a minute.”

Vic nodded, and went to leave, but I quickly reached out to grab onto his hand that was resting on the mattress. He whipped his head around to stare down at our hands. I laced my fingers through his to tell him to stay. I needed a minute, but not a minute alone. Feeling alone was what had brought this on – to a certain extent.

After three minutes, Vic started to hum softly, and that really helped me to clear my mind. I managed to calm myself down after an excruciating five minutes of deep breathing and relaxing thoughts. We finally stepped out of the bunk, and I was surprised when I was blinded by the brightness of the sun shining through the open curtains as the bus was traveling down the freeway – the passing cars appearing as nothing but blurs as they sped by our bus.

“What the hell?” I asked. Had I slept the entire night on the bus? What time was it? When were we going to be reaching our next venue? Which I was pretty sure was in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was always a lot of work, and we always tried to arrive a bit sooner than the bands so the set-up would be completed in a timely fashion. I felt the panic setting in all over again when I realized how frantic things would be without me – I was a key compnonent to the crew because I was the most experiences (besides Kenny) and I could do anything you assigned me to. I could be stage manager, a laborer, catering servant, vending assistant, cleaning crew. They would tell me anything they needed done and I knew how to do it and I would do it right.

I was also afraid that if I was missing, Kenny would take notice – just like he did the other day when I slacked off to sleep with Austin – and it would not sit well with him. I couldn’t lose this job, no matter what happened in my life, no matter how hard I had to work or prove myself, this job was the last chance my life had to remaining normal. Losing this job would mean that every single aspect of my life was officially gone.

I fumbled over my words for a good twenty seconds before I managed to spit out the word, “bathroom.” I scurried down the hallway, rudely pushing passed Mike who had just rolled out of his bunk, and locked myself into the bathroom at the end of the bus. I needed to calm myself down. Nothing was going to get better if I just kept panicking.

I bent over and splashed some water onto my face to try and relax myself. I looked in the mirror after wiping my face dry with the edge of my shirt and studied my features. It had been a long time since I actually stopped to look at my appearance. Especially while out on the road, working for Warped tour, I didn’t care about how I looked. There was no time or effort left for me to sit down and put on a decent amount of makeup or curl my hair or do anything like that.

My hair was naturally wavy – the black locks falling down in an unruly manner and frizzed from sleep were sticking to my shirt from the static of the sheets that I had been tangled in. My hair reached down to the middle of my abdomen when I pulled it all forward, and I couldn’t tell if it was because my hair was just that long, or if I was just that short. My light skin was tanned evenly, only showing a bit of a sunburn on the edge of my nose and on my shoulders right where the sleeves of my tank tops usually were.

I looked sickly without makeup – my round, brown eyes looked lifeless and sunken in with the dark circles around them. How could anybody find me attractive enough to want to sleep with me? Or even talk to me? I looked like I belonged in a hospital. But I guess nobody really knew about what I used to look like, so it didn’t really matter to them. My features were all still the same, but my normally high-bones seemed a bit more prominent from the weight I had lost and my lips were naturally curved downward into a slight frown.

At least my tattoos add some sort of attractiveness to me, I thought as I looked over my tattoos. None of them were in color, all of them in a grayscale tone with a lot of detail, shading, and flowers. It was kind of funny how even before my life turned to shit, I knew that in the future my life would be gray just like my ink.

“Samia, are you alright?” Vic’s voice came through the door. I pushed it open slightly, feeling calm enough to face life again. “Oh, hey.” He seemed a bit surprised when I pushed open the bathroom door.

“I’m alright,” I said with a breath. “Just started to feel a bit panicky again.”

Vic nodded, but didn’t move to let me out of the bathroom. Instead, he nuzzled his way inside, making sure that nobody saw him entering. “Can I talk to you?” he asked.

“We are talking,” I said with a slight smile.

Vic chuckled a bit to humor me, but I could see that the topic of conversation was going to be a serious one. Why couldn’t I catch a break from all the serious-talk and just have some fun?

“I, uh…wanted to say something that I didn’t get the chance to say last night,” he said softly, “when we were talking about just friends…”

“Okay…” I said slowly, unsure of where he was going with this. I remembered the conversation clearly, but I was afraid of how this could go. I was afraid of him saying that he wanted to be more than friends, but I think that I was more afraid of him saying that he didn’t want anything more, and that scared me.

“What’s so bad about being more than friends?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I admitted. “I’m just afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Hurting you.”

Vic shook his head, dismissing my words as if they were complete nonsense. And maybe they were to him, but to me, they held so much more than even I could fathom. “You won’t hurt me. I’m a tough guy.” He held up his arm in a ninety-degree angle and flexed, showing off the definition in his arms – which was quite impressive for a seemingly skinny guy. “See these bad boys? That’s right, baby, soak it in.”

I laughed and reached out to squeeze the muscles, nodding my head in approval. “Impressive.”

Vic laughed and released his arm, also pushing out a breath as he did so. “Yeah, just don’t let Mike show you his because it’ll make me look like a shrimp.”

I shook my head as I laughed, and although the mood was lightened for a moment, I could feel the dense atmosphere slowly creeping back in. I sighed, not looking forward to facing the rest of the conversation we were having. Although I did feel something for Vic, and yeah, we had amazing sex, something just wasn’t quite right. It would feel too weird to be with him when I still felt as though I hardly knew him. I hardly even knew myself anymore, there was no way this could work out.

“If you’re trying to think of a reason to say no to trying this, you can stop. They’re all bullshit,” Vic said with a cocky smile, confident that he had read my mind. “There’s no harm in trying.”

“Yeah, until the failure seeps in.”

“Why do you have to be so pessimistic about everything?” Vic groaned and took a step back as he ran his hand through his hair. “Sam, give me one reason…a good reason…as to why this would fail.”

“What happens when the tour ends?” I asked, actually bringing up the logical reason in the situation instead of my fears and pessimism.

Vic furrowed his eyebrows, reality seeming to finally hit him. “Good point,” he said. “Where do you even live?”

“Los Angeles,” I answered. “Well, Anaheim. Right by Disneyland.”

“I live in San Diego; we’re not that far apart. Only a couple hours.”

I shook my head, not wanting to accept this so easily. “Vic, we don’t know anything about each other.”

Vic sighed, defeated. “I’m an open book,” he protested. “You can know anything about me if you’d just ask.”

“But I’m not.”

“So why don’t you start opening up more then?”

I shook my head.

“Stop shaking your damn head!” Vic groaned. “Just try with me. Give me a chance to get to know you, Sam. You can’t deny that we could have something. I feel it every time I’m near you, and I know you feel it too, or else you wouldn’t let me do this.” He quickly reached out and grabbed each of my hands in his own.

I didn’t flinch and I didn’t pull them back – I allowed him to tightly hold my hands, turning them over in each of his own to get his point across. “Whatever happened in the past doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you trust me, when you clearly have problems trusting people. Don’t throw away this trust.” His words were in a whisper as he pulled my hands up, placing my palms on his cheeks. He closed his eyes at my touch and slowly turned to kiss each of my palms. “Please,” he whispered. I could feel his breath on my wrist as his lips lingered on my hand.

I was at a loss – I wanted to say yes and jump right into his happy, loving arms, but I couldn’t. I knew that these hands were poisonous and would slowly destroy Vic as long as he was in my grasp. I slowly withdrew my hands, leaving Vic frozen with his eyes still shut. He bowed his head in disappointment and allowed his hands to drop, carelessly, to his sides.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. The bus came to a stop and I could hear Jaime’s loud chatter from the front of the bus, talking about how he was heading straight to catering to get the food while it was fresh. I sighed and waited to see if Vic would move to let me out of the bus, but he didn’t. He just stood there, looking upset and defeated.

“I’m sorry.” I choked on my words as I brushed passed Vic and exited the bathroom. I could feel the tears burning the backs of my eyes as I left Vic standing in the bathroom – frozen in sadness. Maybe I was being dramatic, or maybe I was just being a coward, but either way I knew that it was the better choice.

I stepped off of the bus and walked straight toward where I knew Kenny would so I could get my assignment for the day and focus on working. I stopped by my bus first so I could freshen myself up. I was able to enjoy a quick shower – making sure to wash my hair thoroughly and shave before stepping out. I needed to feel fresh, because I really needed a fresh start for the tour. I pulled on a simple outfit – denim jeans, a black bikini top, and a cut-off, red tank top over it. I clipped my radio onto my sleeve after slipping on my vans and left the bus, hoping to leave my conversation with Vic behind me.

Notes

Hey guys! Here's an update! I really enjoyed writing this chapter, because I feel like I am finally able to open up Samia's character a bit more to reveal some more of her personality and past.

I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think about her conversation with Vic!

Love you all!

Also, my friend and I are opening up an online accessories boutique, so you guys should go Like the Facebook page to stay informed on when the website will be open and such! Thanks guys!