The New Member

Tony’s POV
I would never be able to unsee the sight I saw in front of me.
There she was, the most beautiful girl in the world, lying helplessly… lifelessly. The shirt I had given her was rolled up to her chest, no longer covering her fragile body. Her stomach was fully exposed. Blood trickled down from her fingers and the mirror above the sink was completely shattered. It looked like her head had hit the floor pretty hard. Bruising had started just above her right eyebrow and her eye was surrounded by a yellow tint.
After taking in the scene I rushed to her. I cupped my hand over her cheek and tried to wake her up. She didn’t budge. I wrapped one of my arms underneath her shoulders and the other underneath her legs. Slowly avoiding hitting the walls, I walked passed a flabbergasted Vic and went up to my room to let Noortje rest. Before I left I carefully look the shards of glass out of her hand, and firmly wrapped bandage around it. I never expected my day to go like this. I was going to take her out to see apartments and houses in the neighbourhood, but I guess that’s not happening anymore.
Luckily this didn’t seem like a suicide attempt… but I was sure that she had had another mental breakdown. It must have been a lot like the one that happened so many years ago, but no self-harming. I felt afraid, I felt afraid for her.
I kissed her forehead once more and muttered, “You’re so beautiful, don’t ever forget that.”


I grabbed myself a beer from the fridge and sat down in the recliner opposite the couch Vic was sitting on. He looked up at me, his voice was weak, “What just happened?”
“The same thing that happened many those many years ago, but just a toned down version.” I breathed, afraid to disturb Noortje.
“What?” Vic snap his head towards me, “this happened before?”
I nodded my head and took a deep breath for continuing, “that’s what yesterday was about. It happened… It happened on…” I couldn’t continue.
“When, did it happen Tone?”
“The night, the night before you asked her to move in.”
“I- what? How did I not notice? I’m such a bad friend!”
“Hey, nobody knew, it’s not your fault.”
“Well you obviously know.” Vic scoffed.
“I just got told yesterday.” I admitted.
“What did she tell you?”
“Everything.”
Vic blushed red and tried to hide his face with his hands.
“It just meant that I should have noticed!” Vic argued.
“You weren’t focused on that at the time, stop blaming yourself.”
Vic agreed, but I was sure he still felt guilty inside.

We continued talking about band stuff and about our lives. Vic mentioned the new house he was going to be moving in and showed me a few pictures. It was gorgeous. It was a 2 ½ story house and had large open spaces. I was proud of my friend. After continuing our talk and checking on Noortje a couple times I finally decided to bring up the topic. I needed to ask him what the argument was about.
“Hey, Vic?”
“Yea?”
“What was the argument about? I mean you don’t have to tell me, but I would like to know. I totally understand if you don’t want me to know.”
Vic exhaled and rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s ok Tone, I think you deserve to know.”
He told me the whole story until he mumbled something.
“I’m sorry what was that?” I asked
He groaned, “I told her I thought you guys had sex together.”
I couldn’t help but blush. I had never thought of her that way. Why would he be thinking that?
“Oh my god! It did happen!” Vic proclaimed.
“What! No!”
“Then why are you getting so defensive and why are you blushing?”
“‘Cause that is a normal reaction to that type of question? All that happened was we came here, I brought her to bed, helped her get changed--”
“You helped her get changed! You see!”
“No, not in that way. Anyway, I was going to sleep on the couch, but she asked me to stay--”
“Again, you see!”
“Just let me finish! All seemed well, but she woke up often completely disoriented and tried to run away a few times. To be honest I was quite scared. I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if she ran away again and I didn’t notice. I stayed up the whole night making sure she was ok.”
“Oh wow. I take it all back.”
“It’s ok, I’m just really tired.”
“I understand. Why don’t you--”

There was a loud scream that came from the bedroom. Vic and I ran as fast as we could to the source of the scream. Noortje was sat up in bed completely sweaty and out of breath. Her eyes were flicking around rapidly. I walked over to her and wrapped her in a big hug whispering sweet nothings in her ear. Vic sat on the other side rubbing her back. I slowly pulled her down with me so she was laying down on my chest again. She whimpered a bit and clutched on my chest for dear life. Vic stood up, gave us a sad smile and walked out. We lay there in silence staring up at the ceiling and I slowly started to drift off.

Noortje’s POV

I heard quite snoring come from besides me and saw a sleeping Tony. He looked so cute and peaceful when he slept. I stayed in his brace for a couple more minutes before I carefully untangled myself and went looking for Vic.
I found him sitting in the guitar room and sat on the floor next to him.
“I’m so sorry, Noortje. I should have know.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about, “So Tony told you.”
“Yeah…”
“It’s the reason why I left the interview. The mention of it made of the memories come flooding back. I didn’t want to cry in front of the camera. I didn’t care if they would see I had cried, just didn’t want to do it in front of the camera…”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and I leaned into his side.
“I’m going to miss fighting about toilet paper, and getting mad at you for throwing your underwear all over the house.” I said.
“I’ll miss you too. How could I ever forget the PMS!”
I hit him over the head and snickered. He laughed back at me.
“You don’t have to worry about that, we got plenty of tours to catch up on that.”
Vic groaned.
“Have you decided if you want to stay at the house or move?”
“Hmm… I was thinking of moving. Just having a fresh start and leaving memories behind, even though most of them are good.”
“Well, then we gotta start looking don’t we”

We stood up, grabbed Tony’s laptop and sat at the kitchen counter. To make things more fun we decided to divide them into groups: Cool, Maybe, No, What the fuck is this anyway, no seriously what the fuck is this, and would be really awesome. After looking for 2 hours we had 3 in the ‘cool’ list, 2 in the ‘maybe’, 1 in ‘no’, 1 in ‘what the fuck is this anyway’, and 5 in the ‘no seriously what the fuck is this’ list. There were no in the ‘would be really awesome’ list. Suddenly a random Tony popped up behind us.
“What are you guys doing?”
“Ooh, just looking at a couple places I could move into.” I said mostly concentrating on the screen.
“Oh, I was thinking… You know… I mean…. You could move in with me? I just thought you might like it more than living by yourself… You can have one of the 2 guest bedroom and one of the 3 bathrooms. We will still have another guest bedroom and bathroom.” Tony rambled.
I turned around to look at him, “Are you being serious?”
“I mean, why not?”
I wrapped my arms around his next and gave him the biggest hug ever.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I mumbled in his chest.
Tony ruffled my hair and smiled down at me.

This was going to be amazing.

Notes

Sorry for so much dialogue, I just didn't know how else to write it.

-DSN