Lisa handed me another bottle of wine and plopped down on the couch beside me. We were having a typical girl sleepover. Something I had only done a few times in my life since I grew up around boys, but it was nice to spend some time with a girl. Especially after being on tour with all boys and especially after all of my drama with a certain boy. Lisa told me not to say his name tonight, so I was trying to even keep his name out of my thoughts. No matter how addicting it was and no matter how badly I wanted to say his name, even in my mind, I knew that it was best to just let myself unwind.

I looked at the timer as I took a sip from my own wine bottle. We had made a stop to the store after I arrived at her house and picked up quite a few bottles of wine, magazines, movies, snacks, and some beauty items like face masks, make up, nail polish, hair dye, and so on. We had already dyed Lisa’s hair a dark brown and we were now currently finishing up our face masks.

“Time to take them off!” I announced as the time was up on my phone. We stood up and walked into her bathroom. We looked hideous and couldn’t help but laugh at our appearances.

Our hair was pulled up in messy top-knot buns that sat way too far up on our heads. Our faces were caked in what looked like dried cake icing in a hideous shade of green and our t-shirts were covered in the hair dye from earlier. “This is too good to pass up,” I said as I pulled out my phone.

“Wine bottles up!” Lisa said as she held her wine bottle out to me. I held mine out and pressed it to hers while I used my other hand to snap the picture. “Please tag me in that,” she laughed. “And send it to me.”

I nodded and sent her the picture before uploading it onto instagram with the caption: Girl’s night with @lisaruocco #winebottlesup

Not even a half second later, I saw that somebody had commented on the picture, along with a couple hundred likes. Do these people just sit by their phones, refreshing the feed every second in hopes of being the first person to like a post? I rolled my eyes and just as I was about to put my phone in my pocket, I got a notification from twitter. I opened the app and saw that it was from…

“Oh no,” Lisa said softly as she looked at her own phone. I looked up just before I could see the tweet and looked at her phone. She was staring down at the photo I had just uploaded. I noticed that at the top of the comments page was a comment from the one person I wasn’t supposed to talk about or think about.

Call me

And then beneath it were several comments in view that tagged both me and Tony saying things like:

@tonyperry @meediemontclair You guys are so perfect. Please don’t breakup!

@meediemontclair when @tonyperry tells you to call him, YOU CALL

TONY CALL ME PLEASE?!

@meediemontclair @tonyperry I knew you guys wouldn’t work

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Lisa said as she quickly put her phone away. “I get horrible comments all the time. But I’m sure you’re used to it. It’s all part of the gig, right?”

She tried to smile, but I could see that she was worried for me.

I looked down at my phone, now knowing who that tweet was from. Sure enough, Tony had tweeted me.

@meediemontclair Please call me or return my texts. I need to hear your voice at least for a minute. Please.

It angered me that he was using the social networking sites to get my attention. He knew that I cared about the fans too much and I hated to worry them. He knew that by getting their attention, he would get mine as well.

I watched as the tweets and comments came in, begging me to call Tony, and also some begging Tony to call them. And then some people saying absolutely random things and questions. I knew that I couldn’t ignore it. I knew that I had to call Tony, but only for a minute like he said.

“I-“ I began to tell her that I should probably call, but Lisa interrupted me.

“I understand. Just wash your wash off before you burn your skin from letting it sit too long,” Lisa smiled a bit and I watched as the face mask cracked by the corners of her mouth.

After rinsing my face thoroughly and sharing a few more laughs with Lisa, I decided to step into the backyard to call Tony. She said that it was fine because it gave her time to talk to Alex, and I was kind of glad about how things worked out like that.

The phone rang once and then Tony picked up.

“You actually called,” he said quietly.

The sound of his voice was so soothing even when I knew that it shouldn’t be. I should be mad at him. I should be ignoring him.

I didn’t know what to think after today, and most of the news I had discovered still hadn’t really set in. Tony Perry having a girl on the side was one thing, but the fact that he had a kid was a whole new level. And my whole thing was – why didn’t anybody tell me? Vic? Mike? They were supposed to be my family. Vic was my big brother, and surely he would know if Tony had a kid. So why? Why didn’t I know? Something didn’t add up.

And the thing that killed me the most was that I had given so much of myself to Tony. Not only did I tell him my feelings about Marky, but I also changed my entire sexuality for him. I had started to really think that I could fall in love with him. I started to think about our future together. I let the fans know about our relationship. Did all of that mean nothing to him? Because if I meant anything to him, if he really cared about me, wouldn’t he tell me about a secret kid he had back in whatever state – or country – that Faith and his child lived in.

“Please say something,” Tony breathed into the phone. It was extremely quiet on both ends and I suddenly felt bad for keeping him from the after-show partying, but only for a moment. I had to remind myself that he was the one in the wrong here.

“What do you want me to say, Tony Perry?”

Tony sighed when he heard me speak and I could hear the smile in it.

“When are you coming back? I miss you already.”

I couldn’t help but scoff. I wanted to believe that he missed me, but then I thought about he could have said the exact same thing to Faith. And I knew better than to be stupid enough to believe him after he had kept so much from me – basically lied to me about who he was.

“Don’t be like that, Meedie.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I grumbled out as an automatic response.

“Listen,” he sighed. “Just come back to the tour and we’ll talk things out. But whenever you’re ready, that is. I just…I really hope it’s soon.”

“I don’t know if I’m coming back.”

“Wh…what?”

I could hear the sadness in his tone and I had to continue to tell myself that I was mad at him. But it was just so hard to be mad at the one person who had changed your life in so many ways. The one who challenged everything you knew and brought you to slowly realize who you were yourself. Tony Perry was that person to me, and now I felt like everything I had learned about myself in these past few weeks had been a lie because of how Tony’s life had been such a lie.

“I should go,” I said in the strongest voice I could manage. I looked through the sliding glass door and saw Lisa smiling widely and laughing as she spoke to Alex. I envied their conversation and I envied their relationship. “Goodnight, Tony Perry.”

“Please, Meedie,” Tony begged into the phone. “Please just…I wanted to talk in person, but we can talk now? Please let me explain.”

I saw that Lisa had just ended her call with Alex and I knew that I shouldn’t spend any more time on the phone. Not when Lisa and I had been having so much phone before this.

“I can’t…I just really need to go. I’m at Lisa’s house and I don’t want to be rude and stuck on the phone with you all night long.”

“It won’t take that long, listen, it’s really quite-“

“Tony,” I said sternly, cutting him off mid-sentence. “I said not tonight.”

He sighed angrily, but I could also hear the despair in it. Did he really thing that he had done nothing wrong?

“Please call me tomorrow. Or at least text me so I can know how you’re doing.”

“Goodnight Tony,” I repeated before hanging up the phone. I walked back over to the sliding glass door and entered the house. After I locked the door behind me I picked my wine bottle up from the kitchen counter and took several large sips.

“What’s next for girl’s night?” I asked with a wide smile.

Lisa gave me a sympathetic look, but didn’t ask me how my conversation went. In fact, she didn’t even know why I was mad at Tony, and she did me the favor of not asking and not bringing it up. Instead she replaced her sympathy with excitement and happily bounced over to the make-up kit that she had just bought. “Let me do your make-up!”

-

Two hours later and we had already finished off our wine bottles. After Lisa did my make-up and then we played around with hers, we decided to play dress up as well.

“Damn, Meedie! You’re fucking perfect,” Lisa gushed as she looked over the outfit that I had picked out. I was wearing one of Lisa’s red crop tops with my own pair of jeans and a pair of Lisa’s studded sneakers. The outfit was something that I wouldn’t normally wear since it was so put together, but I still felt comfortable in it. My makeup was done to perfection – Lisa had done her usual routine, showing me how to use foundation and liquid makeup. I had a dark smoky eye with a smooth, soft finish on my skin. I looked different. I felt good. And that wasn’t just the wine talking for me.

“Let’s go out,” I said as I stared in the mirror. Lisa was pulling on one of her gorgeous dresses and a pair of thick, tall heels. “I want a tattoo.”

“Really? Let’s do it!” Lisa said without hesitation. She stood beside me in the mirror and snapped a picture of us. “Is it okay if I upload this to instagram?”

I knew that she was asking because of the way Tony had reached out to me on the last picture we posted, but I shrugged regardless. I wasn’t going to hold back on my fun just because I was afraid of Tony trying to talk to me again.

Tony was the first person to like the picture and a few moments later I got a text message from him telling me to be safe and that I looked nice.

“He’s so trying to suck up to you,” Lisa sighed. “Alex does the same thing when we fight.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t have anything to say. All I knew was that I was ready to get out of the house and have a night out in Baltimore with my only girl friend.

We ended up getting a cab to bring us to the more popular part of the city where the sidewalk was still alive, bustling with people as they went in and out of bars and restaurants. We stopped in at a gas station and picked up a couple of red bulls to keep our energy going, but on a bit more of a sober note.

“So what are you going to get?” Lisa asked as we walked toward the tattoo parlor just down the street. I could see the sign from where we were.

I knew exactly what I wanted to get. My mind hadn’t changed much since the last time I wanted a tattoo – I wanted something that reminded me of Tony, but not of our love together, necessarily. Just of the way that Tony Perry had impacted my life. I wanted something that would remind me of the change he brought out in me. And I knew just the thing.

We walked into the tattoo parlor and I told the man what I wanted and I told him that I wanted it on the side of my ribcage, since it was one of the only empty places I had. He sketched it out, and in no time, I was laying down on my side while he began to trace over the stencil. We made small talk for a while until I decided to tune myself out of the conversation. I noticed Lisa snapping pictures of me as I was resting on the table. She thought it was funny because I had my shirt off and wanted to make the fans go crazy over seeing me shirtless. I just rolled my eyes and got lost in my thoughts as she continued to have a conversation with a few of the artists in the shop.

I tried to imagine what would happen if I did go back on the tour with the guys. Would Tony and I talk everything out? Would we still be together? The thought of him having a kid terrified me half to death. I thought about meeting his son, Kaysen, I believe his name was. And I thought about what Kaysen would think of me. Would he like me? Would I turn into a step-mother to him since I was dating his dad? Surely he was too young, only two years old, to understand how it all worked, but still, the thought would be in the back of my mind.

And what about this Faith girl? Would I have to meet her, too? I tried to not think about her because the thought of Tony getting her pregnant made me furious and well…sad. And a tad bit jealous, even though this all happened before Tony and I had any feelings for each other. I still couldn’t help but feel jealous at the fact that he would always have this woman in his life since he had a kid with her. He would never be able to fully move on from her because he would be attached to his son, and that meant that he was attached to a part of her.

“Hey, wait a minute,” one tattoo artist said, breaking me from my thoughts and pulling me back into the conversation. Lisa stopped talking and we all looked over to the man who was on his phone, scrolling around.

“Holy shit,” he chuckled. “I was just looking at my instagram and you guys came up on my feed. I can’t believe I didn’t piece it together before. You’re Meedie MontClair!”

I smiled a bit and nodded the best I could without moving my body too much. “Yep, that’s me.”

“Sweet,” he said with a smile and a nod. “You’ve got a rad voice,” he said. “I like that one song on the album where you kind of do those growls in the chorus? It’s one of the harder songs on the album…I can’t remember the name of it. But yeah, I like it when you do the screams and stuff. It sounds awesome.”

I chuckled a bit at his explanation, but I knew exactly what song he was talking about. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll remember that when I hit the studio.”

“Wait, is Meadows back together?” he asked.

I felt a sudden pain go through me when I realized how difficult it would be to switch bands. “Oh, no. New band,” I winked and rested my head back down on the table. “Nobody knows about it yet. We’re still working things out.”

“When are you going to be releasing this information?” he asked, feeling a bit excited to know that he was the first person to know.

“I honestly have no idea. We’ve just been practicing a bit and working on some songs. Hopefully this summer we can hit the studio and have an album out next year. But we’ll just have to see how it all works out.”

The guy smiled widely and began typing away at his phone. “Is it okay if I tweet about you and post something on instagram?” he asked as he held up his phone.

“Of course, I don’t mind. Here, Lisa, take a picture of us. All of us,” I said as I motioned for the few other artists to get in the picture. They all gathered around me as I was laying down, shirtless son the table. The person who was working on my tattoo (his name was Al) took a quick break to hold up his tattoo gun and smile for the picture. I made sure to put my thumbs up.

“Thank you so much!” The guy took his phone back from Lisa and went to post the picture.

“No problem,” I chuckled a bit.

The other tattoo artists decided to crowd around and hang out as I was lying on the table. The conversation was going smoothly, but I continued to try and remain silent as I tried to get my thoughts together. I had so much on my mind and I really just wanted to think about it all. I was done with unwinding and I was ready to try and figure out what I was going to do.

Looking over the men in the room made me miss Tony. Not because I felt uncomfortable or like they were trying to flirt with me, but just because I wasn’t used to be surrounded by these men. I was used to hanging out with my family and friends on tour. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Tony was sitting by my side. He would probably be conversing with the artists, and then maybe I’d be more interested and outgoing in the conversation.

Just as I felt the finishes touches being added to my tattoo, I realized that there was no way in hell I was going to be skipping out on the rest of the tour. There was no way in hell that I was going to run from my problems by skipping out on the reality of the situation. I had just started to face my fears by facing myself, if I left now, all that progress would be as good as gone. I needed my boys to help me through my life. I needed Tony Perry.

Once we finished, I had Lisa take a picture of me with the artist. This time I stood up, turned sideways so you could see the tattoo, and Al kneeled down in front of me so his bald head was just beneath the tattoo. He pointed his index fingers up at the tattoo and smiled widely.

“Thank you so much, Al,” I said as I looked at the tattoo in the mirror. “It’s amazing!”

Al was very quiet and humble, so when I heard him actually speak up after I gave him a fifty dollar tip, I was taken by surprise.

“Thank you, Meedie. Good luck,” he said.

For some reason I felt like he knew everything that was going through my head while he did my tattoo. I felt like somehow, the gun had accessed my internal thoughts and bled them out while the needle penetrated my skin. I knew it sounded ridiculous, but I was almost positive that it had happened. This tattoo really was something special, and after Al told me good luck, that only made me believe in it more.

“Meedie?” Lisa asked as we walked back up the street, hailing a cab once we reached a busier intersection. We slipped into the cab before she finished her thought. “What happened?”

I sighed. I should have known that she would ask sooner or later. “I’ll tell you when we get back to your house.”

“Okay,” she said softly before turning to look out the window.

The ride back to her house was quick, and we changed out of our clothes and into our pajamas even quicker. I removed the makeup from my face and pulled my hair into a ponytail. Lisa had already gotten comfortable in her bed and I climbed in beside her, not caring if she wanted me to sleep in the guest bedroom or not. She didn’t seem to mind though. She closed the book she was reading and turned the lamp off before turning to face me. We were facing each other in the dark room and I couldn’t even see the whites of her eyes. But I knew they were open, waiting for me to explain.

But before I could say anything, she spoke up.

“I’m just telling you right now that I won’t tell Alex anything if you don’t want me to. I know that he sometimes tends to talk a lot,” she chuckled.

“It’s okay,” I said with a relaxed laugh. “Alex is a good friend of mine and it’s okay if you want to tell him.”

“Okay,” Lisa said softly, clearly unsure of what else to say.

I told Lisa about how Tony started acting a bit weird out of nowhere. And how he was texting Faith and telling her that he had me now. I told her everything that Jaime said to me. And then I told her about Kaysen. When I mentioned the fact that Tony had a son her face contorted into what looked like horror and then sheer confusion moments later.

“I just don’t understand how he could keep this from me. And like, why didn’t anybody else tell me? If Tony had a son, I’m sure that the guys would know about it,” I said.

I could just barely make out Lisa’s features in the dark, but it looked like she still had confusion written all over her face. “That makes no sense. Tony doesn’t have son,” Lisa shook her head. “No way. Alex would know and Alex would have told me something like that. Alex and I love kids, and we love hearing about his friend’s kids. And he always tells me about them. I would know.”

“Well, apparently Tony does an amazing job at hiding it. I’ve known Tony for years now, and I had no idea. Sure, things got crazy with Marky’s death, but I feel like that’s something Tony would definitely talk about. He likes to talk everything out. Why wouldn’t he have mentioned a kid?”

Lisa sighed. “Something isn’t right. There was a miscommunication somewhere. There had to of been. Think back to the conversation, you’re sure you didn’t forget anything?”

“Well, Tony was acting like it was no big deal that he had a kid. Saying he would leave Faith and Kaysen for me.”

Lisa nodded. “And what about when you spoke to Jaime?”

“Well, after her mentioned Kaysen I just shut down and stopped listening. I stormed out soon after.”

Lisa snapped her fingers and sat a bit. “That has to be it. Jaime had to of said more about it and you just didn’t hear it because your brain thought it heard that Tony had a kid.”

“Maybe, but-“

“Did Jaime ever say the words: Tony’s son. Did Jaime specifically tell you that it is Tony’s?”

I tried to think back to the conversation. I could remember what Jaime said clearly, so I recited it to her.

Well, everything gets much more complicated when there’s a kid involved.

The words pained me to think about, and I got angry and upset all over again.

“Yeah, that sounds like he has a kid, but there has to be something else. There’s no freaking way…”

I just shook my head. “I don’t know. I really just don’t know anymore. What do I do?”

“Well, I’ve never been in a situation quite like this,” she chuckled a bit, “But Alex and I have been in many fights and have broken up many times. It really just comes back down to communication. You have to listen to each other no matter what. You have to hear what he has to say.”

“I suck at communicating,” I pouted. I hated to talk about my feelings and I was horrible at expressing how I felt. I used alcohol as an outlet for that – obviously.

“You get better at it,” she said. “Alex used to be horrible at it. But when you really care, you learn to be better at it.”

I sighed. She was right. I really did care about Tony, and I knew that if I wanted to try and make this work. I needed to talk to him. I needed to talk things out with him and listen to what he had to say. I was just hoping that what I heard wouldn’t break my heart any more than I already was.

I heard my phone vibrate from the nightstand and turned over onto my other side to grab it. I smiled – just slightly – at the sight of Tony’s name on my screen.

Goodnight Meedie.

I thought about not replying, but I was over with being to cruel.

Goodnight, Tony. I’ll see you tomorrow.

To that he replied, asking me a million questions about what I had said.

As much as I wanted to skip out on the rest of the tour to avoid talking to Tony, I knew that I couldn’t leave. Not now.

Notes

Meedie's Outfit

Sorry it took me so long. I've been trying, I swear!

But yeah, let me know what you think! Sorry it's a fillerish chapter. :/

LOVE YOU ALL! xoxoxo

Also, I've started to write TWO NEW STORIES. They aren't published or anything because I already have like a million of them. But I mean, pretty soon one of them will be coming out. And it's going to be different :) And I'm super excited for it. Just giving you guys a heads up ahhah.