It was difficult saying no to the hotel party for that night. Once we rolled in, everybody had already taken a couple of shots and a few people even shared a joint. I refused everything that was being handed to me though – I was supposed to be meeting Abby at the hotel for the interview, and I wanted to be completely sober during it. I wanted people to see that I had healed. I wanted to give a great first impression as the new Meedie – the Meedie Montclair that everybody used to know was not around anymore. Sure, I was still sarcastic and a smart-ass, but other things had changed within me. I was stronger now. I was still frail, but definitely not weak. I wanted the fans to be able to recognize that.

Tony was upset when I refused to head over to the party with him, and I think it was partially because he was hoping we could have sex before-hand. But I needed to remain in my right mind – I was too stressed out and focused to drink or have sex. Tony and I parted ways, and it felt strange saying a goodbye to him like that – we were going to be in the same building, not in different states.

Then I started to think about what it was going to be like after the tour – me being in my house while he was in his was going to be hard to get used to. And then what about when touring came back around? The boys didn’t have a very long break after this tour, and I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to be tagging along with them because I was going to be busy making a new CD and scheduling my own tours with my new band.

I stepped into the shower after I had set my bags down in my hotel room, allowing the water to calm my nerves and wash away my thoughts. I just had to deal with things as they came to me, and right now I had to focus on the interview. I was sure that there was going to be a lot of questions that I would be expecting – a lot about Marky’s death and a lot about my relationship with Tony, but there were always questions in an interview that would put you completely on the spot. Those were the questions I was afraid of.

I made sure to do my makeup perfectly – blending eye shadow on my eyelid and applying a cat-eye top liner along with my favorite burgundy lipstick. My hair was drying naturally, and I was actually enjoying the waves that were framing my face – I definitely looked way different than what people were used to. I was wearing more makeup and my hair was straightened or tossed up in a half-ass manner, I was actually trying to look good.

I pulled on some high-waisted jeans, a long-sleeve black shirt with thin, white stripes, and a green cargo jacket over it. Just as I finished pulling on my combat boots, there was a knock at the door and a chiming of my phone.

“This is it,” I muttered to myself as I did one last check in the mirror. I wiped under my eyes just to make sure my makeup was fine, and then quickly walked across the room.

My hand rested on the handle as I stared down at it. This was it. This was going to reveal everything to the fans and this was going to mean that I was officially back. Was I really ready for this? For a moment I thought about just not answering the door and sending her some bullshit text about being ill or maybe saying that there was an emergency and I had to leave the tour – anything to get out of the interview.

What was she going to ask me?

Was I going to be able to handle the questions about Marky?

Would I be able to explain his death out loud?

I had never verbally admitted to the scene that unfolded – I had replayed it so many times in my head and in my nightmares, but I had never explained what I saw. How could anyone do that? How could anymore explain, in detail, their baby brother’s fatal overdose?

Abby knocked on the door again, this time calling out her name. “Meedie! It’s me, Abby!”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I forced myself to push down on the doorhandle. The hinges eased and the door pulled in without any pressure – I could feel the air from the hallway pouring in, and I knew that there was no going back now.

“Meedie?” Abby asked, her hand just barely pushing on the hotel room door.

I nodded to myself and then opened my eyes, plastering a smile on my face as I pulled open the door. She backed up a little bit, shocked at the sudden movements. “Yeah, sorry,” I said through a breath. “I’m just…”

“Nervous?” Abby asked, biting her lip gently. “That’s okay. Me, too.”

I smiled a bit more and took a step closer to the wall behind me so she had enough space to enter the room. She stepped inside, one man following behind her holding a large bag and rolling another behind him.

I waited for both of them to enter before taking one look down the hallway and then shutting the door and locking it with the deadbolt. I followed the two into the room and watched as Abby got to work on rearranging the room a bit so she could set up a small interview area.

“Hi, I’m Justin,” the man introduced himself. He set down his bags near the first bed of the room and wiped his hands on his jeans before offering me a hand to shake. “I’m the camera-dude.”

I chuckled slightly at the title he gave himself as I shook his hand. “Miranda Montclair,” I said. I was somewhat surprised at the fact that I had used my full name, but for some reason I liked the sound of it. I liked how professional my name sounded. I didn’t sound like a rebellious woman anymore, I sounded put-together.

“Okay, so I tried to set up a small little area for the interview,” Abby explained as she stared over the area. “Justin, could you set up right here.” She pointed to an area in between two of the room chairs.

She had moved the desk over to the corner of the room so the hotel-room bed wouldn’t be in the frame and adjusted the desk chair to be slightly angled toward the lounge chair that she had dragged over. I was assuming that I would be sitting in the larger chair and she would be in the angled desk chair, since the way that Justin was setting up the camera was mostly pointed at the large, red cushioned chair.

“You’ll sit here,” she said, pointing to the chair that I had been staring at, “and I’ll sit right here.”

She took a seat, setting down her iPad and a pad of paper on the desk beside her as she got comfortable and adjusted her blazer and the small microphone that was clipped onto her shirt beneath it. Before I sat down, I went and grabbed three water bottles from the mini fridge and brought them over, handing one to Justin as I passed by. I set the other two down on the desk and Abby gave me a nervous smile as she read over the notes she had.

“Is this your first interview?” I asked. She seemed to be extremely nervous – even more nervous than I was.

“Not really,” she said with a sigh. “I usually just do group interviews, you know. Like general questions about touring and it’s usually with bands that are interviewed by everybody. This is way different because, well…first of all, it’s you,” she said with a chuckle. “And it’s way more personal. This interview has to be perfect.”

I understood exactly what she was saying, and although I felt that she was a little bit star-struck, I had to admit that I kind of was, too. But in a different way. It had been a long time since there was a camera staring me in the face, and the light that Justin had set up were extremely intimidating and I felt like every single expression I would make would be noticed and picked apart, and I was afraid of that. I was afraid of being picked apart by the questions in this interview and by the people who were going to watch it.

“Okay, so if any question makes your uncomfortable or whatever, just let us know and we can edit it out.”

“No,” I said, as I furrowed my eyebrows. “Don’t edit anything out. I want all of it to be seen. No matter what.”

Abby flinched a bit, the surprise of my decision appearing to have practically hit her by the way she cocked her head back. “O-Okay, if you say so.”

I nodded, a bit unsure with how confident I was with that decision.

Abby looked over to Justin and raised her eyebrows, silently asking if he was ready. He looked at the cameras and placed his earphones on his head before giving her a nod and thumbs up.

“Ready?” she asked, a smile now consuming her face as excitement seemed to take her nerves over.

“Now or never,” I said with a smile. “Let’s do this.”

She gave Justin a wink and then he counted down to the time that he was rolling the camera.

“Hey guys, it’s Abby Welch here with the one and only Meedie Montclair.”

When she paused I took it upon myself to wave toward the camera a bit and smile widely.

“Meedie has agreed to meet up with me while she’s out on tour with her good friends of Pierce the Veil and All Time Low for the Spring Fever Tour. We’re out in Maryland right now, just after the show the bands have played at The Towson Center Arena, and lucky us! – Meedie decided to skip out on the hotel party to be here with us and answer all of the questions we have been dying to know over the past year.” She paused to look at me, giving me a warm smile and a wink. “Shall we begin?”

“We shall,” I agreed with a nod.

Abby took a quick side-glance over to her notes as she spoke effortlessly – no stutters or awkward pauses. She was a natural, and I knew that this interview was going to be difficult – she was a smart girl and I was certain that she did her research and dug up some of the toughest questions I would ever be faced with. But this was it. There was no going back, and I didn’t want to.

-

“Wow,” Abby said with a chuckle as she looked down at her phone, reading the time that was on the screen. “That interview took three hours.”

I wiped the tears that were still slipping from the corners of my eyes and forced out a small chuckle. I reached up and ran my hands through my hair, only causing a mess of tangles to disrupt my natural waves – but I didn’t care. I just needed to push my hair from my face. “I’m sorry for crying.”

“No,” Abby said, shaking her head. “Don’t apologize. I cried, too. I had no idea…I just…I’m so sorry.”

I nodded and bit the corner of my lip. It was a lot harder than I thought, but I managed to get everything out – it was all on that camera that Justin was lugging over to the door. My entire life-story was recorded and ready to be edited to hit the TV screens of thousands of viewers. I knew it was right though – I knew that Marky would have wanted to the fans to know what happened so they could learn how to cope and maybe learn something from it, too.

“I’m out,” Justin announced, yawning as he pulled open the door. “I’ll see you in the morning, Abs.”

“Yeah, goodnight, Justin!” she waved after him as she dropped her iPad and papers into her purse.

I almost didn’t want her to go, though. I didn’t want to go to sleep with such bad memories on my brain – that was fuel for the nightmares that were waiting to make an appearance every time my head hit the pillow.

“You know, there’s a bottle of red wine that I’ve been dying to open…if you want to stick around…”

“Oh,” Abby said, shocked by my offer. “Okay! I love me some wine.”

I walked over to the mini fridge and prayed that the hotel had provided a bottle of wine like they usually did. I opened the fridge and thanked the heavens that there was – I pulled it out, not caring that they would charge for the alcohol, and began to pour it into the two flute glasses that were provided.

I quickly downed my own glass and then re-poured it. Although wine was my alcoholic beverage of choice – it was still alcohol and I desperately needed some alcohol after that interview.

Hours later, we ended up ordering some real alcohol from room service and getting drunk while sitting on the floor in between the two beds. Each of us leaning against a bed.

“I spilled everything into the camera,” I said, not really caring that my words didn’t make a whole lot of sense. “I admitted a lot on that camera.”

“I know,” Abby said as she pulled her cup up to her lips for another drink. “I don’t know what is going to me more popular – the stuff about your brother or about your relationship with Tony.”

I nodded, agreeing with her words. “Probably the stuff about Tony, to be honest. That’s all everybody cares about is the love and the juicy romances. They just want more to talk about on all those websites. They just want more reasons to either hate or love my relationship.”

“I don’t know.” Abby shook her head. “Everybody really loves Marky, and I know that people are dying to know what happened with him.

“And you know what? I think we should do a huge memorial sequence for him. Since the interview was so long, we should add a special bit either at the end or the beginning about Marky. Show some clips of him and pictures and stuff. That way more people can recognize his life and his story.”

I smiled widely. “I think that’s a perfect idea.”

I got lost in my thoughts, as I usually do when I drink, and instead of thinking about Marky, I started to stress out about the things that I said about my relationship with Tony. I didn’t say anything bad, in fact, I said just the opposite.

I said that I loved him. The words just fell from my mouth, and I knew that I couldn’t tell her to cut that out because I had said not to cut anything. I had to let it air – but at the same time, I didn’t know if it was the best decision. Tony and I had just barely gotten through our first argument – was love really even in the question?

I knew that I loved him, but did he feel the same?

I had to tell him before he saw the interview.

“I have to see Tony,” I said quickly. I tried to stand up, but ended up stumbling down onto the bed, nearly pouring whatever was left in my cup.

“Woah,” Abby said, coming over to my side. She let out a laugh as she took my cup from me and set it on the nightstand in between the beds. “Maybe not tonight.”

I laughed at how dizzy I had suddenly started to feel. I was beyond drunk, and I could feel some of my memory already becoming fuzzy. How did I get up here? I thought to myself as I took a handful of the sheets.

“I think I’m ready for beddy-by,” I said as I burrowed my head into the blankets, not caring that I was laying sideways on the bed.

“Yeah, good idea,” Abby chuckled. “Here, I’ll tuck you in,” she suggested as she hiccupped.

She pulled on my boots, trying to take them off, but then gave up and ended up pulling my legs to the edge of the bed to help me lay properly so my head was actually on the pillow.

“Goodnight sweetie-pie,” she said in an old lady voice. “Why am I talking like that?” she asked with a giggle.

I giggled in response, watching the way her eyes crinkled up and narrowed to the point where they almost looked closed. She was adorable, and my drunken self apparently had no limits. I reached out and pulled the bottom of her shirt, forcing her to lay down on the bed with me. She landed beside me perfectly – our faces only centimeters apart.

Our laughing stopped and the room changed quickly. It felt so noisy with our laughter before, but then it fell dead silent as we stared at each other. I looked over her lips, and took notice of how plump and soft they looked. I knew that I should have felt the urge to kiss her, and if things were different, we would have probably already been kissing.

I was able to recognize the fact that she was attractive, but without feeling attracted to her. I knew that I should want to kiss her, but I just didn’t. I didn’t care to, because I didn’t need to. I had all the affection and love that I ever wanted with Tony Perry. He was the only one that I wanted to kiss, and I was certain that he was the only person I wanted to kiss for the rest of my life.

“I want you to kiss me,” Abby breathed. Her breath hit my lips, and usually I was a sucker for the feeling, but this time I found it almost annoying. I didn’t want her breath on my lips.

“You know I can’t do that,” I said softly. “I love Tony.”

Abby smiled warmly, which wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. She seemed so happy to see me turn her down.

“I know,” she said. “You’re different that the Meedie people think you are. You’re better.”

I didn’t really know how to respond. I let out a chuckle. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “you’re one hell of a gal, Miranda Montclair.”

With that I was able to close my eyes, feeling comfortable enough to sleep. I didn’t care that Abby was sleeping so close beside me, because I knew that I trusted myself enough to not feel the need to cuddle her or make a move. I was comfortable with who I was – with all of my losses in life, my confusion on my sexual preferences, and my romance with the man I least expected – it all made me believe in myself for the first time in my entire life.

-

The next morning I had a massive hangover for the first time in a long while. At the beginning of the tour I was so used to them that they hardly even fazed me, but now that I had been cutting back on my drinking, the hangover was hitting me harder than ever. I moped around the hotel room while Abby just barely started to stir. I cleaned up the glasses and put the chairs and desk back into their rightful position.

“Good morning,” I mumbled when I saw Abby sit up.

“What time is it?” she asked as she rubbed her eyes. She let out a yawn, but winced at the sound of her own voice as she moaned into the yawn. “Fuck, my head.”

“It’s only seven,” I said with a grumble. I didn’t know why I was awake so early, but I just couldn’t wait to start my day. After my realizations from the night before, I wanted nothing but to shower, eat some greasy Mexican food, and see Tony.

“Fuck!” she exclaimed, jumping up suddenly and clambering around to make sure she had all of her things gathered. All that she had out of her purse was her cell phone and charger, but she continued to feel around as if she was forgetting something else. She slowed herself down and picked up her shoes before hoisting her purse over her shoulder. “My flight leaves at eight-thirty,” she explained.

“Oh, shit,” I said, suddenly feeling like I needed to rush right along with her.

“It’s fine,” she said, even though she still seemed rather shaky and rushed. She picked up her cell phone and groaned when she looked at the screen. “Justin’s been trying to get a hold of me for an hour. I need to go meet up with him.”

“I’ll walk you to the elevator,” I offered, following her toward the door.

“No, that’s fine,” she said with a smile. She opened the door and turned around once she was out in the hallway. “I had a lot of fun getting to know you and hanging out last night.”

“Me, too!” I said, feeling genuinely grateful for our night together.

She stood there for a moment and everything seemed to get suddenly really dense and awkward. I didn’t know if I should reach out and hug her, or just wave and retreat back into the room without saying much else. Before I could decide on anything, Abby made the decision that she wanted a hug. She reached out and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me into a tight hug. I wrapped my arms around her middle and squeezed her back.

“Thank you for spending time with me,” she said as we hugged. “And thanks for that interview. It means more to me than you know.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I needed to let it out.”

She pulled away and exhaled at the same time. Her phone started to ring from her left hand, and she looked at the screen and rolled her eyes. “Justin, again. I better get going.”

“Yeah,” I said, a bit awkwardly. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”

Without much warning, Abby leaned forward and gave me a friendly kiss on the cheek. Although it was a bit unexpected, it didn’t feel inappropriate. She steered clear of my lips, placing a very gentle peck onto the peak of my right cheek. I smiled as she turned around and headed down the hallway. I stared at where she was standing for a moment before turning to make sure she was going to make it to the elevator alright.

I turned to look down the hallway and was met with Tony Perry’s gaze. An eruption of nerves and butterflies attacked me from within – now that I had finally admitted, out loud, to my feelings about Tony, I felt overly nervous to see him. I wanted to tell him how I felt, but I didn’t just want to blurt it out. It needed to be right.

“Tony?” I called after him when I noticed him struggling to turn around and head back down the hallway. “Where… Tony!” He didn’t stop when I tried calling out to him. He continued to try and stagger down the hallway, but instead tripped over his footing and fell down to the ground, his head causing a loud thump to sound through the corridor as it connected with the wall.

I ran over and looked down at him as he groaned and held his head. He had a cut near his dermal, and I noticed that the piercing itself was puffy and irritated. His eye looked like it was slightly swollen and as I looked over his demeanor I was able to piece things together. It was clear that he had been punched. Which probably meant that he had gotten into a fight.

“Tony, are you still drunk?” I asked when I noticed him trying to get up. He couldn’t even get up onto his feet, but it was clear that he was trying to. I reached down and took hold of his biceps to try and pull him back up, but he pushed me away quickly, and allowed himself to slump back down onto the ground. “Let me help you up!” I demanded.

“No!” he hissed, pushing my legs away from him. I stumbled backward, but not quite enough to get me to fall. “I don’need your help!” He was clearly still drunk – his words were hardly even understandable.

“Are you just barely getting back from partying?” I asked.

“Don’t fuckin’ talkta me,” he groaned. He moved his head from left to right, his hair sticking to the wall from the static-electricity he was producing with the friction of his movements. “I saw you.”

I furrowed my eyebrows in both confusion and anger. “What are you talking about? What the fuck is going on?”

“You tink that just because you liked girls and now you like me, too…you think you can have ‘em both?” He was trying to yell at me, but his sentence was hardly making sense. “I saw you kiss that girl! You can only have one.”

I pieced together his words. “You think I cheated on you?” I asked, trying to guess what he was accusing me of.

“I saw it!”

“Tony, I didn’t cheat on you. You saw wrong.”

“I know wutta saw!”

I sighed and went back over to Tony’s side to help him up, once again. This time he allowed me to pull him to his feet, but as soon as he was stable, he pushed me back, this time with enough force to cause me to fall onto the ground.

“Don’t you fucking push me!” I nearly screamed at him. I could feel the tears pricking the back of my eyes. Why was Tony getting violent with me? There was one thing I did not tolerate – and that was violence. I grew up being pushed around by male figures all of my life. My mom’s boyfriend would constantly abuse me, and I witnessed him abusing my mother. I knew Tony didn’t have that kindof rage from within him – even looking at him while he pushed me I could see the innocence in his eyes. His eyes weren’t filled with rage, or taken over by some force that was making him believe that he needed to control me. He looked hurt and confused – he was convinced that he had seen me kissing Abby.

“Tony,” I said, softly, “you have to believe me. Abby gave me a kiss on the cheek to say goodbye.”

“Why did she sleep there?” he asked, pointing down the hall toward my hotel room. “Why did she spend the night, huh? You think that you can have both genders just because you used to be a fucking dyke?!”

I could feel my face physically fall as his words really hit me hard. Was it really necessary for him to be so harsh with his words? I had grown up being called a dyke, box-licker, slut – anything that people thought would be hurtful toward lesbians. I grew up defending myself from those phrases, but hearing them from someone who meant so much to me was a million times different than walking down the halls at school and hearing them being whispered behind your back. This time it was the man I was certain that I loved insulting me. This time I could feel the words breaking every bone in my body as I slumped deeper into the ground. I wished that I could just melt away into the carpet and be nothing more than a speck of dust on the ground, because that’s how I felt. I felt so insignificant under Tony’s stare – his words still ringing in my head.

“Maybe you were right,” he said, his voice a lot more gentle than before. His gaze was down, and now he was shifting awkwardly and uncomfortably. “Maybe you were right about before.”

“What?” I managed to choke out. I was surprised that I hadn’t cried yet.

Tony was silent for a while as it seemed that he was trying his best to formulate a sober-sounding sentence to feed to me. I sat on the ground, still in the exact position that I had landed in from when Tony had knocked me over. I looked over Tony and saw that he was still in the clothes from the night before, only he was really dirty. It looked like he had been rolling in dirt, and I also noticed that his shirt was torn a bit at the bottom, right near the hem.

“I think you were right when you mentioned leaving the tour.”

He finally spoke, but I wanted to act like he hadn’t. “You…you want me to leave?” I asked.

Tony sighed and bowed his head, letting out a single nod. “I think you need to leave me.”

“I’m not leaving you, Tony,” I said, my words coming out a bit more aggressive than I planned.

“I’m leaving you, Meedie,” he said harshly. “I’m breaking up with you! So just leave!”

He turned around and all but sprinted down the hallway as he made his way to the elevator to go to his own hotel room which was a floor below mine. When I heard the doors close, I didn’t know what to do.

I sat in that hallway for about an hour – not moving. Not thinking. I didn’t even know if I was breathing.

I finally stood up and made my way back to my hotel room. Once inside, I went ahead and stepped into the shower. My body was trembling, but not from the cold of the water or the feeling of the air against my skin. I was trembling because I was trying so hard to hold back the sobs that were waiting in my throat. My body was trembling with the pressure, and I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I cried as I lathered up my hair with shampoo. I cried as I rinsed it out. I cried the entire time I was in the shower.

I got out and the tears stopped so suddenly, I didn’t know if I had actually been crying that whole time. I sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped loosely in my towel while the wetness of my hair dripped down my body.

Nothing made sense to me. I tried to replay the words in my brain, but even still I just didn’t understand. Did I miss something? Or was Tony really that convinced that he had seen me kissing Abby? I was so good the night before about remaining faithful to Tony. I admitted in that interview that I loved him. I told Abby multiple times throughout the night that I loved Tony. In fact, we mostly talked about relationships and I mostly talked about Tony.

Tony was my everything, but now I was so confused. It didn’t even seem hard for him to tell me to leave. He hardly even hesitated with his responses. He didn’t stutter once when he told me he was leaving me. He didn’t seem to care.

I had nothing outside of the tour – everybody that meant anything to me was going to be moving on for the rest of the tour. We were only halfway through the tour – there was still eleven more dates. There was still a little less than a month to go, and after the tour they were going to be packing up and heading out to South America. What was I going to do?

I had to go back to my home in San Diego where all of Marky’s belongings were. I had to go back and face them all alone. Nobody was going to be there to help me pack up his belongings or clean the apartment or settle things with his death and the finances that came along with it. Vic promised that he would spend the little time he had off after this tour helping me, but now I was going back all alone. Now I wouldn’t have Vic there with me. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t go back to how I was. I knew that the second I would walk through my apartment door, I would be right back to square one – a drunken, blubbering, unstable mess.

But I had no choice. Tony wanted me to leave. It would be far too painful to remain on the tour. No matter what I chose – remaining on the tour or going home – I would eventually end up back at the beginning of all of this. All of my progress with myself was going to be tossed down the drain, no matter what.

I quickly got dressed into something comfortable, not really caring to do my makeup or hair. I grabbed my cell phone off of the charger and quickly found Drew’s number.


“Hey, Meedie! What’s up?” he answered immediately.

“Hey, um…you guys don’t happen to be from San Diego, do you?” I asked, feeling a bit stupid for not even knowing where they were from.

“Actually, we are! That’s why we chose to follow PTV – since it was easiest to catch them when they were leaving. Why, what’s up?”

I bit my lip to hold back a smile. “Well, I’m heading back to San Diego in a few hours, and I was thinking we could all just mob on over together…I’ll pay for the gas.”

“Well, shit, yeah! We can start working on some more songs!” Drew exclaimed, happily. I could hear talking in the background start as the rest of the boys were asking questions. “Let me tell the guys and we’ll get ready to head out. Just tell us when you wanna go!”

“Okay, will do.” I hung up the phone and stood up – immediately gathering all of my belongings and calling Vic to ask if he would help transfer my belongings from their tour bus to Drew and the guys’ van. He seemed confused at first, but at the same time, he didn’t question anything. It made me wonder if he knew something. I didn’t ask through – I wanted to focus on the idea of making new music. And not on the fact that I was already more broken that I had been when Marky died.

Notes

Meedie's Outfit

Woops, sorry! Both for taking forever to update and for making them break up.

What do you think is up? Any predictions?

Guess you'll find out soon!

Love you all!

Check out my new collab with d3ja-ent3ndu, it's called Now It's Your Turn to Run!