Being a shut in was all that I cared about after I had ended things with Tony. I regretted my decision more and more with each passing day that he wasn’t around. I missed seeing his face pop up on my phone when he called. I missed the way he would walk into my house unannounced and immediately try to cook me something to eat or tell me about his day. Why did I ever screen his calls? Why did I deny his love and tune out his attempts to make things okay again?

Every time my phone rang, a small glimmer of hope shot through me. I picked up my phone, wishing that his face would come up on the screen but it never was. It would be a random number trying to call me or an old friend at a magazine trying to call me. It was everyone under the sun – everyone except for him. I usually didn’t answer my calls, but when I saw Drew’s name on my screen, I figured I owed him an explanation for not contacting him since we had returned to San Diego.

“Hey Drew,” I answered, already sounding guilty.

“Listen, I know you’re going through some shit right now and I get that, but that doesn’t mean you can just leave us in limbo over here, Meedie. You joined our band, and even though you’re famous and could probably do much better than us, you still need to fulfill your commitment or you’re out.”

I had to admit that I was feeling quite little in that moment. I knew what it was like to be ridiculed by a band member for doing something wrong, but that band member to ridicule me was usually my brother, so I didn’t take him very seriously or feel ashamed or guilty. But for this, I felt extremely guilty and even slightly embarrassed. Although I knew that I wasn’t better than any other one musician because of my prior success, I had to admit that my head had inflated in just the slightest. I felt as if I was the veteran and I was going to be the one running the show, but I wasn’t, and it was strange. But I was also glad. It was nice to know that someone else was going to be taking on the hardest responsibility within the band – kicking your band members and crew in the ass when they needed it.

“Thank you,” I said through a breath. “I really needed to hear that. You’re right and I am going to prove myself to you. I want to be in this band and I want to work with you, all of you, to be the best that we can be and make some kick-ass music. Do you guys want to go out tonight for pizza and talk about some steps we can take toward getting this going?”

Drew was silent for a moment, but I heard some background talking. “I just talked to my roommates and they said we can just come over here tonight and we’ll order pizza.”

“Sounds good, I’ll grab some beer on my way over.”

“Hi Meedie!” a voice called out from the background, the voice echoing slightly through the house. “It’s Reid. The drummer.”

“Reid says hey,” Drew translated, laughing slightly.

I shook my head. “Tell him I say hello. And that I know who he is…dork.”

Drew conveyed the message and then the two of them bantered a bit before I cleared my throat to gather Drew’s attention. “Right, sorry. See you tonight around seven?”

“Yeah, just text me your address.”

I decided to take a short nap to make sure that I was as refreshed as possible before meeting up with my band. I didn’t want to look too much like death, even though they were probably expecting it. Once I was showered and wrapped in my towel, I was stuck. I had completely forgotten how to properly get ready. I knew that I didn’t really need to impress Drew, Reid, Al, or Logan, but I still wanted to at least look presentable. I threw on a pair of black, ripped jeggings, knowing that they were cute but still comfortable enough to eat pizza and drink beer in. I stood in front of my closet just staring as I tried to decide what shirt to put on.

I felt like I had nothing to wear. All of my clothes looked so dull and boring. Had I even unpacked from tour? I remembered doing laundry and frantically cleaning the house, but then again I didn’t remember sitting down in the hallway and staying there for a prolonged period of time. I could have imagined cleaning the entire house for all I knew. My first week back from tour was still unclear to me, and I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to remember it.

I managed to find an old, sleeveless crop top and tossed that on followed by one of Marky’s old flannels that I had been wearing, putting it on just for a little bit of a cover up. I pulled on the first pair of black boots I saw and moved on to my makeup.

It wasn’t like I ever really wore makeup to begin with, but after seeing myself in the mirror, I wished that I knew how. My skin closely resembled a piece of lined notebook paper – white with flecks of a bluish hue showing some of my veins from how much weight I had lost. Around my eyes were slightly puffy and red – probably permanently like that from how much sleeping, staring, and crying I had done in the past couple of weeks. I needed foundation or something to liven up my skin because I looked like I had been dead and rotting for weeks.

After experimenting for two hours and watching several YouTube videos, I managed to put on a full face of makeup – foundation, blush, and even bronzer. I kept it simple with my eyes, sticking to what I knew about eyeliner and mascara and then filled in my eyebrows. But now my hair was an issue. It was mangled and so incredibly long that I didn’t even know if I could brush through it. The ends were a light brown color, clearly dry and split. There was no way I could wear my hair down so I tossed it into a top bun with some braids.

I managed to get ready just in time for me to make it by seven. When the GPS on my phone told me I had arrived, I was shocked at the house in front of me. I knew that my condo wasn’t huge or anything too out of the ordinary, but looking at this small house made me feel like I lived in a mansion. It reminded me a lot of the house that I used to live in when I was a kid. My mother lived off of welfare and whatever other sketchy business she tended to when she was out of the house, so we didn’t grow up with much, and if it weren’t for the friends I had or my band, I would probably be homeless.

I walked up to the door and knocked a few times, followed by someone calling out for me to come in.

“Meedie! Welcome to the palace,” Reid greeted, bowing at the door. “May I take your jacket?”

“I’m not wearing a jacket,” I replied, laughing at Reid’s antics.

“Oh, right. I just wanted to be fancy,” he replied with a slight chuckle. “Come on in! The guys are right around the corner. And I also have someone who wants to meet you.”

I held my questions and decided to just silently follow behind Reid as he led me around the corner to reveal all the guys sitting on the couches, playing video games. Those who were not playing were watching and everyone was surprisingly silent.

“Babe, I have someone who wants to meet you,” Reid said.

I looked around the room, confused, until I noticed a blonde woman sitting on the center of the couch with a controller in her hands. I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell by her posture and silence that she was focused in on whatever game they were playing. It wasn’t anything I recognized, just a box bouncing over a complex pattern of triangles as it progressed across the screen.

“Can’t right now,” she said very shortly. “New record.”

“Shhh,” Al said, silencer her as he sat beside her, staring at the screen. The more I looked around, the more I noticed that nobody else had a controller.

“I don’t underst-“ I didn’t even get to complete my sentence when I was interrupted by everybody shushing me in unison. It was kind of scary and also made me feel ridiculously dumb for speaking up.

“Wait a minute,” the girl said, perking her head up a bit. She continued to control the box, but her focus faltered and she stood up, turning to look at me, a shriek echoing through the house all while her box hit one of the triangles and everybody else in the room screamed at her, angry at how she lost focus.

“I think I’m missing something here,” I said, a bit scared of what was going on.

“Meedie,” Reid said with a slight laugh. “This is our other roommate. My girlfriend, Chloe. She’s kind of a big fan.”

“Oh my god, Meedie Montclair. Miranda Louise Montclair. In my house. In my living room. Right in front of me. I love you.”

Even though I had met an array of fans, some a bit more exuberant than others, I still didn’t quite know how to handle it. The best thing to do was to give them a hug, so that’s what I did. I reached in to give her a hug, but instead of reciprocating, she outreached her hands and placed them over my face. I stopped what I was doing and just waited it out.

“Chloe! Stop feeling her face!”

“Oh my goodness, I am so sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. I just needed to make sure I’m not dreaming.” She began to hyperventilate, fanning her hands in front of her face as she tried to calm down. “This is so embarrassing. I am so sorry.”

“No worries. Just don’t cry. Or faint. I’ve had a fainter before,” I added. The rest of the guys laughed, but soon lost interest.

“Chloe, I have prepped you for this day. I told you it was going to happen sooner or later,” Reid added, slowly making his way over to his girlfriend. He began to gently massage her shoulders to relax her. She seemed to relax as soon as he touched her and I couldn’t help but to smile at the connection they clearly had.

Chloe took in three deep breaths, following Reid as he told her to remember their preparation. “Okay. I can do this,” she said through a breath. She looked up at me and for a moment I could see the excitement return to her, but she took one more deep breath and she was able to calm herself. “Hi, my name is Chloe and it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I have been listening to your music since it first hit the shelves and I’ve admired you even before that, back when you were only known as a friend of Pierce the Veil. I’ve always admired your sarcasm and once you liked one of my pictures that I tagged you in and I cried for three days.”

“Chloe,” Reid warned as she began to get off topic.

“Right, right,” she said while shaking her head. “It is an honor to meet you because you truly are my idol and I hope that this can be the beginning to a beautiful friendship to the point where we can call each other family.”

Reid stopped rubbing her shoulders and slapped his hand to his forehead at her last comment.

“I appreciate your support, Chloe, and I hope that happens, too.”

The smile that spread across her face brought me so much joy – joy that reminded me why I began to make music in the first place and joy that reminded me why I was jumping back into it.

The pizza arrived shortly after my conversation with Chloe and we all took a seat around the table. Chloe took a seat on Reid’s lap since there were no more chairs, and the way that Reid accepted her into his lap told me that even if there was a seat available, she would have still remained on his lap.

We began to dive into the food and Drew wasted no time in bringing up the band. He expressed his interest in several record labels and asked for my input. I told them as much as I knew about each label and the bands that I knew that were signed to those labels.

“What about Fearless Records?” Al chimed in. “Isn’t Pierce the Veil signed to that label?”

I nodded as I swallowed down some pizza. “Yeah, but that might be aiming a bit high. I mean, you’ve got Tonight Alive, Real Friends, Motionless in White, The Summer Set, fucking Sugarcult. They have a lot of bands that have been around for forever and also some of the most popular bands right now. Aiming that high with a washed up alcoholic and a bunch of people nobody has heard of is a pretty risky move this early in the game.”

“Wait, who is the washed up alcoholic?” Chloe asked, looking around at the group of people. “I mean, sure, they love beer but I think washed up alcoholic is pretty extreme.”

The guys were all pretty silent, exchanging awkward glances until Chloe final realized that I was talking about myself. “Yeah, I’ve kind of been out of the lime-light for a while because it’s been tough. So nobody really knows about my alcohol abuse. But soon everyone will know.”

“Is that why you declined the beer?” Chloe asked, eyeing the water bottle that was in front of me. “I thought you were pregnant or something.”

“Chloe!” Logan warned, speaking up for the first time that night. “How rude!”

“It’s okay,” I chimed in, chuckling slightly. “Actually, I can’t have kids. And also, Tony and I broke up, so…yeah.”

The entire group looked at me with wide eyes and confusion, jaws dropping after my statement settled in. For a moment I could have sworn that Chloe had tears streaming from her eyes, but I tried not to look anyone directly in the face. I could feel the sadness emanating from every person around the table and it overwhelmed me, sending my emotions on overdrive, bringing forth the desire to cry. Had I even cried since the breakup? I could hardly remember the last time I even cried – I felt so insensitive to everything around me.

“Okay, can we move on from that?” I asked with an awkward laugh. The group tried their hardest to stop staring, but the tension was still there. “Look, I think that we should just focus on getting recording time for right now. I can ask Vivian if we can use the recording studio that Vic and Mike built at her house so we can record a demo. Then we can distribute that demo out to any and all record companies and see what happens from there. It will take a while for the record labels to get back to us, so in the meantime we need to find a manager and start booking local gigs to get our name out there and our fanbase built up.”

“I have a degree in business management,” Chloe chimed in. “Although this is slightly different than what I studied, I’m sure I’ll be able to at least get you guys started before you find a better manager.”

Reid nodded, agreeing with Chloe’s statement. Everyone else seemed to agree and if they trusted Chloe, then I trusted her, too.

“The only problem is that it’s going to be very demanding and time consuming and we don’t have an income, so you’re going to be doing this for free until we start getting paid.”

“It’s okay, I have faith in you guys and will do anything I can to help.”

“Wow, that worked out perfectly,” I said with a chuckle. I pulled out the three notebooks from my purse and placed them on the table while I dug around for a pen.

“Woah, what’s this?” Logan asked, picking up one of the notebooks.

“That’s my-“ I stopped when I saw that he didn’t pick up my lyric journal, but instead he held Marky’s journal. “That’s private,” I said quickly snatching it from his grasp. “Sorry, it’s just. This is private.”

“Oh, okay,” Logan said, looking a bit scared.

I placed Marky’s journal back in my purse before pulling out my pen and pushing my other two notebooks forward. I kept my purse on my lap with my left arm wrapped around it, making sure that the journal couldn’t be retrieved in any way. “This is my lyric journal,” I said, pointing to the tattered bound notebook. “This one is for brainstorming and writing down whatever we need.” I opened the regular spiral notebooks and wrote down “Management” on the top, with a dash before writing Chloe’s name down.

“I think we need to schedule a band practice so we can get some songs together,” Al chimed in.

“Yeah, how about tomorrow?” Drew added. “All day thing, let’s just whip it out.”

“Good idea,” Reid agreed. “We can do it here, in the garage.”

“And then depending on how well tomorrow goes, I’ll call Vivian and see about us going over there.”

“It’s so weird that you’re on a first-name basis with their mom,” Logan said, shaking his head. “This is still so unbelievable.”

Everyone let out a small bought of laughter before we buckled back down and even went through some of the songs I had written after meeting them. We tweaked a few of the lyrics together, adding things here and there and removing things that we didn’t seem fit. I didn’t feel nervous about sharing my writing, rather I felt proud that I was able to share these intimate writings with a group of people again. People that I had learned to love and trust in such a short amount of time.

Chloe remained silent, her eyes wide in wonder as she watched and listened to the process. It was so natural for the rest of the boys to help and their input was strong and their additions were beautiful. Before we knew it, hours had passed and the boys were getting pretty drunk, their responses becoming less and less beautiful, and raunchier.

“Alright guys, I think this is good for tonight,” I said with a laugh after Reid had something to completely embarrass Chloe. He insisted on adding something sexual into the song and Chloe’s reaction showed us that Reid was speaking from an experience he had.

“You guys got through seven songs, I think that’s extremely impressive,” Chloe spoke up, the redness in her face slowly leaving after Reid’s comment. “I had no idea writing and album went so smoothly.”

I chuckled a bit, thinking back to a memory I had of me and Marky arguing over a verse of lyrics while the rest of the band broke out into an argument about the bass chords. “Oh no,” I said, “it never goes this smoothly. We just got lucky tonight. Just wait until we start writing the music to match, it’ll be like World War Seven.”

“Seven? I think you skipped a few World Wars there,” Drew commented.

“Oh no, Meadows has already accounted for World War Three, Four, Five, and Six,” I said with a laugh. “I’m sure other bands have had their own World Wars, too.”

“Totally looking forward to that,” Logan commented, rolling his eyes with a laugh. “When Al and Drew get into it, man, it’s ugly.”

I looked over to Al with a raised eyebrow. Al was the quietest one of the group, Logan being a close second, and I just couldn’t imagine hearing Al raise his voice above an average speaking voice. “Really?” I commented.

“Oh yeah, Al may be quiet, but trust me, I can get on his nerves real quick,” Drew said, throwing his arm over his shoulders.

The night came to an end once Chloe fell asleep on Reid’s lap and he carried her to bed. The rest of the guys were going to spend the night, but I felt too awkward crashing at their house. I would usually have no problem sleeping on someone’s couch or floor, but because I was sober, I was longing for my bed. For the first time in a long time, I actually wanted to go back to my house, no matter what excruciating memories were waiting for me.

I said my goodbyes and ventured home, the entire time marveling at the fact that I had the will-power to remain sober for the entire night. If remaining sober was this easy, why didn’t I do it sooner? I was excited for the journey ahead of me, for the life ahead of me. Even if the two people I cared about most weren’t in it anymore.

Notes

Meedie's Outfit
I am so sorry that I've been MIA for about four months with this story. That is such a long time to leave you guys hanging, I am so so so so sorry. Life has been insane. A lot of adjustments have been made and job hunting for a second job has been time consuming and then I've been feeling really down, so just everything has brought me down so I haven't been wanting to write. I want to write something that is well written, not just some shitty update. So this chapter has been in the making for a long time, and I finally finished it last night.

There are only about two more chapters left of this story! Don't worry, though, I have decided to write a sequel. The sequel is going to be much different than anything I have ever written, and I'm pretty nervous to write it. But I am also very excited! I need some story names for the sequel, so I'm going to start brainstorming on that soon so I can start writing it.

Love you all! xoxo!