Pick Me Up

*Jaime’s POV*

And with that, we had just finished our first show in Australia for this tour. Fuck, I love the adrenalin from playing shows. I feel so on top of the world and I can’t even begin to describe how I feel when I hear the crowd sing our lyrics back to us, literally living and breathing our music. Seeing their posters, their Pierce the Veil inspired tattoos and hearing the stories of our fans and how our music has got them through some severely tough times is beyond invigorating, livening.

Vic screams one last ‘thank you Australia, you are fucking amazing!’ to which they return a monumental roar of screams, encores and I love you’s. As the confetti and smoke cannons blast, Vic, Tony and I throw our guitars to the opposite side of the stage for our techs to catch, earning one last roar from the Sydney crowd. I feel as though my life’s purpose is to breathe in and live that roar.

The crowd continues erupting in cheers and screams as we run off the stage, sweaty and panting, cheering ourselves, adrenaline still coursing through our veins, giving us an unimaginable high. Jogging lightly backstage into our dressing room, we are thrown water bottles and towels to help us hydrate and dry off. We throw towel at each other and drench each other all over again with the water bottles until our tour manager Matt hands us all a shot of Vodka.

“Cheers guys, here’s to the best fucking show to date!” Vic chants as we down our shot in celebration. The beginning of tour is always a big deal for us. We treat it as a brand-new adventure every time, as if it’s our very first show and our very last all in one. Its tradition that we celebrate appropriately and personally, Australia is one of my favourite places to celebrate.

Calming down and getting our shit into order, packing things away for easy removal tomorrow, we leave the venue, Mike having googled a good place to go hit up in Sydney. Mike said that he found this cool rock venue, and their show doesn’t finish until 2.00am. By the time we get there, it will be a bit past midnight. We deemed it enough time to go get drunk, and if not, we had booze back at the hotel.

We entered the venue, later revealed to me as “Rad Bar” where I bought us all the first round of drinks. Knocking our glass bottles together, we walked up stairs into the dance floor, where a crowd of people rocked out to the band playing on stage. ‘HARBOUR’ hung behind the band as lights lit up the venue like our shows, with smoke cannons blasting at either side of the stage and speakers mounted high on walls to generate an all encompassing and deeply enveloping atmosphere. The venue was pretty fucking lit in my opinion. The band was amazing, so skilful and talented and the overall vibe of the place was a punk rock comradery.

Downing our drinks during the intermission, I began to wander around the place, a little thing drunk Jaime enjoys doing – Exploring. I wondered to the back of the venue, checking out the posters on the wall and random graffiti where I heard a joyful girl scream above me. I looked up and found a girl hugging a guy before they took a shot – the girl ended up doing two shots before cheering again.

But there was something about that girl and I stood and watched a little longer, curious. The girl released her hair from the handheld ponytail she had made whilst doing the shots to reveal light blue waves, crashing back over her neck and shoulders, revealing to me, it was the one and only Marley.

I stood below the sound tech bar bewildered beyond disbelief. Marley was right above me, talking and laughing with a guy who had dark blue and purple curly hair, held back behind a black bandanna used as a headband. Her signature smile made its fateful return to her face, a slight grin forming on the left side of her face as she laughed.

The girl I’d met in the car and spoke to wasn’t the same girl as the one on the sound bar though. The one above me was smiling, laughing, speaking and stumbling. She hugged the purpled haired boy and she clicked a few things on the laptop in front of her, obviously changing the songs for intermission and adjusting the volume. She danced to the songs she played and pretended to sing along as well. Aside from the singing and the blue waves gracing her neck, she was definitely not the same Marley I had met earlier today. She was a whole different person.

“Hey Himes!” Mike and Tony pat me on the back, “What are you doing over here?”

I looked up, causing them to look up to, but turn to give me a ‘huh’ look, wondering what the fuck I was staring at. “It’s Marley” I said simply, still bewildered by her presence up there.

“Wait wait, Marley as in the girl who bought you to the hotel and then disappeared? The blue haired girl?” Mike questioned astonished.

“Yeah, that’s her”.

Just as Vic appeared, the house lights dimmed and the sound of a guitar could be heard. Intermission was over and the band started to play. I’d realised that I had been day dreaming whilst staring at her from below the bar. She had left my sight, sitting in a chair hidden behind a speaker as she began to keep working. I was reminded that she mentioned to me that she worked as a sound tech in a small club.

I just couldn’t believe I’d found her.

No longer interested in the band, I turned behind me to see if I could catch Marley’s eye, to see if she would notice me in the crowd or be too busy focusing on the stage. But my eye caught something else – someone else. I saw the boy with long blue and purple coloured hair walk down from the bar. In my drunk and impaired thinking, I ran up to the boy, tapping him on the shoulder.

“Hey, are you friends with the girl up there?” I asked.

The boy jumped, startled by my tapping on his shoulder and loud voice over the music. “Marley, yeah she’s my best friend why?” he questioned, chest still raising slightly from the panic I set in him.

“Can you tell me what she’s drinking, I’d really like to buy her a drink” I asked super nicely.
Drunk Jaime was full of confidence. He knew that buying a drink for Marley will get him noticed for sure, well because he would be the one giving her the drink.

The boy laughed, “and who are you?”

“My name is Jaime, I’m just a friend of Marley’s, she’ll remember me” I assured him, giving him the best drunken grin I could muster up.

“Yeah, no, Marley doesn’t have friends. So I am not taking one ounce of that excuse, but since you seem nice, and Marley deserves nice things, I will buy her drink for you and let her know where it came from” the boy laughed and then held out his hand. I looked at him questioningly. He mouthed ‘money’ to me. I finally realised what he had said in that he will buy Marley’s drink for me.

I handed him a $10 note and he swiftly took off, disappearing into the sea of the young punk rockers. I watched closely to see if I could spot the boy and his vibrant coloured hair coming back to the bar with her drink, but after watching for a while, I gave up. I figured that he had disappeared on purpose but would hopefully stick to his promise of giving Marley her drink and let her know that it was from me. Hopefully pointing me out amongst the crowd.

I was promptly brought back into reality as Vic tugged on my shoulder, greeting me with a drunk smile. “Hey Vic, you’re not gonna believe it!” I screamed at him, but he quickly shushed me.

“Yeah man, Tony told me, where is she, what does she look like” he held onto me as he stumbled onto my feet, spilling his drink slightly onto my worn out red vans.

“Woah, Vic, are you ready to go home bud” I laughed and was swiftly joined by a drunk Tony and a drunk Mike. I decided that it was best that we make our way home. Giving up my feat of finding Marley again and speaking to her, I worked to shuffle the boys out of the bar.

I’d finally walked out of the bar where the guys all leaned against the sign post waiting for a taxi. Whilst I waited patiently, feeling the extreme heart beat in my chest from seeing and thinking about Marley, I felt a tap on my left shoulder. I immediately turned in the direction but found no one. I kicked Vic who was in front of me and blamed him, however he just grumbled.

I felt another tap, this time on my right shoulder, but I turned to my left, where I was met with a face to which I jumped, a light panic striking through me as I didn’t expect to find anyone there. Regaining composure, I found Marley.

“Jaime!” she screamed, wrapping her arms around my neck in a tight embrace.

“Marley, oh my god!” I cried, immediately wrapping my arms around her waist, hugging her just as tight back.

“See, Riley, I did make a friend! Yes, me, Marley Rose Taylor, has made a friend! See Riley, I wasn’t lying!” she cheered as she latched onto her friend with purple and blue curly hair. I learned then that Riley was the friend of Marley’s who bought me the drink for her.

“Right you were Mars” he laughed. “We never formally introduced, I’m *hiccup* Riley” he held out his hand to formally meet me.

“Jaime” I said as I shook his hand.

“Riley, this is the guy I picked up on the highway in the rain!” she cried longer.

In this eventful and exciting moment, my body had almost instantly sobered itself, where I was able to come to the realisation that Marley was definitely not the same girl I’d met this morning. Marley was drunk and seemingly more open and free with herself, well within ‘the social norm’.

“What was that, Marley Rose shows emotion? Marley shows compassion? Marley makes a real life friend, sober?!” her friend Riley laughed which rewarded him a great punch in the shoulder from Marley, whom was also laughing and agreeing with him.

“Hey, Marley is a very surprising person, on the very rare occasion. Sometimes she likes to shake it up a bit and feel something!” she laughed hysterically.

I stood there awkward, unable to think of anything to say as the two bickered with each other.

“Screw this, let’s keep drunk Marley around for as long as possible. Let’s continue this party back at the hotel” Marley cheered, to which I reacted excitedly. I felt like a puppy dog wagging its tail so hard from excitement that it might just take off from the ground.

“Jaime, grab your friends! They can join the party too!” she yelled as she began to run up the street. I looked down to see the guys standing there patiently with the biggest grins on their faces. Mike gave me a thumbs up, earning a cheer from everyone. I lightly punched his shoulder and shrugged it off.

“Riley, are you coming?” Marley yelled from the top of the street.

“Not tonight Mars, I’m going home to my boyfriend!” Riley waved before running up to give Marley a big hug. As I got the guys into motion to trek the streets drunk, I looked up to see that Riley had held Marley tightly, seeming to be whispering into her ear.

“I love you Mars” Riley cheered and waved before walking away.

“Love you too Riley! Come on guys, there’s booze at the hotel!”

Notes

So a decent, long and exciting chapter. It's finally going to become more interesting.
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