The Sharpest Lives

Chapter Twenty-Six: Living

It was strange to wake up next to someone after getting used to being alone. Especially next to someone who I'd loved and couldn't have for so long. It was so perfect,so exactly like how I'd imagined countless times before, I couldn't process it for a while. The sunlight that softly lit the room, muted by the fabric of the curtains, his beautiful face next to me, lips swollen and pink, his arm draped lazily across my waist, his soft breaths caressing my throat.

It took me a long time to get myself to believe that I deserved it. And then after that, I started thinking about some stuff.

Things had become complicated when I left, making the whole idea of restarting the band pretty difficult at first. Mikey and Frank both thought that maybe I needed more time to live normally before I even thought about that again, but I felt restless. Imagine if they had both died that day, I said. We couldn't live the rest of our lives like this, laying low. We'd started something, sure, but we had to finish it out like it was meant to be finished. I couldn't selfishly return to my artwork and ignore the people who'd looked up to us. It was hard, of course it was hard to have all of that pressure on us almost constantly, but I was convinced that everything we'd been through made us stronger. If we could get through this, we could bring something beautiful, before we all faded away into ashes.

Then Mikey rolled his eyes and told me that he was in from the start. Frank laughed and said that was all he'd wanted to hear. Ray was ecstatic when he heard that I wanted to restart the band (I hated to see Frank's face when he realized that I'd told Ray and Mikey that I was fine a long time ago and not him, but he understood somehow. He forgave me, even when he shouldn't have).  Bob said that he'd had enough of us being complete divas and that he'd rather watch whatever crazy shit we came up with from a safe distance, with a typical Bob smirk on his face the whole time.

So we were okay. We weren't going back to normal, we were going back stronger.

It was even stranger now, sitting here in a coffee shop with him now, watching people through heavily tinted sunglasses, my fingers twisted in his, as if it were normal. Every now and again we'd get disgusted looks thrown our way, but I didn't care anymore. I'd never cared to begin with, because it had never mattered. I was happy, we were both happy, and that was all that mattered.

We were just leaving when something happened.

"I. um. I'm sorry, can I maybe have...have your autograph?"

It was a girl, maybe about fifteen, her hair dark and clothes bright. She looked at me hopefully, curled in on herself out of shyness, afraid of what my answer would be. She clutched a piece of paper in one hand, a pen in the other and she avoided my eyes as if she was waiting for me to turn away and say no.

Just under her sleeves, I could see her cut arm.

I smiled, pushed my sunglasses up over my head, took the paper she handed me and signed it for her. The joy in her eyes was something I hadn't realized that I'd missed. I'd missed this. Not being known and being stopped in random places for pictures. I missed making people happy. Making someone's day just by writing my signature on a piece of paper for that. I could do more than that, and that's what I was aiming to do now. We had a show in another week, finally after so long.

"Hey," I said, just before she turned away, her hands shaking and her face flushed, "You're stronger than that, okay?" My hand hovered over her arm, "I don't want you to think you aren't goon enough any more."

She nodded, gasped out another thank you and I left, walking back to Frank who was waiting for me by the door. When I looked back, she was crying.

"What was that about?" he asked, pushing the door open for me.

I smiled, inhaling the sweet scent of coffee and taking the first too-hot sip. "She just wanted an autograph. But...did you see her face? The way it lit up like that?" He nodded. "Yeah...I want to do that again. I wanna see a million more faces light up like that. Like they used to."

He grinned. "Well then you can't keep giving in to coffee every five minutes, can you?"

We laughed. The best thing about it though, was that for the first time, I felt like it didn't have to be taken away from me now. I felt like this was where I was supposed to be.

I felt like I was living.