Yesterday (McLennon)

Chapter One: 1980

(So I guess I'll start this off with an author's note . . . This is literally my first fanfiction.  So if you notice any details that are off, or have any other critique, just let me know! Anyway, this is sort of an alternate history type of fiction in which Cynthia and John never happened.  And it jumps from year to year, in case you couldn't tell!)

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“It’s a drag, isn’t it?”

My words echo through my mind once I’m in the car.  Did I really just say that?  That was a monumental understatement.  And yet, it was all I could muster without completely breaking down in front of the unexpected crowd.  Yet, part of me feels that maybe breaking down would have been better than what I just said.  Anything would have been better than what I said.  Because the image of John, with bullets in his back, in crippling pain, has crushed me beyond repair, beyond what any statement could encompass.

I have been conditioned to act a certain way on camera.  It is almost an unspoken word that you don’t cry, that you maintain your composure.  Don’t let any of that real life pain show.  Just a fake image projected on screen that is only a phantom of your real life self.  It never really hit me until now how crazy this lifestyle is.  John always recognized it, but I . . . I guess I relished in the spotlight.  My heart twists.  Success is the only thing that makes people love us.  If we hadn’t made it, maybe we’d be just another band with a stupid dream.  John’s ideas would just be white noise.  Hell, maybe we’d be labeled as druggies instead of being loved by people across the globe.

When I said I was at the studio, listening to music, that was only part of it.  I was listening to his voice, berating myself for all the stupid things I said to him because of my stupid bloody ego.  Trying to get myself to cry, because, for some reason, I have not been able to.  I feel like a horrible person for just feeling . . . Numb.  But now that I finally have a few moments’ peace, the tears finally come.  Now, the lump in my throat is so suffocating I nearly panic.  I feel like . . . Like I might die.  

Flashback.

I remember driving down the road, just four of us, going to the hotel after a concert.  There had been traffic like mad after the performance, and it was late, a little past midnight.  I remember watching John’s eyes through the rearview mirror, thinking to myself about how marvelous it was to see him here in color when so many people only got the privilege to see him in black and white.  And I mean this in the most literal and figurative senses of the term: to them, he was an artist, he was another cute face in black and white on an album cover.  Two-dimensional.  But to me . . . Well he was my best friend.  

He was laughing, like he always did with the boys; it had been a good day and we were all hyped up on a post-concert rush.  But there was this one point where he looked up and our eyes just connected through the mirror, and I nearly drove off the bloody road.

“Goddamn it, Paul, watch where you’re going,” he said.

“Like you could do any better,” I mutter.  He glares at me, but his eyes quickly soften.  We share a laugh, and his eyes glimmer as we pass under a street lamp. 

“Oh shut up,” he laughs.

I feel a surge of happiness pass through me.  I haven’t felt this good in a while.  Suddenly, I feel lucky.  So lucky.  In a few weeks, we’ll be off to America for the first time.  I have something I would never dream meant so much to me.  Multiple things, actually . . . My best friends and my music.  I have never felt so alive.  And I can’t help but wonder if this success will actually last, or whether it will all come crashing down around us.

I snap out of the memory and find myself still in the car.  It’s a different car than the one we drove way back then: nicer, newer, more empty.  So much has happened since then.  I look through the rearview mirror, but of course, it’s all wrong.  John is dead.  I’m still practically gasping for air, drinking in the sweet oxygen he will never get to inhale again.  The car couldn’t get home any faster.  I couldn’t fall into Linda’s arms any sooner.  She nestles her nose in my hair, holding me tight, rocking me slightly as I sob into her arms.  I’m so lucky to have her.

The last time I saw John in person was four years ago, and suddenly, this seems so criminal, so unfair.  I can still hear his voice over the phone, cooing at Sean, talking excitedly, passionately, about love, music, life . . . telling me how much he hated my new song . . . How there was never an “I miss you,” how our relationship was muted, colorless over the phone compared to the way it had been in person, the way it was before all the fame, or the drugs, or the screaming of the fans, screaming that, to this day, I cannot get out of my head.

“Shh.” Linda’s voice brings me back down to Earth, and yet it’s not what I need right now.  I remember how John and I pushed through the deaths of our moms, of Brian, together.  It was nice that way; we never cried like this, simply chugged along, wrote songs together, pushed through the grief, unfeeling.  Just trying to get through.

Now, I wish I couldn’t feel.  I wish I was empty, hollow, not being slowly leeched, emptied.  There is nothing, nothing anyone can say to make this right, to make it better.  I cry the rest of the night until my eyes sting and my stomach aches, and suddenly I am glad I was able to push through this feeling in the studio today.  

I will never fall out with anyone again.  I make that promise to myself, swear to it, because the years I lost with John I can now never make up.  And I’ll never know if he ever knew the way I truly felt.