Warped Tour (A Shannon Leto Story)

New Orleans Issues

After our encounter on the bus that night in Anchorage, we hadn't gone further to act on how we were feeling. We kept a decent distance, acted like friends, until New Orleans. Andy wanted to work on a music video for another single off his solo album and asked if I would be in it. Sure why not, what could possibly go wrong with this? I guess it depends on how you look at it, now thinking back on it I should have said no. If I had just said no, then things wouldn't have happened the way they did, but then? Then it seemed like a fun idea. We were in New Orleans, we were going to do a video, what was the harm in that?

We spent most of that summer night into the early morning and most of the next day working on the video for Beyond My Reach. The premise revolved around a couple dealing with the fallout of their relationship with flashbacks to happier times. Looking back, I should have known spending all that time together, rolling around in between sheets, barely clothed, was going to catch up with us and backfire. After wrapping for the video, Andy and I made our way to a local bar to celebrate and decompress.

One drink turned into two which turned into five, before I knew it we were back in the hotel room we had filmed the video in and this time we weren't acting, at least not in the sense of filming. We were acting on the pent up frustrations and sexual tension that had been building between the two of us earlier that day during filming, shit who was I kidding they had been building since that first night.

I rolled over, tugging the pillow over my head as I pictured that night vividly in my mind. I hated that I could still remember how his hands felt on my skin, how they pulled and pushed, scratched and caressed. I hated how I could still feel his lips as they ran down my heated flesh, how his teeth scraped over me causing goosebumps to explode over my skin. I hated how his deep voice could have me trembling with need without him ever touching me. But most of all I hated myself, I hated that even now I wanted to be back under him. I hated how badly I wanted to be moving with him, like the ebb and flow of waves crashing against the shore before pulling back out into the depths of the ocean. I hated how, laying in this quiet room, I wanted more than anything to fill it with the sounds that had bounced off the wall that night.

But as they say all good things must come to an end and what an ending that good thing had. The next morning I had been on cloud nine, on a high that I didn't think I was ever going to come down from and with good moods come questions. All it took was one question, one question to burst my, what I thought to be indestructible, bubble. Andy had already made his way back to his bandmates, without any of them being the wiser. I on the other hand decided to take my time. No one was expecting me until later, so I could walk back to my bus in complete bliss.

Kellin was the first to see me, smiling back at what I could only assume was my contagious grin. I can remember that morning in vivid detail. How my afterglow faded as fast my coffee could go from hot to cold. In a matter of minutes, Kellin had asked that one question I wish he had never asked me, What's got you so happy this morning? We were pretty close and he knew how much I had been fighting myself with the Andy thing, he had even helped me, keeping me busy, hanging out with us so we were never alone. The moment I told him Andy and I had slept together, his smile dropped and he looked at me with wide eyes.

I can still hear his voice rattling in my head, We need to talk. I hated those words, they never came with any kind of good news, it was always followed up with: this isn't going to work out. Instead they were followed by something worse, Sydney, he's still married. Even now my stomach still drops at the thought, I still feel like someone's pulled the rug out from under my feet. Of all the things I was expecting Kellin to say to me that wasn't it. I felt stupid, I still feel stupid, how could I have let this happen. I should have asked questions, should have figured out if he and Juliet were still together. I was furious, seething with anger, it took Kellin and Vic holding me to keep me from searching out Andy and beating the hell out of him.

I groaned into the pillow before throwing it across the room and sitting up. I knew thinking about this wasn't going to help me get over it, I thought after a couple of weeks I would be over it, on to the next one, but I still see him everyday. I did manage to get him alone later that night, after Kellin and Vic calmed me down. There was a lot of yelling, mostly from me, and a lot of I'm sorry's, mostly from him. I was able to hide what was going on for a few days, until Florida. Since we were there for a few shows, Juliet surprised Andy by flying out there to be with him. Who can turn down Florida's habitual warm weather and beautiful beaches? Not her apparently.

The moment I saw her, I lost my cool. It took Charlie threatening silence, Ace threatening bodily harm to whomever hurt me, and Brooklyn threatening bodily harm to me, before I finally broke down and told them all what had had happened, Karah and Bodhi sitting quietly by watching it all unfold. With the help of Vic and Kellin and my little family, I was able to get out and actually enjoy Florida, drinking as much as I could to forget Juliet was there all over Andy. I wanted to hate her, for what she had, who she had, but I couldn't, I hated myself for falling for a married man and I hated him for not telling me.