Hollywood Nights//Jake Kiszka

Fifteen

•Jake's POV•

I'm sitting on the bus, but then again, I'm always on the bus now. I'm sitting beside Sam, who's rambling about some shitty song he heard on the radio and why he thinks it's so shitty. I nod along while I stare out the window. My mind wanders to her again. Why can't I stop doing this? I want to scream at her to get out of my mind. She's a curse I can't get rid of. The only cure is seeing her again.

"Dude, are you even listening?" Sam snaps me out of my daydream.

"Uh, yeah," I mutter. Of course I wasn't listening.

He rolls his eyes. "What are you even thinking about? All you do is stare into space lately."

"Nothing, Sam, I'm fine," none of the guys are going to find about this. I'm going to get rid of these inconvenient feelings myself. No one ever has to know.

I start strumming out a random progression of chords on the guitar I'm playing. I hum out a melody along with it.

I suck at lyrics, but I try to think of a few.

She is fire
She is rain
She's the reason for my pain
I try to forget
Swallow my regrets
But she keeps coming back again

"Shit, man, that was pretty good," Josh says, coming over to sit on my other side.

I duck my head. "Thanks," I mutter.

Josh stares into my eyes and I just know he senses something off about me. He's my twin, and even though twin-telepathy isn't real, we still have a sense for each other that no one else in the world does.

"Everything okay, Jake?" I knew it.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You're lying," He shakes his head. "Someone who is fine doesn't write lyrics like that." He gets up and walks away after that.

I sigh and pull out my phone. I don't have any pictures of her, I never thought to take any. All I have is her number in my phone. I open up her contact and stare at it for a minute. I swear I almost hit the call button when our manager walks in.

"Hello, boys," We all look towards him. "Since our last opener unfortunately had to go home, I've found a band to finish out the rest of the tour. They're from Los Angeles, female singer, great sound." My head snaps up because shit, that sounds familiar.

"Uh, what are they called?" I hesitate, not sure if I really want to know.

Sure enough, the name that comes out my manager's mouth is all too familiar. My heart starts racing, because I don't know if I can handle seeing her again. With the way I left things, and the fact that I haven't even spoken to her, even though she wanted me to. I've learned that in this job you can't get too attached to people or places, so I've always made sure that no one gets attached to me. Of course the one time I fuck up, it comes back to bite me in the ass.

I look up at my manager and force a smile. "They sound great. I'm excited to have them."