𝐍𝐎𝐍-𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒

I asked myself why can I never let anyone in

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
3 Weeks later
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It was loud, cloudy and red. Everything was red. Loud music playing. Sweaty bodies pushing. Cigarettes. Alcohol. Drugs. Tour in Europe was such a crazy ride. I couldn't wait to put me on a plane and sing every night in a new country. New stage, new people, new parties. Far from home, as I've always wanted. Nobody to give explanations to, nobody to expect anything from. But once there, sometimes the freedom I wanted felt so uncool. Was it really worth it, this never letting anyone in?

"Ari?"

I looked around confused. What did Charlie make me smoke? Where was I? On the floor, in the backstage, yeah, in Amsterdam, I supposed.

"Arianna."

Alex's voice stunned me like a firecracker that had once burst too close to me.

"Get your shit together." His eyes were glazed over and he was holding someone's hand, but I couldn't make out her face. It was too dark and hazy. "If this shit is too wild for you, tell Charlie to fuck off next time. You can't get on stage looking like that."

"We've been great...", I slurred.

"You were barely on your feet", he sighed. "We're bringing our music among the world. Why so sad?"

"I'm not sad", I muttered. "And who is he?"

A light brown hair head rested on my shoulder. My vision was blurry, but I noticed his long, muscular, legs were tangled in mine. A blunt shining between his fingers, he was probably so high, and God knows what else, that he lost senses.

"He's my brother", the girl who was with Alex informed me.

The guy raised his head, his eyes closed, and surrounded my waist with his big arm, still half consciously.

I looked up at Alex and stretched my hand out. He grabbed my arm and helped me to stand on my feet. My Dutch friend laid down on the floor, complitely wasted.

"Where are you going?", Alex asked me before I could leave.

"I nerd to write", I sighed. I glanced at his girl and then at him, again, smirking. So we really were rockstars, with strangers in the backstage waiting for us to fuck them. Did I want that?

"Fine", Alex replied. "Use your sadness so we can sell another album."

I gave him a nudge. I moved my feet, swam through the bodies, letting gravity take its tool. My head was heavy.

Keith and Natalie were hugging and kissing in the corner, proper lovebirds. There was something incredibly pure and tender in the way they were holding each other, looking into each other's eyes like a believer look at a statue of the Madonna. For a moment, just a moment, I thought maybe, for a minute, that night in the end of July, on my balcony, me and Matty were holding each other just like that. And, maybe, if I hadn't told him monogamy was boring, and that I didn't like him at all, it was just that he was impossible, he had a girlfriend, or something like that... maybe, maybe now we would still hug like that.

Sadie told me to forget about Matty cause 1975's members weren't for us. She quitted on Ross cause she was ridiculously into a new girl she met. She said she was something else, she made her feel so weak, she said, it's the best feeling in the world. And Sadie was never weak, but this time was different. "I miss her", she told me the other day, reflecting on whether to take a plane and return to London and confess her feelings. She was going to leave tomorrow. Now, she was recording me with her very old camera.

"What are you doing?", I asked walking towards her.

"Getting content for an advertising about not taking drugs."

Charlie, beside her, was talking on the phone, but didn't miss Sadie's joke and laughed.

"Charlie, what the fuck did you give -"

He shushed me and pointed at the phone. "It's Molly!"

Molly was his new girlfriend. Yeah, Charlie got himself a girl and, suddenly, the little troublemaker, never serious, always careless, was as meek as a lamb. It was so cute seeing him so happy though.

I walked past them, I needed to write. I've been writing a lot these past months. Matty was right, writing is the only thing we have to deal with stuff that haunt us.

I thought it was crazy I was still thinking about him.

I thought that when you make it so hard for people to love you it means something is wrong with you. I thought the desire to escape from a country of twenty thousand people means you want to escape from yourself. I thought that each of us deserves a decent mother and a decent father, at least as long as we are not standing on our feet, or we'll pay the consequences forever. I thought I had a big hole inside, but I believed that sometimes music, art and my friends could fill that hole. I thought that maybe I wasn't damaged, I was just young, and one day I would have learnt how to show my heart to somebody without falling all over myself.

So I took my notebook in my leather bag and a pen. The first song of our sophomore album was born that night. And cross your sorry heart don't tell anyone it was a love song.