I miss you

“Papercut” Part Three: Cry cause it all begins again

Cry alone

Cry to me

Morgan woke up the next day early enough to take a shower before school. To get to the bathroom she shared with Connor, she had to walk down the hall passed her parents bedroom. Curious, Morgan opened the door to see her mother draped over Patrick who had his arms around her shoulders and Morgan smiled softly. She liked to see her parents looking like they love each other, like they actually got along. She had a hard time imagining her parents when they were younger, when their love was still new. She loved watching old movies of Patrick when Fall Out Boy was starting out, but she didn’t have a lot of old footage of her mom and the only think she had of the two of them together when they were still madly in love was their wedding videos from when she was one year old. She hat in her bed the previous night fort a while thinking about the story Joe told her about Destiny fighting for Patrick and she wished her mom was the still cool and that in love with her father. She sighed and closed the door, walking to the bathroom and taking the fastest shower ever. She went to her room and got dressed before digging in the bottom drawer of her desk in a box she rescued from the attic, pulling out a pile of DVD’s rubber banded together. Release the Bats, B-sides, a live DVD and a couple homemade DVD’s with Destiny’s loopy handwriting scrawled across them; they were clearly made by her a long time ago. She knew her Dad had put them in the attic a while ago to put the memories to rest.

            Morgan vaguely remembered the band, Patrick had been the first to have a baby ad she had very faint memories of some concerts and sleeping on a tour bus, but she never knew Pete, Andy or any of their friends and crew very well at all, all she had were these DVD’s. She knew her mother talked to Pete still, but she was sure Patrick knew nothing about it and she was glad, from the stories Joe had told her about why their friendship ended, Patrick would probably divorce Destiny immediately. As much as she disliked her mother, she never wanted to be one of those kids with divorced parents. She opened her lap top and sat down on her bed, slipping on her headphones, settling down to watch the DVD. She smiled as she saw her dad first, clad in a hoodie, hat and glasses, he had barely changed. As she watched, it caught her attention how he always seemed so kind to people, always happy and grateful to be living that life. She wished she could be more like that; it killed her to know she was so much more like her mother. It was hard to imagine how her father could’ve had any woman in the world that he wanted, but choose Destiny. She must’ve been something really special.

            Destiny got out of bed and shoved Connor to the floor, telling him to get dressed for school before heading to Morgan’s room. She stopped at the doorway when she heard the faint sound of Fall Out Boy. Destiny hated hearing Fall Out Boy sometimes, especially when her daughter was listening to it. It was truly sad to cling to the past, but she missed those times. She missed the road and she missed when Patrick still loved his job. She could tell all of this producing was making him crazy, especially this poptart it was currently working with. Destiny had been urging him a lot lately to put out a solo record, even thought they knew it wouldn’t sell very well; it would probably do him some good to make some of his own music for a change. She decided to let Patrick get her out the door for school. She walked back into her bedroom to wake him up, only to find him already at work on his laptop.

            “Can you go make sure Morgan is ready for school please?” Destiny asked him. Patrick looked up at her and pulled off his headphones.

            “And you can’t because…?” Destiny stopped at stared at him.

            “Because I asked you to. Why does it matter?” she said walking into the bathroom.

            “I’m already and you’re doing nothing,” he replied.

            “Patrick!” she said, throwing her arms in the air, “will you please just do it? Jesus…” she said, before closing the bathroom door. Patrick squinted at the closed door. He hating knowing Destiny could barely talk to Morgan, not even enough to get her out of the house everyday. He sighed and got out of bed, walking to Morgan’s bedroom. He was about to knock on the door when he heard the distinct sound of Fall Out Boy. He opened to door to see Morgan on her bed, watching what was a apparently a Fall Out Boy concert on her laptop. She looked up when she saw Patrick approaching her. He sat down beside her and watched the screen for a minute. He couldn’t believe all of that happened over fourteen years ago already. He missed it sometimes, that thrill of playing for a live audience, never knowing what each day was going to bring or where he was going. He used to long for the family life, but he’s had that for over a decade now, it was strange to look back.

            “Daddy…how did you and mom meet?” Morgan asked suddenly, Patrick pulled his eyes away from the concert and looked at his beautiful daughter.

            “I literally ran into her on the street and knocked all of her stuff out of her hands. Then I started seeing her everywhere, and then we ended up at this party together and we were inseparable that whole summer.” Morgan smiled, thinking about how storybook romantic that all was. She hoped she would find a love like that someday.

            “Did you always know you guys were going to get married?” She asked, turning her eyes back to the screen. Patrick shrugged.

            “I always knew that I was going to forever love her. We went through some…stuff for a while, but once that was all resolved, I knew I couldn’t be without her.”

            “Do you still feel that way?” Patrick pulled Morgan to him and hugged her tightly.

            “Of course I do, I’d be nothing without her and you and your brother. You guys are my everything.” Morgan nodded, although something was still bugging her. She was now wondering what that stiff was that they went through. “What brought this on, baby?” Patrick suddenly wondered. Morgan shrugged.

            “Uncle Joe mentioned he remembered when Mom fought some girls over you. I t just made me thing how in love she must’ve been at one point.” Patrick sighed.

            “Joe didn’t really need to tell you about that, but yeah. You’re mom was sometimes too much for me, and we still love each other, Mo. I know we fight sometimes and I’m sorry for that, but it’s not because we love each other less, okay? Go get some breakfast; I’ll take you and Connor to school.” Morgan nodded again, turning off her laptop and leaving Patrick sitting on her bed.

            He peered around his daughter’s room for a minute, his mind lost on memories when he noticed a drawer open from her desk. He had never been a snooper with his kids, but he went over to the drawer and took out the box inside to see old magazines in which Fall Out Boy were on the cover, all of Fall out Boy’s CD’s and a pile of DVDs. He smiled for a minute as he flipped through an old copy of SPIN, but quickly put everything back. The band’s untimely and unfortunate break up still left him bitter mostly and he could only handle so many good memories before the bad ones took over...

            While Patrick took their kids to school, Destiny thought it would be a good time to run some errands and to see a friend.

            Destiny grinned broadly as Pete opened the door, she missed seeing him. Since Fall out Boy disbanded, it left Pete with few options. He was ultimately only marketable when he was with the band, so after the split he stuck to making clothes and his label. Although, he eventually went out of business, he had made more than enough money to keep himself and his family comfortable for a long time.

            “Hey, come in,” he said as he stepped aside. He led her to the living room where they sat on opposite couches. Destiny’s smile faded and she stared at Pete’s feet.

            “Talk to me, what’s going on?” Pete asked as his new puppy danced in her crate at the presence of company. She sighed.

            “it feels like everytime things improve for Patrick and I, something always happens that tears us back down. I hate blaming out children, but…” she began, Pete nodded.

            “Children are the easiest to blame. They came to us like little aliens and they will always stay that way. We’ll never really know them, all we’ll know is the impact they’ve had on our lives. I blame my kids for a lot of things like my broken marriage, but I still love them, that’s all that’s important.” Destiny groaned.

            “Therein lays my problem I guess. What kind of mother can’t stand her own daughter? Patrick thinks it’s because Morgan and I are the exact same person and that’s why we can’t get along, because we see out flaws in each other.”

            “She is just like you, she always has been…”

            “Oh! And this morning I went to make sure she was ready for school and she was listening to Fall Out Boy. I don’t even know where she found that stuff. Patrick had all of that boxed away a long time ago.”

            “Well, we are sadly considered a part of music history, you know, classic rock…God, I’m old,” Pete said before walking to the puppy’s crate and letting her out. The bulldog was Hemmingway’s long awaited second coming. Pete’s heart literally broke when he died a few years earlier, but Destiny was happy to see he had finally moved on. The puppy ran up to Destiny and happily licked her fingers before climbing onto the couch beside Pete.

            “It just makes me miss the old, when life was unpredictable. Now everything is so…stagnant. I miss when we were all friends, when Patrick and I couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. It’s like we are total strangers sometimes. We can’t agree on what’s best for our kids and Patrick doesn’t even know Connor, it’s like they see right through each other. Plus, I know he’s having a hard time dealing with the crap he’s been producing. He hasn’t been proud of his work in a long time. Things are just…ugh, you know?” Pete nodded. The pair sat together for a while longer, before Destiny decided it was time to get back home. Patrick wouldn’t have been happy to know had been talking about him to Pete for the past hour…

            Destiny arrived back at home to see Patrick sitting in their living room, watching a DVD he rescued from Morgan’s room.

            “What are you doing?” she asked him, feeling hot tears sting her eyes as she watched Patrick and Pete sitting in front of green screen reciting their usual banter and the cameras rolled.

            “Morgan put me in a mood. She watches this stuff a lot I think. I wish she was old enough to remember how good things used to be,” he said. Her drive home from Pete’s house was filled with her brain going over and over everything that had happened in her life that led her to the point that she was now so bored and sad. The DVD then changed to a live performance of “Arms Race” and Destiny couldn’t take it anymore. She turned and walked up the stairs to her bedroom, shutting the double doors before sitting on the bed. She recalled how happy she was with life and with Patrick back when he was performing that song repeatedly, and now, she couldn’t find that calm, or that peace. What was once provided by Patrick and her family was now left somewhere else, a place she never wanted to admit…

            Morgan sat with Connor on the bus ride home, something she never did, but the whole day had been a total daze. She was going over and over the things Joe said to her the previous night and what Patrick had told her earlier in the day. It made her want to learn more about what he parents used to be like, it made her want to figure out how her and her brother came to be and she wanted to make everything okay for everyone once more…

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Cry ‘cause we’re only passing through

“Need” Part Eight: Let's hope we never have to say goodbye

And then we sing…
hooray for the madness, we are better by design

Pete watched silently as Kayli slammed the door on Hemmingway. His phone began to vibrate on his desk and hoping against the circumstances that it was Kayli, he picked it up, only to see it was Ashlee. He wasn’t really in the mood to deal with her today, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with her ever again, frightened now that he was going to lose Kayli for good. He didn’t know what to do to try and get her to see that it really was all business and that he wasn’t attracted to Ashlee in the way he was attracted to her, but it seemed almost unfixable. He certainly wasn’t about to tell Ashlee that he was engaged, it would be spread all over LA in a matter of hours, he was sure of it and he was adamant about keeping this secret. Hemmingway sat down at the door again, looking from Pete to the door, back to Pete and back at the door. Pete wasn’t sure if Hemmy really needed to pee or if he was telling him to chase after Kayli, but he decided it was the latter and grabbed Hemmy’s leash before dragging them both to his SUV.

            Kayli was furious. How could she not be? She was bluffing when she threatened to call off their wedding, she wanted nothing more than to share her life with Pete, but this new “career move”, well it was enough to make her scream. If she was unhappy with their situation before, she was almost sick over it now. She decided that she couldn’t keep it a secret anymore, that she needed to let it out and tell someone, and the only way to tell anyone was telling the one person who could keep it a secret.

            She ran up the driveway to her mother’s door step, knocking urgently a few times. Her mother answered the door a few seconds later, a look of concern on her face. Kayli was near hysterics, the farther she drove, the more she thought, the more she thought, the more she cried. She felt betrayed in the worst way. Pete could’ve had the decency to tell her about his public relationship before she had to find out about it like everyone else. She was most upset with him because he didn’t show enough trust in her by not letting her know about the awful situation.

            “Honey…what’s wrong?” Kayli’s mom said. Kayli sobbed softly, reaching forward and grabbing onto her mom tightly, crying into her shoulder for a minute before backing away. She stepped inside and turned to her mother.

            “Mommy, I lied to you and I’m sorry. But I’ve been keeping this secret far too long and I can’t anymore. I have to tell someone and you’re the only person I can honestly trust with this.” Kayli mom nodded slowly, taking her hand and leading her into the kitchen. Her first thought was that Kayli must’ve been pregnant, and she was scared, but she was hoping that wasn’t it.

            Before she sat down, Kayli pulled the diamond ring out of her pocket and handed it to her mother.

            “What’s this?” Kayli sighed and wiped at her tears, before looking from the ring to her mother’s face.

            “An engagement ring. Mom, I’m engaged,” she said. A broad smile quickly spread across her mom’s face before it faded just as quickly.

            “I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.” Kayli nodded.

            “I have been since May. But no one knows about it. The only people that know are Pete, me and you now.”

            “Pete?” Her mom asked. Kayli smiled.

            “Yeah. He’s in the band that I’ve been touring with. He sort of plays the bass but mostly he’s just a genius businessman. He has his own record label, clothing company, and bar. He’s really smart and super sweet and he’s the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.” Kayli said, her voice pinching before a new batch of tears fell down her face. Kayli’s mom sat the ring down on the counter before looking at her seriously.

            “Then why are you crying?” she asked. Kayli let out a loud exasperated noise, wiping harshly at her damp face.

            “Because…he’s dating someone else. He says he doesn’t like her like her loves me and that it’s a strategic career move, but Mommy he didn’t even tell me about it! He waited until I saw pictures online and for me to get upset. I don’t know what to do. I love him so much and I want to marry him, but I can’t do it like this. With all of this secrecy and this public Ashlee crap.”

            “Who’s Ashlee?”

            “She’s this…mediocre pop star who is more famous because of her last name than her talent. I believe that she must be a nice person and cool or whatever, but she’s holding hands in LA with MY fiancée, Mom! It’s not right!” Kayli’s mom sat down beside her and rubbed her daughter’s back. She didn’t like seeing a man she was supposedly in love with causing her pain like this. She didn’t deserve it, her mother knew that. She knew what kind of love her daughter deserved and she was feeling like maybe at her age that Kayli was beginning to feel the biological clock tick and the desperation for a family life set in and she was jumping at her first opportunity.

            Kayli jumped when her phone began blaring because she had been sitting in silence with her mother for a few minutes. She grabbed her phone and frowned at the name Pete on her caller ID.

            “Yeah?” she said.

            “Where are you?” he asked. He had driven twenty five minutes with Hemmingway to Kayli’s apartment only to find she wasn’t there. He wanted to apologize, to further explain the decision to publicly see Ashlee, he wanted them to talk before they had to go to Germany in a week, mostly he wanted Kayli to put on that ring again. He was depending on her in a way he had never depended on a girl before, he was planning the rest of his life around her and she was unaware, but all of his decisions as of late were made with her in mind. He was planning his time around the date of their wedding, and he was planning the future around the hopes of children.

            “I’m at my mother’s. You should come by. She wants to meet you,” Kayli said, looking at her mom. Her mom nodded approvingly. She definitely wanted to meet this boy who was making her daughter cry because he was dating two women.

            “Okay. How do I get there?” Kayli explained pretty simple directions and hung up, sighing as she sat her phone down.

            “Tell me what this boy is like before I meet him so I’m not completely shocked,” he mom said. Kayli smiled and pulled out her digital camera, showing her mom pictures of the two of them from a few weeks ago.

            “Tattoos, Kayli?” Kayli laughed and rolled her eyes.

            “Yes, mom. He has a lot of tattoos. He’s been getting them since he was 15.” Kayli’s mom shook her head with disapproval.

            “Tattoos are so ugly.” Kayli grinned to herself.

            “Not on him, Mom. Besides that, what do you think?” Kayli’s mom shrugged.

            “He’s cute, I guess. I just don’t like that he’s making you feel like this, honey.” Kayli nodded and shrugged.

            A few minutes later a knock on the door disrupter their conversation and Kayli’s mom went to answer the door. Pete smiled sweetly as the door opened and exchanged a hello with her. She stepped aside to let him in. Kayli stepped around the corner, arms crossed. Seeing him now only made her anger return, she wasn’t at all happy with him.

            “Hi, babe,” he said calmly. Kayli just stared at him as he shifted, not used to seeing her upset like this.

            “Pete, would you like something to drink?” Kayli’s mom asked, breaking the awkward silence. He shook his head.

            “No thanks. I just want Kayli to talk to me. I’m sorry,” he said never pulling his eyes from her. Kayli shrugged. Sorry was for kids, he was going to have to do better than this. She was upset that their first fight was over something as major as him dating someone else, she was hoping it would be over something stupid like him using her towel or something, but this was serious.

            “I understand why you’re upset. I already told you that I’m upset, too, but there really is nothing I can do about this. I just want you to understand that I’m doing this for us. I’m looking out for our best interest. I would never, ever hurt you on purpose. I love you.” Kayli’s mom rolled her eyes. She wasn’t impressed right now with Pete at all. To her this was just a typical excuse, from a typical guy who wanted to keep what he thought he deserved.

            “Can’t you just call it off? Everyone loves a juicy break up,” Kayli said. Pete smiled.

            “I’ll talk to my publicist about it. But he’s going to want a reason and I just don’t feel like I can tell anyone yet.” Kayli uncrossed her arms. If he upheld his promise, she was going to deal with it for the time being.

            “Can someone please explain to me why it’s important for this to be a secret?” Kayli’s mom asked. Pete turned to her and nodded, explaining the mean things girls say about former and current relationships, the jealousy commonly shared by most of his fan base. Kayli’s mom nodded, but Kayli could tell she wasn’t getting it.

            “Mom, I promise it’s for the best. These girls can be vicious and you know I let words get to me. Pete’s just looking out for my feelings,” Kayli said.

            “Yea, okay, but I don’t understand why you are seeing this other girl if you love my daughter so much.” Pete sighed heavily. It made sense in the twisted world of Hollywood, but he could see why it was difficult for Kayli’s mom to grasp, it was pretty fucked up.

            “I know this looks bad to you, but I can assure you that my intentions are good. I love Kayli, she understands me in a way I’ve found no one else has and even though we haven’t been together for very long, I just know that I’m done searching. I want to spend my life with your daughter; I just want you to say its okay. If you want to get to know me better first, I’ll wait as long as I have to. K, I want this to work,” he said turning to her,”I’ll do anything to make sure it does.” Kayli looked intently at Pete, searching his eyes again, finding nothing but the honesty and sincerity that made up his inner self. Her mom sighed.

            “Would you to stay for dinner, Pete?” He ripped his eyes away from Kayli’s.

            “I have my dog in the car, he’s pretty bad. I wouldn’t want him messing up your house.”

            “Why’d you bring Hem?”

            “He convinced me to chase after you,” Pete replied causing Kayli to smile.

            “I’m sure he’ll be fine, I insist on you staying for dinner.” Pete nodded and went to the car, bringing the dog in and helping set up for dinner…

            Once dinner was over, Kayli and Pete were sitting on the front door step, Hemmingway running on his leash as Kayli laid her head on his shoulder.

            “You could’ve warned me,” she began. Pete put his arm around her, kissing the top of her head softly.

            “Warned you about what?”

            “You and Ashlee. If you would’ve told me about it before I had to witness it like everyone else, I wouldn’t have gotten so upset,” she said. Pete nodded.

            “You’re right. I just knew it was going to upset you, I was nervous about your reaction so I pushed it away until she begged me to go clubbing, then I was left with no choice. I really am sorry about all of this, baby. Honestly, I never wanted to hurt you. I’m going to try and take care of it, okay?” Kayli lifted her head and caught his eyes, staring at him. He leaned forward and kissed her deeply. “Want to spend the night again? I have a pretty empty day tomorrow,” he asked. Kayli smiled and nodded, wrapping her arms around, kissing him once more…

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If we keep swimming, maybe this will never die

AN: A cocky question - Is my writing underrated? (dont forget to review also!)