Rob found himself on the venue stage, eyes locked onto the lugs in front of him, working tirelessly to tune each head with his drum key. His perfectionist tendencies were kicking in, and the stresses of the road were causing him to erratically work on each head much longer than necessary. 

Finally, a roadie came on his monitor: [i]”You’re good man. We need to start.”[/i]

The voice shook Rob, who looked up to see a dark figure looking at him from stage right. He gave a curt thumbs up, and looked forward.

Jane was already here. 

Her figure was accentuated by the lights beaming down on her, obscuring the audience from view. It was a familiar sight—as drummer, he had rarely seen the faces of the audience. Neither their excitement of anticipation nor their rapture from hearing their favorite song was known to Rob. He was simply a timepiece—the pulsing beat from which the band derived it’s own spirit. 

It was something he was so satisfied with and yet, never quite content about. He thought of the night he had spent in a hotel back in the states, tirelessly working on a solo song on his acoustic guitar. The same guitar that sat in the bus’s storage, collecting dust. 

Missed chances and wasted time. 

He watched in front of him as Jane cued in Sam, and his guitar rang out to thunderous applause. Rob waited several seconds, before hitting his drumsticks together four times in beat, and the band was off again. 

It all faded together so quickly. 

—

Afterwards, Rob fiddled with his drum set again. [i]Why wasn’t the damn snare in tune?[/i] He already fucked with the resonant head like three times. [i]Three half-steps lower. It should’ve been perfect.[/i]

He wasn’t even sure why he was fiddling with the tuning. The crowd in front of him was milling about with themselves, discussing and waiting for Vicarious, which stood just off the side of the stage. The roadies continuously begged for Rob to get off the stage, but he paid them no attention. 

The other members of In Bloom had already excused themselves, talking amongst themselves somewhere else, assuredly. It just needed to be right. For once, something in his life he could control just needed to be right—

[i]“Rob, seriously,”[/i] a voice came on his monitor. This time, it wasn’t a roadie. 

It was Zoe. 

[i]”You gotta clear the stage, man.”[/i]

Rob’s eyes shot up to stage left, where he could see Zoe’s small form standing off near Trent and Andy—one hand to her chin and the other pressing the “talk” button on her headset. 

Something about the way she had spoken had cut straight through Rob’s guard. Her voice was ripe with hurt and pain, and solace as well. Although their lives had broken apart, the bond they had formed over the past few weeks was still fresh. The schism between them seemed acknoledged by her for the first time. 

Rob nodded slightly to her. He knew that he couldn’t comfort her, but he certainly empathized with her. 

Rob made off to stage right when Jane quickly caught his gaze—pulling him immediately to the exit. Before he had time to make sense of all that had transpired, she buried her face to him, and cried.

[i]”Shit,[/i] Rob muttered involuntarily. He had frozen, but soon moved his arms around Jane in an instinctual embrace. He felt her small frame convulse in his, and couldn’t help but feel nearly emotional at the display before him. 

They haven’t spoken to each other, truly, since before she had met with Zoe. What was in actuality a few days at best seemed more like a small eternity. So many things had happened in the preceding time. He could only wonder how much more would happen. 

She suddenly moved back from him, pacing and talking in a rapid tone about his Ambien usage. He could not begin to respond, before she confronted him with the question on both of their minds:

[i]“How much of the conversation do you remember?”[/i]

Rob’s mind froze immediately. The haze he had been in for the past several hours, the rush of the show and how hard he had been trying not to think about this moment—this exact moment, had all come to a complete stop. 

Out here, the air was chilly and sharp; Rob could feel the cool air striking the sweat on his brow and his body, giving him the illusion of this cold sweat. Jane’s eyes stared into his with an emotive weakness he had not seen in a very long time—perhaps, since their last confessional together.

They had fallen into this vicious cycle of miscommunication and possibly, mistrust. They would admit to each other that they wanted to continue on, and would go back to their old ways—suppressing and ignoring their greater feelings.

Perhaps that’s why Rob felt so frozen in this moment. 

Because the cyclical nature of their relationship could end here. If he could finally tell her the truth—not some psuedo-honest bullshit about how much me cared, but the full and complete truth—maybe something would be different. Maybe they could finally break out of this cycle. 

Their world was getting more and more confusing. Jane’s relationship with Andy was a huge question mark for Rob. His own relationship with Zoe, slightly less so. The tremulous relationship with Vicarious would only get worse, or so it felt, and the tour seemed to stretch on indefinitely. He had so quickly forgotten that Europe was not the end of the tour. Once they finished in England, it would be back to the states to tour the cities they had missed and even one’s they hadn’t. If Rob was getting ambushed at his own bus here in Europe, how bad would they be off once they returned to the states? Could they even leave the bus again?

And yet, when it was all thought of and all said and done, there was little more that mattered to Rob than the person in front of him right now. This insecure, wild young woman was both the cause and effect—the reason he woke up and the reason he managed to fuck everything up. And maybe—just maybe, if she knew that—perhaps the world would be a bit less confusing. 

“I remember that I fucked up,” Rob said quietly; his hands in his pockets and his eyes diverted down to his shoes. He could already feel the vulnerability of the coming moment, but pushed through; “I remember wanting to sedate myself because I didn’t want to think about how I felt. How seeing what I did made me feel. And I always wonder that if I could just stop worrying—just stop being so anxious and scatterbrained and actually just live in the moment—then maybe shit like that wouldn’t bother me. If I could just be like you—”

Rob looked back up. “But that’s [i]not[/i] me. I’m not you. And it’s not a good thing and it’s not a bad thing and it’s not anything in between. It’s just differences. I can’t live my life day by day. I can’t go on that stage and act as if nothing is wrong. And I can’t be in a relationship with anyone else without forming some sort of connection. And I envy your spirit and your mind, but it’s not me. And I’m starting to realize that that’s ok.”

Rob took a step forward, holding Jane’s arms. “We may not seem compatible to other people. You may seem like the wild card and me the straight arrow, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. We don’t have to change who we are to be what we can be. Because I’ll tell you now what I told you then—“

Rob couldn’t help but cut himself off, caressing Jane’s face on either side, and moving in to kiss her. His senses were heightened to the extreme—every strand of hair that passed his hands and every touch he felt from her all cumulated into the following:

[i]”I love you, Jane.”[/i] Rob whispered as he pulled away from her. He said it again: [i]”I love you.”[/i]

He pulled in close again, and their lips reconnected. 

And somehow, the frigid air of the coming winter seemed warmer than before—if only for a moment.