Rob waited patiently as the rest of the entourage faded from the room—save for Jane, who held back. The earlier moment the two had shared in bed, delaying what was seemingly inevitable for them, had seem to come. Reckoning. At a time where Rob felt like doing nothing but focusing on saving what little public credibility the band members had left.

It was perhaps rather short-sighted of him to try to put off this conversation—for all his growth and change, he still wanted desperately to go off and think on things. To figure out what would be best for them both. But the road bred a certain type of rush to his life—the constant struggle against working in the timeframe given than the timeframe he necessarily wanted to work with. 

[i]”If you’re gonna end things, just do it now and get it over with,”[/i] the words poured from Jane before she lost composure entirely. It was so painfully fatalistic, but it was honestly the truth that Rob needed to hear from the beginning. The entire preceding tour had been nothing but the ebb and flow of Jane and Rob’s relationship. The collapse of reason and logic to their own emotions. And now, looking at things from his previous mentality—being cold and pragmatic about the future—it seemed so hopelessly futile. Like the entire event had been a massive waste of time, but not necessarily in the way he had expected. 

There’s a law in economics called the sunk cost fallacy—something Rob remembered from the haze of high school and history classes. The argument that continuing in a bad investment simply because of the time so far invested is less painful than ending the investment entirely. 

Economics and relationships were a world away from each other, but Rob couldn’t help but think on that level of logic—he had been trying to do so ever since his last outburst caused him to need stitches. He wondered if all the nights spent together with Jane would have been worth it if they just agreed to part ways, here and now. Would the schism between Vicarious and them have been worth it in the wake of what they had done together? The loss of Zoe, and Jane’s apparent loss of Andy—all of it? And what about the nights in the mideast Rob had spent in the woods, talking through it all with friends he then-trusted? Was any of that relevant? Would this entire tour be relevant if the group collapsed in the wake of all of these damn press releases?

There was so much to deal with—so many fracture pieces of the whole of the band’s image and sound that needed to be dealt with. And here, in the middle, were two young adults far out of their comfort zone. Turning to each other for solace before immediately regressing into their old ways. Even Rob couldn’t excuse himself of that. Here he was, standing before somebody he truly loved, thinking about the logical outcomes of their proposed separation. Something he had done so many years ago as a defense mechanism against the very issues that had pushed Jane and Rob to this moment, here and now, in a waiting room in Naples. Because for whatever fucked-up reason, it felt better to put a cover of pragmatism over the fact that Rob felt worse in this moment that he had ever felt before. Because here he was with the decision given to him by Jane to make. 

“The interview will be fine,” Rob said, scratching at his nape. He knew it wasn’t the first words Jane probably wanted to hear from him following her own confessional, but it was what he had. Business first. And not only business, but the easiest problem to solve. If anything, this would buy him that much more time to think. “I guess we’ll just have to say it all. There won’t be anything left for them to pick at if we just come clean with everything. No matter how shit that’s going to be.” 

Rob let out a thick sigh. [i]Now for the main event,”[/i] he thought coldly in his mind.

“I love you,” he began. “I just…I just want you to know that. I care about you, and no matter what we decide, don’t you dare think what I told you a few days ago was a lie. Because it wasn’t. I love you.” 

Rob sat down from his then-standing position, placing a hand to his face. He averted his eyes from her. 

“…but I don’t know if we can keep doing this.”

The words pierced his own heart as he said them. Words he knew to be true to himself but words he never wanted to say aloud.

“We’ve been everywhere on this tour. But it always seems to fall apart each time to put the pieces together again. And who knows? Maybe we just need to come clean in this interview about all of this shit. Maybe that will help. But I’m just…I’m tired of feeling like I’m in a cycle.”

Rob looked back up to her—his eyes welling up with emotion, but every part of him begging himself not to cry. Tears could not help him. Nor would they help her. “A few days ago, we were completely comfortable with each other? Now? I hardly know where you were at the last two days. And the same is true of me. And it just hurts to feel like we’re constantly trying to figure this own while…and I really don’t want to fucking say it but…the others get neglected for it.”

Rob could feel his heart pounding in his chest. The final gasp of his dying emotions he had chosen to suppress in this moment. Because in this moment, he had to approach this logically. Which meant nothing but pain for everyone involved. 

“I want to be with you Jane. I’ve wanted it for years and I didn’t even know it. But we owe it to Sam and to Austin…to Aaron and Lyla and Harold and Vicarious and everyone else we’ve put in this position…to be a band again. And maybe that means we need to be honest with each other first, before being intimate again. And until we can be honest…”

Rob stopped himself. He wasn’t willing to say it. 

“Let’s fix this. For them. Maybe through that we’ll be honest with each other again.”

Rob looked down to the stitches in his arm. “Because what’s working right now…it just isn’t.”

Rob could almost feel himself break with his last words. 

He had laid it all out. Now all he could do was wait.