I didn’t picture myself bailing from the spotlight so soon. In the first place, I didn’t expect my childhood role model to respond to my demos, sent to him on a fantastical whim over a now-dead website; I didn’t anticipate pulling together a band to play for him personally, or his record label, or getting signed on to a contract almost immediately. Then, I thought maybe our album wouldn’t ever end up actually coming out. We were thirty minutes away from our deadline and still trying to come up with lines to fill in songs we didn’t plan out correctly. We were a fire that took constant fanning and feeding to actually start and maintain, and we didn’t overtake the forest in glorious flames until a metric fuckton of work had been done to ignite us. Before becoming a hit, we were one bad tender away from collapse, a spark close to dying out. Stepping away from everything I worked for - it’s not what I imagined.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We grow up. Perspectives change. Fame looked to me, when I was a kid holding my first guitar, something simple and easy, where everything was spoonfed to you. I still fooled myself into thinking it after my first taste of fame - I thought, maybe after the initial struggle, I’ll get there. But it never became easy. Things worsened, and my real life continued behind the scenes when I thought I’d escaped all that. We all did drugs that we swore off (though, lucky for us, mostly experimentally). I never left my house when I wasn’t touring because the anxiety was a killer. I lost my father, and on the same night, lamented my struggles with him for hundreds to hear, all singing it back to me as if they understood. Putting my thoughts and emotions on loan to the public, entrusting them to people unentitled, was all too much for me, eventually.

And, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I neglected all of my personal relationships. It’s ridiculous to think of now how often I’d start dating a girl I was only infatuated with, only to forget to keep up with her just the next day. I never checked in back home even though I knew there was support there. And, well. The obvious one. Brendon.

I didn’t admit it to myself, and I still don’t, but. He was such a massive part of my life. On the surface, we were just messing around. Experimenting, because I didn’t get to do that in high school, personally, and of course he’d grown up in a religious household - I can only guess he was making up for lost time, too. More than once, though, it was a bad night, and I was cold and alone, and I ended up in his bunk or on his designated bed in out hotel room and he didn’t shove me away. More than once, we woke up with bodies aligned, arms encircling one another, someone’s nose pressed into someone’s cheek. That, we didn’t talk about. We didn’t talk about any of it, not specifically, but that was especially off-limits. I might have loved him.

But we were just friends.

I didn’t move on, either, but there are ways of thinking about the past that aren’t just nostalgia or regret. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to trickle in, fill in the confusing gaps in the picture; to keep the memory alive, and not just as a caricature of itself. I desperately hold on to time as it passes, like trying to keep a grip on a rock in the middle of a river, feeling the weight of the current against my chest while others float on downstream, calling over the roar of the rapids, “Just let go - it’s okay - let go.” It’s not okay, though. He was mine, and I was his, and I don’t know why I let him disappear. But, sure, let’s say we were just friends, it hurts less that way. I yearn less that way.

The only optimistic way I can look at it is by considering Brendon’s success. There’s a possibility he’d be the same or better with all of us still there, or even just me, but he flourished the way things went - the split was undoubtedly good for him. We needed time to mature, maybe, before we met again. And maybe this isn’t the time we reconnect, maybe we never really will, I have no idea. Regardless, seeing him again, I’m happy, among other inexpressable emotions. He grew into himself. His status in the culture seems too impossible to fill in completely, and it’d be way over my head for sure, but he wears his position as a musical icon well. He’s where he’s supposed to be. 

In fact, he’s grown into such a natural version of himself that it’s stunning, and it’s not like he’s doing anything particularly special. He’s dressed down, tiny in the denim jacket he’s chosen, barely as tall as my shoulders - but he exhibits an air of confidence, of charisma, of experience. He’s spectacular, gorgeous, larger than life. Or maybe that’s just the teenager in my head, still obsessed and intrigued by him. 

Somehow, I’m not panicking, or I’m so distantly nervous that I don’t recognize it. There’s a part of me that still thinks he’s my lifeline and my confidant. A part that didn’t grow up, I guess, or realize that any time has passed at all. We were dumb teenagers, nothing we did ever meant anything - but everything always means something more to me, more than I let on. We were just friends, were.

The same part of me that is comforted by his presence even still believes that it can distinguish the tiniest shift in Brendon’s countenance as something telling. I look closely, and I think, maybe, he’s really unnerved by our reunion. I don’t know how I can do anything to shake him when he stands in front of arenas nightly, when he has millions of critics trying to shout louder than even his most diehard fans. So I shrug it off, because everything always means something more to me, more than I let on. [i]It’s fuckin’ awesome.[/i] I’m smiling, and it’s real, because it’s so like him to say that. The tension in my face is easing. [b]”Thank you,”[/b] I say, an easy laugh overlaying my words, and I mean it. Thanks for breaking the ice. 

[i]Oh, yeah. And, I didn’t feel like flexing on anyone tonight.[/i] I almost forgot - he’s probably filthy rich. He never did it for the money. [i]It’s Gabe’s big night, old fucker that he is.[/i] I half-smile, tilting my head at him, and I decide I quite like how he jumped right into easy banter rather than the recap I was looking for. It’s simpler. We have a longstanding streak for doing that, keeping things surface-level, only makes sense that we keep up tradition. [b]”Careful. He can hear mocking from a mile away.”[/b]

I identify discomfort, maybe, in Brendon’s composure as I speak, and I have no idea what I said wrong. He’s so good at hiding anything he feels that I’m not even sure if I made it up - and if I didn’t, I’m not sure how to deal with the fact that I don’t know him as well as I used to. Yes, we were just friends, but he was my best friend. I may have been hiding a lot of things, or just not confronting them myself, but I would readily admit my loyalty to him. And now I can’t even read him.

[i]Uh- Where is he?[/i] I pause, and I’m apparently so sensitive that I feel a sort of hurt, jumping to the assumption that he’d rather see Gabe than continue talking to me. Stupid - it was one simple question, and if he does, it’s because Gabe is the subject of the occasion, come on. I look away when I speak, feeling dumb. [b]”I didn’t see him - I was about to text him when I ran into you, actually.”[/b] I’m looking back at him, and I don’t really mean to, but I’m memorizing his face all over again, every tiny, faint change. One thing different about me: I’m far more honest than I was. [b]”I’m glad you came. I thought I might see you.”[/b] I stop there, because ‘I missed you’ sounds like an understatement. I pause and study him, because I missed seeing him, too, live and in real time, and I’m afraid I might say things brought on by a lack of closure withheld for years, so. I’m already turning as I speak. [b]”Can I get you a drink? The bar’s just inside.”[/b]