Page 40 of Pretty When It Burns (When The Lights Go Down #1)

Chapter thirty-seven

"Waste Love" - mgk

Mia

He’s gone.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing in the middle of the dressing room after he left, but it’s long enough for the crew to start tearing down the stage and for one of the headliner’s stage managers to come in and ask if I’m “heading out any time soon.”

“Sure,” I say absent-mindedly.

He rolls his eyes and moves on, oblivious to the destruction that had just ensued in this room.

The silence that follows is deafening. I keep replaying Grayson’s words on a loop, as if I can change them, as if I can make them mean something else.

You’re not coming.

It still feels like a gut-punch, the warm nausea brewing in my stomach.

I don’t even remember making it back to the bus.

Everyone else is out celebrating. Rylee is likely dancing on top of something she shouldn’t be while the guys bask in their post-show glory.

Eric is probably dancing with her, while Tony and Brandon fight off mobs of women.

Jake is definitely at least six drinks deep and ordering a new clipboard.

They have no idea my entire life has just been blown to pieces.

I don’t want to tell them.

Why has he put it on me to tell them?

I drop my bag beside me and slide into one of the booths. It feels so odd to be on the bus alone. In the dark. It’s the first time that I feel like I don’t belong here.

The tears come suddenly and I curse under my breath. The emotion wracks through my body as I shake, clutching the table in front of me with both hands, needing something to hold onto. The sob that escapes my throat doesn’t even sound human.

Something inside of me tells me to get up. I wander through the bus, not sure what I’m looking for exactly, something, anything to tell me he’d been here. That what we’d had was real.

But all of his things are gone. There’s no trace of him. After everything we’ve been through, after every whisper in the dark, every promise of forever, every time he’d said I’m the only thing holding him down to earth… he’d just walked out of that dressing room and didn’t look back.

I can’t even look at our bunk. Polaroids of us at shows, on our days off, photos I’d taken are taped on the wall, a sickening reminder that they didn’t mean enough to him to take.

Abandoned. Again.

I go back to the front lounge and into the booth, pressing the sleeve of my jacket to my mouth to muffle the sound, but it doesn’t matter.

No one is here to hear me. I let it all go again, because there’s no use in keeping it together now.

I cry harder than I have in years. For him. For his loss. For mine.

Eventually the tears stop. I’ve run out, the exhaustion taking over and the headache setting in. I run a hand through my hair and will myself to move again. To stand, to pack? To do something. But I can’t make up my mind.

Then I hear the sound of boots on the metal stairs. Laughter. Drunken idiocy. Tony’s voice the loudest, followed by Rylee and Eric’s, then Brandon. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for their happiness.

The door opens and they all tumble in, the excitement of being on the brink of—well, everything—radiating off of them.

“Mia?” Brandon calls out first when he notices me sitting at the booth alone. “Hey! Where have you guys been? Tonight’s been wild—”

“Wait, where’s Grayson?” Tony interrupts, the first to notice he’s nowhere to be found.

Rylee steps in next, the smile fading instantly from her face when she sees me. “Mia, what’s going on?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. My throat is raw, my hands clenching too tightly on the table. It’s the only thing keeping me together.

“I’m gonna call Jake—” Eric says after a few moments of silence, starting to turn around.

“No,” I snap. “Don’t. Just… sit.”

The group exchanges increasingly worried looks, waiting for me to say something. Anything.

“Mia, come on,” Brandon urges me. “You’re scaring us. Where is he?”

“He’s gone,” I say, my voice rough, inhuman.

“What do you mean, gone?” Eric asks, stepping closer to me.

I look up to meet his eyes.

Finally, “His mom died tonight. During the show. He found out after seeing it on his voicemail right after. By the time I got to him…”

None of them dare to speak.

“He told me he needed space. That I wasn’t coming with him. He left with Johanna.”

My voice cracks.

“He didn’t even say goodbye.”

Rylee sinks into the booth with me, immediately wrapping her arms around me.

The minute I feel her touch me, the dam breaks loose again.

I fall into her shoulder, the tears I thought had run out spilling over again.

I don’t want any of them to see me like this, but at this moment, I don’t care anymore.

Eric curses under his breath and puts his hand on Rylee’s free shoulder. Brandon sits down across from me and reaches to hold my hand. Tony kicks the nearest thing he could find with full force.

“Fuck!”

Jake finally steps onto the bus and freezes when he sees the scene. He’s never looked so stunned.

“What the hell happened?” he demands, looking around to survey the damage.

Brandon meets his eyes and says, simply, “Angela Harris passed away tonight.”

The last of the noise drains from the bus. No more jokes. No more celebration. Just the sound of grief.