Havoc: Mayhem Series #4

by Jamie Shaw

  I am so fucking sorry, baby. My phone went dead and I forgot my charger at the fucking hotel. [frustrated sigh] I miss you so fucking much. How long are classes? Like an hour and a half? [long pause] I’m just going to wait up, okay? Call me when you get out.

  As I walk out of Campbell Hall, I listen to one ring, two rings, three rings, four rings—

  “Hey,” Mike rushes to say on the other end of the line, urgency pushing through the grogginess in his voice.

  “Did you fall asleep?” I ask, tucking a pencil behind my ear as I walk to the commuter parking lot.

  “Yeah. Shit. What time is it?”

  “Five a.m. your time. Do you want to go back to sleep?”

  “No, no.” Mike yawns, and I hear the rustling of covers. “I’m awake.”

  Guilt gnaws at me, knowing what a huge show he just played, and I say, “You should get some sleep—”

  “Don’t you miss me?”

  The truth is, the sound of his voice makes me feel empty, like my heart is missing from my chest and I don’t know where to find it.

  “You know I miss you,” I say, even though the words don’t feel like enough. I miss my parents and my brother and my potbelly pig, Teacup, but the thought of them doesn’t make me want to sleep in a dark room all day.

  “Then talk to me.”

  “I wish you were here.”

  “Me too,” Mike says, the sadness in his voice matching my own.

  “Five days,” I remind him, because in this moment, I need it to be only five days. I don’t care about Danica’s ultimatum or the fact that Phoenix is still living in his house—I just want to hug him, feel him, kiss him, hold him.

  “Ten.” A deep sigh pushes through the phone. “We added two more European tour stops on the way home. Shawn thought it would be a good idea, but I really didn’t want to, Hailey. I just want to come home to you . . . But it’s only five extra days . . .”

  “Ten days?” I ask to make sure I heard him right, and Mike growls at the hopelessness in my voice.

  “I should’ve told him no.”

  “No, no, it’s a good idea.” I force the words of assurance from my mouth, even as my chest grows yet more hollow. “I mean, they’re on the way, right? Might as well.”

  Mike exhales another frustrated sigh. “I hate being so far away from you.”

  “How many miles?” I ask to try to cheer him up.

  “Too fucking many.”

  I open my car door and sit inside, my eyes focused on my steering wheel, while my mind is somewhere else. “How often do you have to do this?”

  “Tour?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Usually a couple months out of the year.”

  “Every year?”

  I watch students walk past my car, one after another, while I wait for Mike’s answer. Eventually, he says, “You can come along. Next time, come with me.”

  “I have school,” I say, hating the way the hopefulness in his voice disappears.

  “Oh, right.”

  Someone honks their horn behind me, and I glance in my rearview mirror. With an irritated growl, I say, “I’ve got to go. Some asshole is honking for me to give them my parking spot.”

  “Tell them to fuck off,” Mike says, and I throw my hand up between my seats.

  “Fuck off!”

  Another long honk, another angry growl. “I’ve got to be at the shelter in twenty minutes anyway. I should go.”

  “Forget the shelter,” Mike says, but the fight is gone from his voice.

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” I promise. “You don’t have a show tonight, right?”

  “No, just some appearance at a record store or something.”

  “Okay, I’ll set my alarm and call you around eight, okay?”

  “Okay,” he relents.

  “Try to get some sleep. And make sure you have your ringer on.”

  “I love you, Hailey.”

  “And remember to send me a picture.”

  “I love you, Hailey.”

  “And hug a koala for me sometime before you come home.”

  Mike chuckles. “I love you, Hailey.”

  “I love you too,” I say, a soft smile touching my lips even as I flip off the still-honking asshole behind me.

  “Ten days,” he says, and my smile slips away.

  “Ten days,” I say, putting my car in reverse.

  Chapter 46

  On Mike’s tear-stained pillow, sleep doesn’t come easy. After we got off the phone, I worked a two-hour shift at the animal shelter, had a quiet dinner with Phoenix, and crawled into his bed, where I finally let go of the emotion I’d been holding in. It’s not an ugly cry, full of convulsions and sobbing—it’s a hopeless cry, one where hot tears escape the corners of my eyes to slide over my cheeks and onto a cold pillowcase. I fall asleep and wake up over and over again, until I’m not sure if I’m in a dream or in reality, and both feel like a nightmare.

  Mike gave me five extra days—days I didn’t want—to figure out how to fix things, how to keep him and school. But the problem is, there is no way to fix this, and there never was. I want to choose happiness, but happiness is two pieces of my heart that are pulling in different directions.

  When the sun forms a dim outline around Mike’s blackout curtains, I finally give up on sleep and make a pot of coffee. I take Phoenix out to let her use the bathroom before opening my laptop on Mike’s kitchen table. And then, coffee forgotten on his counter, I look up Mike Madden.

  I find all the pictures Danica showed me—and more, and more, and more. Not just pictures of him with girls, but pictures of him with guys, other bands, famous people I recognize. There are pictures of Adam, Shawn, Joel, and Kit too . . . performance pictures and promotional pictures and pictures with fans. The sheer volume is overwhelming—because there is my boyfriend, smiling in hundreds, thousands of pictures.

  I sit there for so long that my laptop idles and my screen goes black, and then I see my reflection: wild hair, big eyes, an unguarded frown on my face.

  I swipe my fingers across the touchpad to get it to go away, and then I look Mike up on YouTube. The most recent video is from a few days ago, and I click it.

  “Are you excited?” a female voice with an Australian accent asks a bunch of girls standing outside of an enormous city building. The sky is bright blue, and all of the girls are gorgeous. Different shades of sunshine-yellow hair, white smiles, pretty makeup.

  “I’m freaking out!” a girl with rose highlights says with a laugh.

  “What about you, Amy? Are you excited?”

  “I’m dying,” Amy says, pulling the camera in close. “Dying.”

  “Who are you excited to see?”

  “All of them,” she says with a devastatingly beautiful smile.

  “Pick one. Say you get to go home with one. Who do you pick?”

  Another girl’s hand shoots up into the air. “Adam! I call Adam!”

  “You can’t call Adam,” the camera girl scolds. “Adam is mine.”

  “Bitch, I will cut you,” the Adam fan says, and the girls all laugh.

  “Shawn or Mike,” Amy finally decides, and my stomach drops to my feet. “Probably Mike.”

  “Why Mike?”

  “Uh, have you seen him?” Amy asks, and the camera girl giggles.

  “You think he’s hotter than Adam?”

  “Way hotter than Adam,” she says, taunting Adam Fan, who launches onto her back. They’re all joking around when one of the other girls suddenly gasps.

  “Oh my God. Is that them?”

  The camera swings wildly around, and a chorus of screams erupts from a long line of people as Adam, Joel, Kit, Shawn, and Mike walk down the line, talking to people as they do.

  Camera Girl spins the camera around so we can see her wide blue eyes. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”

  “Hey,” Adam says when he gets to the girls, and Adam Fan suddenly becomes absolutely speechless.

  “We’re m
aking a YouTube video,” Camera Girl announces, and the corner of Adam’s mouth tips up as he looks into the camera.

  “Oh yeah?” He reaches out and takes the phone from her, turning it around to capture her blushing cheeks. “Have you gotten this huge line of people?” he asks, and Camera Girl nods as Adam backs up further to capture the true scope of the line, which stretches as far as I can see and then wraps behind the building. “How’s everyone doing tonight!” Adam yells, and the line cheers wildly. “Are you excited for the show?”

  More screams, and then Adam winks into the camera before turning it on Shawn.

  “What about you? You excited?”

  Shawn pushes the camera away so we can see more than just his green eyeball, and Adam laughs as he turns the camera on Kit. “Excited?”

  “This show is going to be sick,” Kit says as she ties back her long black hair, and Joel slides in front of her.

  “Joel, you excited?” Adam asks, and Joel smiles brightly into the camera.

  “I’m hungry.”

  Adam’s braceleted hand reaches out to push Joel out of the way, and then the camera lands on Mike, who’s busy checking his phone. “Mike, how much do you love Australia?”

  “Huh?” Mike says, lifting his eyes and pocketing his phone.

  “Australia. Thoughts?”

  “The toilets don’t actually flush counter-clockwise, so I’m pretty bummed.”

  Adam is laughing when he turns the phone around again. “There you have it, folks. Pretty bummed.”

  “They have good steak though!” Mike amends as the band goes inside and Adam stays outside interviewing people in line about toilets. Eventually, he mumbles, “Whose phone is this?” and the video cuts to black before Camera Girl’s face reappears on my laptop screen.

  “Adam Everest just touched my phone,” she squeals, panning to the shell-shocked faces of her friends. “He hugged you!” she tells Adam Fan, whose face is burning bright red.

  “I can’t believe he hugged me.”

  “You’re never showering again, are you?”

  Adam Fan shakes her head furiously, and Amy laughs.

  “I still say Mike is the hottest.”

  The girl beside her nods. “And he smelled so good.”

  “He did smell pretty amazing,” Camera Girl agrees. She spins the camera around to tell viewers, “Guys, I know you can’t smell this video. But trust us on this. Mike Madden smells fucking amazing.” She closes her eyes and sighs. “I can’t believe we just met The Last Ones to Know.”

  “And they were all really awesome,” Amy says, and the rest of the girls agree.

  They talk about the band some more before the doors open and the video ends, but all I can think about is Mike on his phone. I know he was looking to see if I texted or called him—I know it in my bones—but he should have been enjoying the sight of all his fans. He shouldn’t have been oblivious to the girls swooning over him. He should have been there, instead of a million miles away.

  I’m letting him waste his days in hotel rooms and his nights on the phone, but for what? When he comes home, I won’t be able to give him the relationship he wants. He won’t be able to pick me up for dates, or kiss me on my porch, or even sit at the same table with me in restaurants—because Danica will always be watching. I know Mike wants to find “the one,” and maybe he will—maybe she’ll have blonde hair, maybe she’ll have an accent. But she won’t be me, because I’m his ex-girlfriend’s cousin. I can’t give him what he deserves, and I never should have pretended I could.

  When I summon the strength to call Mike at eight o’clock (morning for me, night for him), the aching in my heart has grown sharp, like the tip of a blade that’s slowly plunging deeper. I listen to his phone ring once, twice, three times, four times—

  “This is Mike. Leave a message.”

  “Hey, Mike,” I say, my voice cracking with emotion. There are ten days left before he comes home, but that’s ten days too many. I’ve already wasted enough of his time, and the longer I pretend that things could ever work between us, the harder it’s going to be to accept that they never, ever could. “It’s Hailey . . . Listen, I—”

  Another call interrupts my voice mail, and I answer Mike on the other line.

  “Hey,” he says. “Sorry, it’s loud as hell in here.”

  “Where are you?” I ask, because I’m weak and I need to hear his voice.

  “Some record store party in London. The place is called, uh—”

  As Mike tries to remember the name, someone starts talking to him. A few someones, if the multiple female voices are anything to go off of. I hear laughing.

  “Sorry about that,” Mike says. “No one seems to know where the hell we are.”

  “You should go,” I say, nearly choking on the words.

  “Huh?”

  “You shouldn’t call me anymore,” I say with tears streaming down my cheeks.

  “Hailey?”

  “Go have fun, Mike. Be a rock star. Be happy.”

  “Baby, what the hell are you talking about?” I hold in a sob, and Mike says, “Hailey, you’re scaring the shit out of me. What’s going on?”

  “This just isn’t working,” I say with my whole heart shattering into pieces. I think of Danica’s ultimatum, the dreams I had before I moved here, the dreams Mike has had since Adam and Shawn approached him in a middle school cafeteria. I think of the faces of dozens of girls on the Internet. I think of Danica and how pretty she looked in that wildflower dress. I think of my brother back home and the way the words messed up sounded in his voice. I think of my mom’s hatbox and the thirteen first-day-of-school photos inside it. I think of my broken desk and my broken computer, and Danica’s soup cans rolling across Mike’s hardwood floor. I think of him staring at his phone in front of a long line of people, and me holding mine to my ear as someone honked at me to leave my parking spot. “You deserve to be happy,” I manage through the emotion clouding my eyes. “I just want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy,” Mike argues. “You make me happy.”

  I shake my head against the tears burning lines down my face. I should have done this before he left. I shouldn’t have hung out with him on his bus. I shouldn’t have played Deadzone with him late at night. I shouldn’t have stayed with him when he was sick. I shouldn’t have let him kiss me in the woods.

  I never should have fallen in love with him at all.

  He’s been waiting for the girl he’ll spend the rest of his life with, and now it’s time for me to let him find her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, and I hang up the phone.

  Chapter 47

  I thought I’d fallen apart when Danica trashed my room and I believed my time in this town was up, but nothing—nothing—compares to the way I fall apart when I hang up on Mike. Phoenix whimpers at my feet as I cry into my arms, my entire body racking with sobs that have been piling inside of me for weeks.

  Rowan was right when she said the last love is the one that counts. But I was never meant to be Mike’s last. Someday, he’ll be married to a beautiful wife, and she won’t have the entire world standing between her and loving him. She won’t have vindictive cousins or ultimatums, and she’ll be able to give him the life he’s always dreamt of. They’ll have beautiful kids and a beautiful house and a beautiful life—but I won’t be her. He’ll barely remember me, even though I will never, ever forget him.

  There weren’t sparks before Mike, and there won’t be sparks after Mike—because I carved my heart out of my chest the day I fell in love with him, and now it’s walking outside of my body, thousands of miles away.

  I have no heart left to give.

  Instead, I have a gaping hole, and that emptiness inside me makes me cry until my head is throbbing and my eyes are swollen. And through it all, my phone rings and rings and rings. Within fifteen minutes, I have twenty missed calls from Mike, nine missed calls from Rowan, twelve missed calls from Dee, six from Kit. When Shawn starts calling me too, I finally pul
l myself together enough to answer the phone.

  “Hailey, what the hell is going on?” he asks. “Mike just left for the airport.”

  “The airport?” I ask, alarm overwhelming the rawness in my voice.

  “Yeah. Look, I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but . . . Fuck, Hailey, I’m really sorry, but we have a huge show in Dublin tomorrow. We fly out in the morning. He has to be here. You need to call him. Can you please call him?”

  “Okay,” I agree, absorbing Shawn’s panic.

  “Thanks,” he says, but I’m already hanging up the phone.

  Mike answers even before the first ring stops sounding. “I’m coming home.”

  “Mike, don’t.” My voice breaks with the fresh tears filling my eyes. It was hard enough doing this once, it’s going to kill me to do it twice.

  “I’m already in a cab, Hailey. I don’t even have my suitcase. I have my wallet and my passport and you’re not talking me out of this, because I’m not fucking losing you.”

  A sob steals the breath from my lungs, and Mike says, “Why are you doing this, baby? Just talk to me.”

  “I can’t,” I cry, pulling my knees to my chest in the corner of his kitchen. Phoenix licks at my tears, but I hunch my shoulders and turn away from her.

  There are a million reasons why Mike is better off without me, but I can’t tell him the one reason, the one single reason, why I would be better off without him. I can’t tell him that Danica made me pick between him and school, because then he’ll know I’m just as bad as her. She made me choose between money and love, and it should have been an easy decision, but it wasn’t.

  “Yes, you can,” Mike assures me. “You can tell me anything, Hailey. I love you . . .” There’s a pause, and then he says, “Baby . . . did you cheat on me?”

  “No!” I say as I wipe my fingers over my eyes. “Mike, no, I would never do that.”

  “Is this because we added extra tour dates?”

  “No,” I assure him through a runny nose and scratchy throat.

  “Then what?”

  “I’m not worth this,” I say through a new wave of tears. “You should’ve tried that Indonesian candy with the guys. You should’ve seen how those girls looked at you last week.”