"Hi," Taylor said into his cell phone. They'd been in the air about ten minutes now, so he decided to call Kris.
"Hi honey," Kris said. "Brian left about an hour ago."
"We've been in the air for about ten minutes. I'm bored already," Taylor admitted. Zac was in the bathroom while Isaac was trying his best to ignore him. He had his CD player turned on, and the volume was so high that Taylor could hear perfectly what he was listening to. Lie to me, and tell me everything is all right�Lie to me, and tell me that you'll stay here tonight�Taylor shuddered.
"You sound upset," Kris said. "What's wrong?"
"Zac and I had a fight. Isaac isn't talking to me, and hasn't for a long time. When you met him, you know how he was so distant. He's usually worse than Zac when it comes to meeting new people."
"Oh God," Kris said. "Not another person like Zac. I wouldn't be able to handle it." She paused. "What happened with you and Zac?"
"I told him."
"Told him what?"
"About Brian." Kris nearly gasped.
"Why?" she asked. "Why did you have to tell him?"
"Kris, I had to tell someone. It was eating away at me. I told Zac and he got really upset. That was three hours ago and he's not talking to me anymore. There's something wrong with him and I don't know what."
"I don't want the two of you fighting. It tears me up inside when someone I care about is upset. I always feel like I have to make everything right. Why don't I talk to him?" she asked.
"He's not going to want to talk to you, plus he won't talk to me to acknowledge that you want to talk to him." Zac returned from the bathroom and sat in his seat next to Taylor, but quickly started to do something so he wouldn't have to look at his brother.
"Just try." Taylor sighed. He tapped Zac. Zac didn't reply to him. He smacked him.
"Hey!"
"Kris wants to talk to you," Taylor said.
"Why?"
"Because she does." Zac rolled his eyes and took the phone. "Be nice."
"Hello?" Zac grimly said into the phone. He really didn't want to talk to her.
"Zac I'm sorry."
"For what?" Kris stopped. Why was she apologizing? She didn't do anything wrong, she didn't even talk to Zac since she met him the first time.
"Um, I don't know why, but I'm still sorry. Taylor told me you and him had a fight. I hate it when people I know fight. I didn't mean to do anything wrong! Don't be mad at Taylor for something that's my fault."
"You don't understand what this could do to him."
"Brian?"
"Yeah."
"Nothing's going to happen to Brian. He won't know anything. It's my problem, Taylor really has nothing to do with it. Well he does, but he doesn't. Just don't think about it. It's not Taylor's fault I'm doing this, it's my fault. Just please don't be mad him because I can't take that."
"Listen, Kris, they always find out. No matter how hard you try to cover it up, sooner or later they're going to find out and it's going to kill him. Something happens, he comes to your house to surprise you and finds the two of you on the bed making out. Something always happens."
"Brian doesn't do that sort of thing. He doesn't come to the house unless I personally invite him because he doesn't want to. He's not the kind of person to all of a sudden show up at my front door."
"He changes. Mom invites him over for a surprise happy birthday party. He walks into your room to say hi and there you are with Taylor making out on the bed."
"Nice imagination."
"Still."
"How do you know so much?"
"I just do."
"No really, Zac," she asked. "How do you know so much? You act like this sort of thing has happened to you before. You act like you know exactly how someone in this situation feels. You talk like you've been hurt this way before." Zac's eyes quickly glanced towards Taylor. He was trying not to pay attention.
"Kris, I have."
"Oh my God I'm so sorry!" she immediately said.
"Kris, don't. Just don't think about it." He threw the phone back to Taylor and left quickly. Taylor put the phone to his ear, confused.
"What's going on?"
"Is he mad at me?" Kris asked. "I don't want him mad at me. I'm really, really sorry. I didn't mean to break open any old wounds or anything, I just wanted to talk to him about you and the fight and all but I didn't want anything to happen! Is he really upset?" She sounded like she was going to cry.
"Kris, calm down, he'll be alright," Taylor said. "What do you mean, 'breaking open any old wounds?' "
"He said that he's been through this before."
"Kris, he's never been through this before. He's never even had a girlfriend before!"
"He sounded serious." That would explain a lot, though, Taylor thought. Why he was so upset, why he wasn't talking, why he all of a sudden got up and ran away with tears in his eyes.
"I'm going to find out what's up. I will call you back later."
"Tell him I said I'm sorry."
"Kris, it'll be okay."
"I just don't want him mad at me. It's my fault�"
"Nothing's your fault, Kris. He's just upset. Everything will be alright. I love you, okay?"
"Okay. I love you too." He hung up and went to look for Zac. Taylor wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew he had to find out. If Zac really was going through this entire thing, then he needed to know.
Zac sat grimly in an empty seat near the back of first class. There was hardly anyone on the fight�which was weird. Normally the entire plane was packed. Taylor took the unoccupied seat next to Zac. He realized they were nearing 100 feet away from the nearest family member.
"Go away, Taylor." Taylor only ignored his words, acting as if he didn't even hear him.
"Kris says she's really sorry," Taylor said. "That's just the way she is. She has to apologize for everyone else's mistakes. She just needs everything to be perfect, or she'll flip out." Zac looked out the window, to the land that flew by below. "She doesn't mean to 'break any old wounds' or whatever that means�" Zac didn't say anything. "Do you want to tell me what that means?"
"Her name is Gwendlyn," Zac said, not looking from the window. "She lived in LA�we met when we were there recording Middle of Nowhere. Any chance I got, I saw her and I talked to her over the phone. I kept it away from all of you because I knew Mom would just completely blow it out of proportion, especially considering the fact that I was only eleven and thought I was desperately in love with this girl. I knew Mom was going to scream at you the minute I met Kris." Taylor looked at his brother strangely, but he was staring at the back of a head. "A few months ago, I decided not to tell her we were going back over there and surprise her. By that time her mom knew me rather well and just told me to go ahead on in." Zac sniffed. "I found her in her room with another guy. She explained that she just couldn't handle the fact that I was gone all the time; the phone calls and the meetings that were few and far between just weren't enough for her anymore. I couldn't believe how much it hurt me. I didn't think it would hurt that much, but it did. To see Kris doing this to Brian�I don't care how he treats her, he doesn't deserve it."
"How come you didn't tell me?"
"I didn't want anyone to know that I was hurting so much. I just suppressed the emotion deep inside me until I felt numb to all of it." Zac finally looked at Taylor. "The song for the new album that I wrote, 'Wish that I was There,' you could call it Gwen and it'd be my entire life. I found it too personal to add the fact that she cheated on me."
"Well Zac, it's really not my problem." Taylor admitted. "I'm not going to push Kris to do anything she doesn't want to do. No matter how much she hurts me or she hurts him, I don't want to force her into anything she doesn't want."
"Do you actually think that you're in love with her?" Zac asked. Taylor nodded. "It's the same way I felt about Gwen. Me and her just clicked from the second we met. I know now that I'm better off without her; if she could do that then it wasn't worth it, but Taylor you have to understand that you don't know her at all."
"It doesn't make me feel any less about her." Zac only shrugged. "I would expect this happen to Isaac or something, you're younger than me and you had a secret girlfriend that even I didn't know about. You have some serious problems if you can hold a secret for that long." Taylor's eyes grew a bit, as he shook his head.
"You just think about it, buddy." Zac patted his older brother on the back and went back to his seat. Taylor sat there, thinking. The song Zac introduced to the two of his brothers was nearly completed when he showed it to him. He said he wrote the gist of it in about an hour, but wrote nearly the entire song in two days. Taylor and Isaac just touched up some of the chords and ended the song within the next day, and they had Zac's song written completely then. That must of been about six months ago�the same time Zac said he broke up with Gwen. Damn�
"Are we going somewhere tonight?" Kris asked into the phone. She'd called Brian immediately after she talked with Taylor. "I'm really in for a good movie."
"If you're up to it," Brian said. "I don't really care."
"You going to pay for me?" Kris asked, slyly.
"Fine." She smiled, slightly laughing. "And you know that I just have millions and millions of dollars in my pocket right now."
"Come on! You know you do!" Kris kidded. "Anyway, I still want to go to a movie tonight. We haven't done anything together in a while."
"Kris, I was just there an hour and a half ago."
"Still�we haven't gone out in a while. I just really have the urge to go somewhere. It's a Friday, so we might have to go a bit early to avoid the crowds and all that." She heard Brian sigh. She knew the last thing he wanted to do was go out with the crowds. He hated being in public with her, that was why they didn't go out. That's why they were always over at her house�she hated it.
"Fine."
"You know if you don't want to go anywhere just tell me, Brian. We don't have to go anywhere because you don't feel like you want to be seen in public with me."
"No, Kris, that's not it�"
"Whatever. I'll talk to you later." She hung up the phone and huffed. He was always trying to get out of going with her; after a while it just got annoying. She couldn't handle not being able to go places with anyone. She couldn't go anywhere with Taylor for fear of someone seeing the two of them and telling Brian, while she couldn't go anywhere with Brian because he didn't want to.
Kris walked out of her room and down the stairs. Her mother was there in the kitchen, possibly waiting for Kris to appear. "It's about time you came down from that room of yours," Mrs. Carter said. "I was beginning to think you'd died up there."
"Shut up, I don't need it now." Kris opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water before slamming it shut and walking out of the kitchen. Mrs. Carter decided to follow.
"What's going on? Did you have a fight with Brian?" she asked, sympathetically. Kris turned around.
"When am I not having a fucking fight with Brian?" Kris yelled. "When am I not mad at him? He treats me like shit, I don't understand why he's always acting like this!"
"Honey, then he's not the right guy for you."
"I tell myself over and over that I can change him, and I still believe that. One of these days he'll just treat me like a normal girlfriend, not some object that he has hidden away in the privacy of his own home. So don't say anything, Mom, not until I've finally given up on him." Kris turned back around and ran back upstairs to her room. She was happy to finally be alone, but the silence in the room was engulfing her. It tore at her until she had to flip on the radio and turn the volume up to close to deafening. She knew her mother would bitch until she just locked the door and turned the volume up higher.
Sayin' you love but you don't�You give your love but you won't�Kris got frustrated over what was overcoming her. For some reason, life just wasn't the same anymore. You're stretching out your arms to something that's just not there�She grabbed the nearest object and chucked it across the room. It hit the wall with a loud bang before shattering. If you could only see the way she loves me�
She could already hear her mother thumping up the stairs. "Kristina! Turn that fucking music down! The neighbors will start to complain again!"
"Ooh," Kris shouted back at her, over her music. "Using the full name here! It doesn't work, leave me alone!" Then maybe you would understand� She sat down on her bed, not really caring about it all anymore. Taylor would be gone for a while, she was pissed at Brian, but oh well. It wasn't her deal at that point. Why I feel this way about our love�and what I must do�
Kris got annoyed. She was listening to the lyrics and it wasn't helping her at all. Her situation had to do with the same thing Tonic was talking about. If Brian called back, she'd be happier that he was determined enough to try and stop the fight, but he never did. After a while, it just ate at her until she had to apologize. Then a day later he'd just do the same thing all over again.
She looked outside. The sun was peering through the clouds, now that the snow had stopped. It was beautiful out. Sighing, she grabbed her coat and turned off her music. The sudden silence nearly knocked her off her feet, but she just ran out of the room and down the stairs. "I'm leaving!" she yelled, and left the house.
It was cold out, causing Kris to actually want to go back inside. But the snow was fluffy and crunched beneath her feet. She had to stay out here; that's why she loved Chicago so much. The snow and the weather was always so great that she would forget where she was and the noise that surrounded her and walk around in her own little world. The first thing she decided to hit was North Avenue. If she was lucky enough, she'd have enough daylight left to get to Johnny's for dinner and get downtown. The city was so huge, and she wouldn't be able to get around if she hadn't gone out on walks so much. The city streets were more of a home to her than her actual house. She knew the street venders and the people who walked the same way to work every day. She even knew the majority of the beggars that sat in their own pity in shaded areas.
Kris walked into Johnny's, expecting the empty room and single clerk standing behind it. But today there was someone at the counter. Kris knew who it was. She went to the counter and took the stool next to him.
"Hi Brian."
"I knew you'd come here, you always do after a fight." Kris looked at the clerk, who knew what to do. She'd been there so much lately, and she always ordered the same thing that she didn't even have to ask anymore. "I thought I'd beat you here. I took the car."
"You do know stealing cars is a felony," Kris said, smiling. She looked at him. He shook his head and looked away.
"I'm sorry about what I said," Brian said, then looked back to her. She didn't quite know how to handle that; he'd never apologized for any fight before.
"Brian, it's just that I always feel like you're hiding me. I feel like I'm not good enough to be with you. Your friends are my friends too, Brian, they're not going to care that we're together. They'll probably care more that we've kept it a secret for so long."
"I'm not hiding you. We're here, aren't we?" he asked. The clerk came back and set an item in front of Kris. "I don't know what I'm thinking." She smiled. "Don't worry, I'll shape up."
I hope so.
Musical Credit goes to Jonny Lang (Lie to me) and Tonic (If you could only see)