Devil In Disguise

Departure Depression

The photo album was laid on my lap, and it had been for the past three hours. Scratch that, three hours and twenty seven minutes. That’s how long it had been since he walked out the door, slamming it harshly behind him. Did I mention he had his suitcase rolling behind him? Packed full of band tees and skinny jeans in preparation for his next tour. He’d be gone for nearly a year and he’d left right in the middle of a fight. Again. I had been hoping that maybe this time we’d be able to part on a strong note. A happy one. But no. He’d walked out the door, demanding I don’t come to the airport to see him and the boys off. He left me sitting here on the couch with the pictures, sobbing into the sweatshirt of his that I’d stolen in the very beginnings of our relationship.

My phone had been vibrating nonstop with texts and calls from my family, but mostly from my friend Raina. Raina, who happened to be dating Calum, had probably heard the entire story by now. I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with people right now. So I picked up the photo album and walked slowly into Michael and I’s shared bedroom and sunk not-so-gracefully onto the bed. I opened up the album and stared deeply at the first picture I saw. It was a candid shot, taken on our wedding day. I had walked into the guy’s dressing room to ask Luke if he’d seen my “something blue”- one of his old rubber bracelets – and I happened to have been in my wedding dress. I thought Michael was in the reception hall sneaking a piece of cake like he’d sworn he would do, so I thought I was safe…

“Avery! What are you doing in here!? What if Michael comes back?” Ashton asked, running up to me and trying to push me back out the door I’d just come through.

“Relax, Ash, I just need to talk to…”

“Hey guys what’s – shit fuck balls! Avery what the fuck!?” I turned around just in time to see Michael drop something (which upon further inspection was, in fact, a plate of cake) and throw his hands up to cover his eyes. Our photographer was sitting in a chair off to the side and snapped the perfect shot, Michael with his hands over his eyes and me mid-laugh, tears nearly streaming down my face.

When we had the photos edited, the photographer had blurred out everything in the background to make Michael and I the main focus, but I can still make out the boys in the background. Ashton with his arms crossed over his chest, practically radiating smugness and his I-told-you-so attitude. Luke looked like the world just ended, his jaw all but on the floor and his eyebrows all but in his hairline. And Calum, God bless Calum Hood, was curled up in a ball on the floor, laughing his ass off.

This very quickly became my favorite picture of the two of us, trumping hundreds of pictures from the previous two years. Probably because in this one picture, you can see all the personalities of the four people who mean the most to me in my life. My brothers, and my husband.

I heard a knock on my front door and internally deliberated for a few moments on whether or not I should get out of bed and answer it. What was left of my sanity was telling me to get my ass up and answer the door, but my lonely and depressed heart was telling me that whoever it was wasn’t that important and could wait. My sanity won.

“Avery Lynn Clifford what happened?” Raina asked as she came barreling through the door I’d just opened.

“Sure, Raina, come inside.” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes. It’s not like I wasn’t used to her barging in on me constantly. Since her apartment is right down the road from my house she was always popping her head in to check on me, especially when the boys were on tour and she didn’t have Calum to keep her occupied. And I had no desire to imagine what they did to keep themselves “occupied”.