In Love And Death

Why are you here?

Bert started to walk up to us. I got scared and hid behind Stef.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I don't want him to see me." I said.

"Zoe, it's fine. I won't hurt you." He put his hands up to surrender, I hid further back when he stepped closer.

"Bert what are you doing here?" Brian asked. He had no clue to what was going on.

"I'm here to record some music with my friends. But before I wanted to go to see a favorite band of mine live." He pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. "I'm not going to hurt you Zoe."

I stepped out from behind Stefan to see Bert's face. He smiled waved at me like nothing ever happened to us. "Hey Zo."

I looked down at the ground and looked back up at his grinning face. "Hello." I was scared of what he was going to do or say.

"You don't have to be shy." He lifted my chin up so he could look at my brown eyes.

"Fine," I stared at his blue eyes.

"How are you after what happened?" He took a drag off his cigarette. Bert was acting normally after his incident in jail.

I was confused, but I decided to answer him. "I'm alright. You?"

"Pretty good." He flicked some ashes off the cigarette. "I'm sorry that happened a few nights ago. It's been rough for me and I-."

"No excuses." Brian was obligated to ignore what Bert said. "Zoe, can I talk to you?"

"Sure." I walked along with Brian to a little space between the venue and another building.

Brian turned around to make sure Bert or anyone else wasn't listening before he spoke. "You know he's trying to get you away from all this mess to do something even larger. Right?"

It was pretty obvious. "Yeah, that's why I tried to stay away. There's something going on."

"Be careful around him, if he tries to talk with you, don't say much." Brian took my hand. "You're coming to set up with me." He led me to the back and we went inside.

"So what are we supposed to set up if Steve and Stef already did it?" I asked as he led me through the band's instrument stuff.

"I only think they set their stuff up." We went along the hallway to the dressing rooms, our bags weren't open yet. "That figures."

"You're right. So don't we just put our clothes on the rack over there?" I pointed to a tiny rack that had nothing on it.

"Yeah, just hurry up." He unzipped our stuff and helped me put it on the rack.

"Am I playing on stage again tonight?" I asked.

"If you want to. I liked it two nights ago." Brian kissed my cheek. "You are a brilliant guitarist."

"Thanks. I will, I liked making people happy. This time don't drink though."

"Ok, I won't. Drinking every day makes me feel terrible, so it's not a lot I drink." He took my dress off the rack. "Tonight wear this."

"Fine. I'll be the sexy one." I laughed. "What are you gonna wear in," I checked my phone, "6 hours."

"This one," The dress was black with random white stripes down it. The black matched our short black hair.

"Now I'm jealous sexy." I said. It was a nice dress.

"If you want it. I will let you play one of my guitars tonight." He handed me the dress.