Show Me That I'm Better | Post Malone

XXXV

He wasn't hers. She had no right to feel upset or betrayed. She had no claim to him.

She had been at the studio all day, partly because she needed to lay down some more vocals and partly because she had more self respect than to sit around dwelling on how much she had been missing him.

She had spoken to him after his show, she'd wanted to make sure it had gone well and that he was still feeling alright.

It had been a waste of time. She could tell he was lying to her, that his version of 'tired' was as much of a bull shit cover as hers was. She could hear in his voice how much he was struggling, tears rolling down her cheeks through the entire call.

The night had gone slowly and she had spent more of it than she cared to admit staring at her phone waiting for a call, a message, something.

It was no secret to her that she missed him, she didn't think for a second that it was a secret to him either, but the sheer weight of just how much she missed him was the hard part. The part that had caught her off guard and tossed her world upside down. The part that made her stomach constantly sit somewhere between excited and queasy.

She heard her phone at around 2:30, grabbing it instantly in case it was him. Instead it was a video message from Brad, random footage of them on the bus, clearly drunk. She could see Dre and Smitty and a couple of other guys she hadn't met before along with a selection of scantily clad women. 

Then she saw him.

He was sitting on a couch with some bare legs draped over his lap, smoking a cigarette, drink in hand. He didn't look well, he also didn't look sober.

She rolled over again, trying to put the video out of her mind, trying not to think about the words Dr Hartley had said when they had been in his office, or the words that he had said to her when they had been by his pool.

Ten minutes later her phone went off again, another video from Brad. She wanted to believe he wasn't doing this on purpose, it wasn't unusual for him to send videos when they were on the road, surely he didn't have any bad intentions with these.

The second video was much the same as the first, the same guys surrounded by the same girls. As he panned around the bus she could see the couch where Austin had been sitting was empty, both he and the leggy girl were gone. Just as she was deciding whether she should feel relieved or worried he came back in to view, making his way through what she assumed was his bedroom door, hand in hand with his leggy girl.

'He's not mine' she told herself as she silenced her phone, locking it and placing it on her bedside table.

He's not mine.

***

She was already wide awake when her alarm went off. She was tired and nauseous and she could feel the prickles of a panic attack beginning. She had ended up in the very position she had been trying to avoid, willingly allowing him to put her there.

He hadn't messaged her in the morning, she still hadn't heard from him by mid day, by the time it got to the afternoon she had crumpled. She needed to speak to him, to hear his voice and make sure he was okay. 

She regretted it instantly.

His voice sounded different, a hesitation or nervousness behind every word. Somehow she had managed to make it through the call without him knowing tears were rolling down her cheeks, that she could pin point every lie he told her or that the walls around her were already back under construction.

She hadn't called him that night.

He hadn't called her either.

***
She sat in the studio, waiting for her producer to return from a phone call. She had been trying to avoid her phone as much as possible, trying to avoid everyone as much as possible.