paper rings (l.h.)

13

"Front-man and singer-songwriter Luke Hemmings found unresponsive in LA apartment," My Mom reads out loud from the other side of her laptop, as I pace my Aunt's old bedroom - the one my Mom had decided to camp out in instead of the one I had stolen from her. I run my fingers through my hair as she continues. "Paramedics rushed to the scene to find the 25-year-old clinging onto life after a colleague received a number of concerning messages from Hemmings."

"Poor guy," I say after a second, sitting on the edge of my Mom's bed as she continues.

"Rare sighting of ex-front man Luke Hemmings after overdose that nearly killed him: See before and after below."

"I don't want to..." I shake my head, glancing at my phone just in case Luke decides to message me. But it's late now, nearly 2:00 AM, and Luke is probably asleep. "This feels wrong. He told me he doesn't like how exposed he feels. It feels wrong."

"WATCH: Bodycam footage of Five Seconds of Summer frontman Luke Hemmings' overdose leaked."

"We can't watch that," I remind her, although she glanced up at me from her screen with an I know look in her eye. "That wasn't meant for us to see. It wasn't meant for anyone to see."

It was all so overwhelming, listening to all of this information after only just learning about his past, and where he came from. It felt as if I was placing myself somewhere I didn't belong. "Poor guy," my Mom says after a second. "And you had no idea he was famous?"

"No," I shrug. "He didn't say anything. I guess he kind of assumed I knew, and that I was trying to play it cool or something."

"He shouldn't have assumed that," she glances over her computer again. "Considering we are in the middle of nowhere."

I smile up at her, grabbing my phone off of the mattress that it lays on, finding Luke's phone and texting him:

Sleep well, Luke. I'll be looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

"And," I continue, flailing my body across my Mom's mattress, "we didn't have much time to talk about that kind of stuff when we first began seeing each other, considering Grandma and everything."

Suddenly, a sort of acoustic guitar fills the silence between the two of us. It's a solemn melody, haunting, as I hear an unfamiliar voice begin singing:

I drove by all the places we used to hang out getting wasted

"What is that?" I look over at her.

"Amnesia," she reads out loud. "By Five Seconds of Summer, 5 years ago."

I pull myself off her bed to move directly beside her, my eyes meeting a brown eyed boy who I only assume to be his bandmate. I watch as the lyrics he sings appears across the boy's forehead, then finding it's way across someone's bedroom.

The brown hair boy had plump lips, and a wide jaw. He was muscular, but each of the band members seemed to have that in common.

One had hair that was swept to the side, and an earring dangling from his right ear, the other a bandana, and dimples deeper than Luke's.

My jaw dropped when I saw a much younger boy who I could recognize in a heartbeat. His hair was not curly like it is now, instead flat-ironed and styled straight up off of his head. He had stubble beginning to grow where I had once kissed his fully grown beard, and a lip ring where I had not seen one yet. I listened to his voice as it began his solo, at how beautiful it sounded despite the struggles he must have already started going through. I felt something in the pit of my stomach when I realized the circumstances which brought him to me, and the words my Mom had just told me ringing in my head.