Silver Screen Romance (Book 3)

34. Lives change like the weather I hope you'll remember

Matt's POV

I watched the room closely as Josh chose his next words carefully.

"Benji is on drugs again." As he spoke I wasn't expecting my reaction, I was trying to prepare for everyone else's, but as I processed each word, I felt the need to jump out of my seat and go after him, but I couldn't move. I looked down to see what was restraining me and found Mandy's hand firmly pressing into my leg.

I turned to face her and she simply nodded. Immediately realizing what she meant, I calmed down, and looked at Alex. She was trying to be strong, but once Spencer was at one side and Linzi was at her other she broke down. They led her out of the room, I imagined until she calmed down, but we all took the opportunity to talk about the whole situation.

"I can't believe that this is happening again." Mandy said breaking the silence. Honestly I was a bit confused as the rest of the Avenged side of the family, at least that's what I thought, until Brian spoke. My anger was more towards the whole drug thing, not the 'again' part.

"He will get through this I mean he did last time, we owe him a chance right?" Brian asked.

Jimmy shook his head. "I don't think that we all know the whole story here. I mean Alisha only mentioned it to me once, but not in great detail, so do any of you want to elaborate?"

Billy looked to Mandy, who turned to Paul, who then turned to Dean, who immediately looked over at Tal, and so on, no one really wanted to talk about what were quietly referred to as the dark times in their lives. I still was shocked that I had never heard any of it before.

"Is anyone going to say anything?" Johnny said rather loudly, which earned him a smack across his head by Lacey followed by a quiet 'shut up'.

Joel sighed and then the story began.

"Benji had never had serious problems like this until we were around 17, at first it was just excessive drinking, but who really cared we were teenagers with fake ID's and it was cool. We were starting our career as musicians, packed up and went to LA and things just went downhill fast. I had left Alisha and he had left Alex behind, but the difference was that he was angrier about the fact that our dad had left my mom and he was now leaving the love of his life to pursue a career. Josh had supported our move to LA, he knew that we were getting nowhere in Waldorf and he wanted something better for us, he was our dad growing up, but the drinking, the drugs, was something that Benji hid really well when it came to Josh, he didn't find out until it was too late."

I looked at Josh and he nodded along, agreeing to every word that Joel said.

Joel continued. "Before Dean joined the band we had another drummer in the band named Chris, he worked with us on The Young and The Hopeless, and he seemed to be the one that added to Benji's bad decisions. When we would have a late practice they would leave right after together and for a while I never knew what they were up to, I was drowning in my own self-pity from leaving Ali. The day I caught Benji messing with his drug of choice, cocaine, he was with some random girl in the basement of Chris's cousin's house where we often practiced. He was snorting lines and tried to play it off as a one-time thing, but with his erratic behavior I knew it was a bigger problem. Call me a snitch if you want, but my first call was Josh. He flew into LA the next day and when we couldn't get him into a rehab facility in LA we decided to go back to Waldorf."

"How long was it before you realized what was going on?" Val asked.

"Too long." Joel answered, but when he noticed that that wasn't a good enough answer he put his head down and stared at the ground.

"It was a little over a year." Josh said angrily, obviously still not happy with Joel for not taking proper care of Benji, as he had promised.

Mandy continued the story. "When they came back to Maryland, Joel called me. Well he thought he was going to be able to talk to Alisha, but of course I wasn't going to let that happen. I met them at Billy's mom's house the night that they flew in. Benji didn't look great at all and he kept crying out for Alex. I was sneaking out of my house almost every night to help them with Benji, something that I now regret." She grabbed my hand and held onto it tightly, tears were starting to form in her eyes and I didn't understand why, until she started to speak again.