Misprinted Lies (Alice in Chains/Bruno Mars)

Misunderstood

A few weeks later we were on our flight back from London for the BRIT awards. Bruno picked up an award, not that I was surprised. Everyone was so excited still on the plane from the performance. I engineered the sound for the show. Normally that doesn't happen for TV shows and tours; they usually have someone already doing it at the venue. Bruno pulled some strings though because he wanted me to do it.

"That was epic," Bruno said.

"Yeah I know!" I said excitedly.

"Thanks for doing the sound. We sounded great. I usually hate how we sound on TV."

"Yeah," Jamareo said from across the aisle. "We sounded damn good."

"No problem guys," I replied.

Before I knew it, I was out like a light. The time zone change back and forth knocked me out. When I woke up, I saw that I had a notification on my phone. "phil_smeeze tagged you in a photo." It was from Instagram. I peeked my head forward to see past Jamareo to see Phil smirking. I scrunched my eyebrows in suspicion and opened the photo.

It was a picture of me and Bruno sleeping. He was falling and leaning against the window and I was leaning on him with my head against his shoulder. The caption said "Hey guys, I wasn't done with my story."

I smiled. "Nice Phil."

Bruno woke up and I showed it to him. He laughed.

We got off the plane and headed straight for baggage claim. My suitcase was nowhere to be found. Suddenly my phone rang. It was Jerry. I excused myself as Bruno scoured the belt looking for my bag.

"Lily I fuckin' hate that guy."

"Oh hi Jerry, nice to hear from you," I said sarcastically.

"He's bad news."

"You haven't even met him."

"He's such a douchebag. You guys should NOT be together."

"Oh I take it you saw the BRIT Awards. Did you know I did the sound work for that show? We're not dating Jerry. We're friends."

I just wanted him to be proud of me for something and not just a reminder of his dead best friend. Bruno was proud. He told me all the time. I looked over and he was on the phone too, holding my suitcase.

There was a pause.

"Jerry, why did you even bother calling me?"

I hung up on him and walked over to Bruno.

"Look Jess we're just friends."

Aw shit...the Instagram picture.

When I got home that night the Instagram picture was out of control...there were thousands of comments and the few I actually read were about Jess.

I called Phil when I got home.

"This picture is fuckin' viral. Jess is so pissed right now."

"I took it down but it's still out there. I didn't mean to cause a problem. I just thought it was a cute picture. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it, Phil."

___________________________________

I didn't want to go home. I wasn't prepared for an ass-chewing. I turned to turn the knob as quietly as I could but Geronimo started barking. Jess was in the living room. There was a movie on but she was on her phone. She spent way too much time reading comments about herself on Twitter and Instagram. I told her to ignore the hate, but she continued to respond and that only made it worse.

"Hi Jessica."

"Hi Bruno."

We didn't say anything for a while. I stayed seated at a stool in the kitchen.

"She's too young for you, Bruno."

"What are you talking about?"

"You heard me."

"Yeah but I don't get it."

"Lily."

"Jess we're friends. We've been friends for 4 years. Just friends. It was just a picture."

I mean, we were best friends but this conversation spawned from jealousy so there's no way I was saying that out loud.

"Your fans already hate me," she said, bursting into tears. "Now they're just going to speculate about whether you really love me and whether you and Lily are sleeping together."

"We're not, I promise," I said sitting beside her on the couch. I wrapped my arm around her, getting close. "Who cares what a couple of angry people post on the Internet? I love you and you love me. That's all that matters, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so," she said.