We lasted for three years after that.
At first, we spent every night on the phone for hours. I told him about
my job at Pixar and the concept art I worked on while Michael told me about the shows they did and the songs they wrote, his grin showing through his voice. We made a point to visit each other every few weeks, sometimes meeting halfway. Whenever I was visiting the facility in LA, I spent every second I could with Michael, and he did the same whenever the band was nearby.
It wasn't ideal. Some nights, when things felt bad again, I woke up shuddering in a cold sweat, reaching for him only to find that he wasn't there. But I wouldn't have traded it for anything. Michael meant the world to me and I always believed him when he said that he'd never loved anything more.
But then things got even more difficult.
I was on the go, now working with some major animators and traveling with them to places that inspired new shorts or films. Michael and the band were swept away for tours. Suddenly everything was jumbled up. When Michael saw a sunrise, I was drifting off to sleep. Our calls became less frequent, often filled with long silences and desperate promises. At some point, we couldn't bring ourselves to really talk about what was going on in our lives, not without having the other really there to experience it and relate to. All we could do was say how happy and proud we were for each other, our words repeating like a broken stereo. Seeing as it was too difficult to talk about the present without missing each other more, all we could do was reminisce about the past or dream about the future and make plans that ultimately fell through.
We started arguing, upset with either the other or ourselves when we couldn't make things work. A few times when we were both at our homes in California, we'd plan a trip to meet halfway for at least a weekend together. But then something would pop up and pull the other away. We'd fight on the phone, shouting and screaming until one of us had had enough and hung up, sometimes cutting the other off mid-sentence. But almost always, we called each other back the moment we cooled off, sobs shaking our voices as we exchanged apologies and promised to make it work.
But then one day it just became too much.
It was a Friday, one of the busiest work days I'd had yet. It was a long day of turning concept art into real versions that would actually be put into our project and rendering images. After hours of weeding through what we wanted and didn't want and recovering crashed or deleted files we had originally cut, my co-workers and I had decided to go out for dinner, all of us relieved to have gotten so much done.
My mind was overwhelmed with exhaustion and satisfaction with what we had accomplished that it wasn't until I unlocked the door to my apartment and found the suitcase by the door that I remembered Michael was visiting.
What followed was by far the worse fight I'd ever had with anyone, the both of us pointing fingers and shouting until our throats were raw. Michael accused me of not caring enough to make time for him and I argued that I needed to focus on my life too, bringing up the countless times we couldn't meet because of him.
There was no space to get away and cool off, the tears never came, apologies were never given, and Michael and I were still fighting the morning after.
Michael shoved whatever stuff he had in my apartment for when he visited into his suitcase and left, saying this wasn't working anymore. I didn't stop him. He was right. It had come to the point that whenever I envisioned a future for myself, very rarely was Michael included in it.
Michael and I never talked again after that. I still kept in contact with the other boys, listening to how the band was doing, how Michael was doing. But as time went on, they stopped mentioning him to me, and I never asked for them to do otherwise.
