I Could Never Leave Your Bed (Mike Fuentes)

Chapter 8

I don’t remember what happened. I don’t remember how I got somewhere besides the hard concrete floor, or why my face is suddenly so cold. The only thing I know though is that I must have passed out. That’s the only explanation. Though I don’t understand why I fit so perfectly on the surface I’m lying on, and I don’t understand why I don’t ever want to leave it. I don’t understand until I realize that my “bed” is breathing. Then the scent hits me, the scent I’ve always associated with home. It’s him. It’s Mike, and that thought alone makes my heartbeat go crazy as well as my breathing.

He must have noticed the change because instantly rests his chin on my shoulder. Though my breathing has regained normalcy, my heartbeat is still having trouble slowing down. I slowly open my eyes and notice that where in the lounge of his bus. In front of me I can see his arm softly placed around my waist, and his legs at my sides. From the corner of my eye I can see what must be an ice pack being held by another tattooed hand. Looking at it I can see where the skin should be on his knuckles yet all I see is blood in almost perfect circles.

Letting out I sigh I remove arm that is wrapped around my waist and turn to face him. There is no fight in it, and I think he understands that as wrong as it seems to my heart, that in my mind he’s the one to blame. I want to let him comfort me, I want him to take care of me, but my brain is telling me that I can’t. I can’t fall for him again, I can’t let myself get sucked in. It took such a long time for me to get to a place where I could tolerate the pain. Being with Mike is opening a wound that has just begun to heal.

He’s just staring at me know searching for something and I can see the pain in his eyes, the regret as he scans the right side of my face, the one that most likely has a giant bruise on it. I catch him off guard though as I take the ice pack in his hand and put it on his bloody knuckles.  

“You still have to play tonight Mike,” I say without looking at his eyes, because I can’t take the way his eyes burn into mine, the way they captivate me. Instead I distract myself by staring at my hands that are now intertwined in my lap. “You still have people counting on you, like the rest of your band to play a good show. You can’t get in trouble.”

I know he knows what I’m implying. That he shouldn’t have been so reckless and fought James, which I’m pretty sure ended bloody. I can practically feel the anger radiating off of him, and I know he hates the fact that I won’t look at him.

“What was I supposed to do Sam?” there’s that edge in his voice, that dark tone that lets me know he’s angry, yet even now I can’t help but to think his voice is anything but intoxicating. “Just let him beat you to death?” He’s shouting now and I can tell that he’s more frustrated than angry.

“He wanted to get a rise out of you, and you gave it to him” my voice is so emotionless which only seems to aggravate him more, “You could have ended up in the hospital or possibly even jail tonight, and do you honestly think that’s fair to Vic? To your fans? I’ve been through worse Mike, I’ve survived much worse.”

“There were security guards, they saw everything, if anyone was going to end up in jail, it would be him.” He informs me, and it’s quiet for a couple of minutes which I pass by refusing to look at him. I know he wants to ask me and sure enough he does, “How long were you with him?” his voice is much softer now and I want to look at him but I continue looking at my hands.

“About a year.” I say and for some reason I want to tell him everything. Maybe it’s to hurt him, maybe it’s to show him how badly he’s left me, maybe it’s just to finally tell someone, but I let myself go and continue talking. “He’s not the first, there are so many more, and I’ve always dealt with it the same way. I leave. I join Jack on tour and I pick a new city to live in. Yet, I always get stuck with someone just like the last. He was the first one that’s actually decided to look for me.”

“Why?” he’s frustrated again, and his voice keeps rising, “Why do you let them treat you like that Sam? I thought you learned from your experience with your mother. You know who they are, Sam, and yet you still look for them! Why do you let them hurt you like this?” he reaches for my hand but I pull away.

“What do you expect from me Mike?” I shout back at him and this time I do look at him and I can tell he’s surprised by my outburst. “I lost so much in the course of a year. I lost people I loved. What was I supposed to do? Just move on and pretend it didn’t happen? Pretend that I didn’t love you? Pretend that my father didn’t die in my arms? I needed to feel something besides this pain in my chest. Every little bit of new pain replaces the old right?”

The way he’s looking at me, I can’t stand it, because he looks legitimately concerned for me. He looks like he cares. I can’t let myself think that he does, because that’s how this all started, with me thinking that he cared. I can’t let things end the way they did. Without hesitation he reaches forward but I back away and for the second time tonight I snap at him.

“Don’t touch me!” The words carry enough anger to have him retreat, and instead of anger I see sorrow for the briefest of seconds before his face blanks of all emotions. “You don’t understand do you? You’re the reason I’m like this. No one has ever hurt me like you hurt me, and I’m still trying to get over that pain, because I really did love you, and you used me.” I can feel the tears begin to pool in my eyes, but I quickly blink them back. I’m not going to cry, not for him, not anymore.

The next thing he does catches me off guard. He stands up and starts heading to the front of the bus without a word. My eyes follow him because I know I shouldn’t have said all those things to him, even if they were true, even if he deserved to hear them because now I regret the way I made him retreat into his head, to completely appear emotionless on the outside. God only knows what is going on inside his head. As he reaches the door he stops and looks at me with that mask of neutrality on his face.

“I left some clothes in the bathroom for you so you could take a shower. I’ll tell Jack that you’re staying here, and I’ll have him bring your camera.” Without another word he leaves the bus and I find myself feeling completely hollow inside.

I’m not quite sure how long it took me to take a shower, but I know that the tears wouldn’t stop. His face kept haunting my thoughts. I hurt him, I wanted to hurt him like he hurt me, but in the end I only made the pain in my chest that much more painful. The multicolored bruises that already started to appear on my torso didn’t hurt nearly as much as the weight of my regret on my chest.  

I stood in front of his bunk for a long time, staring at that stupid picture that signified that this was in fact his bunk. I wanted to crawl in there and let his scent envelope me. I wanted to sleep peacefully, the way I only did when he was there with me, and when his scent surrounded me, but after the way I treated him I couldn’t. I don’t think he would want to see me for a while so instead I crawled into the bunk opposite to his: Vic’s bunk.

The clothes he left for me, still held his scent, but it was a cruel reminder of what I couldn’t have. Instead of a peaceful sleep, I found more and more tears, and when sleep did claim me, the nightmares began again.