Come Back Home

Chapter Seven

-Mikey's POV-

It was an odd parallel, looking back on how things were a year ago to how they are now. All of the problems that had seemed so pressing and demanding then seemed to lose their edge. It was hard for me to remember just why Liv and I had fought so often, or why I got so angry at Andy. I was embarrassed, even, to think about the person that I was then – How I behaved, the decisions that I made – And, while I was still me at heart, I was happy that I had changed. I liked to think of myself as a better version of me – Mikey Cobban 2.0. I was more willing to learn and grow, to accept that we were all still young, still working on becoming better people. I worked to understand other's points of view, and I tried to accept feeling like sadness instead of immediately translating them all to anger.

All of this was easier, of course, when I wasn't stuck in the literal version of Hell – We'd taken to calling that summer The Pit, where pretty much anything that could go wrong, did. And, it was hard to see a way out when we were living it, never catching an escape from all the pain and the heartache.

The thing with pain was that it was so all-consuming that it made it nearly impossible to see past it. It always felt like that was all there was and all that there would ever be, even when that wasn't the case. But, somehow, all of us had made it out of it. Maybe not in one piece, or, not in the way that we had been before – But alive. Somehow, we had made it to this day, and it felt so beautiful and surreal that it made working through it all worth it.

Back then, I never would've imagined that, only a year later, we'd be in America, of all places, performing to crowds of people from a foreign country that somehow knew our names, and sang and jumped along to our songs like we'd all been born to do so. There was magic in the moment, as I looked out and realized that I had finally broken out of the nightmare and was now living my dream – Something that I had fantasized about since I was a child. I knew that I had old journals somewhere from when I was a kid, documentations of the hopes that I held for the future.

Every obstacle that life had thrown at me – Every "No" and lecture that I could never be a singer, that I needed to find a 'real' job, every rejection and failure, had all led up to this one singular moment, where all I could do was grin in awe at the cell phone lights and smiling faces in the crowd. I was memorizing the moment to stow away forever when I felt Rye behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders, and excited gesture that seemed to say: "We made it."

But the feeling was more than just that. It had something to do with how new and refreshing and exciting everything was when you were in a new place, with new people, having new experiences that seemed so far away from rainy England. It felt exuberating, like nothing could be better. In fact, the only thing that I would add to the situation to make it perfect would be for Liv to be there – But I was even feeling a bit better about that than I had expected. I hoped that she was as happy at uni as I was here – And, if so, then I finally understood why she wanted to go so badly in the first place.

Change was a scary thing, even when you needed it. It was always much easier to stick with what you knew – But now that we had finally broken loose from the same every day routine that we had been stuck in, I was finding that I liked it a lot more than I had previously anticipated. Still, that didn't mean that we had to change everything. As soon as we left the stage, adrenaline still pumping through our veins as we whooped about what a success it was, I Facetimed Liv, eager to share what pieces of the experience with her that I could – Or, to be more accurate, I tried to.

Because, even though the phone rang and rang, she never picked up.