You're Not Even Mine to Miss [Fall Out Boy - Wattys 2014]

➽ Track Thirty-five (Pete's POV).

Track Thirty-five (Pete’s POV): I hide behind these words, but I’m coming out.

(July 12, 2008)

“You’ve all gotten crazy” was what I told Andy, Patrick and Joe bluntly and repeatedly as they all gawked at me as if I was some pathetic and whimpering prey that they managed to surround and was about to be feasted on mercilessly.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I grunted at them with a frown when they still wouldn’t stop staring at me.

Three pairs of eyes from the rest of the members of Fall Out Boy were all resting on my face, scrutinizing every inch of my skin in search for an imaginary speck of dust or something absurd and not on my face.

Although I was starting to feel a bit self-conscious about the kind of look that they were shooting my way, I was very aware why they were all doing it—Donnie McKenzie, and of course, the lyrics of the new song that I had just presented them which had her name on it.

I knew what they were all thinking at that time – that I was becoming too obsessed with my girlfriend, that maybe I needed to see a shrink and put myself into therapy again since my mind didn’t seem to be functioning properly, that I was risking Donnie’s privacy. Well, I had thought about the last one, but then again, Donnie knew what she was going to deal with when she decided to become my plus one. She already made sure that she knew what a band member’s lifestyle is like, thanks to Patrick, which was why she was already aware that her private life would be revealed to the media, and that the paparazzi would be following us everywhere.

Another thing was that only a handful of people call London McKenzie using the nickname “Donnie”, and I was sure that none of us had blurted out that nickname in public. Most of the time (since I made sure that nobody else would know what we usually call my girlfriend), the band and I always mention “London” during interviews, and never did we use “Donnie” to refer to her.

But, in that case, regarding the whole ‘widely inappropriate song title choice’ fiasco, I wasn’t talking about Donnie, my girlfriend. I was talking about a different person—Donnie Hathaway, to be exact—but since the only “Donnie” that the whole band was very familiar of was my girlfriend, it was crystal clear that they were thinking that I wrote it for her.

That was when everything started to go wrong.

“No. It’s you who have gone completely insane, Peter,” Patrick snapped at me, his eyebrows furrowed together due to anger and agitation. “And, contrary to what you’ve said, even if you try to look at the situation in various angles, what you have done is just downright wrong.”

He was acting like that because was just very concerned of Donnie’s welfare (I didn’t want to think that maybe he was just doing that because he didn’t want the girl he had a huge crush on for over a decade get hurt by her own shitty boyfriend – a.k.a. me – which was why I tried not to think about that part too much), but I knew exactly what I was doing.

“Patrick, you’ve completely lost the point of the song,” I explained to him with a heavy sigh, massaging the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. Jeez, if only you knew…

“No, I clearly haven’t!” he insisted as he slammed his palm on the table. I saw Joe and Andy flinch slightly because of the sudden noise, but they remained quiet as they listened to the two of us argue. They didn’t want to butt in to the rather heated conversation we were having. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?! Putting Donnie’s name into one of our songs is very risky for her—”