When you walk in on them together, you can’t even bring yourself to be surprised. You know you should be, you know you should be surprised, or disgusted, or some sort of negative emotion but the thing is, you’ve known. You’ve known for years that it was headed this way. They’ve been your best friends since you and Andy were both small children, not even 4 years old and in the sandbox of the daycare together, playing with Andy’s My Little Pony doll and your Michelangelo action figure. You’ve known Devin since before he was even speaking in full sentences. You’ve seen how they’ve developed.
You were there when they were separated on you and Andy’s first day of kindergarten, you can remember clearly the way Devin had screamed himself red in the face and cried himself sick as your Mom and their Mom had gotten you ready for the bus together. You’d grown up in houses next to one another’s, and they’d decided that since you’d made best friends in daycare when you were toddlers and had been so close from the very beginning that they’d get you ready for that first day together. They’d pinned your names to your shirts like they were supposed to, and had put your backpacks on your backs, and Andy had stood there, silent and pale and watched as Devin had cried and screamed about not wanting Andy to leave him. You’d tried to comfort Devin just as much as Andy had, but it had been Andy’s touch and little whispers of how he’d be home soon that had finally gotten Devin to calm down. And you’d been there when you’d both come home that day just at lunch time, fresh off the bus, to Devin running down the driveway and throwing himself into Andy’s arms.
You’d been there when you were 10 years old and Devin had been sick. Devin had been so sick, and no one had had any idea what was wrong with him for days. He’d been throwing up, and tired, and Andy had been worried to tears every night. You’d stayed with them each night to try and soothe Andy to sleep because he wouldn’t sleep any other way. He was too worried about his younger brother. You’d been there when Devin had been admitted to the hospital, and had had to have his appendix removed. Andy had been terrified, but Devin had thought it was the coolest thing ever. It meant that Devin didn’t have to go to school for two whole weeks, and that he got to sit at home with their Mom and watch the Price Is Right and I Dream Of Jeannie and eat ice cream. Andy had clutched to your hand like it was his lifeline and had asked what happened if Devin didn’t wake up, like that was an actual possibility, and you’d had to tell him very gently that that wouldn’t happen. Of course Devin would wake up. People had their appendixes taken out all the time. You weren’t sure of it, of course, but you’d had to be strong for Andy.
Then you were there at 14 when Andy’s first girlfriend broke up with him. She had called him a loser, and told him he was a freak because he was too close to his brother. She’d said they were codependent, that no normal brothers were that close to each other. No normal brothers needed each other that much. You’d thought it was true, of course it was true, but Andy and Devin weren’t normal brothers. They were all each other had always had with a mother who’d always been more invested in her bottle than she was them, and a father who was always more invested in his music than he was paying any attention to them.
At 14 you’d known that there were problems in their lives that you couldn’t fix, at least not for another few years, but God would you if you could. You did everything you could to keep them happy, and you were just as close to each of them as they were to each other. You’d lie in bed curled with either of them, your fingers in their hair, speaking softly of the future. Of how the three of you would get out, you’d make it somewhere. You’d already started the band with Jimmy, Jeff, and Brent. You had songs; you were going to make it. You knew you were going to get out. Devin was amazing with his vocals even though he was young, and he’d just get better. You were all just going to get better.
And now you were 16 and you were walking in on Andy and Devin lying in bed, legs all tangled, their mouths pressed together. You weren’t surprised, you were just a bit sad. You’d always wanted that, from each of them, you’d always wanted to matter that much to each of them, and you were glad that they had each other and had that safety in one another, and love for one another… but when were you going to get your share? So when you walked in on them you turned to walk out as quietly as you could, and resolved to always knock on their bedroom door from now on. It wasn’t like it had always been anymore. You couldn’t just come running over to their house anymore and run up to their room and let yourself in. If you did, you’d see more of these private moments, and maybe they’d hate you for that. You couldn’t risk them hating you.
You start taking precautions. You start withdrawing and becoming more quiet and resigned around them. You still listen when they need you to, you’re still there when they need someone to support them. You write song lyrics with them, and you write music with them, and soon your band is signed and you can’t contain your excitement at being able to actually go out on tour. Soon you’re 17 and you’re going on your first tour, and by then you’re used to ignoring the way Devin and Andy’s touches linger just a touch too long when they press their fingers to your elbow, the way their eyes linger on your mouth when you talk. You’re used to ignoring it because it can’t mean anything, because they have each other and you have nothing like you always have. So you get drunk each night of tour. You get drunk with the older bands, and you fuck random girls with the endlessly supplied condoms by the promoters and you get a reputation for being easy. You get a reputation for being a shitshow. You can handle that. Nothing really means anything anymore, anyway. It hasn’t for the longest time and you can’t even feel things the right way anymore.
When you’re 18, there’s a falling out. You get too drunk one night, and Devin starts screaming at you about how you’re just as useless as his fucking mother, and you scream back at him that he’s just a dysfunctional fucking freak and no one but his brother can love him. You know you don’t mean that because you love him, and you always have. You love him, and you love Andy, and you know you don’t mean it, but… But Devin doesn’t know you don’t mean it, and you find yourself with your things stuffed haphazardly into your suitcase on the side of the road in Billings, Montana with your cell phone half dead and no money to get home. You have to call your mother, still drunk, and ask her to wire you the cash to the convenience store the band left you at. You ask her to wire you a thousand dollars, so that you can get a taxi to the nearest airport, and catch the next flight home to Michigan. You’re still drunk, so the reality of the situation hasn’t hit you yet. When it does, the next morning, you want to call Devin and beg for his forgiveness, and admit all of your feelings, admit everything you’ve ever wanted from him. You don’t. You don’t, because you know that he won’t forgive you. You remember very clearly the fight, and the things you’d said back to him. You’d gone too far, and you know there’s no way to fix that. You’ve just cost yourself everything you’ve been building for your whole life.
You go home to Michigan and you mope for the first few weeks. You don’t talk to anyone, don’t take any calls. You keep your cell phone turned off, actually you just let it die from that first night of half a battery and you never plug it back into the charger. You don’t take any calls to your house phone, and you can’t believe the incredible amount of sharp pain there is every time you breathe. You can’t believe how much it hurts to know that the life you’ve always wanted has hit a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour at not even 19 years old, and there’s nothing you can do about it. After a few weeks your mother tells you that you need to do something with yourself. She tells you that you need to either get a job or go back to school, but you can’t just lay around the house hoping for something to change and mourning the loss of something that isn’t going to come back. She comes home the next day with applications to everywhere within a 10 mile radius, and a beater 1987 Toyota Camry to get you there and back each day. She tells you to fill them out and pass them in and to keep calling until one of them hires you. She tells you that once you’ve worked for a few months and saved some money, you can start going to school for something and really make something of your life. You don’t want to. You don’t want any of this. You just want to be back on tour with Devin, and Andy, even though you know they’re home now. You’ve heard their voices in their backyard through your open window. You won’t even go outside for fear of running into them. For fear of being seen.
You apply everywhere your mother wants you to, each signature to each application killing you a little more inside until you feel like nothing more than a hollowed out shell. You’ve quit drinking because it doesn’t do any good, it doesn’t make you feel any better, doesn’t make you feel any more alive. It’s no fun to drink alone. You fill out all of the applications, and you call every place every other day on a rotating schedule until you finally get a call back. It’s from Del Taco. They’re the only place that will hire you without any experience anywhere else. You’d gone right from high school into touring full time with the band, and you don’t have anything to put on a resume. This is the only job you can get. So you take it. And for four months you go to work every day in a blank daze. You smile, and you chat with customers, and you fake interest. You make small talk, and there’s a girl who comes in and she starts coming in regularly. And then she starts coming in every day. And she seems interested in you, but you don’t really care. She’s not Devin or Andy, so it doesn’t matter, but she asks you out. You can’t come up with an excuse quick enough, so you say yes. You go on exactly two and a half dates before she tells you that she thinks there may actually be something wrong with you, and leaves you sitting at a table in a restaurant, staring down at your untouched food and wondering what it is you’re supposed to do.
You’ve been talking to Jimmy again, the past few months, since you ran into him at work. He keeps you up to date with everything, lets you know how everyone is doing, how everyone is handling everything. He lets you know that their new vocalist isn’t really working out and that Devin says all the time how much he wishes they had you back. You can’t be the first to make the move though, because Devin still won’t answer, you’ve tried. You’d sent him a text that had said how sorry you were, and he hadn’t responded. You figured that was his right. It had hurt, of course, but everything was so crushingly numb these days that you couldn’t even bring yourself to feel badly about it. You’d just gone back to work the next day like nothing had happened and had continued on with your existence because what else were you supposed to do? Jimmy texts you once or twice a week, never calls, and you don’t know if he’s told Devin where you’re working but you figure he has because you’ve never run into Devin there.
That all changes of course one day about 9 months after the huge fight, when Devin and Andy walk into the restaurant. You’re standing behind the counter, rolling someone’s burrito, and talking to them about their dog who is apparently a Cockapoo named Roderick Emilio, and you’re nodding your head as she tells you all about the dog. You look up as you hand the burrito to the woman and you see them standing there and you feel your skin pale, and then flush in embarrassment. You had been fairly certain that you weren’t ever going to see them again. So you do what any rational person would do when confronted with a painful piece of your past. You try to hide. At least for about 30 seconds before you realize that you’ve made eye contact with them and that hiding isn’t a viable option.
So you ask your manager if you can take your break, and you go and sit down with them at one of the little tables. Andy touches your hands and Devin watches you with his doe eyes he gets when he’s genuinely sorry for how things have gone, and you all apologize and catch up on how one another have been. It’s all going well, and staying well within the light zone until Devin slips. Devin slips and says that he misses you, and you rub your hand over your newly shaved head, and look at him with too large eyes and shrug your shoulders helplessly because Devin’s the one who made you leave. Yes, you’d said horrible things, but so had he, and no, that didn’t make any of it right or acceptable but it had put you where you were then. You rub your hand over your head and mumble about how you miss them too, and you don’t mean the band, which you do miss, of course. You mean Andy and Devin. You miss Andy and Devin who have been in your life for literally as long as you can consciously remember.
From that night on, they start texting you. First Andy, with random questions about song lyrics and then Devin about how things with Chris aren’t working and would you ever come back? Please? You talk to them every night for another month and somehow, some way, before you know it you’re leaving with them on warped tour and you’re back. You’re back in the band, and you’re back in their lives but you’re more. You’re more than you ever were before. You all three curl up together on the couch in the back lounge, draped all across each other’s laps and into each other’s sides. Devin will kiss you lightly in the morning before you’ve even brushed your teeth, when your mouth is still dry and sandpapery from sleeping with it hanging open. Andy will press you into walls backstage at the shows and lick into your mouth just before you’re meant to go on and play and scream your parts and hype up the crowd. You’re more to them now than you were before. Or maybe you’re just as much as you ever were, and they’re finally letting themselves have you. Either way, you’re finally where you want to be.