Rip Her To Shreds (1/4)
Rip Her To Shreds.
R. FOBgirlverse. Trish/Peyton.
Written for Bandombigbang. 22,533 words.
Brilliant art and fanmix here.
The interviewer is pretty fucking generic; big, blonde curls and blue eyes that sparkle less with life and more with the glint of the stage lights, with her pay check at the end of the week.
“Is there any like, irony I guess, in the band name? I mean, Fall Out Boy is a pretty interesting title given your line-up.”
She holds out the microphone and lets loose a blinding smile, showing rows of bleached teeth. Peyton quirks a brow, a grin, and leans forward into it to speak.
“Not really. We were stuck for a name and someone at one of our early gigs watched too many episodes of The Simpsons. It wasn’t deliberate, but, y‘know, nothing in this band has been.”
*
Officially, it starts with Jo.
Or, more specifically, it starts with sixteen-year-old Josephine Trohman, who’s all cropped, bleached hair and big breasts, baby fat and braces and crazy blue eyes.
It starts at Borders.
“No,” Jo says, and her voice is sorta nasally, that awkward sort of loud that bounds off the wall and sucker punches the unexpecting. “No, seriously, Neurosis is-”
“Fucking gay,“ one of the guy’s cuts her off, laughs aloud something sprawling and obnoxious and Jo’s a little girl, but she’s got quick fists and a sharp tongue. She clenches her fingers at her sides though, and tries to remember her mother’s lectures on classy girls with clever words.
“Look,” she says, and she puts her hands on her hips, tightens lips and squints her eyes. “Through Silver in Blood is just-”
“Seriously,” and the guy rocks back, all dyed pink hair and a lightning bolt nose stud, “shut the fuck up, Jo. Neurosis is fucking pretentious. I mean like, Pain Of Mind and The Word As Law? I thought I was fucking listening to like, the same album.”
“I should shut the fuck up?” Jo‘s screechy when she‘s pissed off and PMS-ing and tired and she breathes out too hard, shoots the guy a glare and evens her tone. “Paulie, you’re the ass who clearly has no fucking clue what he’s talking about. Neurosis fucking, like, embodies the death metal movement. Those riffs are fucking,” and she waves her arms, raises her eyebrows and bites her lip, “orgasmic.”
A few of the guys laugh and the pink haired one, he sneers, leans forward to say something derogatory, but a heavy alto thrums behind them, a steady, “Neurosis?”
Jo turns on her heel to a short, curvy girl with red hair hidden beneath a baseball cap and an Abbey Road t-shirt pulling over big breasts and a little belly. She quirks a brow. “You know Neurosis?”
“Fuck, they only like…” The girl flashes a grin. “What was it you said? Embody the death metal movement?”
“Jesus,” one of the guy’s mutters, and Jo turns around to sneer something back, but the other girl’s beaten her to it. She sways a little on the spot, is holding a stack of CDs that she shifts from hand to hand and says, “Fuck off, seriously, their music is fucking malicious, like, the riffs are almost primal.”
Jo laughs aloud, nods quickly and her blonde curls bounce in their place. “Exactly, it’s like, ‘welcome to the jungle’ only entirely in ferocious drum beats and guitar riffs that are like,” and she throws her arms up again, eyes wide and grin sprawling across her face, “like fucking lions. Kings of the jungle.”
The other chick laughs and one of the guy’s slurs out a, “hey, maybe you should both go make out,” but Jo just flips him off, wanders closer to the girl and holds out a hand.
“Jo,” she says, and the other girl nods, smiles, says, “Patricia,” and that’s that.
*
Unofficially, once upon a time happens with eighteen year-old Peyton, who isn’t so much the blonde, fairy-tale princess as she is the chick in the back of the classroom, dreadlocks down to her ass and eyebrow, lip, nose, nipple piercings. She’s B-cup bra size and size 4 hips in size 12 jeans. What’s important? Right now Peyton embodies teenage awkwardness, the gangly in-betweens. What’s more important? She is not pretty.
Sleazy pubs are the fairytale castles and Racetraitor, Arma Angelus are the bands of singing animals and Peyton screams her way through puberty. Somewhere, somehow, Andrea Hurley saves her life.
Neither will ever remember the details, but maybe that’s not important, maybe that’s the fine print. What matters is Peyton has never had anyone that she wants around that much.
Andrea is made up of sharp tongue, moral compass and slutty tendencies. Andrea is made of a ferocious loyalty that Peyton would back in a fight and a sort of faith that Peyton won‘t ever think she deserves.
*
Unofficially, there’s fifteen-year-old Jo at a hardcore gig in one of Chicago’s underground bars. Fuck knows how she got there, but Peyton isn’t likely to care, not when she’s just finished a set, is buzzing her way to the bar, all vibrating energy that freefalls from her pores, from her open mouth.
Jo’s waiting by the bar, all wide eyes and stuttering lips and Peyton slides in next to her, languid movement and painted smile. Peyton is not seventeen anymore.
“I…” Jo falters, swallows too hard and rubs a hand through curly, dark hair. “You are-”
“A lot of things,” Peyton finishes, grins harder. She orders a diet coke, props herself up on the counter just enough to give the barman a look down her top. “I left my purse in my car,” she says, and the barman grins, grabs a glass from beneath the counter and fills it. He’s good-looking, young and lean and Peyton flashes teeth, pushes herself up again, and squeezes her arms against her breasts to give herself more cleavage than she has.
Jo fumbles with her bag, puts a few dollars on the counter, enough to pay and Peyton laughs aloud, turns to look properly at Jo, size her up. “Fuck,” she says and Jo flushes fuchsia, tries for a grin and she gets lucky, because it’s a rare occurrence that Peyton knows forever when she sees it.
*
Officially, Patricia is all awkward size and shape and breadth. She has a belly and boobs and a butt, none of which is a size 6. She has glasses and shoulder-length blonde-red hair that’s hidden beneath cap, fedora, bandana, hat. Patricia’s a real girl who eats three meals a day and feels the toll on her waistline. Insecurities, she figures, are boring (but then again, so is she).
There’s a sharp rap on the door, and she pulls it open to miles of tattooed, tanned skin, to an hourglass on legs - apple bottom and handful breasts, to blowjob lips and bedroom eyes, to short dark hair that curls around her ears, sticks around her neck. Peyton Wentz looks like she walked off a centerfold and Trish always knew that, has been to Arma gigs, but that doesn’t make it, this, any less of a sucker punch.
Peyton’s eyes widen, and a smile tugs at her lips. She looks Trish up and down, sketches her out and Trish has never felt more exposed, is only used to this from the girls at school.
“Okay, okay,” Peyton says, and her voice doesn’t match her body, isn’t out to seduce, is just sort of nasally and awkwardly deep. “I’m like, I’m hardly the fashion police or whatever fucking Cosmogirl calls it, but seriously, what the fuck are you wearing?”
And okay, so argyle sweaters were never in, and maybe shorts and black knee socks were a bad choice, but, still. Trish flushes, fumbles over words, and she can’t really stop herself, can’t shove down the part of her that is all bad impulse control and gut, and she slaps Peyton across the face.
“Right.” There’s a red mark across Peyton’s left cheek which imbalances her, ruins the symmetry. She touches a hand to it, bites her lip and grins. “Deserving?”
“You think?” And Trish hadn’t seen Jo, who’s shoving Peyton to the side and poking her head around the corner, is all smiles and blue eyes and the sort of welcoming that Trish was maybe sort of hoping for from Peyton.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,”
“Ignore her, Trish.” Jo’s shoved her foot in the door, pulled herself in. “Someone dropped a bottle of hair bleach on her as a baby, it soaked through her skull and killed whatever brain cells she was born with.”
Peyton laughs, quirks a brow. “Says the only peroxide blonde in the room.”
Jo’s grin is lightning fast, and she puts her hands on her hips, says, “Hey, if you can rock it.”
Trish isn’t sure what to think, but Peyton’s already leaning in too close, enough that Trish can smell perfume, deodorant and sweat, can smell whatever it is that’s just Peyton, not anyone else. Peyton moves fast, is pulling the hat from her head and smiling. “See, better already.”
Trish snatches it back, slams it on her head. “Fuck off, seriously.”
“Feisty!” And Peyton widens her eyes dramatically, bites her lip to suppress a grin and Jo rolls her baby blues. “Peyton, Trish,” she says. “Trish, Peyton.”
“Jo tells me you’re amazing,” Peyton says, and she smirks, this condescending thing that tugs at her lips and Trish hates this girl already, loathes her. “Prove it.”
*
So, Peyton’s a bitch.
They watch Trish drum and Peyton’s tapping her foot along to the beat and when Trish finishes, Peyton says, “We don’t really need a drummer, what else you got?”
“Fuck off, Peyton, we totally need a drummer.”
“Nah,” and Peyton flashes a toothy grin, “you play anything else?”
“Guitar,” Trish says, and she can hear Jo huff somewhere in the background, but all she can see is Peyton, can’t take her eyes off the way she’s collapsed into the back of the sofa. The way Peyton just stares back with half-lidded eyes and parted lips and looking totally debauched and Trish flushes, chokes on something that sits too heavy in her throat.
“Good,” Peyton says, and she gestures with one wrist. “Go on, wow me.”
Trish grabs the guitar from the side of the room and pulls it onto her lap, thrums a few chords and takes a too-deep breath from lungs that can’t handle the strain right now. Starts to strum her way through Saves the Day, Through Being Cool and she doesn’t know when she starts singing, but she does, clenches her eyes shut and tries to mean it.
When she opens her eyes again, she’s surprised to see Peyton sitting hunched on the edge of the sofa, eyes no longer half-lidded and her lips clenched together.
Jo’s suddenly in her headspace though, right in front of Trish and slamming her into a hug. “Fuck off! You didn’t tell me you could sing like that!”
“What?” Trish starts, but Jo’s all wide, cool eyes and unfiltered smiles, hair bouncing as she jumps on the spot, pulls Trish’s guitar to the floor and slams her into a full-body wrap. “Jesus Christ!”
When Jo lets go later, Peyton will be smiling and laughing, teasing Jo, and throwing an arm around Trish’s neck. “Fuck,” Peyton says, and laughs again, a deep, throaty sound that bounces off the walls of Trish’s skull. “Our golden ticket, Jo, and she’s short, round and sings like Aretha Fucking Franklin.”
Trish isn’t sure whether to be offended or not, but Peyton’s pressing in closer, breathing down her neck and her eyes are solid, unwavering, and Trish will feel them on her hours after Peyton’s left.
*
Peyton falls in and out of love with everyone, falls in love with moments and ideas and words, with voices and the people that have them.
She falls in love with this kid, who isn’t just the golden ticket, but the entire goddamn chocolate factory.
*
Arma Angelus is not…unknown. On a larger scale, internationally, maybe, but in Chicago it doesn’t matter if you’re into hardcore or not, if you know shit all about the music scene, you know who they are, or, more specifically, you know who Peyton Wentz is.
Trish always knew, because she fell into infatuation somewhere between songs at a gig six months back, and she’s not gay, but she crushes on yells and moans and a body made for sin. Fell into something with someone she knew nothing about.
*
“Sorry Peyton was a bitch.” But really, Trish thinks, Jo only looks half sorry (if that).
“Seriously,” Jo says, “she’s fucking insane or something. Awesome, but insane. I think she’s on her rags too, so yeah. You caught her on a bad day.” Jo shrugs her shoulders and crinkles her nose, but she’s grinning something fierce and maybe it’s infectious, because Trish can feel herself smiling back.
“Whatever,” she says, “she’s, yeah. Whatever.”
Jo sort of looks like she’s going to say something back, but she stops herself, purses her lips for a second and stands up instead, throws her backpack over her shoulder. “I should probably go home,” Jo says. “If I break curfew, my dad goes crazy. He starts to try and give me another ‘safe sex is no sex‘ talk and like, I‘ve had more of those than The Beatles had LSD trips.”
“Really?”
Jo just shrugs, but she’s smiling still and Trish stretches on the sofa, waves goodbye as Jo heads down the hall.
“Hey,” Trish yells, just before Jo lets herself out. Jo turns around, eyebrows high, inquiring and hair bobbing with the breeze from the open door. “This mean I’m in the band?”
There’s a fresh smile bleeding over Jo’s pale face and she calls back, “You tell me!” and Trish, she just grins.
*
Band practice is Peyton, Jo, Trish and the flavor of the day: a million young, old, good, bad, boy, girl, black, white, Asian, whatever musicians that stand in, audition, try out and Trish doesn’t hate all of them, but doesn’t love any. The feeling seems to be universal.
“Dude,” Jo says, and she’s sprawled over the sofa, sweaty and beat from throwing herself around the make-shift practice area for three hours. “Why is everyone a dick?”
Peyton shrugs, throws her bass onto the pile of guitars and drumsticks, music books and sweaters, and wanders over, falls on top of Jo.
“You’re crushing my boobs, babe.”
Peyton mumbles something unintelligible, moves her body so she flattens Jo more and Trish laughs at Jo’s moan, at Peyton’s rolling giggles. “Fuck,” Peyton says, and she’s arching up backwards, torso up, legs still intertwined with Jo’s. “What time is it?”
Trish checks her watch. “Ten to nine.”
“Fuck.” Peyton bolts upright, moves off of Jo and grabs her backpack off the floor. “I’m gonna head to Morgan’s.”
Jo sighs and Trish, she holds her tongue.
*
“What’s the deal with Morgan?” Because it’s been three weeks and Peyton never really hung out that much after practice (popularity is a foreign concept to Trish), but lately she hardly makes it to the end of the rehearsal.
“Morgan?” Jo asks, and they’re sitting in the parking lot of a McDonalds, eating bad fries and flipping off the guys who call out shit like ‘dykes’ or ‘lesbos’ because Trish’s short fuse is only functioning when the fight is half worth it.
“Yeah, like, brother or-“
“Boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
Jo nods, rocks back on the sidewalk. “Boyfriend.”
“Okay,” Trish says, and she leans back as well, scrunches the fries packet up in her fist and throws it at the trashcan a few meters off. She misses. “Is he like, a good guy or whatever?”
Jo makes a noise like a buzzer from a game show and says, “Sorry, miss, you only have two lifelines left. Would you like to phone a friend or ask the audience?”
Trish shrugs, “Asshole?”
“Yep.”
“Okay,” Trish says, and that’s that because there’s only so much Jo will say and Trish doesn’t want to push.
*
Trish doesn’t make a habit of being early to practice, but Jo couldn’t pick her up today and her mom said she’d drop her off if she went then and fuck, Trish would rather be early than catch the bus again.
They all have keys to the rehearsal space, and as she gets closer she pulls them out of her pocket, fumbles until she finds the right one. There are noises, bangs and crashes behind the door that make her stop in her tracks and fuck, Trish thinks, because she’s had a shit morning already and if they’re being robbed she’s pretty sure her cell phone is out of battery.
She reaches out for the handle and it isn’t locked, she just has to jiggle it a bit and it falls open like Paris Hilton’s legs.
As she gets in, something’s thrown against the wall and Trish has to cry out, yell when she’s met with Peyton’s skinny form, heavy and angry and intense in ways that Trish isn’t used to. She mustn’t see her, hear her, because when Peyton paces back to the wall, she slams her fist into the plaster hard enough to leave a mark and Trish doesn’t move, just stands, fingers jittering and Jesus, she thinks, because this is the sorta shit you see in movies. In melodramas and tragedies and Trish doesn’t think she’s old enough for this feature. She reaches out anyway though, grips Peyton by her skinny wrists and Peyton turns around in time to slam a fist into her belly.
She doubles over, hands wrapped around her waist because Peyton’s a bony fucker and minutes pass with Peyton’s heavy breath in her hair and her shaking fingers twitching in Trish’s line of sight and fine, whatever, because Peyton knows Trish has a short fuse and when she can stand up straight again, she decks Peyton straight in her pretty face.
“So like,” Trish heaves, “calm the fuck down.”
Peyton growls and suddenly she’s on her, clawing at her and yelling shit that Trish doesn’t even understand and Trish just, she’s younger but she’s bigger than Peyton, stronger too apparently, because she rolls over and pins Peyton beneath her too easily.
Peyton thrashes like a dog in a trap, like a kid getting a blood test and Trish, both her hands are caught up in keeping her pinned so she leans down and sinks her teeth into the flesh over Peyton’s collarbone and the girl goes still beneath her like, like, fuck, the dog, kid’s dead.
Maybe both their eyes widen, maybe time stops or music plays, Trish has no fucking clue, because all she knows is she has a mouthful of Peyton’s hot flesh and she’s choking on it like it’s bone, like it’s caught in her throat instead of between her teeth and she can feel Peyton’s breath in her hair, down her neck and suddenly she‘s hot all over like someone‘s bled summer beneath her skin.
Trish loosens her teeth, lets go and her eyelids flicker open (she hadn’t realized she’d closed them) and her teeth marks are over Peyton’s collarbone like a big, ugly love bite and fuck, that’s not, it’s not, they’re--
Peyton moans a little beneath her, writhes a little in a way that Trish has never, never felt or experienced or heard and the heat beneath her skin is tenfold, stuck over her hips, tight in her thighs and Peyton looks up with big, half-lidded eyes and wet parted lips that Trish almost -- She shakes her head, tries to, but Peyton tilts her hips enough to crash against Trish’s like cut glass. She still has Peyton’s wrists pinned, tight in her fingers, and Trish supposes there’ll be carpet burn (because of her, fuck) and she just, she can hardly suppress the urge to do, to, to do.
Peyton smells like sweet chili, like Mexican food and cheap perfume, like sex and too much pride and Trish feels hazy, nauseous to the pits of her belly and she won’t hurl, won’t cry and fuck, she won’t, won’t kiss her either, because-
“You’re staring.” The words are whispered, murmured between them and Trish’s blink feels heavy like a climax and when she looks back down at Peyton, it’s easy in a way it shouldn’t be.
“Sorry,” she mumbles and Peyton tries for a grin, but her breath just hitches again and she manages to get her hands loose, push Trish off just enough to let herself sit up and she says, “No, it was me and y’know. Sorry too. It’s not…I’ve had a shit day.”
Just as Trish smiles, because yeah, she gets that, the door crashes open and Jo tumbles in with two bags of Doritos and a bottle of soda. She takes one look at them both sprawled on the floor like an awkward afterglow and just quirks a grin.
“Jesus, you guys want like, some jello to wrestle in? Mud? It might take a few minutes to get together, but seriously-”
“Fuck off,” Trish says, but she’s grinning and Peyton jumps up, crash tackles Jo and it’s over. Just like that.
*
Trish starts to realize that the band has gone from hobby to soul-consuming when her prom blindsides her, crash tackles her from behind in a way that isn’t really all that flattering.
“Dude,” Jo says. “Seriously, how can you forget about your own prom?”
“I don’t know, I guess it just wasn’t something I was intending to go to?” At Jo’s quirked brow, she adds a, “Fuck off.”
“What changed?” Jo’s lying backwards on the bed, guitar in hand and she’s strumming out sounds, notes and chords and Trish tries to close her eyes and just listen, but prom is suddenly too many new kinds of distracting.
“A guy at school asked me to go with him.”
Trish doesn’t need to look over to know Jo’s sit herself up, is grinning, slow and languid. Trish is groping around for her laptop, dragging it onto her outstretched legs and starting up garage band.
“Did you say yes?”
“I said maybe.”
Jo makes a show of some big, dramatic sigh and she falls back onto the bed. “Fuck off, you have to go.”
“I don’t have to go anywhere.”
Jo rolls her eyes before rolling off the bed and falling onto the floor to pull the laptop from Trish’s steady fingers. “Trish, is this guy mentally retarded?”
Trish quirks a brow, leans back against the side of the bed. “No.”
“Okay, is he really fucking ugly?”
“No.”
“Is he an asshole?”
“Why did that come after the ugly thing, because seriously, I think this should matter more, and-”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” Jo, she purses her lips, raises both eyebrows and says, “So what’s the fucking problem?”
*
The thing is, it isn’t incentive and it isn’t motivation, isn’t blackmail or bribery, but that Friday night, Trish buys a dress, buys gloves and shoes and tries not to feel completely retarded when she brushes natural curls out of her hair, irons it flat and sticks it up with bobby pins and clips. She shaves her legs and paints her toenails and Jo helps her with her make-up because Trish wouldn’t trust her mom with a tube of lipstick, let alone an entire fucking face.
There’s a knock on the door somewhere between eyeliner and perfume, and Peyton tumbles through, all smiles and giggles and she’s brought alcohol and a necklace and herself and Trish rolls her eyes as Peyton falls through the door.
Trish is still in her underwear, in a strapless bra and seamless panties and Peyton stops dead in the doorway, sighs dramatically. “They grow up so fast.”
Jo laughs, and Trish quirks a smile, but she tightens her arms around her waist and Peyton throws the bottle of straight vodka down onto the bed, gropes around her bag and comes out brandishing tit tape.
“I feel like such a big sister,” Peyton says, and she leans over the bed, pulls some of the tape out of the dispenser and moves to sit by Trish. “Jo’s prom was at the beginning of the year, y’know? I got to run around with a camera, it was awesome.”
Peyton pulls out some of the tape, starts to press it down on the part of Trish where her breasts end and her chest begins, and her fingers, they maybe linger for moments more than they should and Trish tries to remember how to breathe. Tries not to pay attention to proximity, to how she can feel Peyton’s breath on her neck, the way it makes her skin crawl, tingle and vibrate with nervous energy. It wakes up nerve endings that Trish hadn’t even realized existed and it‘s not something she‘ll remember in a few hours.
“You’ll be so beautiful,” Peyton says, and she’s smiling, something deep and honest and it isn’t her normal, stupid, donkey smile. It’s soft and gentle and Trish would cry if she were the sort of girl that got off on fairytale romance.
“Peyton,” Jo drawls, and she’s grinning, pulling the dress off its hanger, “we’ve got like, ten minutes to get Trish into her dress and out the door. You should’ve gotten here an hour earlier if you wanted the deep and meaningful conversation.”
“Fuck, is it that late already?” Peyton eyes the clock on Trish’s bedside table and quirks a too wide grin. “I’ll give you the short one then.”
Peyton grabs the dress off Jo, unzips the back and holds it open for Trish to step into. “Use a condom, even if it’s just head coz, sweetie, if a guy has something, he won’t tell you. Drink to excess and there is nothing wrong with jacking a guy off beneath the dinner table unless it’s someone else’s boyfriend.”
“Classy, Peyton.”
She quirks a smile, flashes teeth. “I thought so.”
There’s a knock on the door and her mum creeps in, all smiles and happy wrinkles and she chokes out, “The boy’s here!” and Trish straightens up her dress, steps into stiletto heels and ignores Peyton’s eyes and Jo’s thumbs up and goes downstairs.
*
“Have you seen Dave?”
Susie shrugs, and her dress is too big in the shoulders, the sleeves slide down her arms like runoff after storms and Trish sighs, leaves Susie to Gavin and bad music.
Trish isn’t that into school dances, especially not when all the music thrumming out of the speakers is some retarded blend of bad r’n’b and waltzes from the forties. She sways though, lets her dress swish around her ankles and heads over to another girl, anyone that she knows, because Dave left to get her a drink twenty minutes ago, and sitting on the bleachers on her own, it isn’t fun and it isn’t particularly moving watching the rest of her year grind their way to teen pregnancy and syphilis.
She wanders over to the other side of the hall, falls in between impassioned kisses and groping hands and it doesn‘t take her long to see Dave, with his fingers up another girls skirt and she’s moaning like a two-dollar whore and okay, Trish thinks. Okay.
It doesn’t stop it hurting, not when Dave had opened the door for her, and laughed at her jokes all night and been nothing but nice, kind and thoughtful. It doesn’t stop that space in her chest contorting, twisting under pressure and Trish blinks back tears because she’s stronger than this most of the time, but tonight, it’s meant to be magic.
She’s staggering out of the hall and bolting for fresh air, heaving open the gym doors and breathing in the outside like she’s drowning, chokes on oxygen and carbon dioxide and it strips her throat bare, leaves her cold and too isolated and she pulls her phone from her purse, dials Jo’s number and waits for the answer.
When there isn’t any, she hesitates for seconds, before dialing for Peyton. She picks up on the third ring.
Peyton’s yawn crackles over the line, and she says, “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, engaging in underage drunken antics right now?”
“Peyton, just,” Trish sniffles, breathing heavy and she‘s blinking back tears. “Can you pick me up like, like right now?”
“What, are you crying?” Peyton’s voice is instantly different and the change is a 180; Trish is used to mood swings, but not that note in Peyton’s steady alto that’s desperate and serious and attentive. “What’s wrong?”
“Just, just pick me up alright? I’m at school still.” And she hangs up.
Peyton’s there in twenty minutes, and Trish recognizes Peyton’s shitbox car, can hear the hum from the end of the street, the chugga-chugga-boom of the engine and Trish has taken off her shoes, is holding them in cold, tired fingers and swaying loosely to the music filtering through the windows of the school hall.
Peyton flings the door open, is staring with wide eyes and messy eyeliner, too many lashes and crap hair and Trish pulls herself into the front seat and lets Peyton drive them off, doesn’t ask questions when she pulls into a K-mart parking lot and brakes over three spots.
Trish can’t move, is staring at the floor, feeling puffy and stupid in her lilac dress and her stupid elbow gloves, but Peyton’s next to her in a pair of boxers and a too big t-shirt. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Peyton shrugs. “There are more important things.”
They stay up together all night and Trish doesn‘t say anything and Peyton doesn‘t push. When the frost bites at the windows and the car clock flashes three am, Peyton writes words in the condensation on the windscreen that eat Trish’s heart.
Somewhere between night and early morning sunrise, Trish starts to cry, chokes on sobs and tears and Peyton leans over, brushes some of Trish’s hair off her face, and presses in to wrap her arms around Trish‘s shoulders.
“High school’s not forever,” she says, “and the guys there don’t know Prince Charming from Mr. T.”
“Yeah?” Trish says, and Peyton nods, smiles and drives Trish home.
*
Continue.
R. FOBgirlverse. Trish/Peyton.
Written for Bandombigbang. 22,533 words.
Brilliant art and fanmix here.
The interviewer is pretty fucking generic; big, blonde curls and blue eyes that sparkle less with life and more with the glint of the stage lights, with her pay check at the end of the week.
“Is there any like, irony I guess, in the band name? I mean, Fall Out Boy is a pretty interesting title given your line-up.”
She holds out the microphone and lets loose a blinding smile, showing rows of bleached teeth. Peyton quirks a brow, a grin, and leans forward into it to speak.
“Not really. We were stuck for a name and someone at one of our early gigs watched too many episodes of The Simpsons. It wasn’t deliberate, but, y‘know, nothing in this band has been.”
*
Officially, it starts with Jo.
Or, more specifically, it starts with sixteen-year-old Josephine Trohman, who’s all cropped, bleached hair and big breasts, baby fat and braces and crazy blue eyes.
It starts at Borders.
“No,” Jo says, and her voice is sorta nasally, that awkward sort of loud that bounds off the wall and sucker punches the unexpecting. “No, seriously, Neurosis is-”
“Fucking gay,“ one of the guy’s cuts her off, laughs aloud something sprawling and obnoxious and Jo’s a little girl, but she’s got quick fists and a sharp tongue. She clenches her fingers at her sides though, and tries to remember her mother’s lectures on classy girls with clever words.
“Look,” she says, and she puts her hands on her hips, tightens lips and squints her eyes. “Through Silver in Blood is just-”
“Seriously,” and the guy rocks back, all dyed pink hair and a lightning bolt nose stud, “shut the fuck up, Jo. Neurosis is fucking pretentious. I mean like, Pain Of Mind and The Word As Law? I thought I was fucking listening to like, the same album.”
“I should shut the fuck up?” Jo‘s screechy when she‘s pissed off and PMS-ing and tired and she breathes out too hard, shoots the guy a glare and evens her tone. “Paulie, you’re the ass who clearly has no fucking clue what he’s talking about. Neurosis fucking, like, embodies the death metal movement. Those riffs are fucking,” and she waves her arms, raises her eyebrows and bites her lip, “orgasmic.”
A few of the guys laugh and the pink haired one, he sneers, leans forward to say something derogatory, but a heavy alto thrums behind them, a steady, “Neurosis?”
Jo turns on her heel to a short, curvy girl with red hair hidden beneath a baseball cap and an Abbey Road t-shirt pulling over big breasts and a little belly. She quirks a brow. “You know Neurosis?”
“Fuck, they only like…” The girl flashes a grin. “What was it you said? Embody the death metal movement?”
“Jesus,” one of the guy’s mutters, and Jo turns around to sneer something back, but the other girl’s beaten her to it. She sways a little on the spot, is holding a stack of CDs that she shifts from hand to hand and says, “Fuck off, seriously, their music is fucking malicious, like, the riffs are almost primal.”
Jo laughs aloud, nods quickly and her blonde curls bounce in their place. “Exactly, it’s like, ‘welcome to the jungle’ only entirely in ferocious drum beats and guitar riffs that are like,” and she throws her arms up again, eyes wide and grin sprawling across her face, “like fucking lions. Kings of the jungle.”
The other chick laughs and one of the guy’s slurs out a, “hey, maybe you should both go make out,” but Jo just flips him off, wanders closer to the girl and holds out a hand.
“Jo,” she says, and the other girl nods, smiles, says, “Patricia,” and that’s that.
*
Unofficially, once upon a time happens with eighteen year-old Peyton, who isn’t so much the blonde, fairy-tale princess as she is the chick in the back of the classroom, dreadlocks down to her ass and eyebrow, lip, nose, nipple piercings. She’s B-cup bra size and size 4 hips in size 12 jeans. What’s important? Right now Peyton embodies teenage awkwardness, the gangly in-betweens. What’s more important? She is not pretty.
Sleazy pubs are the fairytale castles and Racetraitor, Arma Angelus are the bands of singing animals and Peyton screams her way through puberty. Somewhere, somehow, Andrea Hurley saves her life.
Neither will ever remember the details, but maybe that’s not important, maybe that’s the fine print. What matters is Peyton has never had anyone that she wants around that much.
Andrea is made up of sharp tongue, moral compass and slutty tendencies. Andrea is made of a ferocious loyalty that Peyton would back in a fight and a sort of faith that Peyton won‘t ever think she deserves.
*
Unofficially, there’s fifteen-year-old Jo at a hardcore gig in one of Chicago’s underground bars. Fuck knows how she got there, but Peyton isn’t likely to care, not when she’s just finished a set, is buzzing her way to the bar, all vibrating energy that freefalls from her pores, from her open mouth.
Jo’s waiting by the bar, all wide eyes and stuttering lips and Peyton slides in next to her, languid movement and painted smile. Peyton is not seventeen anymore.
“I…” Jo falters, swallows too hard and rubs a hand through curly, dark hair. “You are-”
“A lot of things,” Peyton finishes, grins harder. She orders a diet coke, props herself up on the counter just enough to give the barman a look down her top. “I left my purse in my car,” she says, and the barman grins, grabs a glass from beneath the counter and fills it. He’s good-looking, young and lean and Peyton flashes teeth, pushes herself up again, and squeezes her arms against her breasts to give herself more cleavage than she has.
Jo fumbles with her bag, puts a few dollars on the counter, enough to pay and Peyton laughs aloud, turns to look properly at Jo, size her up. “Fuck,” she says and Jo flushes fuchsia, tries for a grin and she gets lucky, because it’s a rare occurrence that Peyton knows forever when she sees it.
*
Officially, Patricia is all awkward size and shape and breadth. She has a belly and boobs and a butt, none of which is a size 6. She has glasses and shoulder-length blonde-red hair that’s hidden beneath cap, fedora, bandana, hat. Patricia’s a real girl who eats three meals a day and feels the toll on her waistline. Insecurities, she figures, are boring (but then again, so is she).
There’s a sharp rap on the door, and she pulls it open to miles of tattooed, tanned skin, to an hourglass on legs - apple bottom and handful breasts, to blowjob lips and bedroom eyes, to short dark hair that curls around her ears, sticks around her neck. Peyton Wentz looks like she walked off a centerfold and Trish always knew that, has been to Arma gigs, but that doesn’t make it, this, any less of a sucker punch.
Peyton’s eyes widen, and a smile tugs at her lips. She looks Trish up and down, sketches her out and Trish has never felt more exposed, is only used to this from the girls at school.
“Okay, okay,” Peyton says, and her voice doesn’t match her body, isn’t out to seduce, is just sort of nasally and awkwardly deep. “I’m like, I’m hardly the fashion police or whatever fucking Cosmogirl calls it, but seriously, what the fuck are you wearing?”
And okay, so argyle sweaters were never in, and maybe shorts and black knee socks were a bad choice, but, still. Trish flushes, fumbles over words, and she can’t really stop herself, can’t shove down the part of her that is all bad impulse control and gut, and she slaps Peyton across the face.
“Right.” There’s a red mark across Peyton’s left cheek which imbalances her, ruins the symmetry. She touches a hand to it, bites her lip and grins. “Deserving?”
“You think?” And Trish hadn’t seen Jo, who’s shoving Peyton to the side and poking her head around the corner, is all smiles and blue eyes and the sort of welcoming that Trish was maybe sort of hoping for from Peyton.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,”
“Ignore her, Trish.” Jo’s shoved her foot in the door, pulled herself in. “Someone dropped a bottle of hair bleach on her as a baby, it soaked through her skull and killed whatever brain cells she was born with.”
Peyton laughs, quirks a brow. “Says the only peroxide blonde in the room.”
Jo’s grin is lightning fast, and she puts her hands on her hips, says, “Hey, if you can rock it.”
Trish isn’t sure what to think, but Peyton’s already leaning in too close, enough that Trish can smell perfume, deodorant and sweat, can smell whatever it is that’s just Peyton, not anyone else. Peyton moves fast, is pulling the hat from her head and smiling. “See, better already.”
Trish snatches it back, slams it on her head. “Fuck off, seriously.”
“Feisty!” And Peyton widens her eyes dramatically, bites her lip to suppress a grin and Jo rolls her baby blues. “Peyton, Trish,” she says. “Trish, Peyton.”
“Jo tells me you’re amazing,” Peyton says, and she smirks, this condescending thing that tugs at her lips and Trish hates this girl already, loathes her. “Prove it.”
*
So, Peyton’s a bitch.
They watch Trish drum and Peyton’s tapping her foot along to the beat and when Trish finishes, Peyton says, “We don’t really need a drummer, what else you got?”
“Fuck off, Peyton, we totally need a drummer.”
“Nah,” and Peyton flashes a toothy grin, “you play anything else?”
“Guitar,” Trish says, and she can hear Jo huff somewhere in the background, but all she can see is Peyton, can’t take her eyes off the way she’s collapsed into the back of the sofa. The way Peyton just stares back with half-lidded eyes and parted lips and looking totally debauched and Trish flushes, chokes on something that sits too heavy in her throat.
“Good,” Peyton says, and she gestures with one wrist. “Go on, wow me.”
Trish grabs the guitar from the side of the room and pulls it onto her lap, thrums a few chords and takes a too-deep breath from lungs that can’t handle the strain right now. Starts to strum her way through Saves the Day, Through Being Cool and she doesn’t know when she starts singing, but she does, clenches her eyes shut and tries to mean it.
When she opens her eyes again, she’s surprised to see Peyton sitting hunched on the edge of the sofa, eyes no longer half-lidded and her lips clenched together.
Jo’s suddenly in her headspace though, right in front of Trish and slamming her into a hug. “Fuck off! You didn’t tell me you could sing like that!”
“What?” Trish starts, but Jo’s all wide, cool eyes and unfiltered smiles, hair bouncing as she jumps on the spot, pulls Trish’s guitar to the floor and slams her into a full-body wrap. “Jesus Christ!”
When Jo lets go later, Peyton will be smiling and laughing, teasing Jo, and throwing an arm around Trish’s neck. “Fuck,” Peyton says, and laughs again, a deep, throaty sound that bounces off the walls of Trish’s skull. “Our golden ticket, Jo, and she’s short, round and sings like Aretha Fucking Franklin.”
Trish isn’t sure whether to be offended or not, but Peyton’s pressing in closer, breathing down her neck and her eyes are solid, unwavering, and Trish will feel them on her hours after Peyton’s left.
*
Peyton falls in and out of love with everyone, falls in love with moments and ideas and words, with voices and the people that have them.
She falls in love with this kid, who isn’t just the golden ticket, but the entire goddamn chocolate factory.
*
Arma Angelus is not…unknown. On a larger scale, internationally, maybe, but in Chicago it doesn’t matter if you’re into hardcore or not, if you know shit all about the music scene, you know who they are, or, more specifically, you know who Peyton Wentz is.
Trish always knew, because she fell into infatuation somewhere between songs at a gig six months back, and she’s not gay, but she crushes on yells and moans and a body made for sin. Fell into something with someone she knew nothing about.
*
“Sorry Peyton was a bitch.” But really, Trish thinks, Jo only looks half sorry (if that).
“Seriously,” Jo says, “she’s fucking insane or something. Awesome, but insane. I think she’s on her rags too, so yeah. You caught her on a bad day.” Jo shrugs her shoulders and crinkles her nose, but she’s grinning something fierce and maybe it’s infectious, because Trish can feel herself smiling back.
“Whatever,” she says, “she’s, yeah. Whatever.”
Jo sort of looks like she’s going to say something back, but she stops herself, purses her lips for a second and stands up instead, throws her backpack over her shoulder. “I should probably go home,” Jo says. “If I break curfew, my dad goes crazy. He starts to try and give me another ‘safe sex is no sex‘ talk and like, I‘ve had more of those than The Beatles had LSD trips.”
“Really?”
Jo just shrugs, but she’s smiling still and Trish stretches on the sofa, waves goodbye as Jo heads down the hall.
“Hey,” Trish yells, just before Jo lets herself out. Jo turns around, eyebrows high, inquiring and hair bobbing with the breeze from the open door. “This mean I’m in the band?”
There’s a fresh smile bleeding over Jo’s pale face and she calls back, “You tell me!” and Trish, she just grins.
*
Band practice is Peyton, Jo, Trish and the flavor of the day: a million young, old, good, bad, boy, girl, black, white, Asian, whatever musicians that stand in, audition, try out and Trish doesn’t hate all of them, but doesn’t love any. The feeling seems to be universal.
“Dude,” Jo says, and she’s sprawled over the sofa, sweaty and beat from throwing herself around the make-shift practice area for three hours. “Why is everyone a dick?”
Peyton shrugs, throws her bass onto the pile of guitars and drumsticks, music books and sweaters, and wanders over, falls on top of Jo.
“You’re crushing my boobs, babe.”
Peyton mumbles something unintelligible, moves her body so she flattens Jo more and Trish laughs at Jo’s moan, at Peyton’s rolling giggles. “Fuck,” Peyton says, and she’s arching up backwards, torso up, legs still intertwined with Jo’s. “What time is it?”
Trish checks her watch. “Ten to nine.”
“Fuck.” Peyton bolts upright, moves off of Jo and grabs her backpack off the floor. “I’m gonna head to Morgan’s.”
Jo sighs and Trish, she holds her tongue.
*
“What’s the deal with Morgan?” Because it’s been three weeks and Peyton never really hung out that much after practice (popularity is a foreign concept to Trish), but lately she hardly makes it to the end of the rehearsal.
“Morgan?” Jo asks, and they’re sitting in the parking lot of a McDonalds, eating bad fries and flipping off the guys who call out shit like ‘dykes’ or ‘lesbos’ because Trish’s short fuse is only functioning when the fight is half worth it.
“Yeah, like, brother or-“
“Boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
Jo nods, rocks back on the sidewalk. “Boyfriend.”
“Okay,” Trish says, and she leans back as well, scrunches the fries packet up in her fist and throws it at the trashcan a few meters off. She misses. “Is he like, a good guy or whatever?”
Jo makes a noise like a buzzer from a game show and says, “Sorry, miss, you only have two lifelines left. Would you like to phone a friend or ask the audience?”
Trish shrugs, “Asshole?”
“Yep.”
“Okay,” Trish says, and that’s that because there’s only so much Jo will say and Trish doesn’t want to push.
*
Trish doesn’t make a habit of being early to practice, but Jo couldn’t pick her up today and her mom said she’d drop her off if she went then and fuck, Trish would rather be early than catch the bus again.
They all have keys to the rehearsal space, and as she gets closer she pulls them out of her pocket, fumbles until she finds the right one. There are noises, bangs and crashes behind the door that make her stop in her tracks and fuck, Trish thinks, because she’s had a shit morning already and if they’re being robbed she’s pretty sure her cell phone is out of battery.
She reaches out for the handle and it isn’t locked, she just has to jiggle it a bit and it falls open like Paris Hilton’s legs.
As she gets in, something’s thrown against the wall and Trish has to cry out, yell when she’s met with Peyton’s skinny form, heavy and angry and intense in ways that Trish isn’t used to. She mustn’t see her, hear her, because when Peyton paces back to the wall, she slams her fist into the plaster hard enough to leave a mark and Trish doesn’t move, just stands, fingers jittering and Jesus, she thinks, because this is the sorta shit you see in movies. In melodramas and tragedies and Trish doesn’t think she’s old enough for this feature. She reaches out anyway though, grips Peyton by her skinny wrists and Peyton turns around in time to slam a fist into her belly.
She doubles over, hands wrapped around her waist because Peyton’s a bony fucker and minutes pass with Peyton’s heavy breath in her hair and her shaking fingers twitching in Trish’s line of sight and fine, whatever, because Peyton knows Trish has a short fuse and when she can stand up straight again, she decks Peyton straight in her pretty face.
“So like,” Trish heaves, “calm the fuck down.”
Peyton growls and suddenly she’s on her, clawing at her and yelling shit that Trish doesn’t even understand and Trish just, she’s younger but she’s bigger than Peyton, stronger too apparently, because she rolls over and pins Peyton beneath her too easily.
Peyton thrashes like a dog in a trap, like a kid getting a blood test and Trish, both her hands are caught up in keeping her pinned so she leans down and sinks her teeth into the flesh over Peyton’s collarbone and the girl goes still beneath her like, like, fuck, the dog, kid’s dead.
Maybe both their eyes widen, maybe time stops or music plays, Trish has no fucking clue, because all she knows is she has a mouthful of Peyton’s hot flesh and she’s choking on it like it’s bone, like it’s caught in her throat instead of between her teeth and she can feel Peyton’s breath in her hair, down her neck and suddenly she‘s hot all over like someone‘s bled summer beneath her skin.
Trish loosens her teeth, lets go and her eyelids flicker open (she hadn’t realized she’d closed them) and her teeth marks are over Peyton’s collarbone like a big, ugly love bite and fuck, that’s not, it’s not, they’re--
Peyton moans a little beneath her, writhes a little in a way that Trish has never, never felt or experienced or heard and the heat beneath her skin is tenfold, stuck over her hips, tight in her thighs and Peyton looks up with big, half-lidded eyes and wet parted lips that Trish almost -- She shakes her head, tries to, but Peyton tilts her hips enough to crash against Trish’s like cut glass. She still has Peyton’s wrists pinned, tight in her fingers, and Trish supposes there’ll be carpet burn (because of her, fuck) and she just, she can hardly suppress the urge to do, to, to do.
Peyton smells like sweet chili, like Mexican food and cheap perfume, like sex and too much pride and Trish feels hazy, nauseous to the pits of her belly and she won’t hurl, won’t cry and fuck, she won’t, won’t kiss her either, because-
“You’re staring.” The words are whispered, murmured between them and Trish’s blink feels heavy like a climax and when she looks back down at Peyton, it’s easy in a way it shouldn’t be.
“Sorry,” she mumbles and Peyton tries for a grin, but her breath just hitches again and she manages to get her hands loose, push Trish off just enough to let herself sit up and she says, “No, it was me and y’know. Sorry too. It’s not…I’ve had a shit day.”
Just as Trish smiles, because yeah, she gets that, the door crashes open and Jo tumbles in with two bags of Doritos and a bottle of soda. She takes one look at them both sprawled on the floor like an awkward afterglow and just quirks a grin.
“Jesus, you guys want like, some jello to wrestle in? Mud? It might take a few minutes to get together, but seriously-”
“Fuck off,” Trish says, but she’s grinning and Peyton jumps up, crash tackles Jo and it’s over. Just like that.
*
Trish starts to realize that the band has gone from hobby to soul-consuming when her prom blindsides her, crash tackles her from behind in a way that isn’t really all that flattering.
“Dude,” Jo says. “Seriously, how can you forget about your own prom?”
“I don’t know, I guess it just wasn’t something I was intending to go to?” At Jo’s quirked brow, she adds a, “Fuck off.”
“What changed?” Jo’s lying backwards on the bed, guitar in hand and she’s strumming out sounds, notes and chords and Trish tries to close her eyes and just listen, but prom is suddenly too many new kinds of distracting.
“A guy at school asked me to go with him.”
Trish doesn’t need to look over to know Jo’s sit herself up, is grinning, slow and languid. Trish is groping around for her laptop, dragging it onto her outstretched legs and starting up garage band.
“Did you say yes?”
“I said maybe.”
Jo makes a show of some big, dramatic sigh and she falls back onto the bed. “Fuck off, you have to go.”
“I don’t have to go anywhere.”
Jo rolls her eyes before rolling off the bed and falling onto the floor to pull the laptop from Trish’s steady fingers. “Trish, is this guy mentally retarded?”
Trish quirks a brow, leans back against the side of the bed. “No.”
“Okay, is he really fucking ugly?”
“No.”
“Is he an asshole?”
“Why did that come after the ugly thing, because seriously, I think this should matter more, and-”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” Jo, she purses her lips, raises both eyebrows and says, “So what’s the fucking problem?”
*
The thing is, it isn’t incentive and it isn’t motivation, isn’t blackmail or bribery, but that Friday night, Trish buys a dress, buys gloves and shoes and tries not to feel completely retarded when she brushes natural curls out of her hair, irons it flat and sticks it up with bobby pins and clips. She shaves her legs and paints her toenails and Jo helps her with her make-up because Trish wouldn’t trust her mom with a tube of lipstick, let alone an entire fucking face.
There’s a knock on the door somewhere between eyeliner and perfume, and Peyton tumbles through, all smiles and giggles and she’s brought alcohol and a necklace and herself and Trish rolls her eyes as Peyton falls through the door.
Trish is still in her underwear, in a strapless bra and seamless panties and Peyton stops dead in the doorway, sighs dramatically. “They grow up so fast.”
Jo laughs, and Trish quirks a smile, but she tightens her arms around her waist and Peyton throws the bottle of straight vodka down onto the bed, gropes around her bag and comes out brandishing tit tape.
“I feel like such a big sister,” Peyton says, and she leans over the bed, pulls some of the tape out of the dispenser and moves to sit by Trish. “Jo’s prom was at the beginning of the year, y’know? I got to run around with a camera, it was awesome.”
Peyton pulls out some of the tape, starts to press it down on the part of Trish where her breasts end and her chest begins, and her fingers, they maybe linger for moments more than they should and Trish tries to remember how to breathe. Tries not to pay attention to proximity, to how she can feel Peyton’s breath on her neck, the way it makes her skin crawl, tingle and vibrate with nervous energy. It wakes up nerve endings that Trish hadn’t even realized existed and it‘s not something she‘ll remember in a few hours.
“You’ll be so beautiful,” Peyton says, and she’s smiling, something deep and honest and it isn’t her normal, stupid, donkey smile. It’s soft and gentle and Trish would cry if she were the sort of girl that got off on fairytale romance.
“Peyton,” Jo drawls, and she’s grinning, pulling the dress off its hanger, “we’ve got like, ten minutes to get Trish into her dress and out the door. You should’ve gotten here an hour earlier if you wanted the deep and meaningful conversation.”
“Fuck, is it that late already?” Peyton eyes the clock on Trish’s bedside table and quirks a too wide grin. “I’ll give you the short one then.”
Peyton grabs the dress off Jo, unzips the back and holds it open for Trish to step into. “Use a condom, even if it’s just head coz, sweetie, if a guy has something, he won’t tell you. Drink to excess and there is nothing wrong with jacking a guy off beneath the dinner table unless it’s someone else’s boyfriend.”
“Classy, Peyton.”
She quirks a smile, flashes teeth. “I thought so.”
There’s a knock on the door and her mum creeps in, all smiles and happy wrinkles and she chokes out, “The boy’s here!” and Trish straightens up her dress, steps into stiletto heels and ignores Peyton’s eyes and Jo’s thumbs up and goes downstairs.
*
“Have you seen Dave?”
Susie shrugs, and her dress is too big in the shoulders, the sleeves slide down her arms like runoff after storms and Trish sighs, leaves Susie to Gavin and bad music.
Trish isn’t that into school dances, especially not when all the music thrumming out of the speakers is some retarded blend of bad r’n’b and waltzes from the forties. She sways though, lets her dress swish around her ankles and heads over to another girl, anyone that she knows, because Dave left to get her a drink twenty minutes ago, and sitting on the bleachers on her own, it isn’t fun and it isn’t particularly moving watching the rest of her year grind their way to teen pregnancy and syphilis.
She wanders over to the other side of the hall, falls in between impassioned kisses and groping hands and it doesn‘t take her long to see Dave, with his fingers up another girls skirt and she’s moaning like a two-dollar whore and okay, Trish thinks. Okay.
It doesn’t stop it hurting, not when Dave had opened the door for her, and laughed at her jokes all night and been nothing but nice, kind and thoughtful. It doesn’t stop that space in her chest contorting, twisting under pressure and Trish blinks back tears because she’s stronger than this most of the time, but tonight, it’s meant to be magic.
She’s staggering out of the hall and bolting for fresh air, heaving open the gym doors and breathing in the outside like she’s drowning, chokes on oxygen and carbon dioxide and it strips her throat bare, leaves her cold and too isolated and she pulls her phone from her purse, dials Jo’s number and waits for the answer.
When there isn’t any, she hesitates for seconds, before dialing for Peyton. She picks up on the third ring.
Peyton’s yawn crackles over the line, and she says, “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, engaging in underage drunken antics right now?”
“Peyton, just,” Trish sniffles, breathing heavy and she‘s blinking back tears. “Can you pick me up like, like right now?”
“What, are you crying?” Peyton’s voice is instantly different and the change is a 180; Trish is used to mood swings, but not that note in Peyton’s steady alto that’s desperate and serious and attentive. “What’s wrong?”
“Just, just pick me up alright? I’m at school still.” And she hangs up.
Peyton’s there in twenty minutes, and Trish recognizes Peyton’s shitbox car, can hear the hum from the end of the street, the chugga-chugga-boom of the engine and Trish has taken off her shoes, is holding them in cold, tired fingers and swaying loosely to the music filtering through the windows of the school hall.
Peyton flings the door open, is staring with wide eyes and messy eyeliner, too many lashes and crap hair and Trish pulls herself into the front seat and lets Peyton drive them off, doesn’t ask questions when she pulls into a K-mart parking lot and brakes over three spots.
Trish can’t move, is staring at the floor, feeling puffy and stupid in her lilac dress and her stupid elbow gloves, but Peyton’s next to her in a pair of boxers and a too big t-shirt. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Peyton shrugs. “There are more important things.”
They stay up together all night and Trish doesn‘t say anything and Peyton doesn‘t push. When the frost bites at the windows and the car clock flashes three am, Peyton writes words in the condensation on the windscreen that eat Trish’s heart.
Somewhere between night and early morning sunrise, Trish starts to cry, chokes on sobs and tears and Peyton leans over, brushes some of Trish’s hair off her face, and presses in to wrap her arms around Trish‘s shoulders.
“High school’s not forever,” she says, “and the guys there don’t know Prince Charming from Mr. T.”
“Yeah?” Trish says, and Peyton nods, smiles and drives Trish home.
*
Continue.