It feels like stealing hearts

Ch3. Blow up dolls, butter chicken & Tour

-Noah-

“What the fuck isgoing through your brain right now, Jack?” I yelled at him as I pushed past him into his apartment, later that night. I had to blast Yellowcard through the studio, while finishing off Carter’s tattoo to stop me from practically stabbing her with the needle in rage.

“Hello to you too.” He spoke in a confused tone, closing the door as I stood there giving him a death glare. “What I have done, to wake the dragon?”

“You know exactly what you did! Did you really expect me to drop everything and come with you on tour and play fake girlfriend for 3 months?” My arms flung around in the air, while I expressed my rage.

“Oh that.” He looked down at the ground, his voice was so much lower than mine that I barely heard it.

“Yeah, fucking that Jack! I am not just someone you can order around.” Anger seeping through my voice with every word while Jack stared at me like a lost puppy. “We had a deal, one night that was it, so now it is your fault you lied to the record label TWICE and now you have to fix it.”

Before anything else could be said, I left making sure to slam the door myself.

~

I looked out the window down at the Baltimore streets, from the comfort of my bedroom window seat. I had happily kicked off the black pumps when I walked through the door 2 hours ago and changed into grey sweatpants, a loose purple tank top and pulled my hair into a messy bun. I took a sip of my lemon tea from my Harry Potter mug and looked back at my sketch book.

“Knock, Knock!” Sam’s voice came from the other side of my bedroom door, without waiting for a response he walked in, the smell of butter chicken followed him. “Dinner break for the artist.”

“I’ll eat later.”  I responded, looking back out the window at the cars passing by. We both knew I wouldn’t, so he put the bag of food at the end of the window seat and moved my legs so he could sit down with my legs across his lap.  Grabbing the bag, he pulled out a container of butter chicken and a spork.

“Open.” He ordered as he put rice and chicken onto the utensil. Rolling my eyes at Sam, I did as I was told. Here I was 22 years old and I am being fed like a baby. “Want to talk about it?” He asked while I chewed and shook my head.

“Nothing is wrong.” I responded once I had swallowed the delicious Indian food.

“I call bullshit.” Sam sighed, putting more food onto the spork only to eat himself and talk with a mouth full of food. “You have been sitting here for god knows how long, and your page is blank. That only happens when something is wrong.”

“It is just a drawing block.” I shrugged, still looking outside. “It happens to every artist.”

“In our 22 years, I have never known you to” His attempt at making me talk was suddenly interrupted by the door. “Eat.” He ordered me, before kissing my forehead, putting down the food and leaving to answer the door.

~

Jack had been waiting for the outside the store on the Monday morning, I  ignored him when he tried to talk to me, and was now going in the back entrance, seeing as he had been there every other morning since. It was now Wednesday. “You have to talk to him at some point.” Bear sighed, handing me a Starbucks mocha as he reached me at the front desk.

“No, I don’t.” I replied, going through my bookings for today and emails on the computer.

“You can’t just let him stand out there all day every day.” Bear pushed, his tone becoming annoyed.

“Yes, I can.” I picked up my coffee, and went over to my station to finish a sketch for a client I had coming in soon. While I was sketching, my phone made a chirping noise indicating I had a new twitter notification, picking my phone up from the desk, I saw that it was a tweet from Jack.

“@Thecolorwhorale I am going to wait out here, until you come out and listen to me. ~Jack”

Rolling my eyes at the lame attempt, I pulled up a new tweet and directed it at the rest of all time low.

“@alexalltimelow @riandawson @zackalltimelow Y’all need to bring the asshole outside the studio some blankets, a blow up doll and a tent, he will be waiting a while”

“Go out and talk to him.” Bear ordered me, as he read the tweet from behind. “Or just hear him out.”

“What did you do, Bear?” I sighed in irritation, whenever he says ‘just hear them out’ it means he has gotten involved. It was something I disliked about him.

“He came in on your lunch break yesterday and told me what he did. I know you aren’t happy with what happened, but if any part of you wants to go, you’ll still have your job here when you get back and I’ll still pay you, so there is nothing to worry about.”

“Why did you get involved?” I spoke, frustration laced through my voice.

“Why do you keep pushing everybody away?” He shot back, he knew he would win with that answer. Throwing my pencil down on my bench, I pushed past bear and walked outside to Jack.

“You need to leave, Barakat.” I cut to the chase, before he could even say hello. “I am not coming on the tour with you, don’t get my boss involved with this again and stay away.”

“I can’t do that, Noah.” He shrugged, I half expected the smirk to re appear on his face, but today it was nowhere to be found. “Why don’t you come with us? It doesn’t have to even be for the whole time, just for the first moth, then we can stage a break up, or we can just say you had to come back to work.”

“For some odd reason, the idea of spending even 3 days on a bus for 9 other horny men, doesn’t seem that appealing to me.” I rolled my eyes and folded my tattooed arms over my chest.

“Ella will be there too.” Jack tried, even then I must admit the idea of not being the only girl did win him some points. “Come on, do it for Ella who, if you don’t go will be stuck with the 9 other horny men.”

“Fine, you have one month with me Barakat, then I am leaving.” I snapped over the fact that I was giving in. “I am doing this for Ella so don’t get any ideas in your head. Also there will be rules to this thing.”

“Understood.” He saluted me, resulting in another eye roll from myself.

“Go home Jack, you are scaring the customers and smell worse than Zack’s socks after a gym session.” The smirk was back as he quickly leaned in and kissed my cheek before running away so I couldn’t yell at him.

~

“TOUR DAY, TOUR DAY, TOUR DAY” Were the words being screamed outside the door of my apartment, 2 weeks later at 6 am, closely followed by pounding on the door. Throwing the door open, with a scrawl on my face I was met with the click of a camera and Ella’s smiling face. “WE ARE GOING ON TOUR!”

“Scream it one more time and you won’t be.” I grumbled letting her into the apartment, as I continued to finish getting all my bits and pieces together.

“Come on, lighten up!” She laughed, spinning around my living room. “Ella and Noah, tattooing and photographing their way across the country.”

“It is 6 am, I am never awake this early on a Saturday.” I replied, scribbling a note on the bench for when Sam woke up.

“Neither are most sane people, but since when has it been fun to be sane?” She pointed out to me as I rolled my eyes back at her, smiling.

“We are all mad here.” I quoted Alice in wonderland. “Now take my duffle” I ordered her, a smirk across my face, grabbing the handle for my tattoo case and my backpack. Turning off the lights in the apartment, I headed out into morning sunrise, to my slow painful death.