XOXO// Frank Iero

Five

Kit

Friday

He texted me. He fucking texted me first, even though I was the one with his number. I giddily served every customer who came into the shop that night, all because he had texted me this.

"Hey Kit! It's Tony; Mikey told you about me. I'll be at Joey's tomorrow to get the guitar."

And he did. He showed up at Joey's five minutes before I closed, greeted by me and my full-faced makeup.

His skin was tanned, he had a dermal piercing on his cheek, stretched ears, and heaps on bounds of tattoos. His eyes were brown, and his smile was huge.

"Hey, Kit. I'm Tony."

I smiled at him before making some small talk about how hot of a summer we were having and how Joey's was always empty, even though the stuff in there wasn't that bad at all.

I got the guitar off the rack on the window, and he asked to plug it in. He took a seat on a stool and plugged in to the Orange amp we had lying around. He had his own pick that he pulled out of his pocket. Clean-toned, anything that he played sounded slightly silly, so when he played the riff of "Sonne" by Rammstein, the band that adorned my t-shirt that day, I almost didn't recognise it.

"I love that song." I smiled.

He nodded at my T-shirt, not stopping his strumming. "They're a great band. Good taste!" he shouted over the sound of the amp.

I walked over closer to him as he played. I scanned his face. I found it incredibly hard to comprehend that he was the one going through all the bad things I read about his life in his diary. He sat there, playing a song for me, and I knew far too much about him; he didn't know more than my name and the fact that I liked Rammstein.

"Beautiful guitar, isn't it?" He slid his fingers up the fretboard, holding the strings, to stop the buzz.

I nodded. I probably didn't know as much as he did. I had the knowledge of someone who sold them, not played them. Joey once told me that he wished all of his workers played guitar, and having me on was like a mechanic who didn't drive.

"It's nice, yeah. We get some really gorgeous ones coming sometimes, from Sweden and Germany and stuff." I cleared my throat, my stomach stinging and tingling.

"I should be coming in here more often." Tony nodded. "I'm always breaking things and losing things when I'm out with the band."


"Oh yeah, your band! Mikey was telling me you guys are doing really well," I said.


He smiled. "Well, that's kind of Mikey to say. Yeah, we're doing pretty well; we're set to start recording some singles before summer ends."

He told me all about the interesting gigs his band was playing, in a very modest way. He said he liked the Circle Jerks and lifted his sleeve to show me a tattoo of their logo on his upper outer arm. I thought this was cool, but some part of me wondered why I didn't feel a big crush on him. I know it was somewhat silly to think that I would see him and just fall in love or something, but I thought I would feel more of a pang running through my chest when I saw the boy who owned this book I've been reading like a bible.

Even in saying all that, when he asked me if I would like to go to a gig with him the next night, I said, "Yes, of course."