The next morning, when I woke up and she was gone, I panicked. I rushed from my bedroom to find Joel on the couch, and he told me Peach had left with Dee. I raked my fingers through my hair, asking over and over again if she said anything or if he knew anything. The guys wanted to know why I was freaking the fuck out, but what could I tell them? I pushed her too far and now she couldn’t even look at me? I sat on the floor in my room staring at my phone until I got the guts to text her. I asked why she snuck out, and a second later, the most confusing text I’ve ever read flashed onto my screen.
Sorry about last night. I know you don’t want a girlfriend. I didn’t mean to be one of those girls.
She was apologizing? To me? My brain couldn’t wrap around any of it, so I texted back, One of those girls?
The ones that want more from you.
I stared cross-eyed at the phone for a few seconds before yelling for Shawn and Joel. Then I told them what happened with Peach—skimming over the good parts and the part about her being a virgin, since that was a secret she shared with me and I’d take it to my grave—and asked them if the text meant what I thought it did. Did it mean she wanted to be my girlfriend?
They told me I was a fucking idiot for needing a text message to tell me that, and I slowly realized what a tool I’d been. She thought I didn’t want a girlfriend, and in a way, I really didn’t. Other girls wanted to date me for a lot of fucked-up reasons, but those girls weren’t Peach. I didn’t want a girlfriend—I just wanted her, in every way possible.
Another text rang through, this one asking if we were still friends, but hell no we weren’t friends. I was so tired of pretending not to want the world from her. Waking up without her next to me and worrying that I’d never get to fall asleep with her again knocked some sense into me, and I knew I had to grow a pair and do what it took to be with her.
When she asked me a few weeks after Mayhem why I asked her to be my girlfriend onstage, I told her it was because I wanted the whole world to know how I felt about her, but that was only part of the truth. I also had that word friends ringing in my head and was terrified of being rejected for what would have felt like the hundredth time in my life, all one hundred times by the only girl with the power to break my heart. I finished the set and walked offstage, my heart leaping into my throat when I saw her waiting with her answer.
I thought that hearing her say yes made me the happiest man alive, but it didn’t even compare to the moment she told me she loved me. Before Peach, love was just a word that girls threw at me from the crowd, but now I know what it really means.
It’s mayhem. It’s forever.
It’s her.