(4) Out of Control: An All Time Low FanFiction Romance

Chapter 46: Close Up

        "What the hell was that about?" Jack asked, following closely behind me as I walked away from the table, following my band and some crew members back towards the bus. There was a slight edge to his voice that led me to believe he didn't like Hunter.

        "Nothing, it's nothing important," I muttered, feeling as if I'd pulled myself into something stupid by dragging Jack nto this and calling him my boyfriend. I really didn't want to have to explain Hunter to him, but I felt that was exactly what I was going to have to do.

        "Well, it was obviously something if that kid was so pissed off that you told him we were dating," Jack pressed, his voice light but confused. I clamped my teeth together, lips pressed in a straight line as I spun to face him, causing him to stop short so he wouldn't walk right into me.

        "I appreciate your help and everything, but it's really not important, okay?" I tried to turn again, aggravated at something pointless. I assumed, at this point, that any type of friendship I could have had with hunter was shot to hell, and it was his fault. I had tried to tell him that I didn't want us to be like that, I told him over and over again, and it wasn't my fault he couldn't get it through his thick skull. The way he walked off like that was childish, getting uner my skin in a way that I hated. Jack's persistence about my past with Hunter was only adding to the annoyance I felt.

        "I don't see why you can't just tell me what his name is," Jack said, crosing his arms over his chest, his voice stopping me again.

        "I said it's not important, end of story."

        "No," Jack continued, maing me groan slightly in annoyance. "I'm not asking you to cut your fingers off or anything. I only want to now why you told that kid we were dating and why it pissed him off so much," I rolled my eyes, tilting my head back and closing my eyes in frustration.

        "And I think I have the right to know,s eeing as I am your boyfriend now," he continued, causing me to snap my eyes open and meet his gaze. My eyes were narrowed into a glare, but my expression immediately relaxed at the grin on his face, telling me he was just trying to gain my attention and lighten the conversation.

        "Fine, whatever," I gave in, thorwing my hands up slightly, posture relaxing as I leaned more weight onto my left leg. "His name is Hunter."

        "Ah, I see. I'm not really good with names, so you'll have to give me a little more than that if you want me to understand." Jack said.

        "There's not much to know," I muttered, shifting my feet. "We had a thing, once or twice, and he never really got over it. He couldn't grasp the concept that I wasn't looking for a relationship," I was smoothing things over a lot, dimming them down to just get the gist of my past with Hunter out, hoping that Jack would just attribute it to my personality and let it go. Obviously, I was wrong.

        "You seemed pretty comfortable with him if he was just a fling," Jack pressed, watching me curiously. It was starting to get under my skin. I couldn't help wondering why it was so important to him to know this, and the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to tell him.

        "We were friends when we weren't together," I shrugged, feeling the words fall freely out of my mouth. It was confusing me that I was easily telling him this. It wasn't some deep secret I was trying to hold in, but it wasn't important to me. It was something that I pushed aside whenever Hunter wasn't standing in front of my face, trying to get things out of me that I didn't want. I had so easily forgotten about him so many times, I just wanted to do it again. I wanted to forget he'd even showed up here, obviously not over his stupid feelings for me, even after months of not even being in the same area code as each other.

        But, Jack wouldn't have that.

        He continued behind me as I turned and continued towards my bus, wanting a shower, comfortable clothes and a place to sleep, alone.

        "So, you've known him for a long time?" he questioned, walking beside me. I bit down on my lip, searing internally to myself out of annoyance.

        "I don't understand why this is so important to you!" I exclaimed, spinning on him again. He stopped short, expression neutral, holding if my angry tone affected him. "This is my past, mine, so sorry if I don't want to play twenty questions with you to discuss something that was practically no importance to me!"

        "I don't do this Jack! I don't tell guys I'm sleeping with about my life. It's part of the deal, part of the territory, part of the whole I don't do relationships thing. The only guys who's never known anything about me, besides the guys in the band, is Hunter, because he was my neighbor. We grew up together and we had a thing once, but not a relationship, a thing. We hooked up a few times for a while and then I left, the same way I leave everyone else, and he couldn't understand the fact that I do not have relationships. I kept going back to him because I knew he'd always bet here, because I knew how he felt about me.

        "And you want to know why it pissed him off so much? Because every time we got together, he asked me for something more than a fling. It was all he ever wanted, a relationship, and every time I said no. I said things hadn't changed, I hadn't changed and I still didn't have relationships with people. The only reason I told him we were dating just now, was to get him off my ass. I told him before we left to get over whatever he felt towards me, and seeing him today told me he clearly hadn't, so when you came up, I jumped at the opportunity. I needed him to get the picture that I didn't want to be with him. I never wanted to be with him the way he wanted to be with me."

        I felt the words spilling off my tongue, so quickly, and so filled with anger and exasperation that I couldn't have stopped myself even if I'd realized what I was saying, and just how much I was telling him. It was something I'd probably regret later, if I ever regretted anything, but I was too worked up to stop, and Jack, standing unmoving in front of me, made it easier to yell out because he wasn't trying to stop me.

        "Is that what you wanted to know, Jack? That I used him for years because I knew I could? That I turned him down over and over and over again because I'm not the relationship person, and then jumped at the chance to let him think something different just because I didn't want to deal with him? Because, that's what you asked for. If you ask about Hunter, that's what you're going to hear."

        Jack stood in front of me, unmoving as I rambled on, voice loud enough to draw passing eyes to us, curious as to my fury. My words came to a halt, chest rising and falling at a much quicker pace, trying to regain the breath I'd lost while shouting.

        I stopped short, mouth choking on the words that came to my mind next. I had thought, or I had thought to tell Jack that he wasn't an exception to this. I wanted to tell him that even if we'd had our thing for a month now, that didn't mean anything. Chances were, it would end soon, because I didn't do long term commitments, and there were no exceptions to that rule - nobody was an exception. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to say those things.

        "Yeah, well, that's what you asked for," I sighed, running a hand through my hair as I turned again, finally making it onto my bus, inside with the rest of my band, ignoring the sound of Jack saying my name.

        "Don't let him in, okay?" I asked Kinsley as I passed her, voice low as I moved around the guys legs, stretched out from where they were sitting.

        I was now angry at myself for telling him any of that in the first place. I didn't know what had gotten into me, but once I started talking it was like the filter inside of me shut down, allowing me to say whatever I thought in my head until I had exhausted it, regaining my mentality and realizing, to my dismay, that I didn't want to say anything to hurt Jack.

        I almost couldn't stomach the thought that I'd stopped myself from saying something because I thought it would upset him. It was a weird feeling, caring about how he felt, feeling that it wasn't wrong to tell him about how I'd used Hunter. I'd never had that thought before, with anybody. His questions may have been as annoying as everybody else's was, but it had become the same type of annoying as Kinsley or my mom, the kind of annoying where they weren't doing it just to be obnoxious, but because they cared.

        It threw me off, that I was having these thoughts, and isntantly, I felt myself closing up, my brain telling me that I needed to do something to stop these thoughts.