Head over Heels || brance

XXV

It was now July. Bruce hadn't heard or seen Vance since that last week of school. Since then, his mother had been waiting on him hand and foot as if that could erase the guilt she held, Bruce was angry with her for a while but he could see that she was genuinely sorry. He had heard her crying in the night and part of him wondered if it was truly over the pain she caused him or that fact that his father hadn't returned yet.

Bruce was angry with her for weeks, but there were a lot of things for him to be angry over and that was just part of the mixture. He could've imagined that his mother was telling the truth, he could picture the whole situation with Linda from next door and then how Linda told others who had no business knowing.

Bruce hadn't left the house in a while, nervous of what people would think of him if he did. He mostly sat in his room, reading the few comics he had until they were practically memorised. Finney had came over at the beginning of the month to see how he was. He told Finney then about the fake relationship and how it had felt different to him and maybe that was what had caused all this to happen, maybe he needed a reality check.

Finney told him that the rumours were over that Vance told some of his friends who told the rest of the school that it never happened, that he never hung out with Bruce and he had barely ever spoken to him. It hurt Bruce a bit to know Vance followed through with it and it hurt him even more to know that Vance most likely didn't care. He could imagine Vance's life going back to how it was but his wouldn't. He had gone through so much emotions and it felt like he had nothing left to feel.

He couldn't help but wonder how his summer would've been going if nothing had happened, if the town hadn't known. He hoped he was with Vance. Vance crossed his mind regularly in the nights and it made Bruce feel the uncomfortable loneliness.

That was until the night of the concert.

Finney, Robin and Billy had came to his house that afternoon to prepare their sneak in route. Robin was somehow able to convince Billy to follow them instead of paying.

Bruce's mother had offered to pay for all of them and Bruce knew she was doing it because she still felt guilty even when Bruce told her that no one believed in it anymore.

Bruce didn't want his mother to feel bad over it, now that no one really cared, Bruce pretended like it never happened and he wanted his mother to try to act like how she did instead of almost breaking down when he walked into the room.

"Okay, so I practised this path yesterday while they were setting up the stage. This is longer than going through the lot, but it may be easier to say we were there before." Robin said as he pointed at a map of the park he must've drawn.

Bruce was excited to go, even if he still didn't know the singer even when Amy had bought him a cassette of the guys music. He had zoned out to it but he hoped that maybe the lyrics would find their way back to his brain when he heard the beat.

"And what are we going to do if we get caught?" Billy asked, staring at Robin.

"How would they know? We just act part of the crowd." Robin said as if he was very confident in his plan.

"Won't they give us a ticket or a wrist band or something?" Finney asked, and Bruce practically mentally facepalmed knowing that Robin hadn't thought about it.

They most definitely would give out something like that, Bruce could imagine that they wouldn't be the only ones trying to sneak in. Billy groaned and Bruce couldn't blame him. Robin leaned back on his hands while mumbling out something along the lines of 'I didn't think of that'. In all honesty though, none of them had.

"My mom said she could pay for us." Bruce said, looking at the map again.

"Dude, that would literally be $40, I'd feel so bad." Finney spoke, and Bruce could hear the guilt forming in his voice just at the thought. Bruce would admit that he would feel bad if his mother paid for them too, especially the way she had been treating him recently, he didn't want to use her like that, but she did offer...