[AustinCarlile] Only Baby Scars

Eleven.

There comes a time in life when all the stressors lead to a mental breakdown.

It’s been a week and I still haven’t had one, yet. I feel it coming, just waiting for me to snap so it can take over.

“Don’t touch me. I will cut your hand off with a rusty knife.” Slapping Alan’s hand away from my shoulder, I glare at him. “You have one thing to do. All you have to do is get ready for the concert by sitting in this green room and waiting. What question could you possibly have?”

The trial is tomorrow, and according to Austin he reacted to a comment made by the guy he hit. Really, with all the details that I was given, it appears that he didn’t throw the punch that was the most harmful. Austin told his lawyer that the kid made some comment about a girl with cancer, and with the alcohol in his system he simply reacted. The way he reacted was by knocking the kid out. The lawyer pointed that out to him and Austin only replied by reiterating that he made a comment about a little girl with cancer and he was drunk.

So, who the hell knows how the trial is going to go?

If this goes to trial, if the judge doesn’t acquit him, I don’t know how the jury is going to decide. They're supposed to stick to the law and the facts, nothing else. It’s the nothing else that would help Austin get away with hitting the kid. By law, Austin committed felony assault. In his mind and in his heart, he only defended the little girl who passed away days before.

While that’s nice that he was sticking up for her, it’s not nice that he got arrested for felony assault. That’s not acceptable. And honestly, while it’s sweet in a twisted way, it’s absolutely disgusting that he would beat someone up that bad. An assault means the person was in the hospital for three or more days. That’s so hard to overlook.

And the drinking, I've never in a million years thought that he would be drinking as much as he does. It’s constant, every night, he’s out with his new friends, drinking, bottoms up, doing whatever the hell he does when he’s piss drunk.

My phone has been going crazy, with people wanting statements about the trial tomorrow, about what the label thinks, about what Austin thinks, about what the band thinks. They won’t stop and I don’t know how many times I can politely tell people that at the moment we do not have a comment but we’ll have a comment at the end of the trial. If one more person asks why we’re waiting until the end of the trial to make a statement, I'm going to go off.

I'm stressed, so stressed, and I've never wanted to quit my job so badly. This isn't worth it and I don’t think he’s even thanked me for dealing with his mistake.

I thought that I hated Danny Worsnop, but dealing with him seems like a piece of cake compared to dealing with Austin. At least Danny owned up to his problems. While he was clean for a while, he would slip up every so often, but it’s not a smooth ride to sobriety. Honestly, I think that’s why I got the case in the first place, because I know what it’s like to be an alcoholic.

“Pierce,” Alan plops down on the couch beside me. Sighing, I place my Blackberry down on my lap, turning to face him. “I think you should just go out and have a drink and let loose.”

Knitting my eyebrows together, I bite down on my lower lip. “Austin didn’t tell you?” Tilting my head to the side, I glance at Austin, who’s standing in the corner of the room, confused. It’s something he has on me, clearly, not that my employer doesn’t know, but these guys don’t know. It always leads to people looking at me differently. And that’s fine, because I look at my past differently than I look at my present.

“Austin didn’t tell me what?” Alan is genuinely confused and I'm happily confused. Everything this week with Austin has been a wreck. He hates me. I couldn’t see him not telling them this, especially the part of the story in which I was driving the car during the crash, considering how miserable he wants me to be.

“Oh, I'm sober. I don’t drink.” I say it in such a matter-of-fact manner that he doesn’t respond right away.

He stares at me, like he’s trying to figure me out, but he’s cut off by Austin walking over. “Alan, I need help with the chorus of a new song I'm working on.”

It doesn’t take more than two seconds for Alan to jump up off of the couch in excitement. I don’t think that they’ve spent much time together since the accident. I know that it’s been hard for Alan, losing his best friend.

But, I realize that Austin was standing in the corner of the room without his phone in his hand and without any paper to write down a song.

I don’t know why he felt the need to pull Alan away so I didn’t have to talk about my past, but I'm so worn out emotionally that I don’t know if I even feel grateful. I want to. What he’s doing in sweet, but all I want right now is a simple thanks. I want him to realize that what he did affected more lives than just his own. I want him to tell me why he hates me so much.

I'm not even the same person I was in high school. In high school, I had long blonde hair and fake nails and wore preppy clothing. My hair is now mixed with brown and there are holes in my ears. And I get that me now doesn’t suddenly wash away the old me, but it’s been years, almost ten years, and I can’t do this back and forth crap with him anymore.

The whole thing with my past, with my drinking and the rehab and the car crash, I can’t keep dealing with him holding it over my head sometimes and protecting me from it others.

It’s not worth it.

And if Craig wants to fire me for telling him that I can’t help Austin make this wrong a right, then so be it.

There’s nothing I can say to make his arrest sound good. Sure, he hit the kid for saying something about a girl who died of cancer, but he still hit him.

Just like I killed my best friend in a car crash, even though according to her diary she was going to kill herself the next day anyway. I still killed her.

He’s not cooperating like Danny was. Danny listened when I said to stop taking interviews and stop answering questions about what happened. Austin doesn’t give a shit who he talks to as long as he can tell his side of the story. And that’s great, he can tell his side, in court, or after his trial.

So, I'm done.

I quit.