Adrenaline

41 | all the magic we gave off

        "It's not like I just felt alone. I was separated by an entire ocean from so many places that are close to me. Growing up on an island can be pretty disorienting. You either feel trapped or too sheltered to understand the rest of the world, and it's hard to reach out, especially when you're young. You know?"

        "And now you get to see all of it."

        With the now empty glass of milkshake discarded, my fingers dance along his palm mimicking the plucking of guitar strings, or a pebble skipping across a fluid sheet of glass.

        "Sometimes it doesn't feel like enough. Sometimes I think life is gonna just say fuck it, let's throw her for a loop and just take all of this away from me. And then what? I crawl back to Hawaii with nothing but these good memories. I always feel like if I don't just...go for it, it's all going to slip out of my fingers."

        Brendon looks down at our fingers. Nobody ever talks about how easily two people slip into a steady rhythm. One day you're volleying playful insults to each other, the next you're using their shoulder as your favorite place to cry on. I hardly remember a time when there was Stevie, and there was Brendon. The only future I see is Stevie and Brendon.

        "You do that a lot," he says after a beat.

        "Do what?"

        "Overthink every good thing that happens to you. Think it's some kind of fluke and not something you genuinely deserve." Brendon smooths his fingers over a faint white line on the back of my knuckles; a scar from when I was a child. "Or undermine your worth. I get it, I do. But I wish you could see yourself the way I've always seen you. You'd never doubt yourself again."

        I love the act of storytelling.

        There aren't as many books being checked off my to-be-read lists since our careers took off and we've become busier and busier with each passing year, but I've always believed those who have the power to tell stories also have the power (and responsibility) to make a difference with their words. We do it on a smaller scale with our music, and with a different fluidity.

        Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. For the most part. You establish everything important at the start, watch it grow and bend, and oftentimes shatter into a million pieces before being stitched up again once you reach the end. Maybe a sad or complex one comes along and doesn't quite follow the same rhythm, but humans are optimistic by design. We want to see a happy ending, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.

        But the best stories are the ones where the lines blur together. The beginning doesn't feel like an introduction, but like jumping right back into familiar territory. And the middle has so many twists and turns along the way that you don't realize how cathartic it is when the end finally comes. Because, truthfully, the end is never an end. Not in stories. The truly great ones. They continue until the last star in the galaxy dies, and then some.

        Despite every painful hardship I've endured, mine is my favorite story. Who else can we count on to root for ourselves time and time again? I've come to learn that, even if I'm still a work in progress.

        But Brendon is so intrinsically part of my story that there is no longer any beginning, middle, or end. He simply is. And just because my story will always be most important to me doesn't mean I can't hold equal regard for his story alongside mine. Learning to love myself and every messy part of me is a lifelong journey, and I'm not sure where I'm at right now; it's okay if my favorite version of me is the one I see with him.

        So why—god, why—do I look at him and think he's too good for me? Why is it so easy to fall into these slippery moments of self-doubt, and why is it so difficult to believe this good person in front of me is someone I deserve?