You're Not Even Mine to Miss [Fall Out Boy - Wattys 2014]

➽ Track Twenty-One (Pete's POV).

Track Twenty-One (Pete’s POV): This chance that I won’t miss, but I miss you anyway.

(May 14th, 2008)

‘Get ready for sound check. We’re all here onstage.’ Joe had sent me that text message the minute I had finished putting a shirt on me. After grabbing my bass guitar and slinging the strap around me, I was ready. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let anything distract me that day—the last day on tour. I had to focus on the performance alone, not to anything else.

Remember when you forced Donnie and you had practically raped her?

Fuck, don’t remind me.

That’ll haunt you forever, Pete Wentz. There’s a special place in hell for you.

I’m fully aware of that. And I’m already expecting it, anyway. You don’t have to tell me.

Donnie just couldn’t get out of my mind. She was just stuck in there, reminding me of what I had done to her. What I did to her was borderline rape, but I wasn’t sure why she wasn’t mad at me or anything. I was really ashamed of myself, but on her letter, Donnie was telling me that I shouldn’t be sorry about anything that had happened to us. Was she telling me that she wanted it as well? Was she saying that she forgave me about everything already?

Fuck—concentrate on the performance you’re going to do, Wentz.

I tried to focus, but it was a huge struggle.

Practicing for sound check – or rehearsals, in a way – was the band’s tradition. It helped us lessen stage fright (we may have been touring for years, but the stage fright was always present) and it taught us what to do if there would be any technical difficulties during the performance. Every time we step onstage, with all the people in the audience cheering excitedly for us to play songs, all of our personal problems and troubles should be left offstage, and we could just pick them all up after the show.

Don’t let anyone or anything distract you, I chanted in my head, exhaling as I held the doorknob. Because I had been in a really foul mood the second I had stepped inside the venue, I was in the dressing room while they were all outside (and, as what Joe had informed me, they were waiting for me onstage already) to clear my head. Perhaps the guys had felt that, which was probably why they just practically avoided me for almost the whole day. It was okay with me. It let me calm myself down.

Licking my dried lips, I had turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, only to be surprised that something had bumped on the door. I was about to react, thinking that it was one of the staff or one of the members of the band who was waiting for me outside the dressing room, and was about to scream at whoever it was, when I had recognized the person standing by the doorway.

It was London McKenzie.

The brunette was rubbing her forehead, her face scrunched up in pain. She then opened one eye to look at whoever opened the door—which was me—and gasped. “Pete? Oh my god, it’s you! You should be careful whenever you open a freaking door,” she sulked, groaning loudly. “I think I’m going to have a bruise later on.”

“Why the hell are you even standing in there?” I asked her in concern, swiftly stepping out from the room to check the black-and-blue bruise that was starting to form on her forehead. The anger that I was feeling towards myself (and maybe to the whole world) had been forgotten momentarily.

“I was about to knock, thinking that you guys might be inside,” Donnie explained, still nursing her forehead. “I wanted to talk to you. And you probably know why.”