skinny love | shyland

one

shane's pov

from my window, i watched the sun drip down the horizon as it splattered a thick shadow across the city in front of me. i'd driven to new york: i'm not sure why, but there was always something so comforting that came with skyscrapers. there was no particular reason for my trip; perhaps it was to escape from the past, or perhaps it was to relive it. life had been a complex rollercoaster of jawbreaking highs and groundbreaking lows, all of which had created a perfect poster image to be plastered upon my skin in a thick layer of perfection which transformed my tragedies into tales of the heroic shane dawson – the music mogul who grappled the strength within him to pull away from the wrong sides of the track.

the first boy i ever fell in love with was chase fogharty. he was nice and pretty and coincidentally my sisters boyfriend, all of which accumulated to him being the perfect person to ruin my childhood over. the final four years of my teenage life were spent pining over the sandy haired older boy, all until a few days after eighteenth birthday, when he and my sister got engaged, i had one too many glasses of wine and blurted all my feelings out to him in one rush of discombobulated words before throwing up in his lap. neither of us ever spoke a word of it after that, keeping silent and masking awkward moments at the alter as the two got married – i was twenty, they were both twenty three – with bright and cheesy smiles.

sunsets reminded me of chase fogharty; straight to the point yet simultaneously layered; ephemeral and fleeting, all whilst being pain-strikingly imperishable.

i slowly fell out of love, which in itself is an incongruous, sidesplitting sensation. no longer is it awkward when i give my niece and nephews piggyback rides as my brother-in-law laughs loudly, clapping me on the shoulder and passing me a beer as he kisses my sister's cheek lightly. nothing is permanent, and sanity is fleeting; falling in and out of love with chase taught me that. people move on and stars align and eventually everything will fall into place. that's what i kept telling myself.

miraculously, this wishful thinking somehow accumulated into a reality and i began working for scrimshaw records, a music producing company who thought far too highly of themselves whilst taking far too much cocaine and pretending they live perfectly functioning lives. they did not. at twenty three, just after i'd secured a status of higher power and become the manager of three areas of the label, the firm went bust and i was left high and dry with several dozens of rival companies grasping at my loose threads in order to try reel me into their perfect little puppet show. my strings were frayed and thin though. my downfall was inevitable.

the only way from this moment, i quickly learnt, was up. high up. head first, i was thrown into a world of girls and sex and drugs and alcohol until just as i was about to lose track of who i was, in came garrett watts.

another blonde, i hate to admit, but oh so different to chase. we were soulmates – i like to think we still are. he was an editor, finalising the touches on songs that dominated the charts within hours of their release. something about this was addictingly attractive; the prospect of dating someone who wasn't in the public eye but still understood my lifestyle engulfed my mind. with a mop of curls atop of his head and this cheeky smile that made me double over laughing, garrett shed this beautiful glowing light that made my red spiderwebs in my eyes quiver from underneath their hooded sockets. i was suddenly alive in an abundance of transient moments where i fell slowly infatuated with the boy and his cheesy jokes and our like-minded hatred for the music industry's transparency.

this was kept dutifully under wraps, of course, because by then i was dating – "dating" – lisa schwartz, hollywood beauty who had recently climbed her way up the ever-shaking ladder of fame, balancing so wearily in her six inch stilettos that she could barely cling on to me. when i had turned twenty four and my face soon had a name beside it, speculation had began to arise about who i was dating and every single celebrity i was seen out with was labelled as my newest bit on the side. so, after a meeting with each other's agents (much to my disgust), it was decided that lisa would play as my girlfriend. there wouldn't be much messing around, just a few kisses in public after purposefully tipping off the paparazzi to photograph us in that destination.

it wasn't that i didn't find lisa attractive – god, she was beautiful and i wasn't gay, i liked girls just as much as i did guys and no part of me wanted to deny this. but, whilst with girls i had brief hook ups in office storerooms, the only two people i had ever truly loved were both guys and as my status began to stun others, this became increasingly worrying.

times with garrett would be spent in overly-expensive hotel suites that i would book, getting drunk on millionaire-worthy champagne as bodies sweatily collided in a sorcery only secrecy could spark. the novelty of sneaking around and fucking in penthouses soon wore off, despite how appealing it may sound, and soon the lust between us fizzled out into a strong, firm friendship that only the two of us truly understood. we were best friends still to this day and this time, there was no heartbreak, no healing process, just garrett and shane. our love story was slight and precious and one only the two of us would ever treasure, and for that i was grateful.

sunsets reminded me of garrett watts; warmth, familiarity, lazy afternoons in the backs of limousines with sticky leather clinging to our skin, and home.

the last morsels of daylight tauntingly danced across the skyline, sharply protesting as the sun was dragged down by puppet strings into the impending doom of darkness. after things with garrett quietened down, i took it upon myself to draw a fresh start for my own good and, from scratch, begun flakefleet records. the company became my baby and bloomed beautifully, subconsciously growing into the only reason i would wake up in the morning. life was no longer about chase fogharty, snorting lines of coke, garrett watts or lisa schwartz. it was shane dawson and making something of myself and not fading out as a failure like the rest of young, aspiring music producers in the twenty first century.

this worked, and here i somehow was, thirty years of age, in a million-dollar mansion with the bleak sound of post malone's unreleased album that played in the background on my apple mac as i struggled to even remain awake. slamming the lid shut, i turned my gaze back to the glass wall that stole glances upon the alive city that was so oxymoronically full of emptiness.

i needed a drink.

pouring myself a neat whiskey, i downed the bitter liquor in one and barely flinched as the acrid liquid trickled down the back of my throat, my mind murdering all humane sensations once more. even being surrounded my dozens of employees every single day didn't take away the fact that i was alone, and although the company of strangers and lovers may seem indistinguishable to many, it was painstakingly obvious to myself.

i wanted to feel something, and when sex and drugs and alcohol and money finally led me to a pure feeling of numbness, he came tumbling into my life with a single sunset, and changed absolutely everything.

sunsets reminded me of ryland adams; a beginning of a new day and an end to an old one, all rolled up in a destructible cluster of adoration and love.

a/n: so... what are we thinking? this is my first book with them as adults so if this is awful please don't hate me, i'm used to writing in the mind of a teenager because... well... i am one :')
-amber