The Middle - Volume Three ✔️

Chapter 49 (Patrick)

Patrick

It’s been a week since I told the guys I was taking some time away from the band. And it’s been one of the shittiest weeks of my life.

I went to classes and I started teaching at the youth centre, which has been challenging but good. There are only four kids in Middle School coming in for drum lessons so far, and none of them had ever even tried it before. So it’s been good, showing them the basics and seeing them start to get excited about it. They've all got potential, and I think it’s gonna be worth my time.

But I didn’t hang out with the guys, which has been weird. The only people I’ve hung out with are Pete, Steph and Amanda. I spent the first few days at my mom’s, I figured Joel wouldn’t really wanna be around me. And I was right, turns out he’s moved in with Jamie. I haven’t seen him all week, and I’ve barely spoken to him. I haven’t spoken to Jay at all, or Jamie. But I did see her at Marley’s on a date with Noah. They were even sitting next to each other on the same side of their booth. Talk about romantic.

That really reminded me why I’m doing what I’m doing.

And Amanda has been awesome. She totally understands, and it’s been good to have someone impartial to talk about all of my shit with. She gets it, and I like hanging out with her. She’s a good friend.

It’s a new week now, and I feel like it’s time to stop wallowing in my problems and start doing what I set out to do: get over Jamie. For good.

I’m not gonna sign up to dating sites and start putting myself out there, hell no. Amanda says that getting under someone else is not the way to get over someone, so I know where I've been going wrong all these years at least. She says I need to just go about my business, and focus on other shit. So I am. I’m focussing on the kids at the youth centre, and school. Kinda hard to focus on school though, given that everything I do in school is targeted towards getting a career in music. With The Middle. That’s still the plan, absolutely. I just know it’ll never work out if I can’t get over Jamie. So unfortunately, I need to focus on that too.

Honestly, it’s all a total head fuck. But Amanda says that’s normal and I shouldn’t overthink things. She says time is what I need. And it’s time I’m gonna get. I just wish I knew how much fucking time this was gonna take. And I wish I could stop going over everything in my head.

I just don’t understand how things were so good with Jamie during those few days after New Year’s, and now they’re so shit. I told Amanda about that, hoping she’d have a fresh outlook on it. And I mean, I told her about fucking all of it. All of the times I ended up sleeping with Jamie, all of the stuff that was happening between us that I took to be something more than it was. I was so sure that Jamie maybe was realising she... You know. But she doesn’t. I know she doesn’t. Because she loves Noah.

The moment it all seemed to go wrong was after Jamie and I slept together in my old room at my mom's, which, ironically, was the best time. For both of us, I’m sure of it. I keep replaying the conversation we had afterwards in my head, before we both drove home. She wanted me to spend the night with her, and I did want to. Of course I fucking wanted to. But I just couldn’t, not while she still had Noah hanging on waiting to hear whether or not she wanted to make things official with him. It would have been wrong, like the other times before, to sleep next to her and hold her in my arms while some other guy was sleeping alone thinking of all the things he wanted to do with her once she was his. I just couldn’t do it. And she knew, she fucking knew that was why I wouldn’t spend the night with her.

Amanda thinks that’s why she got so pissed when I said no. Because deep down she knew it was wrong, but she was willing to go through with it anyway. I made her feel like an asshole because I wasn’t willing to go through with it.