Blue

Philip's faded turquoise hair matched the dull cloudy sky. It was that time of the day where the sun was hiding and the lights of the room were still turned off. Tate stared at Philip while the boy played with Chester's hand. Mac was silently sliding his thumb across the screen, which lit up his angular face with a light blue light.

"Did they hurt?" Philip asked, examining each of Chester's tattooed fingers on his right hand.

"Eh, kind of... the thing is it only lasted a few minutes so I could bare it. I remember when I got the ribs tattooed... ouch..."

Tate pretended to pay attention but his mind was elsewhere, nowhere in particular, he was just gone. They all heard Cheese's story of how he got three of his fingers tattooed, images of an arrow, an anchor and his lucky number 5.

"Anyway, why are we here Tate unless it's to write new music."

"I- I think-" He looked at Mac. "We should be organizing the festival since it's less than three weeks away. Is the video edited yet... we have a lot to do."

"I gave the organizers the play list yesterday and we also have an interview tomorrow with the festival management to talk about the equipment and promotion."

"And also the money," added Chester. "Which songs are we going to play, by the way?"

"The demo intro faded into the first song: "Blackout Hearts," then "Midnight Machine." Mac started to count all the songs with his fingers. "'Delirium,' 'Passion' 'Poison' 'Will You Be Mine' and then we'll do the mash up between 'Riot' and 'Battle Scars' which would be the last song."

"Great," Tate replied.

"And Uncle Jon told me that tomorrow we'd have the video so we can upload it to our website."

"Double Great."

"We'll have the sound check two days before, on the fourth. They'll give us two hours to rehearse that day and arrange the lights and everything."

"Yep, Great!" Tate repeated, genuinely excited. "Everything is great... just great."

"Tate are you okay?" asked Philip.

"I'm just nervous that's all," he replied looking everywhere but at his friends, he realized he couldn't stop moving. He bit his lip and closed his eyes tight.

"Tate Hayes? Nervous? Well, that's something I thought I'd never see."

"Shut up."

"Listen, I heard there is a new record store in the Mainheit Street and I need to see if they have The Red Cross album."

"That band died out like twenty years ago and you're just getting around to buying the album now?"

"Don't be rude to the blue-haired kid," said Tate squeezing the words out between tight lips.

"I hope that doesn't happen to us," Chester added.

"It's not going to," Lips replied with a hopeful smirk.

➳

A rock song played in the background. The record store was practically empty. Mac was just browsing, hoping an album would catch his attention, but for the moment they looked all the same. Tate was in front of him, perusing another stand with older albums. No one was talking, but they sensed the rising tension.

Mac had not apologized yet, and wasn't planning to. All of the things he said to Tate were true. And the truth might have hurt Tate's ego, but his self-centered personality wasn't something Mac was about to put up with.

Mac suddenly felt a vibration on his back pocket, his cell phone was ringing and on the screen displayed Cassie's number. He looked at Tate, his dark drown hair falling over his forehead as he leaned his head towards the end of the table. He remembered Tate didn't have a cell phone yet, he'd lost it (or that's what he said.)

"Who is it?" asked Tate without looking up at him.

"No name."

"Are you going to reply?"

"Nah," he said, dismissing the call.

Mac saw Tate raising his eyebrows before nodding his approval and resumed looking through the albums. Lip and Chesterwere at the other side of the record store. Chester finally found the album he was looking for.

"Hey!" Chester called out to Mac and Tate, "I found it!" he exclaimed, giddy like a little excited kid. He paid for it and went to meet the other two boys with Lip following behind.

"Let's go for something to eat," Chester suggested. He looked at Philip. "I'm so hungry I could eat Philip's arm"

"Please don't," said Philip opening wide his gray eyes.

"Let's go to The Blue Bone," Suggested Tate before looking up at Mac, he had the phone in his hand and he couldn't stop looking at the screen. "Eh... Macaroni, coming?"

"Yeah." He put his cellphone away, blocking Cassie's number.

➳

Come on, come on, answer, Tate... Mac, anyone? Cassie thought to herself white walking down the street. She wanted to meet him, she wanted to tell him everything, but where was he?

Without really planning to, she ended up at Tate's house. It was frigid and night was setting in. His small house looked so inviting, a source of shelter and warmth in the middle of a cold, dark emptiness.

She waited outside a few minutes, wondering if knocking the door would be a good idea or not. She hadn't seen or heard his voice in days and missed him. Thinking about Tate first raised Goosbumps up and down her body, but then she turned sad. Cassie was wise enough to understand that if you like someone too much you have to be prepared for both joy and pain.

What was she going to do, jump into his arms and declare everything was going to be okay? She didn't want to look desperate and do something sappy like hold his hand or smile. Anything like that would just not be Cassie.

Just thinking about this impossible dilemma got her heart beating so fast she thought she was going to die... again.

Cassie decided not to knock on the door, instead turning around to head back to the street. Reaching out to Tate is a stupid idea, she said to herself, over and over as, agitated, she paced down the sidewalk in a huff.

"Cassie!?" She heard Lily's voice and turned around again. Paused at her side was Titan looking like he was waiting for her.

"Lily, hi!" Cassie stayed a few meters from the door so Lily had to narrow her eyes to see her. She had her white hair in a bun and her right hand on the doorknob.

"Come here, sweetie," Lily said softly.

Cassie felt she had no choice but to be polite and enter the house.

"Tate is not here."

"Oh."

She could hear how sad her voice sounded and hated that.

"It's okay." Cassie added.

"He went out with the boys and might arrive back home late. Follow me."

The old woman led her to the living room. It was small with blue walls and the two armchairs had vintage flower designs. The walls were filled mostly with black-and-white pictures, but some were in color. A large coffee table made the room feel even more crowded, on it a white wool tablecloth and a lone mason jar.

"Want some tea?"

"No, but thank you."

"Now, tell me, how have you been?"

Cassie sat down on the arm of one of the chairs, placed her hands between her thighs, and leaned her back a little. She had a strange feeling as if she wasn't supposed to be there chatting with Lily even though she knew Lily from before.

"Great, thank you."

"Do you live with your family?"

Cassie suddenly felt as if she was being interrogated as if Lily was looking for information to either accept or reject Cassie as an important person in Tate's life.

"I do, I live with my dad." Cassie immediately thought of Piero while conjuring up that little white lie.

Lily took a sip of tea, the amber liquid rocking back and forth in her white porcelain cup.

"Talking about your family, do you know about us?"

"Us?"

"Tate, his parents and me."

"No," she said honestly, Tate avoided that topic the one time she asked so Cassie decided she would never ask again.

"Tate escaped from his home when he was-"

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Lily," Cassie said interrupting the old lady.

Cassie watched as the sad look on Lily's face turned into something else-confusion wrapped with anger. Cassie opened her mouth but only spoke a few seconds later.

"I think it would be better if Tate tells me something like that himself, when if and when he wants to."

Lily smiled uncomfortably. Cassie held her breath.

"I think he might be at a bar called The Blue Bones. They always meet up there."

————————-

Hello! Mad here, just wanted to tell you that this novel it's going to be devided in two parts and even though this is the 19th chapter we are not even close to the end of part one lol.

Thank you so much for you votes, comments and adding this story to your library, means a lot seriously <3 I want to thank all of the people who started reading from the very beginning, the first chapter was posted around this time last year but back then I didn't have any idea what I was going to write about, now I do know and I want to thank y'all for the feedback I really appreciate it.

The picspam was made by the amazing _grimm! thank you so much, love is so pretty! <3

XXMAD