Enjoy!
He was pacing the floor in front of me while I sat on the bed. His shoes made a scraping sound against the rough hotel carpeting and the bed made a loud squeaking noise and I shifted my weight uncomfortably.
It was the most agitated I had ever seen him. His hands couldn't seem to find a comfortable spot. Now they were behind his back, now in his pockets, now resting on his arms which he crossed over his chest. His eyes darted from one side of the room to the other, never looking straight at me. His hair was a mess and his clothes were rumpled. I wondered briefly about that, but dismissed it figuring it was pretty irrelevant to the conversation.
"I don't get it," I said finally.
"What is there not to get?" he asked, still not looking at me. "I can't do this anymore, Tay. Taylor. I can't."
I stared for a minute, but he continued to pretend he didn't know from which direction my voice was coming from, his eyes darting every which way but never seeing me sitting right there on the bed.
"Can't do what?"
"Be with the band!" he finally shouted and his eyes met mine at that moment. They were almost wild with desperation for me to understand what it was he was saying to me.
I didn't even blink. It wasn't an uncommon statement coming from him. He'd repeated it over and over again in the middle of every tour we'd gone on in the past ten years. It didn't take much.
"Don't look at me like that," he said.
"What other way am I supposed to look at you, Ike?" I asked. "You've said it enough times before."
"So you don't believe me," he said mildly, though his expression had darkened significantly. "I mean it this time. I really do."
I raised an eyebrow, unconcerned. It always seemed to me that all you had to do was get Isaaac up on stage in front of the women who worshipped him so. One guitar face and you knew you had him.
"It's ripping my marriage apart," he went on, beginning to pace once more. "Debbie thinks I cheat on her every chance I get. And now with Elizabeth..."
I felt a pang at the mention of my six month old niece. I knew I was jealous that Isaac had someone more to think about and someone more to love than himself. Eve in a marriage that was coming dangerously close to becoming a statistic, he would always have Elizabeth. Debbie wasn't the type to take that away from him.
"Well it's not as though you do cheat on her," I pointed out.
He gave me a look and suddenly I knew where the rumpled clothes and tousled hair had come from.
"Oh," was all I could think to say.
"I can't do this anymore," he repeated meaningfully.
Suddenly I was enraged, on my feet and staring him straight in the face.
"You can't do this!" I said. "You can't leave the band!"
He sighed. He seemed to pity me. I pitied myself.
"You'll get someone to replace me..."
"I can't believe this!" I said, sitting back down on the edge of the bed, cradling my head in my hands. I would have stuck my fingers in my ears and started lalala-ing, but...
"I'm not a kid anymore, Taylor. Neither are you even though in all your immaturity it's hard not to mistake you for one."
"Oh I see," I said. "So this is personal. You're leaving because of me."
"Don't be such an asshole, Taylor. I'm leaving because of me," He said. "It's not the life I want anymore. Maybe when I was seventeen, but...it's changed now."
"But...how can we get someone to replace you? You can't leave!"
I thought if I repeated it enough times the idea might squeeze its way through his thick skull and he'd finally see that he couldn't abandon me. Or Zac.
"I don't know," he replied. "You know Julian is dying to play on stage with you again."
"The name of the band," I said slowly and deliberately, "is Hanson."
"Julian's practically a Hanson."
"No!" I insisted. "How can you do this? You can't leave!"
The band would never survive this. Isaac had always been the mediator between me and Zac. Without him there to pacify our various fights, we'd probably kill each other.
The sands were running through my fingers.
He shook his head and walked toward the door. He turned back to me with his hand on the knob.
"I want you to know that this is something I have turned over in my mind again and again and again. For years, even. This isn't something I'm just suddenly doing to hurt you, you know," he said. "I have Debbie and Elizabeth to think about. You'll get it someday."
I kept my eyes to the scenery outside the window and my jaw clenched. I knew he wasn't looking at me either as the door opened and he exited, his shoes scraping against the carpeting. He shut the door softly behind him.
The end.