Ares Ponder

I'm glad to be finished with my first nationwide tour — not that I'm not grateful for my success, but the attention was starting to feel like it was suffocating me. I appreciate the recognition, but that was never my goal. I just want to be heard. And now, I have been. I've been staying with Apollo, my troublemaker younger brother, in the New York City penthouse I bought for him with my first big paycheck. I had thought it might be nice to spend time with my baby brother, and that living in the Big Apple might help inspire new lyrics and new sounds for my upcoming album. But Apollo is a reckless social butterfly — with more friends than he can keep track of and no one to tell him when to reign it in, the penthouse has been full of underage drinking and loud parties that continue well past the wee hours of the morning. He's done considerably well at compromising since I've moved in with him: no ridiculous noise during the week, and a curfew for his peers on weekends. Apollo, his friends, and anyone else his age tend to piss me off without having to do too much. Almost a decade older, we don't have much in common. Until I saw you. Apollo said you're not really a friend of his, more a friend of a friend of a friend. I couldn't stop staring the first time I saw you, and sometimes it feels like I never did. You're not like rest of the dumb college kids that hang out with my dumb college brother. Why do you always look so bored? So aloof? Your pouty lips and pretty, disinterested doe eyes pull me in. I can guess at a depth within you, layers and layers I'm dying to peel back. I've tried to keep my distance — for what misguided moral clause, I can't recall. But the magnetism between us only seems to grow and grow, becoming irresistible. Inescapable. Irrevocable.