If All I Could Do Was Hold You
Chapter 2
By: Amanda
A letter arrived in Larceny’s mailbox two weeks after she posted her letter to Benji. It had no return address. This is the letter she received.
Stay out of Benji’s life. Don’t try and contact him in any way, shape or form. I don’t want you near him. You wrecked him once and I won’t let you do it again. That means no letters, phone calls, emails, no nothing. It also means that you aren’t welcome here any more. You want to stay in DC, then make sure you stay well away from him and us.
I really mean it when I say don’t contact Benji, he doesn’t need you any more. He has all he needs in me, the band, the rest of his friends and soon, Tony. He can’t have you around, you’ll just destroy everything. Don’t ruin his friendship with Tony for the second time. It nearly killed him and I don’t think he could handle it again. If you really love Benji as you seem to THINK you do, then stay away from him. The best way for everyone concerned to move on and start again is without you. No one needs you or wants you here.
Another thing just so that you know, I did read the little pathetic love letter you sent Benji, and no he wont be reading it. I have better plans for it, much better. I heard from Tony that you’ve been trying to apologise to him again, so that you can be “friends”. Well I’m not going to let that happen, Tony and Benji are just starting work things out and I’m not going to let you pollute that. They’ll never be proper be friends as long as you’re in the picture. So the only way to solve that is to remove you from the picture. Entirely.
That’s why I am giving Tony the letter. That should be more then enough to convince him that you’re only using him to get to Benji, because that’s what you’re doing isn’t it? Well it won’t matter soon because Tony will really know what a bitch you are. Trying to con Benji into taking you back while being all friendly with Tony. You make me sick, you are Benji’s biggest mistake, you broke him in a way that I never thought could happen. Go find yourself another life and stay out of Benji’s.
Joel Madden
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From: LarcenyRulesTheWorld@hotmail.com
Sent: Friday, 25 February 2004 03:06:58 AM
To: JMadden@goodcharlotte.epic.com
Subject: Benji
How dare you, I thought you were my friend? You invaded my privacy and you invaded Benji’s privacy. There were things in that letter that no one but me and Benji were supposed to know. How could you Joel? This is a new low, even for you. You’ve been spiteful in the past but this is absolutely ridiculous. I’m stupid, I fucked up. I know all that, but that still doesn’t give you any right to choose whether Benji talks to me or not. And it gives you even less right to read my personal thoughts written solely for the eyes of Benji. It was hard enough writing it knowing Benji would read it. But instead of Benji, you and Tony will read it, I don’t think I can handle that. I shouldn’t have to.
Please don’t show it to Tony. It will just hurt him even more and I don’t want to do that. He has to understand that my feelings for Benji are serious but this isn’t the way. Joel you have to understand that if you show that letter to Tony then from this point on any new problems are your fault. I’m doing what I can to salvage my friendship with Tony, but you’re hell bent on destroying it. Please think about what you’re doing and stop.
If you won’t do it for me then do or even Tony then do it for Benji. He doesn’t need this crap especially from you. You want to help Benji then find some other way because all this is going to do is hurt him.
Joel, I really don’t know what else to say. I’m sick of telling everyone I’m wrong, of defending my decision, of being separated from everyone by this invisible barrier. Just please don’t give my letter to Tony, you don’t have to give it too Benji but PLEASE don’t give it to Tony.
Larceny.
From: Jmadden@goodcharlotte.epic.com
Sent: Saturday, 26 February 2004 12:23:01 PM
To: LarcenyRulesTheWorld@hotmail.com
Subject: RE Benji
Too late
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From: TheLovatoLoveMachine@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, 3 March 2004 03:06:58 AM
To: LarcenyRulesTheWorld@hotmail.com
Subject: ??????
Well I never thought I would be writing an email to you to tell you what I am about to tell you. I don’t know what to say. How do you tell your ex-girlfriend that you read a love letter that she wrote to the guy who broke us up and is coincidentally my ex-best friend.
Fuck this shit! I don’t wanna hate you, it would be easier to just pretend that I don’t and that everything is okay and say that I forgive you but I can’t. I know I said we could be friends but I can’t do it, not now, I’m not sure ever. Things have changed. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Joel showed me the letter you wrote to Benji.
Fuck, I can’t believe you said some of that shit to Benji. You were really fucking honest with him, were you ever going to be that honest with me? I know I shouldn’t have read the damn thing but can you really blame me? Joel said there was some pretty bad shit in there. And he was right, but it wasn’t what I expected, especially from the way Joel was raving about it. I thought you were being a sneaky underhanded bitch. He made it sound like you were gonna try and fuck both of us,.. But instead I find out that you just want to fuck Benji.
Okay, so far this letter hasn’t gone the way I wanted it too, it was just meant to be a quick note but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I’ve got a lot to say to you and to ask you but I don’t know if I’m ready to hear the answers. Therefore I don’t know what where to fucking start. You fucked me up, but from you’re letter I’m starting to realise that maybe there is more to it then I first thought. I dunno though, I thought you were just trying to fuck me over like Sahra did to Benji, but maybe, just maybe, it’s not that simple.
Fuck this is too hard. I don’t want to go and bring all this shit up again. It was bad enough going through it the first time. You’ll just have to deal with the fact that I can never trust you or even be friends with you again. Some day I might be able to be around you but definitely not anytime soon. I don’t want to know any more about you and Benji at the moment, I can’t handle it! What I read in the letter was bad enough. It was an overload.
Okay I want to say that the main reason I am emailing you is to tell you that I AM going to give your letter to Benji. I don’t give a fuck what Joel says, Benji was my best mate for years and just because we aren’t friends any more doesn’t meant that I should hold this back from him. It was wrong for Joel to take it and read it, it was wrong for me to read it and it was probably wrong for you to even write it to Benji. But that’s not my choice to make. You wrote it to him so therefore he should be able to read it, especially since we all did.
Although it’s insane I still feel some sense of loyalty to both of you, so I feel so fucking guilty about reading the stupid letter. We all become such good friends and it’s hard to turn off those feelings even though I don’t feel the same about either of you any more. Just because I’m doing this doesn’t mean anything except for the fact that I sometimes have a conscience. Except for that pathetic reasoning I don’t know why I’m giving Benji the letter, so don’t ask me about it. I’m just an idiot that’s all there is too it. MO< You know, after six months I still have trouble believing you did it. Not only did you screw around on me, you did it with my best friend. I won’t deny you’re a bitch for that and I never thought that you would do it. Not you. The betrayals still there and I just can’t get past it. I should be able to since we have been friends for so long, especially me and Benji but I can’t. I don’t want to talk about this with you yet but there is a few things that I need to ask you. Why did you give up one and a half years of us for something that wasn’t guaranteed? Why take such a risk? Was I that horrible to be with? Was it worth fucking up everything?
I don’t know what the hell I am going to do about you and Benji now, just when I thought I had it sorted you totally threw me off balance. That letter changed everything I thought I knew about what was going on. All I really do know is that we probably shouldn’t see each other for a while. I don’t want to see you, and I don’t think I can see Benji either especially knowing that he is the cause for you doing this.
And Larceny can you do something for me please? Just write back to let me know that you are doing okay? You sounded pretty damn low in that letter and no one seems to have seen you at all lately, except for when you went up to DC a couple of weeks back. But even then I heard that you didn’t talk to anyone but Billy. I don’t want you to do anything stupid okay! Email me as soon as you get this.
Tony
P.S.
One more question, Do you really love Benji? I mean really love him, no bullshit, I want the god’s honest truth. I want to know whether you fucked us up for what you think is the real thing or just to get laid? I know I haven’t been perfect in that department, and I don’t know if you know this but yes I did cheat on you a couple of times. But that was more in the beginning when I was on tour, but come on this is you were talking about. And you don’t have the pressures of touring on you all of the time!!!