Based off of 'Audrey, Wait!' I'm just using Miley, Lilly, Oliver, Amber, Jake, and Nick Jonas' names and making it more like their personalities. And this takes place about 3 years later than present day and Nick Jonas is not famous. I own nothing. Enjoy! And it's rated T for a reason.
The day I broke up with my boyfriend Jake was the day he wrote the song. You know, the song. I'm sure you've heard it. Maybe you've danced to it at prom or sang it in your car on a Friday night when you were driving and feeling like you must be inhuman to feel this happy, the windows down and nothing but air around you. Your mom has probably hummed it while cleaning the dyers' lint trap, and your grandpa has most likely whistled a few bars. If he's the whistling type.
According to the poll on the front page of USA Today, sixty-three percent of Americans blame me for the breakup, so let me clear the air now: They're right. Sixty-three percent of Americans are no fools when it comes to knowing about my love life, a fact that is really creepy and isn't helping me sleep well. But it's true: I broke up with Jake, and eight hours later, he had a song in his head and a guitar in his hand and it snowballed from there.
It took me forever to decide whether or not to break up with him, I can tell you that. It wasn't like I just woke up one morning and was like, "Hey, let's liven thing up!" Please. I have enough on my plate without all this. I'm a junior, for God's sakes! It's not like I have to take the SATs this year or anything. But I had been thinking about it—breaking up—for a while.
"Make a list," Lilly had suggested. She's big on lists and has a folder full of them. They have titles like "Six Colors to Dye My Hair Before I Shrivel Up and Die" and "Five People to Banish From the Face of the Earth" (Jake, according to her, is now numero uno). So the day I did it, I sat at Lilly's kitchen table and wrote down the reasons why I should stay with Jake.
1. He's a singer/songwriter with a band and actual talent.
2. He has excellent oral hygiene. (That one is so important, I can't even tell you. I can't imagine ever kissing a non-flosser. So gross).
3. He says he's going to write a song about me.
And then I wrote the cons:
1. He smokes too much pot.
2. He's always "practicing" or "gigging" with his band, the Do-Gooders, especially when I need him.
3. He says "gigging".
4. He's mellow about everything. Everything.
5. He makes me be the one to get the condoms from the school nurse's office.
6. He sucks his teeth after he eats, which makes horrible squeaking sounds, like a mouse is dying.
And so on. I wrote so many cons that I needed a new piece of paper, and by the time Lilly saw me start a fresh page, she took it away and shook her head. "Miley," She told me, "save a tree."
"Well, can we still be...I don't know, friends? Or something lame like that?" Jake had been cross-legged on his bed when I broke up with him. I was on the opposite side of the room in his desk chair, sitting backwards. We were both crying, but he was the only one who needed tissues. Still, we passed the box back and forth.
"Friends would be great." I said, and relief flooded through me. Friends were bloody fantastic, friends were not angry at each other. Friends still talked. Friends drifted apart. "I'd really like being friends."
He fell on his bed for a minute before sitting back up. "Steve finally got the A&R guy to come to a show of ours. He set up a one-off tonight. You're really killing my vibe."
"I'm sorry." I said, and I meant it. I really did.
"Will you still come?"
"If you want me to, sure." Anything to make this conversation end, I thought.
Jake nodded and hugged his guitar tighter to him, and I have to admit that even in the eleven months we were together, that guitar practically got more action than I did. (Reason number fourteen on the list of cons, by the way). "You sure you want to do this?"
"Yeah," I whispered. "I'm sure."
We didn't talk for a few minutes, and then I got up and said, "I'm going now." When he didn't respond, I left the room and was halfway down the stairs before I heard him say, "Miley, wait!" But I kept going, pretending I didn't hear him calling for me.
That night, I enlisted Lilly and her boyfriend, Oliver, to come with me to the show for moral support. "Like I wasn't already going?" Lilly said when I asked her. "I've already gotten about fifty million texts and thirty million Facebook bulletins about it. And besides," she added, "I want details."
During the drive over to the Jukebox in Oliver's car (he has an awesome sound system with a subwoofer), she made me recount the breakup word for word, with Oliver wincing every few minutes.
"Harsh, man," He kept saying. "That is so harsh." Lilly finally whacked him on the shoulder. "Can you please be more sensitive to Miley's situation?" she hissed.
"Sorry, Miley." Oliver smiled at me in the rearview mirror. "Sensitivity controls now engaged."
"And could you not sound like a dork when you do it?"
"It's one or the other, babe."
"Don't worry about it, Oliver." I told him. "It's all good."
Lilly just shook her head and hung over the backseat. "Either way," she said, "I cannot believe you agreed to go tonight."
Half an hour later, packed like sardines inside the Jukebox, we were still talking about it. "Did Jake actually say 'kill his vibe'?" Lilly asked. By now, she was on her third Diet Coke and I could see the caffeine starting to shoot out of her eyes.
I crossed my arms in front of me and stood by the side of the stage, hoping the Do-Gooders would hurry up and play so we could go home and skip the traffic. "Those words exactly." I told her. "Plus some other choice phrases."
"What? Like, 'Fuck you'?"
"No, more like, 'How could you do this to me?' 'I thought we were gonna be together forever.' That kind of stuff." I stirred my melted ice with my straw.
Lilly rolled her eyes in solidarity. "Please. He must be a closet romantic novel reader. I'm surprised he didn't break out a lute and try to woo you."
"If he had done that, I would've been more interested." I took her drink from her and sat down. "You're making me nervous with all the addictive stimulants. Don't you know that NutraSweet can give you cancer?"
"So can sunlight." She took her drink back and made a big deal of slurping the rest with her straw. "I hope Oliver's getting me another one of these."
"I hope he's getting you a side of tranquilizers." I looked over my shoulder and saw a third of our class standing behind us. No one seemed too interested in me. Yet. "Do you think people know we broke up?"
"Have you told anyone besides me and Oliver?"
"Nope. But Jake might have."
"You've totally ruined the poll that people had going for Cutest Couple in the yearbook, by the way. Not to guilt you out or anything."
"What?"
"Not me, I mean. I saw this one coming a long time ago. But people were laying two-to-one bets that you and Jake would be Cutest Couple."
"People are betting on yearbook superlatives? Really?"
Lilly nodded. "Now the smart money is on Dan Milne and Janie Cooper. She's worse than static cling."
I was about to comment on Janie Cooper's static-clinginess, but then I saw Amber across the room. Even if you've never met Amber, you know her. Every school, I'm sorry to say, has a girl like her. She's pretty or hot or whatever word you want to use, and she has this weird ability to make every guy worship her. Every guy, that is, except Jake.
"What are you looking at?" Lilly asked, craning her neck to see, but luckily Oliver elbowed his way back to me and Lilly with her Diet Coke and my cranberry juice with lime. "See now, Jake wouldn't have done this." Lilly pointed out as she took her drink. "He wouldn't have noticed that you were thirsty, much less that I was. I mean, you could both be walking in the goddamn Sahara desert and you'd be dying of thirst and he'd be all like, 'Hey Miley, I've got this killer idea for a song.' Totally useless."
I swirled my ice with the straw. "Jake used 'killer' last year. This year, everything is 'fool-ass'."
"Okay, Miley? Let me introduce you to something called The Point. You're missing it."
She was on a roll now. "I'm just saying that you've been really patient with Jake. More patient than I would've been—"
Oliver snorted and then became really interested in his drink.
"—and I think you just deserve someone who makes you feel special and wonderful and all those good things that you see on TV."
"I thought you weren't watching TV anymore."
Lilly shrugged. "I fell off the wagon."
If you ever meet Lilly, don't call her Lil, Lils, Lillian, or anything other than Lilly. If you're feeling both immortal and bored, though, call her Lilly Willy.
On-stage, Jon, the Do-Gooders' drummer, started to do a half-hearted sound check. If there is a hell, there will be a drummer sound-checking there, I guarantee you. "Oh, God, kill me now." Lilly rolled her eyes again.
"I'm a weak, spineless girl, what can I say?" I was quickly downing my cranberry juice and wishing it had a kick to it.
"Plus, the A&R guy's here and Steve kept promising that he would come and I want to see him in person."
A quick word on Steve: Three months ago, the Do-Gooders played a show at the Jukebox, the one where part of the ceiling caved in during their set and it knocked out their amps and they kept playing away.
Anyway, Steve was at the show that night. Steve was a freshman at UCLA who smoked tons of weed, went to class occasionally, downloaded MP3s, and had an uncle who knew someone who did A&R at a record label. Steve thought the Do-Gooders were "a-may-zing, dude, fucking a-may-zing!" and after the ceiling collapse and the amps gave out, they all went and hung out at Steve's dorm room and agreed to let Steve manage them. As far as I can tell, though, getting the A&R guy to come to the show was the first managerial thing Steve had done for them.
I was about to say something to Lilly about how weird it was being out here rather than backstage before a show, when she grabbed my arm. "Space!" She cried, and shoved me about six feet toward the speaker.
If you really want to know something about me, you should know this: I like my music loud. I mean loud. I'm not talking the kind of loud where your parents knock on your bedroom door and ask you to turn it down. Please, that's amateur hour. When I say loud, I mean you-can't-hear-your-parents-knocking-and-the-neighboors-are-putting-a-FOR SALE-sign-on-their-house-and-moving-to-another-block-because-they-can't-handle-the-constant-noise-anymore loud. If you aren't this kind of person, then I don't think we'll get along.
Lilly and I always turn things up for ten. In fact, it's getting to be a problem because we've already blown out the speakers in my car. Twice. The first time, my parents took pity on me and replaced them, but now I have to dig up the cash to fix it. So Lilly and I usually use Oliver for his car, ow we just ride in mine and sing really loud until we laugh so hard, we want to throw up, and Oliver ducks in the backseat and pulls his hoodie tighter around his head and looks like he wants to die.
The lights finally went out and the crowd started whistling and clapping. Next to me, Lilly was grinning and wiggling around. She lives for this moment at shows, when the lights are cut and all you can see is the dim outline of a stage and empty mikes waiting to be picked up and abused. When the Do-Gooders came out, shaggy and skinny with their heads down, the applause got even louder. Even I let out a few whistles.
"Here comes trouble." Oliver muttered behind me when Jake came out, and I could see Lilly plow her elbow into his ribs from the corner of my eye.
My resolve took a little nosedive when I saw Jake. God, he was cute. Not even cute: hot. H-A-W-T, hot. His hair was shining under the stage lights and he was wearing his beat-up shoes, the ones that looked horrible and smelled even worse. I could see him looking out at the crowd and I didn't know if I was supposed to make eye contact with him or smile or pretend I couldn't see him.
Was Jake looking for me, though? His eyes scanned across stage left and never stopped, and I didn't wave. Next to me, Lilly reached down and squeezed my hand twice. Seriously, I love her.
"Hi, we're the Do-Gooders," Jake said into the mic, and you could hear some girls giggle and swoon. I had never been jealous of them before, but now I felt a small twist in my stomach. Just get this over with, I begged silently. "The name's ironic." Ha ha, hee hee,. Oh, Jake, you're a riot. Please. Stop. My sides.
They played through six songs and the crowd danced and sweated on each other and the bass shook the floors under our feet and the roof over our heads. The Jukebox was approximately the size of my parents' kitchen and the walls would get slick from the humidity of too many people too close together. Onstage, Jake kept shaking his head back and forth in time with the music, his hair pinwheeling and sending little blue drops of sweat toward Bob, the rhythm guitarist, and Daniel, their bassist.
Here's something you don't know about Jake: He used to practice that move in front of the mirror. I'm just saying.
Jake's voice pulled me back to the stage. "This is usually the point where we go backstage and you clap and we do our encore, but we're gonna skip that middle part tonight and get straight to the music."
One more song, I told myself. One more song and then I can go to the In-N-Out drive-thru with Lilly and Oliver and get a grilled cheese and a chocolate shake and blast music until my ears want to fall off and Oliver takes me home. One more song and then I can be a normal, average girl without a boyfriend."This is a new song for us; I wrote it tonight."
A new song? Everyone in the crowd was talking a little. The Do-Gooders hadn't written a new song in at least four months, and we already knew all the words to their stuff. But a new song? This wasn't in my grilled-cheese-and-loud-music plan.
Lilly, I should point out here, is very smart. Sometimes she is smarter than me. "Uh-oh." I heard her say, but before I could turn my head to see what "uh-oh" was about, Jake kept speaking.
"My girlfriend Miley broke up with me today and—"
Uh-oh.
You know how in the movies, the room will be really crowded and noisy and someone will say something that causes everyone's heads to whip around and stare at the person? Let me tell you something: That happens in real life, too. And it happened to me when Jake said that. Two hundred people in the room, four hundred eyes (actually 399; Jake Myers lost one in a fishing accident when he was nine), and all of them were burning into me.
Jake hadn't shut up yet. "Yeah, she broke up with me right before the biggest night of my life—"
"Harsh," whispered a voice behind me. Guess who.
"And I always said I'd write a song about her and, well, I hope it's not too late. This on is called 'Miley, Wait!'"
Have you ever had a brain freeze? That's what it felt like when I heard the title of the song. I remembered walking down Jake's staircase, pretending I didn't hear him. I had made a huge mistake. I hadn't listened to him, so he was making sure I was listening now.
(Okay, so I also have to admit, I was a little disappointed the song wasn't titled "Miley, the Hottest Girl I've Ever Met," or "Miley, You're Kisses (Were Amazing)" or something like that.)
It was like nothing they've ever played before. Jake was changing chords so fast and I thought for the briefest moment, Is that how he loved me? Did he really love me like this? I began imagining our reconciliation scene, making out after the show and giggling about how stupid I was for breaking up with him and--
He started singing.
"You said your piece and now I've got to say mine! I had you and you strung me on the liiiiinnnnneeee!"
What?
"We said we loved and it was a lie! I touched your hair and watched you die! You crucified my heart, took every part, and hung them out to drrrrrryyyyyy!"
Oh. My. God.
"'It's all good!' you always say! But save it for another day! 'Cause now I'm watching you walk awaaaaayyyyyy!"
Here's the worst part: The song was good. I mean, you obviously know that by now—I'm not revealing some big secret or anything. But at the time, the whole crowd was having a collective heart attack, they were dancing so hard. Even the kids who don't dance, the ones who refuse to show any emotion about anything but still show up, they were nodding their heads to the beat like they were issuing a mob hit. I could see the A&R guy, tapping his foot and watching the stage, hungry. Steve was completely bug-eyed and gaping; he had no idea this band could produce this song.
Neither had I.
And then the chorus started. Sing along if you want.
"Miley, wait! Miley, wait! You walked out the door and I want you to see me slam it shut! Miley, wait! Miley, wait! You can say all you want, but I want you to know that this is the cruelest cut!"
I swear, if that song hadn't been about me, if I had never met Jake, I would've been on that stage shaking what my momma gave me, it was that addictive. But instead, I was rooted to the floor and my jaw was somewhere around my knees. Lilly was next to me, her eyes wide, and Oliver was bopping around behind us, a little unaware of how dire the situation was. I mean, Jake was standing on the stage and singing about me in front of our entire school!
If I had been quicker, I would've run up onstage and yanked the wires out of the amp, and while I was at it, body-slammed Jake or knocked over the drum kit or something. But I couldn't move; I couldn't cry or talk. Really, it was like being buried alive, and Jake had the shovel.
I finally turned my head to look at Lilly, who kept glancing from Jake to me. "Holy fuck," her mouth was saying again and again. But even her foot was tapping the floor. She saw me looking and stopped. Why couldn't I have broken up with Jake tomorrow? Why couldn't I be a procrastinator like Lilly?
I bet he even lied about flossing.
Finally the song ended. "Thank you, we're the Do-Gooders!" Jake shouted, putting his fist in the air as he pulled his guitar off. The rest of the band walked offstage, but Jake? I swear, he strutted. Just like a chicken.
"Is this really happening?" I grabbed Lilly's hand and held it in front of me. "Is this a dream? Am I dreaming? Are you dreaming? Are you about to turn into a Cadillac or is a unicorn gonna run through the room?"
"No, you're awake."
I closed my eyed and then opened then wide. "Could you please just lie to me?"
Lilly, without taking her eyes off me, pulled on Oliver's sleeve. "Uh, you might want to start leading us out of here sweetie."
"Is Oliver dreaming? Am I in Oliver's dream, maybe?" Oliver was holding on to Lilly's hand, and she had mine, and we were making a little train through the crowd of people.
"No, you're having a meltdown."
"Is it a bad thing that I can't feel my feet?"
"Now you're just being dramatic."
"Um, excuse me, did you not see what just happened?!"
"Hey, Miley, that was an awesome song!" Kids waved at me as if I'd written The Song. As if I would write it!
"Good thing you broke up with him!"
"Miley, wait! Miley, wait!" I heard that one every time I took a step.
"I'm going to kill them." I told Lilly.
"No, you're not." Oliver tugged her to the left and I zigzagged behind them.
"You're right," I agreed. "I'm not going to kill them. I'm going to kill Jake."
"That would make a fantastic college essay. 'I Killed My Boyfriend and Still Managed to Maintain a 4.2 GPA.'"
"You would never write a song about me, would you, Lilly?"
"I wouldn't write a song like that about you, that's for sure."
By the time Oliver got us back to the car, I had pulled my hair over my shoulders so that it hung toward my stomach and hid my face. "Buckle up, Cousin Itt," Oliver said in the rearview mirror.
"Now would be a good time to engage those sensitivity controls again, Oliver."
"Got it."
Lilly climbed into the backseat with me and we sat facing each other. "So do I kill myself now, or do I wait and do it in front of Jake so he feels really, really bad?"
"You're not going to kill yourself. Remember in health class, when they talked about how adolescents drink to mask pain? That's what you're going to do."
"Did they talk about dismembering ex-boyfriends, too?"
"I don't think we'll get to that until anatomy next year."
I laughed as the car lurched into traffic. Everyone was looking into our windows and then turning to each other in their cars. I could practically hear what they were saying: "There's the girl that broke up with Jake! Her, right there!"
"Look," Oliver said from the front seat. "Don't worry about this, Miley. It's just some song. It's not like those people weren't gonna find out you broke up, anyway."
"Listen to the man," Lilly agreed. "He speaks the truth."
"Damn straight," Oliver said. "He's gonna be so high later that he probably won't remember the lyrics anyway."
"Amen," Lilly added. "You wanna go to In-N-Out?"
I rested my head against her shoulder and nodded. She knows me so well it's scary. "Yes, but I don't have any cash."
"Me either. Oliver, Miley and I have no cash."
"Why aren't I surprised?" he muttered while merging into the intersection.
So while we were in the drive-thru line, while Oliver was yelling our order into the teeny-tiny speaker box, while they were making me a strawberry milkshake instead of a chocolate one I ordered, you probably know what Jake was doing. I mean, he's talked about it in every single interview he's given. The A&R guy came out into the Jukebox loading dock and shook all their hands and said things like "You guys rocked!" and dropped some names of label heads and invited them to the office on Monday morning. "Get ready," he told them. "Your lives are about to change."
No one told me that my life was about to change, though. They didn't tell me about paparazzi and magazine editors and publicists and the lawyer my parents would have to hire. They certainly didn't tell me that all of you people would know my name by the end of the year.
And that's all you know: my name.
But not anymore, kiddos.
Here's my side of the story.
Long chapter, right? Haha. (:
And let's pretend that for this story that Miley's mom is still alive. Just play along. Review!