AN: Hello! Yes, I am happy to be continuing this! And thanks to all that reviewed. Yes, I know, the Lemonade Mouth fandom is a sort of old and unseen one, but it's very dear to my heart. Thank you to the people who commented. I didn't believe anyone would, but that wasn't going to stop me from writing! I have been in another country all summer on an immersive program, so I'm really writing here to get back into the swing of things. I didn't expect for it to be as much fun as it is! I love these characters, so this chapter is more of a background story. I had wanted to move forward with what I planned for Olivia and Wendy, but I couldn't seem to write that well yet. So, I tried my hand at this back story, and it just flew from my fingertips! Yes, I do realize it's in italics. I was gonna nix that cause I have a thing against it, but it's a backstory, so I think it kinda makes sense… Well, I hope you enjoy this chapter! And if you wanna review, I'm totally cool with that… Happy Sunday!
Disclaimer: I own nothing!
They had been sharing a room for a while now. When they were on tour, they shared a room. At first it had been a mistake. They were short one room, and they had been given the same key. No one said anything as they followed each other into the room. From then on, they had convinced their manager that it was for writing purposes and completely necessary. Well, they made music. Just not the instrumental kind.
They had been rather steady for a year following the interview where they had saved Mo's ass, and sharing a room had only lead them to taking the next step. And that first room they had shared only had one bed anyways. So, their relationship escalated, very quickly. And it was fun, and they loved each other, they were tied together in more ways than one, and it should have been perfect.
Should have been being the operative phrase.
For a year, they had been living in bliss. Their tours had started out as summer things, but got longer as their popularity grew. They began taking classes on the road. Gram had been a school teacher, and she had been more than willing to make sure that the band was keeping up with their schooling. It gave her an excuse to keep up with her granddaughter as well. Although, she didn't know what went on behind closed doors, and she had been too oblivious to ask why Wen and Olivia had begun sharing a room.
Senior year. They started at Mesa High, but finished on the road. Lemonade Mouth had been finished by the end of that tour.
Stella had been the first to go down the wrong path. Despite her strong headedness, she had been a lightweight when it came to the drink. She claimed that everyone was doing it, and they would probably end up doing it in college anyway. It was all because of their opening act, a group who spent too much time drinking instead of writing. It got out of control. Stella was drinking anything she could get her hands on. She liked the buzz, said it calmed her down before going on stage. She pulled a Luke Bryan one day. Falling off the stage mid-set, and people began getting suspicious. She covered it up quick, but from that moment the band was watched with scrutiny.
Scott went second. He didn't drink or do drugs, but he had been taken from them. One night while playing back home, he and a few of his old Mudslide Crush buddies had taken someone's dad's bikes for a spin. Scott had been getting the hang of it when he swerved into oncoming traffic. First response was quick, but he had no protection on that bike. The hospital did all they could, but Lemonade Mouth's second guitarist was too far gone. In a coma for who knew how long. After months of fighting, his family pulled the plug.
Mo was shaken from Scott's sudden death. Her breakdown at his funeral had been in the tabloids for weeks. She wasn't able to control her shaking. She had night terrors, she cried all the time. Going on stage was made difficult. With each passing night, her anxiety got worse. She found a drinking buddy in Stella. Her habit died quickly though once she discovered how horrible a hangover could be.
What hurt the most, was Wen. Olivia hadn't known how he found it. Or when he started it, but it drove a wedge into their relationship. She thinks it happened after Scott died, but no one knew for sure. He had picked up a pretty bad cocaine habit. Keeping it hidden from the band, from her, for a long time. Olivia didn't find out until midway through their senior year. They had had a break in the tour, going home to start the spring semester in January. Their next tour would pick back up again in April, then going on hiatus at the end of May for graduation.
Olivia had found herself spending a lot of time at Wen's that winter. Specifically, in his bed since his dad and Sydney both worked and Georgie had afterschool activities. Their friends had figured it out, but the adults in their lives were none the wiser. Without the supervision of their family members, it made Wen's growing habit easier to conceal. Until Olivia came over to surprise him.
She had let herself in, like every other time they wrote or distracted themselves. She hadn't knocked on his door, and maybe if she had…
She saw him crouched over his desk, dollar bill in hand, cocaine in a line. She dropped her songbook, and Wen swiveled the chair around at the speed of light. Olivia stood in shock. Her hands flew to her face, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. He walked to her in two strides, but she pulled away when his arms draped around her.
"Liv," he murmured. Olivia threw her hands up, shaking her head quickly. "Olivia!" he shouted over her growing sobs and pounding footsteps as she stumbled down his stairs. He ran after her, quick to catch her before she reached the door. "Just listen!" he exclaimed as her fists beat at his chest.
"No!" she sobbed. "You knew! You knew!" He did know. He knew that drugs, drinking, bar fights were the reason her dad was in jail. He should have known better.
"Look, I-I'm sorry," he weakly tried to reason.
"How long?" She refused to meet his eyes. He shrugged, mumbling a response that she couldn't understand. "How long?" her voice grew stronger, and she stared into his eyes. The pain he saw was killing him.
"I don't know!" He threw his arms up, stepping around her to the couch. "I don't know, ok? It just happened, and I liked it!"
Olivia had her hand on the handle, ready to leave and never come back, but he sounded broken. He sounded so broken, and she couldn't leave him like that. She loved him, and an addiction couldn't change the way she felt. She fell beside him on the couch, placing her hands on his. Their eyes met, and he kissed her because she didn't leave. "I love you, but you need to get this under control. I don't think I can be with someone who, who does this!" she waved her hands in front of her body, obviously meaning the cocaine.
"Ok. I-I'll work on it. I'll get help, I'll do whatever it takes." He brought his hand to her cheek. "I'm not gonna disappoint you." He placed a kiss on her forehead, but it wasn't enough for her to stay with him.
In the end, nothing was enough for her to stay with him. It was their last night before going back for graduation. The show had ended, and everyone went to their rooms. Olivia lay on their bed, her hand rested on her stomach while she flipped through a book. She placed her book down on the bedside table, and she opened the drawer to search for the TV remote.
She was sitting upright when Wen opened the bathroom door followed by a cloud of steam. Her head flew from the finger she was playing with, and the anger on her face indicated that she knew.
"What the hell, Wen?" she growled, moving across the bed to where he stood. "I believed you! I trusted you!" She stood, throwing her things into a bag. "After everything, you still, you still. What the hell were you thinking? That you could hide this from me? We're in a relationship! You can't hide this from me! You can't do it anyway. It's illegal! It's fucking illegal, Wen. What the actual hell?"
"I was embarrassed," was his response. Olivia scoffed loudly, pushing her way past him.
"I'm done. I'm done with you lying to me. I'm done with Stella being too drunk to do anything. I'm done with what fame has done to us! It's… I'm… I'm going." She turned toward him one last time. "Don't bother talking to me, or finding me. I don't want a thing to do with you anymore."
The door slammed, and she let out a wail. It ripped Wen to his core, but he didn't go after her. He was going to do what she told him this time. He wasn't going to mess it up again. Not like there was anything else for him to mess up. She was gone, and she wasn't coming back.
When Olivia left, the band fell even farther apart. Mo had a full on mental break down, sending herself to a nearby hospital's stress center. Charlie had been by Mo's side the entire time, but Stella and Wen only fell farther down the rabbit hole, causing him to give up on any chances of the band returning to its days of former glory. The night after graduation, Stella drank herself into a stupor, kicked out by her parents. Wen's world came to a halting stop, the night that he had come so close to death. Two nights after Olivia left them, him, his dad found him in his room, a needle in his arm. Her leaving had taken him from cocaine to heroin in 60 seconds flat.
Thus, Lemonade Mouth canceled the rest of their tour. Forever.
XXX
It was in those months that Olivia came to a career halting discovery. She was pregnant. She was pulling the same stunt as her parents, a teenager with a baby. But there was a stirring in her. She was going to be the mother she never had. She was going to do right by her daughter. She would have told Wen at their graduation. He would have been thrilled, or so she hoped. She never got the chance to tell him. He had chosen his addiction to her. She wasn't going to let her child grow up like that.
So, she left. She packed up after graduation. She her grandmother had a friend who had strings she could pull at Indiana University. The music program was good, and the school of education was phenomenal. She had wanted to be a teacher for a long time, and with her background in music, she would go to do just that. There was also the fact that any college in all of America would die to Olivia White in their music program.
Once accepted, she changed her name to Olivia Johnson, but something couldn't bring her to change her daughter's name along with her. Gwendolyn White was what Olivia believed to be a strong name. A quiet tribute to the child's absent father, and a pretty name for a pretty girl. Wendy grew quickly at IU; she thrived with the music, and Olivia really believed she had made the right choice.
When Wendy was four, Olivia had gotten a job with West Meadow Schools as their second choir director. The school district had been growing for quite some time, and Grace was getting overwhelmed with the amount of kids wanting to join her choirs. The two had become fast friends, something Olivia had avoided at all costs while in college. She hadn't wanted someone to recognize her and to exploit where she was. She didn't want Wen to know about Wendy yet, if at all.
The mother and daughter had begun their lives in a tiny apartment in their suburban town where Wendy could play with other children at the local pool, but Olivia wanted more for the four-year-old. While on the house search, they had spent an entire summer living in Grace's basement. Wendy had loved it. Every day she was playing with Grace's youngest Austin, and following behind her oldest Lily. It was there that Wendy met Savannah, one of her current best friends, who lived two doors down from the Wheeler's.
The two girls lost touch when Savannah's family moved to a different neighborhood, and so did Olivia and Wendy. Although, Olivia had found them an adorable house in a neighborhood built to resemble a New England community. It gave the blonde woman a sense of home, and Wendy loved the number of trees and random things to play on. They had created a daily routine of going on walks by the many walking paths, and had learned fishing from Grace's husband. West Meadow fit them nicely.
Though, Olivia's days occasionally were gloomy. The days that she saw the father of her child plastered on the front pages of magazines. He looked better, that was for sure, but he was now climbing the ranks in a large corporation. It was a music corporation, but still, it made Olivia uneasy. Wondering if he had turned his back on the revolution they had held as kids. But then again, hadn't she?
