"Have you ever wondered what it would be like if we weren't band geeks?" Amberly asked one day at a football game, observing the cheerleaders jumping and bouncing in their micro-mini skirts, then the football players running across the field after a stupid ball. Purposeless, all of it was.

"Um, depressing?" Piper offered. "We'd have no life."

"What if we were-" Amberly gulped slightly, only being a little more dramatic than normal. "Cheerleaders?"

"Ack! Don't joke, Amberly!" Piper squealed, drawing attention to herself. As usual, all of the underclassmen boys stared at her, drinking in how pretty she looked even in the nerdy band uniform. "Cheerleaders?" her voice dropped low, and she was faking complete fright. "I'd rather be emo."

"Hey!"

"Oh, right. Sorry, Ams." She had, as usual, 'forgot' that Amberly classified herself as 'overly emotional' or 'emo', as they were in a high school that wore stereotypical labels like the latest goods from Abercrombie & Fitch.

"It's not a bad thing to be overly emotional, Pipe."

Piper's jaw dropped slightly, "It may not be bad for you, but you don't have to deal with constant mood swings coming from your best friend!"

"You know, it's a good thing we're band geeks, or we'd probably have murdered each other by now…"

"Oh, if only!" Audrey snapped. Piper glanced over, a little surprised that she hadn't noticed that Audrey was there.

"Shut up, Audrey. You don't know what you'd do without us here to be your best-best-best-best friends!" Amberly slung an arm around Audrey and air-kissed her cheek.

Audrey yanked away, while Piper and Isabelle, who had just approached, laughed. "Jesus, Amberly! What the hell?"

"Aw, you know you love me!"

"Get off me!"

Piper rested her tall, skinny self on Audrey's lap and smirked, "You act like you don't want us!"

"Gee, who would have thought?" Isabelle cracked. Piper kicked her.

"Piper, God! Your ass is bony as hell, get off of me!"

"Never!"

"PIPER!" Piper wiggled her butt a little, making Audrey squeal. "Piper, get off me, you lesbo!"

Piper jumped off of her friend's lap and glared, "Bitch!"

"Lesbian!"

"Lesbian-lover!"

"Lap-dancer!"

"Lap-dancer lover!"

"WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP?" Isabelle roared. Everyone in the bleachers turned to look at her, surprised that such a petite girl could scream so loudly. She giggled and sat down, "Thank God we're band geeks, or people would think we were crazy!"

Piper looked up at the ceiling of the band bus. Senior year was progressing, it was already November. She hadn't seen her own boyfriend since he'd left in August. Her friends hadn't seen theirs either, except lucky Isabelle. Why couldn't Piper have chosen a boyfriend in her own grade? It would have made so much more sense.

When she thought of James, she almost always would remember when they got together. That was the happiest day of her life. She'd been an eighth-grader, and he was a freshmen. They'd ridden the same bus, and had talked to each other daily. Piper had been completely infatuated with him from day one, and the two soon became best friends.

Piper sent Amberly to talk to him about her, and was heartbroken when she learned that he liked someone else. She went about being melancholy and depressed for a whole month before Audrey staged an intervention and crankily asked James at one of Piper's slumber parties, "Do you like her or not? I'm kind of tired of her acting like a wet cat." In those exact words. Yup, that's exactly why she loved Audrey so much.

James had replied, "I'm not going to answer in front of a bunch of immature 8th-grade girls." Piper had freaked out on him, screamed at him for being such an asshole, and then sat there with Audrey and Amberly also shouting at him through the phone.

Then two weeks later, the obviously-shy James asked Piper out. And they'd been dating since then. Despite the everlasting torture James had gone through in high school for dating a girl in the middle school, even though Jake Auburn was dating Mr. Fisher's daughter Amy while she was an eighth grader as well, James hadn't broken up with her. She hadn't broken up with him, either.

Awkward hugs, choppy conversation, and the most fumbling first kiss in the history of first kisses. That was her boyfriend, her klutzy, nerdy boyfriend.

Thinking about James reminded her of her first months in high school, in marching band. How she'd been ostracized from the rest of the clarinets, for everyone knew that no woodwind should ever date a brass player. She was the only person that had ever broken that rule in the history of her band; Isabelle and Sticks, Michael and Audrey, Jack and Amberly, they were all perfect little couples in the same woodwind-woodwind or brass-brass pairing. Piper hadn't been allowed to sit with her section at games or on the band bus. James was his section's leader, so the ostracism wasn't as terrible, but he as well was tortured. And yet, James still didn't dump her over that. She'd have understood if he had, but he never did.

Now, after all of that, she'd never been happier. Piper's mother had told her that every woman would go through at least three guys in her lifetime before she found the one she was happy with; Amberly had done that, she'd found happiness on her fourth. But it was obvious that Piper was not going to have to find two more guys to love. She didn't plan on leaving James for anything.

There was a ring hanging around her neck, tucked into her shirt where no one could see it. It was her promise ring, from James. Amberly had one from Jack, and Audrey had one from Michael, but Piper knew hers was special…

Piper sat down on the edge of the concrete stoop in front of James' two-floor, five-bedroom home and looked into the puppy-like eyes of her boyfriend. He was set to go off to college the next morning, and that was the last night she'd ever spend with him until she hopefully joined him the following year.

He reached out and took her hand, then pulled something from his pocket. He slid the golden band onto her finger and smiled, "I'm calling this a promise ring. But it isn't a promise ring…"

Piper gasped. "Are you serious?"

"Piper, will you marry me? Like, when we're out of college and everything, but will you?"

Piper flung her arms around his neck, "God, James! Of course I will!"

"I thought so…"

The next morning before he left he had told her that she'd need to tell everyone that it was nothing but a promise ring, for they'd have a fit if they knew she was seventeen and already engaged. Piper had promised her mother she'd not marry until she was thirty, but who could wait thirteen years to marry their true love?

Piper reached into her shirt and pulled out the ring. It was a golden ring, slim and sleek. A simple diamond, very small, flanked by two golden eighth notes. It was the Piper Daniels engagement band. No other person in the world would be so moved by two golden eighth notes, but Piper was.

Two simple golden eighth notes, one for Piper, one for James. True love…