Author's Note: I wanted to do the entire thing from Cal's POV, but I just couldn't get this scenario out of my head, and Cal wouldn't know any of this so, yeah, here's a chapter from Lucy's POV. I hope this kinda makes sense as I carry on. The last chapter was really short because I don't like switching POV within chapters, so I made this a new chapter.
🎧 Lucy 🎧
Never one for gentle awakenings, Brit was shaking me and yelling my name in my ear. Apparently we were going to be late. I'm not sure how someone can be late to the beach, especially when they have nothing else to do, but that was Brit all over. I'd fallen asleep in the clothes I'd been travelling in, only just remembering to remove my contacts beforehand. I'd never been so exhausted in my life; it was a combination of not sleeping because I didn't have the guts to remove my contacts on the plane(or in between flights) and that guy – Calum, I think – sitting next to me insisting on talking to me. Introversion caused exhaustion any time I had to socialise for an extended period of time, but I couldn't just not talk to the guy – he was trying really hard to be my friend (though I'm not sure why). Throwing on my 5 Seconds of Summer racer back vest top, I grabbed a snapback and my backpack, leaving my glasses and contacts in the room. The look on Brit's face as I joined them said it all; horror and disgust radiated from her and her tone matched the expression on her face.
"You're not going like that" she sneered.
"But I thought we were going to be late?" turning up the whine and throwing in a pout for good measure, I could sense the held in guffaws and grins from her friends.
She turned on her heel, sighing in frustration, entourage in tow, and off we went. It was a short walk to the beach – the hotel had been chosen specifically for it – so it wasn't long before we were setting up our own section of beach with the chairs and towels that had been brought. Luckily for me, Brit had the foresight to pack a towel of mine in her beach bag, so I wasn't just sat on the sand. Maybe she wasn't all bad.
"What are you doing? Get the hell off my towel." She screeched.
I stand corrected.
"It's mine." I had been handed a dark grey towel with a heart eyes skull with wings on it, had unfolded it, laid it on the sand, and was now sitting cross-legged on it.
"It was. Now I need it. One for keeping me off the ground, one for drying myself if I get wet, and one for using as a pillow."
"You don't need three towels. Since when did you go in the sea? Won't it mess up your make up?" I remained seated.
This time I was ignored, Brit had found that it was easier to just stop arguing when she couldn't defend herself because I was much smarter than her and could think much quicker. I had placed the towel behind some chairs so that I was in their shadow, in an effort to keep a little bit cooler in the Australian heat. Trying to read, all I could hear was the inane chatter of girls with nothing interesting to say, so I pulled on my headphones and escaped to the sanctuary that was 5 Seconds of Summer. I never had to turn the volume too high, I could just listen to them and tune out everything else, especially the squawk of Brit and her friends.
Which is probably why I ended up with a small pray bottle of bug spray being thrown at my head. Ripping my headphones out of the jack on my iPod and tugging them down to my neck, I looked at Brit. It didn't matter who had thrown the bug spray, it would be Brit that needed to talk to me – it always was.
"Turn your dork music down, we can hear it."
I could hear it still, but I knew it couldn't be me because I'd pulled the headphones put which automatically paused the music.
"Brit, I've just turned it off to talk to you."
"Clearly not because I can still hear it."
Handing her my iPod as proof that it was no longer playing music, I strained my ears in an attempt to locate the source of the sound. Someone else on the beach was listening to 5SOS. Out loud. I had to find them, I'm not sure why – it's not usually my style – but instinct seemed to tell me I had to know who it was. It could even be the guy from the plane (I'm almost certain his name was Calum). Supposing that anything was better than Brit and her friends, I stood and began to walk away. She only asked where I was going so that it would seem like she was trying, even though our parents wouldn't know if she wasn't. Leaving my backpack on the towel, my stuff spilling out of it, so nothing would be moved, I wandered off in the general direction of the music. It took me a while to gage the exact direction it was coming from, but that just meant less time spent with Brit and her minions.
As I walked closer to the sea, a slight breeze picked up making it cooler than sitting at the top of the beach; something which made me very grateful since I didn't handle heat well. Why was I on this trip again? Oh, right, because Brian decided his twenty-year-old daughter and her three twenty-year-old friends couldn't handle a four week trip to Australia without an extremely introverted seventeen year old to 'keep them in line'. What kind of father doesn't trust his daughter to the extent that he paid for a girl three years younger than her to chaperone?
The music was getting louder, and I recognised it as Lost Boy. As I got closer, I recognised the unmistakeable sound of acoustic guitars. This was odd – I was almost certain Lost Boy hadn't been released as an acoustic track, but maybe I'd just missed it. Before I'd had too long to think about it, the song ended. Remaining in place, I waited for another one to start, and my mind began to wander. If it really was that guy from the plane, what would I say? Wouldn't it be weird if he was playing 5SOS on the off chance that I heard it because he actually wanted to talk to me? I suppose that is he had really wanted to keep talking to me, he would have asked for my phone number. He wouldn't have taken it with him though, I wouldn't have let him. Still not sure what I would have said if he had asked for it, I noticed that Gotta Get Out had started playing. This one I knew had been released as an acoustic version, further convincing me that I had simply missed the acoustic Lost Boy.
I neared the source of the sound and caught a glimpse of smurf blue hair. My heart jumped – Michael Clifford from 5SOS had that exact hair right now. It couldn't be them, could it? They did live in Sydney, but it couldn't be them. I could never be that lucky.
