Jordan's POV:
I watched the tour bus, which looked ever so familiar, drive up to my house and park in an empty space nearby. I was incredibly nervous about seeing Ian again, but despite that I was still really excited to see my brother and his friends. Josh leaped out of the RV first, followed closely by Mike and Matt wasn't far behind him and then a little while later Ian emerged from the vehicle. I let my cat run off to hide under the porch. He didn't like strangers. Josh charged up to me, threw me over his shoulder and pranced around in front of my house.
I laughed. "What the fuck?"
The second Josh put me down I was suddenly heaved into the air again and Mike imitated Josh. I sighed and Mike put me back on my feet. Matt walked up to me and gave me a big hug, something he had never done before then. I was a bit surprised. I smiled at the guys and Josh gave me another hug.
He ruffled my hair. "I've missed you, kid."
Nat appeared out of nowhere and waved at me. I waved back.
"I've missed you guys too," I smiled at them.
Ian seemed to be hanging back a bit.
"You guys can go inside and make yourselves at home. I've got some ginger snaps on the counter. Help yourselves. My dad's not home right now though," I gestured toward the door.
The guys ran inside quickly and I followed behind. Ian wasn't far behind me and by the time I had gotten into the kitchen Josh, Ian, Mike, Matt and Nat had already found the cookies and were digging in. I sat down at the table after pulling out the milk. The guys and I all sat in my dining room, catching up and talking about absolutely nothing in particular.
Once we had all eaten our fill of the cookies, which was all of them, I offered to take them on a little tour of the yard. I showed them the house first. Ian seemed to be hanging back shyly and the look on his face told me he was thinking about something. Once I had showed them all around the house I took them outside. It was still fairly warm out so we didn't have to worry about jackets and stuff. I showed them the barn and introduced them to Lucy. She was a little wary of these strange people, but after they fed her some treats she was happy to meet them. Josh took quite the liking to Jasper and carried him around everywhere. The strange part was that Jasper gladly let Josh take him around the yard. He usually wasn't like that, but hey, it was Josh.
After I showed them around we went back inside where we soon started playing video games. Mike had seen that I had Just Dance and challenged Josh to a dance off. Josh's moves were far from adequate. He failed miserably and Mike danced like a pro. I wasn't even any good at that game and I had been playing it an awful lot for the while that I had been home.
After playing video games for a while we sat down in my living room and started talking.
"Hey, did Chad tell you guys about the band he's setting me up with?" I remembered.
"What? No! I thought he was going to call me about this kind of stuff!" Josh shouted.
"Yup, I'll be flying out to Vancouver in a couple days to go meet them and get settled in. I've got an apartment out there now."
"That's awesome!" Mike shouted.
"Do you know what the band is called?" Matt inquired.
"Yeah, it's called A Thousand Disadvantages," I recalled the name Chad had told me.
"Oh, I saw those guys just before you showed up at my house a while ago! They were having issues with their singer so I guess they kicked him out," Josh nodded.
"Him? Why would they want a female singer after having a guy?" I was a little curious.
"I guess they wanted a different sound. Maybe they didn't like the way things were before," Mike suggested.
"Yeah, probably. I actually have their demo in the bus. Should I go get it?" Josh mentioned.
"Yes! I wanna hear this!" I got excited and started jumping around.
"Okay, I'll go get it!" Josh leaped off of the floor where he was seated and ran out the door, to the bus.
He came back moments later, breathing heavily and holding a CD case. He handed it to me and collapsed on the ground.
"Out of shape much?" I snickered.
The others laughed and Josh just scoffed sarcastically at me.
Ian's POV:
Jordan had giggled at her brother and I melted. I had missed that laugh. She placed the CD into the sound system she had sitting around the television and pressed play. First the drums boomed through the massive speakers then shortly thereafter you could hear a rough bass line. A few more seconds later the guitarist slammed in with some hard chords. A melodic voice chimed in and he sang loudly. The lyrics sounded alright, but could have used some work. Once the song had died down Jordan pressed the stop button so the next song wouldn't start up right away. She pulled the disk out and handed it back to Josh.
"Keep it."
She smiled. "I can't believe I get to work with these guys!"
"They're good, but I think you'll bring something to the table that they don't have. They can write a melody pretty well, but the lines…" Josh broke off.
"Yeah, I noticed, and I may or may not have a way to fix that," she smiled mischievously.
Josh chuckled and ruffled his sister's hair. "Yeah, I kinda figured you would."
It had started getting a bit dark outside. It didn't seem like we had been there that long.
Jordan whipped out her phone and held it in the air. "What kind of pizza do you guys like?"
Jordan had gone to pick up the pizza she had ordered and left us at her house. Matt and Mike were playing video games and Josh and I were talking a bit.
"So…how are you doing with all this?" he asked me.
"I hadn't realized how much I've missed her. I feel like such a douche."
"Maybe you should talk to her. She seems like she misses you too. I saw the way she looked at you earlier. She seemed worried about you."
I looked up at my friend. "You think that's a good idea?"
"Look man, I'm sorry for clocking you, even if you deserved it, but she really likes you and I know you like her too and I really don't like seeing you two like this. You both deserve to be happy," he put his hand on my shoulder reassuringly.
I nodded. "I'll talk to her when she gets back. I can't believe we haven't spoken to each other since that night," I shuddered.
Josh and I both heard a vehicle drive up. It was a bit difficult to hear it over Matt and Mike's shouting, but we heard it nonetheless. We both looked at each other, got up and ran to the door. Josh went out before me and grabbed the pizzas from Jordan before she was barely out of her truck. He spun around and quickly ran inside, food in hand.
Jordan's POV:
"Uh, Jordan…" Ian stepped outside the door stopped me before I went into the house. "Can I talk to you for a second?"
I looked inside the house and saw Josh looking through the kitchen window. He soon lost interest and turned his attention back to the food I had brought home. I spun back toward Ian and nodded. "What is it you want to talk about?"
He sat down on the porch steps and patted the spot beside him for me to sit down. I did and he sighed.
"I really am sorry. I was drunk and I didn't know what I was saying. No, you know what, that's a horrible excuse. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that to you. I feel awful. I can barely sleep thinking about it. I've missed you so fucking much since you left the tour. I hadn't realized how much I really do care for you and I was just scared and worried about what might happen and…Jordan?"
Tears were tumbling down my face already as I tried to absorb what Ian was telling me. "Yes?" I answered him.
"I love you."
I covered my face with my hands and the tears kept coming. Ian held me in his arms and let me cry into his chest. I don't know why I felt such intense emotions when he said that, but I was only half crying because I was sad. I was sad because I had pushed him away like that and I felt awful about it and I had let that one thing get in between us, but at the same time I was relieved. I was calmed by the fact that he was sorry and that he wanted to keep trying with this relationship and he really did love me.
After I had stopped crying we just sat there, holding each other and cuddling. "I love you too, Ian," I whispered to him.
"I've missed you; that smile, those eyes, the way your hair smells, how you love to snuggle beside me, the way you'd slap my hand away when I tried to touch your ass," he chuckled at the last one.
"Ian, I'm sorry I left," I sobbed. "I was just scared and I knew everything would be super awkward and I saw how it tore you and the guys apart and I couldn't deal with knowing I did that."
"You didn't do anything. Please don't say that. Everything is going to be fine. The guys and I are okay. Josh and I talked about it and we're okay now."
I wiped my eyes. "I didn't fuck things up?"
He laughed. "No, you didn't." He kissed my forehead and wiped my tears away, as I had done a poor job. "C'mon, let's go inside."
Ian stood up and held out his hand for me. I took it and he heaved me back onto my feet. We walked inside, hand in hand, and entered the kitchen, where we were greeted with a round of applause. The guys had been watching inconspicuously through the window and heard every word that was said. I blushed and Ian just shouted at them, playfully.
"Guys, fuck off!"
Everybody laughed and I just plopped myself down at the table and grabbed some pizza, throwing it on my plate.
"Bye, dad," my dad hugged me tighter than he'd ever hugged me as I stood on the porch with most of my belongings.
I was moving to the apartment in Vancouver Chad had set up for me and the guys had agreed to take me back to Vancouver on their tour bus on their way back home. My dad was almost crying and I felt awful for leaving him here, all alone, but I just couldn't stay forever. I had to get on with my own life and get my career started.
"Promise you'll come visit your old man once in a while, kay?" he wiped a tear from his face.
"Of course, and you can come visit me whenever you want to."
"We gotta go, Jordan," Mike shouted from the RV. "We just packed the last of your things into the bus."
"I'll see you later, daddy!" I waved to him as I climbed back into the tour bus that I had spent all that time on months ago.
He waved to me as we drove down the driveway and then as we drove down the gravel rode I watched as my little farm disappeared into the distance. I was going to miss it dearly, but I had to leave at some point.
A few provinces later I was sitting on the couch, curled into Ian's side, watching Mike and Josh argue about something completely irrelevant and I suddenly got a call on my phone. Everybody went silent after I pulled it out of my pocket and shouted that it was one of the guys from my new band.
I answered my phone and a loud, coarse voice greeted me. "Hey! Is this Jordan?"
"Um, yes. Who is this exactly?" I asked the man.
"Malcolm, the guitarist from A Thousand Disadvantages. Chad told me we had to wait till you got here to talk to you, but I begged him for your number cause I wanted to talk to our new singer!" he sounded rather eager.
I laughed. "Um, okay well I'm on my way right now. We should be there within the next few hours."
"Great! Chad also gave me the address for your apartment so how about we meet you there? The guys are all really excited to see you!"
"Sure! Sounds awesome! That means you guys can help me move in," I smirked and wished he could have seen it.
Malcolm chuckled at what I had said. "We'd love to."
"Alright, see you later."
"Bye," and he hung up.
It wasn't much longer and we had arrived in Vancouver. I gave Nat my new address and he successfully navigated his way through the city on his own after promptly cursing at his GPS system. As we pulled up to the building I sat and started at the gorgeous architecture of my new home.
Nat drove up to the front doors and I saw four guys hanging around the doors. One of them was skateboarding around, another was shouting at him to sit down and relax and the other two were lying on the pavement, staring at the sky. The one skateboarding had short, dirty blonde hair, cargo shorts and a shirt with black, three quarter length sleeves. The guy who was shouting at him had long, black hair and baggy clothing. The other two appeared to be twins and they both had brown hair although one of them wore it long and straight and the other had it cut to more of a short, shaggy style. They both wore average looking clothing.
When the guys and I shot out of the RV the guys all jumped up and ran over to me. The one with the short, blonde hair bear hugged me like Mike always did.
"Hi! I'm Malcolm!" he said happily.
"Haha, yeah I figured," I smiled at the boy as he leapt around.
Malcolm tripped on his skateboard and fell flat on his ass. The twins laughed at him and the other guy just facepalmed.
"I'm Dirk," the boy with the long hair held out his hand for me to shake after everybody had calmed down from Malcolm's fall.
I took his hand and smiled at him.
The twins came up to me and hugged me at the same time.
"I'm Andy," the twin that had his face buried in my shoulder mumbled.
"And I'm Jake," said the other.
Andy was slightly shorter than Jake.
"C'mon guys, let's get this shit into the apartment," Josh shouted from the open bus door.
"Hey, my stuff is not shit!" I yelled back.
He waved his hand dismissively. "Whatever."
Jake handed me multiple keys. "Chad asked me to give this to you when you got here."
Two of the keys were identical house keys, but the other two appeared to be car keys. I held those two up and waved them around a bit. "What are these ones for?"
"Oh, your car," Andy said, sitting down on the sidewalk.
"Car? What?"
"Oh, right we forgot to tell you." Mike said from behind me. "Chad bought you a car."
"He did what? Why?" I exclaimed.
"Everybody needs to go places and a lot of people already know about you because of us. You'll get recognized a lot, especially here. You can't take the bus or the subway," Josh said, walking to the door with a couple boxes in his arms.
I unlocked the door for him and Malcolm held the door open for the rest of us as we started bringing things into the building. I walked in front of Josh up the stairs and down the hall and when I finally reached my apartment, number 301 at the end of the hall, I unlocked the door, swung it open, stepped inside and took in the smell of the place and looked out the windows and saw the lovely view of the city.
"I am just going to put this right here," Josh carefully put the boxes down in the middle of the living room.
The apartment was already partially furnished. Chad had taken quite the liking to me and I was grateful that he was just giving me all these things. I guess he figured I'd go far and make the company a lot of money. I chuckled at the thought.
Once all my things had been brought into my new home the guys in my new band took me to the underground parking lot where my shiny, new car was parked. It was a lovely blue coloured Audi A3. I was surprised that Chad had gone for such an expensive car. It was terribly cute though. I smiled and bounced around it, peeking into the windows and checking everything out.
"Okay, okay, well we've got to go. We have stuff to do tonight. See you tomorrow, Jordan," I wasn't sure who spoke because I was too concentrated on my car, but when I turned around they all waved goodbye.
"Bye guys!" I waved back.
"We need to go too," Mike said, looking at Josh.
"Yup. I miss my cats."
We laughed at Josh and he just stared back with a straight face.
"I'm serious!" he threw his hands in the air. "I miss my babies!"
"Alright, well goodnight guys," I smiled and waved.
"Uh, actually I was wondering if I could spend some time with you for a bit before going home. You don't mind, do you?" Ian stepped toward me as the others started leaving.
"Sure! We haven't spent some time alone for…we've never spent time alone."
"How you getting home later, man?" Matt asked.
"I'll call a cab. It'll be fine. You guys go on home," he waved them away.
The guys left and Ian and I went back up to my box filled apartment. I plopped myself down on my new, black sectional couch and Ian sprawled himself out beside me. He wrapped his arms around me and I curled into his side. I let out a deep breath and stared up at this wonderful man that held me in his arms.
"I love you, Jordan, so much."
I smiled hugely. "I love you too."
He kissed me once last time and we fell asleep in each other's arms, on my new couch, in my new apartment, in my new city, with my new life.
Two years later…
Ian's POV:
"Josh, turn on the fucking TV! Much Music!" I yelled as I ran into my friends' apartment.
Mike was sitting on the couch with Tux and Josh was lying on the floor with Anemonie lying on his chest for some reason. I shook my head, sat down on the couch and stole the remote from Mike.
"Hey!" he protested as I changed the channel.
"I didn't know that was today!" Josh said.
"I called you yesterday and reminded you, smart ass," I smirked at him.
"Why don't I remember any of this?" he mumbled and sat down on the other side of me, still holding his precious calico.
New Music Live had just started and the VJ, Phoebe, stood in the center of a crowd of people and when they realized that they were live they all started screaming.
"Hey everybody and welcome to NML!" she shouted over the yelling. "Today we've got five very special guests here with us and I'm sure you all know who they are, right?" Phoebe turned to the hoard of people and questioned them.
The screaming got louder and the crowd kept getting more excited. I was on the edge of my seat. I was even excited.
"Alright, let's bring em out! A Thousand Disadvantages!"
The mass of people shrieked even louder now. Now all three of us were sitting on the very edge of the couch and Matt had come bursting through the door and stood behind the couch, leaning forward in anticipation.
First the twins came running out then Dirk and Malcolm skipped out and into the view of the camera. Then there was silence. Jordan was nowhere to be found. I was confused and tilted my head to the side at the television.
"Hey, buttface!" Jake yelled into his mic.
"Shut your mouth!" Jordan's voice came on, but we still couldn't see her.
When the fans heard her voice they yet again screamed louder than ever. She suddenly came prancing out from backstage and met her band mates. Once the guys had sat down on the provided bench Jordan leaped around a little bit, gave Phoebe a hug and sat down in the last available spot.
I squirmed in my seat at the excitement of seeing my girl on TV.
The VJ proceeded to ask the band random questions on recording and stuff and when their next album might be ready. I already knew the answers to most of these questions, though.
"So Jordan," Phoebe turned to her. "Everybody wants to know…" I knew what she was going to ask her. "You and Ian Casselman. Any news? Anything you wanna tell us, maybe?"
She laughed. Oh how I miss that laugh right now when she's on the other side of the country. "Well, we've been dating for about two and a half years by now and even though Ian has his own place, he seems to think my apartment is where he lives. I swear half my closet is filled with his stuff. I don't even know where it all comes from. It's like he brings it over when I'm not home."
I scoffed. "I don't have that much stuff there."
"And Ian, I know you're watching right now," she pointed at the camera. "and I know you're thinking that's not true, but last time I checked, you had more stuff in my house than I do."
Phoebe giggled. "Okay, well what's it like touring with all these guys and do you think Ian gets jealous?"
"Touring with these guys…well it's like a couple years ago before I was in this band. I was on tour for a while with Marianas Trench and that's how the whole 'me and Ian' thing started. It's not so different from that. I did grow up with just my dad too so I'm not really used to living with other females anyway," she laughed.
The interview lasted about half the show. They ended up playing a game with the audience. They'd ask the audience questions about the band and whoever got them right would win merch packages or something. The questions all seemed rather comical and amusing.
At the end of the interview, Jake was talking to Phoebe and the others just sat, making faces at the camera. The four of us all laughed and giggled at the dumb faces they made. Just as the interview was coming to a close and the show was going to be over, Jordan looked at the camera, made a heart shape with her hands and mouthed the words "I love you, Ian," to the camera. I smiled and Mike and Josh both nudged me with their elbows and matt ruffled my hair.
I pulled out my phone and texted her an "I love you too," so that she knew I had seen it.
"Gonna go creep on the fans on Facebook now, Ian?" Mike turned to me.
I laughed. "Yeah, I wanna see what they have to say."
"We'll be on twitter then. I'm curious too," Matt said quietly.
I went on Facebook on my laptop and signed into my alias account. I went into the "Twitter Trench Fam" group and read some of the posts the others had made. They had no idea who I was. They just thought I was another fan. At one time they had suspected that I was in fact in the group under an alias, but they never did figure it out.
One girl had posted "Okay, not gonna lie, Andy and Jake from A Thousand Disadvantages are adorable."
Some others had responded with things like "OMG I KNOW!" or "I want to marry them. They are mine ._."
I'm sure the boys would be thoroughly creeped out to see what these girls were saying. I saw one post a little farther down the page that said "Jordan is so cute! Did you see her little message to Ian at the end?"
I smiled and read the comments.
"They are so perfect together. I saw them at a mall once. They could not get any cuter."
"Every time you see them somewhere together like in pictures or whatever, they're always holding hands and looking at each other cutely."
"OMG I KNOW!" One particular person seemed to respond constantly with that.
I decided to leave a comment myself. I simply typed, "Do you guys all have the same schedule and watch all the same programs on TV and then talk about them here all the time?"
Somebody responded with "Pretty much XD"
"No, only if it has something to do with Trench and Jordan always has something to do with Trench thus so does A Thousand Disadvantages. Plus most of us like their band anyway."
"Interesting…" I said.
"How so?"
"Just is. A lot of you people in this group just seem so…synchronized XD"
"Haha I guess we are sometimes."
I turned my computer back on just in time to see a text from Jordan. It was just a little smile. I sent her one back. We seemed to be like that annoying couple sometimes that sends pointless texts back and forth, but we didn't care.
"People on Twitter love A Thousand Disadvantages. I think Andy's on the band twitter right now, responding to some fans," Mike shouted.
"Tell him some girls on Facebook have proposed to him," I yelled back across the room.
Mike laughed.
Josh giggled loudly, falling out of his seat at the dining table and lying on the floor. We all started laughing at the fact that he had literally started rolling on the floor, laughing.
"What?" I asked him, quickly getting up and looking at his computer screen.
He just pointed at the computer and continued to laugh and by this point he had stopped making noise and was just clapping his hands "like a retarded seal" as many people on the internet say.
I read the two tweets that were at the top of the page. The first one was a fan talking to Jordan. He asked "Jordan, have my babies!"
She responded with, "Babies…scare the fuck out of me."
Once Josh had calmed down enough, he started talking. "Like brother, like sister," he beamed.
"That wasn't that funny, but alright," Matt chuckled.
Josh's home phone started ringing and he was still sitting on the floor, his cats now crawling all over him, begging for attention. He leapt up and ran to the phone, Tux and Anemonie trailing closely behind him. He picked it up and spoke the little bit of French he actually knew, which translated to "Hello, I like cats."
The rest of us just stood around, waiting to see who had called and what for.
He hung up and smiled hugely at me. "Jordan's coming home tonight. That was Malcolm to let us know they were getting on the plane soon.
I did a little dance, picked up the nearest feline to my location, which happened to be Tux, and danced around with the little guy.
"Dashing!" Mike struck an elegant pose.
We laughed and I still had the cat in my arms. He purred and cuddled into me. I scratched his furry, little head and put him down on the floor.
I paced anxiously around the airport as we waited for my girlfriend and her band-mates to arrive. The others were all sitting down patiently on a bench, but I couldn't sit still for a moment.
"Ian, relax. She'll be here soon enough. You need to stop being so tense and uptight," Josh said calmly from his seat.
"I can't help it. I haven't seen her in so long. I miss her so fucking much!"
"Ian!" I heard a girl scream from the other side of the airport.
I twirled around and saw Jordan, hair bouncing around her face, running at me, arms out. I smiled bigger than I ever had before and scooped the girl up, spinning her in circles with me. I hugged her tightly and she snugly curled her arms around my neck, kissing my cheek before burying her face between my shoulder and my neck.
"I missed you," I kissed the top of her head gently and rubbed her back.
"I missed you too. I'm so glad I'm back here with you."
"Aw, does Joshy get a hug too?" my friend's voice rang out behind me.
"Okay!" Andy ran over and gave Josh a big hug.
Josh smiled sarcastically and hugged him back. Everybody laughed a bit and then Jordan went to give her brother and the other guys hugs too.
"So, now everybody's here. Why don't we go back to my place and have us a lovely movie night thing with snacks and shit?" Josh clapped his hands together excitedly.
Everybody seemed rather happy with this plan and we all went to Josh and Mike's apartment. Once there, we all agreed on a movie after a twenty minute argument about action movies vs. horror movies. We weren't very far into the movie and Jordan had already fallen asleep in my arms. I cuddled in closer to her and closed my eyes. This is how it should be. I hope we can stay like this for a long time. I never want this to end. Soon, I too was asleep and everything in life was good.
A/N: Yeah, yeah, I know. Really fuckin long chapter. Not totally sure where I was going with the ending, but what the hell. Well, it's the last one so I figured it'd go out with a bang…..or something like that. Plus I didn't feel like making tons more chapters so I kinda mashed them all up into one. Okay, so the story is now over. I really hope you guys liked it. It sure was fun writing it. I do take requests. I have one ongoing request story at the moment and will be working on that and finishing it before I start any more, but if you have one that you'd like to see me write, let me know and I'll put it on the list. I do have a lot of other fics I'm working on too for different fandoms so I won't be getting to any other requests too soon, but if you want more info on where I'm at with stories and when I'll have time, check out my Twitter. The link is on my profile or you can just search Lori_Fish on Twitter. Anyway, R&R please and let me know what you liked or didn't like or whatever the fuck you want. Tata for now.