"So, how's life been treating you?" Scout and Sammi asked me and Sierra as we were video-chatting on my bus.
"Oh, you know, pretty good. I can't complain. Except for the fact that my best friend is hurting." Sierra said, wrapping her arm around me as I was staring sadly into my empty bucket of ice cream.
"So, Tidal, how's life been treating you?" Sammi asked, plastering on a smile that I knew wasn't for real.
"Like I ran over its dog. With what's going on with Andy, the depressing songs I've been writing, and the fact that I'm out of ice cream, I haven't been happy for days." Sierra rubbed my shoulder as I sighed and put my bucket of ice cream on the table beside me.
"So, Andy posted a Tweet a couple of days ago about how he and you had a heart-to-heart. That true?" Scout asked in concern over how I was handling this. She should know better than anybody, seeing as how we shared the common fact that we're both Andy's ex-girlfriends.
"Yeah, it's true. Long story short, he broke onto the bus, made me cry, and then we had the first civilized conversation in quite a while." I said, giving them the short version.
"Well, do you think you could us what he said or what you said or maybe even both?" Sierra asked as Scout and Sammi nodded enthusiastically. I chuckled and told them what had happened.
"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry. And, you still don't believe him?" Sammi asked with sympathetic eyes. I shook my head, so they decided to change the subject.
"So, how's your new EP coming along?" Scout asked with a bright smile.
"It's going pretty good. One of the other bands has a recording studio in the back of their bus, so we've been using it. We finished, like, the first two songs yesterday, and we going to record the other two today, send them to Embassy Records, and then they're going to release it in a couple of weeks. Probably three or four at the most." I said with a little hint of pride. I was proud of the EP; I had worked hard on it.
"That's good. What about cover art?" Sammi asked, looking a little bit hopeful.
"Well, you remember that photo shoot that we did with you on the Just Tonight set?" I asked Sammi, and when she nodded enthusiastically, I continued, "Well, we were talking about using one of the pictures from that, and you should actually be getting a call from the publishers later." She squealed.
"Seriously? This is going to be my first album cover! Thank you guys! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" The rest of us laughed as the guys came out of the bunk area carrying their guitars and drumsticks.
"Hey, Tide, you ready to go and record the last two songs?" I looked at the guys and they gestured for me to go ahead.
"Yeah, come on." I said, standing up and leading them out to the Of Mice And Men bus where Austin Carlile let us in and into their recording studio.
"How are you lovely ladies doing today?" He asked as we were trying to get situated in the crowded space.
"We're doing okay, we just need to record these last two songs." Kailee said as he nodded.
"Looking forward to hearing it." He said with a smile as we all settled in and recorded our songs. We even got the piano parts down. The songs with piano are The Last Song I'm Wasting On You and My Immortal. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, but, yes, I play piano.
We got our songs on a flash drive, thanked the OMAM guys, and headed back to the bus, as it wasn't our turn to perform yet. We passed Asking Alexandria as they were playing on the main stage and Danny waved to us as they were performing Not The American Average.
When we finally got back on the bus, Sierra was sitting on the couch, eating a muffin, and watching some sitcom on ABC.
"Hey, how'd the recording session go?" Sierra asked, taking another bite of her muffin. The guys all put their instruments back in the back, then joined me and Sierra on the couch.
"It went great. All we need to do is send the songs to Embassy and we're good." Mor said, grabbing the remote and changing the channel to Lifetime which was on a movie about how this girl had a boyfriend who cheated on her and she was trying to decide whether or not to go back to him. How ironic can that get?
Anyways, as soon as I saw the info thing, I started crying. Then, get this, CC, Jinxx, Jake, and Ash walked onto the bus, carrying a huge, movie set type camera. They sat down in front of us on the coffee table, just as Ronnie was about to press Send in relation to the songs on the flash drive. She did and they successfully sent.
"Hey, Andy told us what happened, so we asked Sammi to send this to us. See, she got this new camera that shows you the date and the time and everything, and when she and Jinxx were back at the bus 'talking', I was playing around with it and I recorded the entire backstage during your entire set." CC said in a two sentences, skipping through a few videos on the camera. He finally got to one, and the time said forty-seven minutes, twenty-two seconds.
We all looked at it curiously as CC pressed play and fast-forwarded it to fifteen minutes fifty-two seconds. When he stopped it, the screen went to Andy as the girl who had told me Andy had cheated on me walked up to him.
"This is the first encounter that he had with Cecilia." Jake said as the video started playing.
"Hey, baby, how you doing?" She asked Andy, running a finger up his chest suggestively. He looked down at her in all of her prostitute-ish glory, completely uninterested. He took her hand and dropped it back down to her side.
"I'm fine. Sorry, but I have a girlfriend." He said, turning back to Matt and giving him a cigarette. She wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and he looked over his shoulder before removing her from his back.
"Well, I have a Poetry test tomorrow for college." She said, biting her lower lip, probably trying to appear attractive.
"So?" Andy asked, frustration evident in his voice.
"Sorry, I thought we were talking about things we could cheat on." She said, this time huddling up to his side and going for his manhood, but he pulled away before she could get a hold of it.
"I told you, I'm sorry, but I. Have. A. Girlfriend. And, I happen to love her very much." He said, backing up a little bit, trying to get away from her. Matt was laughing and Jake and Ash were in the background snickering.
"Okay, fine. But, I'm not going to give up." She said, huffing and walking away again. This happened about four more times before we came back from our set and Andy kissed me and told me what a great job I did, based on some of the performance that he saw. The screen went black and CC lowered the camera. I stared at it for a second.
"Where's Andy?" I asked, snapping my head up to look at Ash.
"He's back on the bus, wallowing in self-pity and alcohol, probably stalking your Twitter page." Ash said, gesturing out the door.
"Have you guys already performed?" Sierra asked, and when they nodded, I ran out of the bus, looking around for BVB's bus. I found it wedged in-between The Devil Wears Prada and DRUGS.
I burst onto their bus and saw Andy laying on the couch, drinking out of a half-empty bottle of whiskey and looking at pictures of us on his phone. He didn't even notice me, despite my loud entrance. I walked over to the couch and sat on the floor by his head. He looked up in surprise and sat up, taking one last drink of whiskey before putting his phone and bottle on the table beside him. I sat down right beside him, staring at him.
"First of all, are you drunk?" I asked.
"No, I just got the bottle a couple of minutes ago." He said, picking it up and shaking it around a little bit, sloshing the alcohol inside.
"Okay, good. Then, I won't have to come back later." I said, causing him to look confused. "The guys showed me the video of you guys backstage, and I know you didn't cheat on me." I said in one sentence.
"Oh, thank you! Does that mean you wanna get back together?" He asked hopefully, looking down at me with pleading eyes.
"Yes, it means I want to get back together." I said smiling. He sighed in relief. I leaned up and kissed him, tasting the whiskey on his lips. When we pulled apart, we both smiled.
"Are you sure you're not drunk? I could get drunk just from that one kiss." He laughed and kissed the top of my head.
"I can hold alcohol better than you can. I love you." He said, brushing the hair out of my eyes, but it just fell right back in place.
"I love you, too." I kissed the tip of his nose. "Listen, I'm sorry about those songs I wrote about you and we're coming out with a new EP in a couple of weeks, also about how much I hate you. But, that was when I was really angry and hurt." I said, hoping that he'd understand.
"It's okay. I understand. I like your songs anyway." He said. I smiled in relief, then my phone started ringing, blasting Fixed At Zero. I held up my finger to Andy, the universal symbol for 'Hold on' and answered the phone.
"Hello?" I asked.
"Hey, Tidal, I hate to interrupt your little love-fest with Andy, but it's time to go on stage and we have some big news." Ronnie said from the other end.
"Okay, we'll be right there." I said, hanging up my phone.
"It's time for you to perform?" He guessed and I nodded. We stood up and headed to the stage where the guys, Sierra, and Andy's guys were waiting backstage.
"Hey, what's the big news?" I asked curiously, the guys all smiling.
"Punk Goes wants us to record a song for the new Punk Goes Classic Rock Two album!" Mor exclaimed excitedly.
"Seriously? What song do you guys wanna do?" I asked, equally as excited, for my life just kept on getting better.
"Well, we are aware of how much November Rain means to you and Andy, so we were thinking that maybe we could do November Rain and you and Andy can do a duet. If you two want..." Ronnie trailed off.
"I think that's a great idea." Andy said, wrapping his arm tighter around my shoulder. I nodded in agreement.
"Hey, it's time to go on!" A roadie said, peeking around the corner of the stage. Andy wished me good luck and we went on stage. I took the mic from the stand and smiled out at the crowd.
"Hey, guys, how you doing?" I asked happily. I saw Hayley join the guys backstage and ask Andy why he was there as the crowd screamed. Some explaining was going on, so I looked back out to the crowd.
"That's great. We're doing fan-freaking-tastic and we're going to put on a really great show for you guys! Who's ready?" They screamed. "I can't hear you!" They screamed louder. "Louder!" They finally screamed so loud I thought my eardrums were gonna bust. We played our set, me singing better than I had since the show before the last show on AP.
"Thanks, guys! We've got some new stuff coming out for you! We have an EP coming out in a couple of weeks, and we're going to be going on a couple of tours this fall and some this spring, so we hope to see you guys out there!" I yelled before exiting the stage with the other guys. Hayley was standing there, glaring at Andy.
"What's going on here?" Kailee asked, confused as Ash put his arm around her.
"Hayley doesn't believe that Tidal and Andy got back together, so she's been sitting here glaring at him for about half an hour." CC said, waving his hand over her face, but her gaze never wavered.
"Hayley, it's okay. We did get back together." I confirmed, going to stand beside Andy and he wrapped his arm around me. Her gaze relaxed.
"Congratulations! I'm happy for you two, but if you ever hurt her like that again, I will castrate you." She said, poking him in the chest. Everybody laughed, but when they saw the serious expression on Hayley's face it turned into a nervous chuckle. We, being our band and Andy, walked out to do the signing.
As soon as everybody saw me and Andy together, they gasped, then swarmed us. A lot of people were screaming at Andy about how he shouldn't have gotten back together, some people were screaming at me about the same thing, and even fewer people were screaming about how they were so happy for us. After we had managed to get out of that alive, we went back to my bus. We being the band, BVB, Sierra, and Hayley. Sierra, Hayley, and the rest of BVB sat on the floor, Mor and Ronnie were raiding the fridge, and me, Andy, and Kailee were on the couch. I pulled out my phone to check Twitter and was immediately assaulted with angry Andy fangirls and pictures of me and Andy at the signing.
Why would he get back together with her? He's so out of her league.
Andy is way too good for her.
She doesn't deserve him. It's her fault they broke up in the first place.
I hate her. She has a voice like nails scraping on chalkboard.
Those were only some of the Tweets I got. The last one actually made me cry. I cried silently, hoping nobody would notice, but of course, somebody did.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Andy asked, gaining the attention of everybody else. I gave him my phone which still had the Tweet up and his mouth dropped open.
"What happened?" Hayley asked in concern. Andy passed the phone to her, and after she had finished reading it, passed it around to everyone else.
Andy took his phone out and logged onto Twitter. He started typing furiously and when I got my phone back, a new tweet from Andy showed up on the screen.
Okay, I love all of you, but I also love my girlfriend, so if you like my music great, but leave her alone! It wasn't her fault that we broke up. She doesn't deserve this, so SHUT UP!
Of course it didn't all fit into one tweet, but it still got the message across.
"Thanks, Andy." I sniffled and he wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
It was really hard to believe that only an hour earlier we weren't together.
A/N: I didn't really like the ending, but I thought that that was a good place to stop. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm gonna do a little self-advertising here. I have two Andy one-shots called Blue Jeans and a Rosary and November Rain. I have a Ronnie Radke one-shot called Don't Know What You Got Til It's Gone and I have a new CC story called Love Isn't Always Fair. Read and review please!