"Austin!" Nudge.
"Austin!" Shake.
"Austin!" Thwack!
Austin jumped, "Hm," he hummed, his tired lids opening up to reveal his weary, dark eyes. The blurriness of his eyesight focused on the figure in front of him. Ally.
Ah, Ally.
Wait...Ally?
"Ally." Austin muttered, lifting his hand to rub his eyes, ridding them of sleep.
"Austin!" He just realized her eyes were filled with panic, wide and doe-like.
"Ally?"
Suddenly, a loud-thumping knock echoed throughout the apartment. Ally visibly cringed before her eyes grew larger than they had been before.
"Oh no." she whispered, "They're here."
"They?" Austin repeated, still groggy.
Ally shook her head. "We don't have time. You need to hide!" Ally cried as softly as she could. She grabbed Austin's hand, pulling him off of the couch.
"Ally, what am I doing here-"
"Quickly!" Ally hissed, pulling him through the apartment. "Uh, one second!" she called towards the door. "Quick, quick, quick!" She hauled him towards a closet, muttering incoherent things to herself about getting fired.
Austin spun out multiple questions: Ally, what's going on? why am I at your apartment? Who's here? Why are you pushing me into a broom's closet? Is that a spider web?
"Stay here and don't leave. Don't even move." Ally warned him, pointing her finger at him. Austin stared at her oddly. She shut the closet door in his face, leaving him alone in the dark.
Austin frowned, staring at the door and blinking twice. A broom hit his head. "Ow."
Ally raced for the door. She opened it wide, seeing Cassidy and Trish standing there impatiently. They saw Ally and immediately grinned at her. "Trish...Cassidy...When you said you'd be here in two minutes, I didn't think you literally meant two minutes." She laughed nervously.
"We were in the neighborhood." Cassidy replied. Ally slowly nodded. Ally's eyes glanced down and she noticed Austin's shoes. She swiftly kicked them beneath her bench and smiled tightly.
"So, uhm, did you need something? I cleared and organized Austin's schedule. Do you need it? It's the in the kitchen. I could give it to you!" Ally said, breezily, her words flopping out her mouth in a rush.
Trish shook her head, waving her hand dismissively. She side-stepped over Ally, inviting herself inside. Ally stumbled over as Cassidy and Trish walked into her apartment.
Ally gnawed on her lip nervously. She shut the door and followed them to her kitchen. She collected all the papers which held the information on Austin's American Tour and the schedules. She handed in to Trish who sifted through it.
"You did all this last night?" Trish questioned.
Ally shifted her eyes, a flashback of Austin appearing in her apartment flooded her mind. She looked back at Trish and forced a smile. "Yup!"
"Perfect, thanks, Ally." Trish smiled. "It's only ten in the morning. How about some breakfast? My treat."
"Thanks for the invite, but I really shouldn't-"
"-Oh, come on!" Cassidy teased, "What are you hiding?"
"Hiding? I'm not hiding anything. There's nothing to hide, and if I was hiding something, it wouldn't be anything important. I just..." Ally trailed off when Cassidy and Trish stared at her. She held her breath. She forced a smile. "Sounds good. How about you two wait in the car and I'll...er...get into a change of clothes."
Ally glanced down at her sweatpants and t-shirt. The girls grinned and nodded. "Be quick. I'm starving." The girls took off outside the apartment. Ally exhaled when the door was shut behind them.
She rushed to the closet and opened the door. Austin stumbled out of the closet. Ally caught him before he could lose his balance. Austin groaned, rubbing his head as he straightened out.
"That was Cassidy and Trish. I had to hide you." Ally told him, timidly.
"Yeah, I heard them." Austin replied, cringing at the after taste of alcohol stinging his mouth. He looked at her and arched a brow, "What's the story? How did I get here?" Ally opened her mouth to reply but he interrupted with a groan, "Nevermind. I need Advil."
Ally nodded her head and raced to the kitchen. Austin followed after her, collecting the small pill she placed in his hand. She poured him some water and handed it to him. He swallowed it down quickly, wincing as movement hurt his head.
Austin noticed Ally fidgeting. "What?" he asked.
"I just...I'm going for breakfast with Trish and Cassidy. I need to hurry. I don't know if they saw your car. I mean, maybe they didn't, but I should hurry before they do and-"
"-Ally."
"Yes?"
He rolled his eyes. "Shut up, and go."
Ally took a deep breath and nodded her head. She looked at him and then quickly ran into her room to change. Austin shook his throbbing head.
x
Ally stared down at her glass of water.
She thought of Austin's smile - it was watery, too. There was something about the way he was sprawled out on her couch that made her insides twist. Maybe it was because she understood him, maybe it was because she didn't understand him. She was stuck somewhere in between.
Then her thoughts metastasize into a flashback. His lips, her eyes. His arms tangled around her waist, her hands on his shoulders. Her face right there and his face right there.
And a final thought: She should've kissed him.
She wasn't glad that she didn't. She had an underlying curiosity for what his mouth felt like and how much passion he would reply to her with could have answered so many things. Besides, it wasn't like he would remember it. There wouldn't be an awkwardness - he wouldn't remember! She would just live with the tingle and move on from it. So simple, so easy.
Non-sense. She's his assistant. She can't think that way. But he did want that kiss as much as she did, drunk or not.
Snapping fingers in front of her face caught her attention. Ally looked up and saw two expectant faces staring at her. "Hm?" she hummed in response.
"Where'd you go?" Cassidy asked.
Ally shook her head. "Nowhere important." But it kinda was.
Trish and Cassidy exchanged solid glances. Ally arched a perfectly trimmed eye brow. Cassidy nudged Trish, giving her some sort of silence encouragement. Ally's stomach dropped worriedly.
Trish gave Ally comforting look that was short-lived. Then she'd sighed and looked Ally in the eyes. "Look, Ally," she began, "We know you knew where Austin was last night."
Anxiety. "What? Why would you...say such a thing?"
Ally holding her breath proved she was hiding something.
"We saw his car." Cassidy replied.
Ally exhaling marked her blown cover.
"You're not in trouble." Trish said, quickly, noticing the look in her eyes. "Did he ask you to lie for him?"
"No." Ally replied. "He needed someone and I was there. After all, I am his personal assistant."
"Ally, he's my best friend." Trish reminded, "I know him. I have since before he got into this business so I know how he is, what he does." Trish let out a sigh. "He's deceiving, often a liar, cocky, insolent, and finally, he doesn't care about anyone."
Ally just remembers his story about his seventeenth birthday. His father. The destroyed cake. His mother's absence. She's quiet for a moment.
And then, "No, I don't think you know him at all."
x
"I was thinking something like this." Ally said, playing a couple chords, "and maybe it could be like: I'm so mixed up / there's no doubt / Got me feeling like I'm inside out." she sang delicately. Ally glanced over at Austin and saw him staring straight ahead at the wall, eyes glazed. "Austin," she snapped, "Are you even listening?"
"Hm? Yeah. Yeah, I am. That sounded great." Austin said, but Ally wasn't too gullible. She frowned at him. She wrote down the lyrics onto the sheet of paper anyways.
Ally put down her pencil, turning with her full and undivided attention settled on him."What?" she pressed.
He shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing." He touched the finger tip of his index finger on a pianos key. The sound was fragile, high-pitched, and out of rhythm. His distracted manner made Ally narrow her eyes.
"The song?" she gestured, offering to let go of the topic and continue working but he never responded. They sat in a vast silence.
"Your Mom..." he finally said, capturing Ally's attention quickly, "What did you do?" he questioned, "When she...she yelled at you after the fire. What did you do?"
Panic crawled up her throat. "You...You remember that?" she coughed.
He nodded his head. He gave her a tired grin. "I guess I wasn't as hammered as I thought."
But his headache was pretty bad this morning and he didn't remember too much. Just that he had said some pretty personal things and that he woke up with a strange feeling of wanting her for some reason. It could've been that echoing dream of her hair falling around his face with her mouth so close to touching his. He wished for it to be a memory, but he knew better. It probably wasn't.
Ally felt stiff and out of sorts. "Um." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nervously. "I don't know. I just...I let it happen. There wasn't anything I could do. I was ten."
He nodded his head in understanding. "Should I let him do it?"
"What?"
"My Dad. Should I let him push me around the way he does? I make up excuses for him, like, he's not in the right frame of mind to think about what his words or his actions." Austin told her. "I can see the regret in your eyes when you talk about your Mom."
"Oh?" She was kind of breathless.
He read her easily, like she was a children's book - a more complicated version, of course. She felt exposed, like there was nothing she could do to lock herself up because she kept breaking out somehow. She mentally scolded herself and focused on staring down at the words she'd written.
"I...I don't...I guess, I guess it's up to you." She wished she'd stop stammering. "Love your Dad, Austin," she finally sums up softly, "Just love him."
Austin hesitates for a long while, before letting out a growl, "I do." He wished he didn't.
"Don't make up excuses for him. Don't let him push you around, say mean things, do stupid things. Don't let him." Ally swallowed. "But don't stop loving him."
His eyes narrowed, unsure of how to respond. It was crazy for her to think Austin would stop loving his father. After all, he was Austin's father, his mother's husband. The man who helped bring him into the world, the man who allowed him and encouraged him on his dreams. Austin couldn't imagine not loving him, no matter what he did.
Ally drifted away. Somewhere far, somewhere painful.
/ /
Her little poet heart was bitter.
She'd said some pretty un-reversible things. That was the downside of words, Ally told herself, good or bad - both can leave a permanent mark.
Her mother was passed out again, after a pretty good swap of words with Ally. Ally didn't see anything wrong with what she'd said; it had all been true. Her mother was selfish. Her mother was a screw up. Her mother was one of those embarrassing moments at the party.
And Ally had said them all out loud.
Her mother's face had twisted into hurt, anger, betrayal. "Who do you think you are thinking you get to talk me like that? Say those kinds of things? I'm your damn mother!" A few of those were slurred.
It was all too ironic.
Ally searched deep in her gut for sincerity, pity, apology, but she'd found nothing. Just a hollow ache, just the cruel twist of anger making her see red.
She wasn't even sure where she'd found the courage and confidence to spew out, "Oh? We're doing that now?"
That was not what her mother pictured her twelve year old daughter saying. She'd sounded too mature. Too wise. Too old. Too spoiled! Maybe it would have to be on a rainy day for her to see that Ally was all of those things, but only because her mother refused to parent and chose to party instead.
"Allyson-"
"It's Ally." She immediately snapped back.
"I know your goddamn name!" Her mother cried, rage making her voice sound full.
"Not last night." Ally visible winced at the memory of her mother laying on the front yard, trying to say Ally's name but appearing unable to get the pronunciation right.
Her mother shook her head. She didn't recall last night so she found it hard to understand what Ally's reference was to.
Ally shook her head. Being twelve didn't push away the fact that Ally was bitter and angry towards her mother, that there was no empathy or pity swishing around in her guts, that there was simply no love there anymore.
Her heart felt hard and cold, and simply out of sorts.
Her mother had pulled the rug from beneath her feet so many times and never once held out a hand to help her daughter back up. That was her father's job, and sometimes even just simply Ally's own job. Ally didn't mind dusting herself off, though, she wasn't so sure she wanted her mother's grubby hands all over her anymore.
Ally's palms bled from her fingernails cutting into the skin of her fisted hands. Now it was getting harder to breathe, the rage sat on her chest so stiffly. Before Ally could stop herself, she already gritted her teeth and snarled, "I hate you so much. I hate you. I hate you." Then she fell into a small weep, cheeks dry but eyes wet, "Mom, I hate you."
/
There was something on her cheek. A raindrop. A tear.
"Ally?"
She numbly looked up at Austin, having gone so far into her head she hadn't realized his hand on her shoulder or the fact that her eyes had gotten really, really wet. She sniffed quickly, forcing a smile and smudging her tears with the pad of her thumb.
"Oh, um, let's get back to the song. Yeah, I think...I think these...words are good." Ally said, trying to get the stinging in her chest to wear off.
He was quieter than normal. While Ally tinkered with the melody a bit, almost like she didn't notice that the trembling of her hands made it sound a little too off. But even if she did notice it, she'd decided that the sound was better than paying attention to the salt she'd just rubbed right back into the wound she thought had been sealed up. Guess it hadn't been.
"Where'd you go?" he asked her.
Ally stopped playing, swallowed hard, and then started playing again. "Um, We could...We could go like: It's funny when I'm here with you / I wouldn't change a thing." she sang, sounded a little bit stale. "Now, we need to just-" She stopped and looked at her wrists. His hands wrapped around them tightly.
She looked up at him and suddenly he just wanted nothing more than to just kiss those sad eyes. He knew she wasn't okay. Whatever place she went to inside her head had left some sort of scar on her and he wondered if he was the one who opened it again.
He blurted, "I get it. You can tell me, because I get it."
She wondered why he was putting the lump in her throat. He hadn't let go of her hands. "Why'd you come to my house last night, Austin?" Her voice was more hoarse than she wished it had been.
"Because I know that you get it, too." he replied instantly. "I told you things that I haven't even told Trish."
"Because I get it?" she asked. He nodded. She gave him a watery smile, it didn't quite reach her eyes. She shook her head. "We need to work on this song. Jimmy wants it recorded before the tour."
He didn't want her to shut the door on him. He knows that he's been a jackass, he knows that he had no right to butt in on her personal life, he knows that she had every single right and reason to not want to share anything with him, but he just wished she would.
He sighed slightly. He played some keys on the piano, correcting some that she'd scratched down to create more of a sound that was his style. It was kind of quiet, besides the sound of the piano and occasionally Ally telling him words she'd thought of, and even the sound of the pencil scribbling onto the paper.
And then, "You don't stop loving somebody," Ally voiced, not looking up from the lyrics she'd written, "Because once you do, that's when they leave."
He stopped playing the piano. "Your Mom could've stayed, Ally."
"But she didn't."
"She could have, Ally, and it had nothing to do with you." Austin stated, "My Dad doesn't have to drink, but he does, and it has nothing to do with me. That's what he chose. That's what your Mom chose."
"Why?" Ally questioned, more to thin air than to Austin, "Your Dad drinks because he's sad, my Mom drank just because she wanted a good time."
"You'll never know why it had to happen, Ally. Don't beat yourself up trying to figure it out." Austin said. "I'll never know why my Mom had to die, just like you'll never know why your Mom started to drink. But we can't live in the past. That's what a future is for."
Ally didn't know what else to say, so she gave him a small smirk, "I didn't know you were so inspiring."
"Is that what I am?" he replied, one corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other. Ally laughed. "Tell me something, Ally."
"Anything."
"Did you try to kiss me last night?" he wondered.
"No." Oh, thank God her voice was level.
He shrugged. "What a weird dream." he mumbled, but she still heard him.
She willed her cheeks not to turn pink.