A/N: Thank you to the people who reviewed this story, This chapter is dedicated to you guys :) Also, you may notice that I have totally re-invented California, but I've actually never been/seen it, so I have made up my own version. Sorry to all you Californians...

We made it home in good time, there were a few paparazzi hiding in bushes, but other than that it was pretty much deserted.

Or so I thought.

I walked into my non-mansion house, I had bought it a couple years back. I didn't like to be pretentious and be like the rest of the celebrity world, having a huge kitted-out palace. So I bought this and now me and family lived here.

It was deathly quiet, I wondered if my family had gone out without telling me. I said a timid 'hello' and crept along the hallway, Charlotte and Holmes tailing me.

"Sheesh, somewhat creepy, isn't it? It's not like your family to be so... quiet?" Charlotte whispered, as if a homicidal maniac would hear her.

Then a screech tore through the silence and we jumped, seeing my mother swing from the gallery upstairs on a rope.

Unfortunately, it took the wooden post that the rope had been tied to with it, sending my mother into the wall.

Yeah, my mum was kind of... I don't think there's a word to describe her actually.

She peeled herself away from the wall, still grinning like the mad woman she was, "Hello, Ella dear! Enjoyed the party?" She said brightly, standing in her florescent plane-landing orange exercise outfit.

"Uh, yeah. What are you doing?" I ask tentatively, slowly backing away with Holmes and Charlotte.

She turned to look at the mum-shaped dent in the wall, "Oh, you mean this?" She said, gesturing to the rope and banister supporting beam thing, "I watched Tarzan, I was inspired."

Tarzan would be going to charity.

"...Okay... Maybe we should go. See you in a mo!" Or a couple of days.

We bolted outside, my mother at our heels. She was rather creepy.

"OH! LIZZY!" She shrieks, out of breath, "Won't your friends stay for some orange squash!"

Holmes and Charlotte go a bit pale and shake their heads, "Uh, no, thanks though Mrs. B."

Last time they had a drink at my house, they had been ill for a day.

Holmes stuck his hands in his pockets, "My place?" He said, cocking his eyebrow in his I'm-oh-so-cool expression.

I sigh, "Okay. Sorry 'bout that guys. Maybe some jamming is in order?" Holmes and Charlotte looked excited, nodding eagerly.

Charlotte smiled, "Maybe we could do some folksy, café band kinda music? Last time was simply AH-MAZE-ING!"

Last time Charlotte, Holmes and I had jammed, we hadn't gone to bed that night. At all. Just us three jamming all through the night. Holmes's house wasn't quite as small as mine, but it still wasn't that big. He had a room filled to the brim with instruments and sound mixing equipment.

Basically, it was where we recorded almost all of our music.

We had talked to our agent and talked about releasing a folksy, café type album alongside our other album. Our normal style was indie/rock/easy rock, but we did other kinds of music in our free time and had gathered some really awesome sounding songs over the years.

Our agent had obviously also thought they were awesome sounding and that's why we had to write 6 more songs before we could release the album. We had 8 songs already that had been written over the years, but 6 more songs would take a reasonable amount of our time.

We decided to stay up all night to try and finish the album. We were being hopeful, but isn't that what life is all about?

On the way, we stopped at the 7-11 and bought a whole ton of caffeine: Red Bull, Monster, coffee. You name it, we got it.

"Ella, you can't have the Red Bull. Remember last time!" I was trying to wrestle the Red Bull off Charlotte, who had nastily snatched it from my clutches.

Last time was at my 20th birthday party. I had gotten drunk on Red Bull and had stood on the shed roof, drunkenly shouting at an invisible foe, namely one of the guys from JLS. Apparently, I had just told him that he would look totally hot in a banana outfit when I fell off and landed on Holmes, resulting in one broken wrist and a broken ankle.

I released my death grip, "Alright. I see your point."

Oh, the joys of being Red Bull intolerant.

We arrived at his house and set to work.


The next morning found us slumped over chairs, drum kits and, uh, the floor.

I was on the floor.

I woke up next to my guitar, one arm slung around it and the other tucked closely against me, my cheek resting against the cold floorboards. Holmes was comatose over his drums, his head resting on top of the snare. Charlotte was sitting backwards on a chair, sleeping like a log, which makes no sense since logs don't sleep. Babies don't sleep either. People can be so thick with their clichés.

I groaned and rolled over, staring at the white ceiling when my phone started blaring Escape 700 from Hanna (GREATEST SOUNDTRACK EVER! DONE BY CHEMICAL BROS. LISTEN TO IT PEOPLES!). Holmes mumbled something and Charlotte drooled on the floor.

I leapt up scrambling for my phone, "Yello?

Elle? That you? Jane's voice said brightly on the other side of the phone. Why did I have to be inflicted with a morning person for a sister? Why did the sun have to shine so bright? On second thoughts, why did it have to shine at all? I deduced that I was hungover from... to much caffeine?

How on earth?

Then I remembered, at around 7 AM, I had given into my need for caffeine and sugar... I had a Red Bull.

I grunted into the phone.

Are you even awake? Anyway, Charlie asked you and I if we could go with him and couple of mates to the coast for 3 days aaaannnndddd... I accepted. Don't kill me!

I almost dropped the phone. "WHAT! JANE! HOW COULD YOU!"

Charlotte fell off the chair, startling her awake and Holmes jerked up sharply crashing his hands down on the drum set and making such an almighty sound (Line from FATM lol).

Be ready in about in half an hour, he'll be picking us up in, umm... about half an hour. Pack a bag and meet us outside- hang on. Where are you? I hear voices that aren't our families'...

I looked around and saw Holmes walking over to the door in a zombie-like state, muttering about, "darned evil sisters" and coffee. Charlotte had fallen asleep again where she had fallen asleep on the floor.

"I'm at Holmes' place with Charlotte and him. You woke us all up."

Well, it's about time you got up.

"We stayed up all night."

Oh! Oh man... Someone's going to need to swallow some happy pills before we go.

"I'm sending all of my happy pills over to Will Darcy's place."

Ah, yeah, Ella, about him... He's coming with.

"SMURFS! WHY JANE! SERIOUSLY!"

She hung up on me. I couldn't really blame her, I would be frightened of hungover, caffeine-deprived me.

"Coffee, bub?" I turned to see Holmes standing in the doorway, holding two mugs of coffee.

"Aw, Holmes! Can I live with you forever? Please. My family is MAD." I smiled at him, taking my mug from him. He grinned and ruffled my hair affectionately, "No chance."

He walked over to his balcony that over-looked the town he lived in, held the door open for me and sat down. I sat down next to him, breathing in the cool morning air. There wasn't anybody around and everything was so quiet the silence only broken by the chirping of the birds.

I sighed, "I'm going to the coast today with Charlie B, Jane and a couple of his friends. Save me. Please."

"It'll be fine once you have coffee." Holmes laughed, leaning back on the slide door, sipping his own.

"You're probably right." I took a long sip from my steaming cup and almost immediately my senses woke up somewhat.

"I've got an idea." I said, setting my mug down on the wooden slats and jumping up, running to get my guitar. I sat back down next to him and slung my strap around my neck. I started strumming, softly singing.

Coffee, coffee, you are my heroine,
You open my eyes better than anyone,
When I've done all the things I want to do,
Make sure I'm buried next to someone I'd like to talk to,
Oh, she lives again.

I stopped strumming/singing and Holmes laughed, shaking his head.

"How many songs do you reckon we did last night? I lost track when I had that Red Bull." I asked, trying to remember some of the songs we had done, but it all blurred together.

"We did all 6 of them, we'll listen tothem in a bit." He said, wrapping an arm around me when he saw me shiver.

"I have to go in half an hour. I wish you guys could come, it'll be so awkward..." I groaned.

He laughed, rubbing a hand across his 5 'O clock shadow beard, "It'll be fine. Anyway, I can put them on your iPod. Check them out and tell me what you think so I can give Benny some feedback." Benny was our very patient agent.

"Mm'kay, I'll listen to them on the journey." I pecked him on the cheek and got up to pack.


I was shoving Scott F. Fitzgerald into my bag when I heard the doorbell go. Charlotte was still out for the count and so Holmes answered. I heard manly voices coming closer and I hopped out of the door quickly, Charlie was standing there, his eyes widened slightly.

"Oh, sorry! Hi!" I said apologetically, realising I had almost opened it into his face.

Charlie, still happy and good-humoured as yesterday, smiled and took my old battered suitcase from me.

"That's fine! I needed a bit of a waking up anyway, I had a bit of a late night." He said sheepishly, sticking his free hand into his pocket.

I frowned at him, "You had better of taken Janey home last night."

"I did! Honest!" Charlie said, giving me his I'm-so-innocent look.

"Hm." I said, turning around and hugging Holmes, "Goodbye, Sherlock!"

As I turned to follow Charlie out of the front door, I heard Holmes call from behind me, "Ella! You forgot your iPod!" He said, jogging towards me, holding my black iPod out to me, "I uploaded all the new songs we wrote, 'kay?"

I smiled and gave him another hug, "Thanks, Holmes, I'll let you know whether their good enough to send off or not as soon as I can."

"Bye, kiddo!"

He shut the front door and Charlie and I walked down the drive. I had worn denim shorts, a old Beatles t-shirt that my mom (on one of her saner moments) had bought at one of their concerts and some high top purple chucks.

It was the perfect day for the drive down to the coast. I opened the car door.

Apart from the fact that I would be sitting in the same car as Mr. I-Will-Kill-You the whole way there.

I slid into the spare seat next to him and tried not to breathe in his incredible man smell, not sweat, believe me, it was not sweat.

He looked at me with shock, I guess he didn't know I would be coming as well, "Charlie, why on earth did you invite her?" He said, disapprovingly. I almost winced. I mean, seriously, what parent would have let their boy grow up to be such a jerk?

"Maybe because he wanted to distract you from calling Jane a gold-digger for the whole holiday." Now it was his turn to wince.

"What is your problem?"

"You." I replied bluntly, he huffed, rolling his eyes and muttering something about jumped up nobodies. Charlie slid into the front seat after putting my bags into the boot of his Range Rover and pulled off the curb.

Meryton, California, was a quiet rustic village about a mile from the city. It was the kind of town that you saw on a program about out-of-the-way villages you should visit, really scenic and retro. We were about 2 hours from the beach, which meant two hours of enduring Darcy. I sighed and turned to look out of the window, Charlie switched on the CD player and started playing some weird old music. Pulling my iPod from my short's pocket, I decided to check out our new songs from last night.

They were good, if you could excuse the couple of yawns and me yelling at Charlotte in the middle of one song for being so tyrannical, not letting me have a Red Bull. Darcy must have heard the music, because he bent his head over my iPod and saw the title of the playlist, "Nu songs :)".

He looked up and at me, furrowing his brow a bit, "You're producing a new album?" Darcy said, nodding to my iPod. I nodded and looked back out the window, he didn't let me escape so easily, "Could I listen to it?"

I gasped sarcastically, "You forgot to say the magic word!"

He breathed in deeply, trying to keep his temper in check, "Please."

"OK," I stopped him as he was just about to take the earbuds from me, "Wait! You have to promise me you won't start whining about how horrible it sounds and how you're so much better." I say, holding my earbud just out of his reach.

"Are you always like this? It's kind of annoying." He sighed and I gave him a pointed look, "Fine. I promise." I handed him one of the earbuds so I could still listen to it. It was kind of awkward, our heads being so close and all. I could feel his body radiating off him, making me sleepy. I started nodding off, warmth had always made me fall asleep quickly.


I woke up, my head resting on something solid. I moaned and ran a hand through my hair, sitting up to see what I had been lying on. I moaned some more when I found out that it was, in fact, Darcy's shoulder I had been sleeping on. I was so relieved when I found that I hadn't been drooling, although I shouldn't have worried, since I never drool.

I am a classy sleeper.

He had put my iPod away in the pocket of the seat ahead of me. Darcy gave a little half smile, I was completely bowled over, he could smile? Without his face melting off? I had just lost ten dollars to Holmes.

"It was good." He said softly as Jane and Charlie were chatting away in the front. How could two people talk to each other for so long, I do not know. They had managed to talk for almost the whole journey, if they hadn't stopped while I was asleep, that is.

"Really?" I said, still sleepy.

Darcy nodded, "You guys did sound a bit tired in it though and the shouts during the middle of that one song didn't go very well, but I'm assuming that that wasn't meant to be in there." He raised an eyebrow at me.

I laughed, unable to believe that we were actually having a proper conversation, "Yeah, we stayed up all of last night working on these. I got drunk on Red Bull at my 20th and broke a couple of bones. Charlotte wasn't allowing me to have Red Bull and so I got mad at her."

He frowned. Oh no. Back to Mr. Kill You, "You can actually get drunk on Red Bull? Don't you mean a sugar high?"

"It isn't a sugar high, it's like I'm actually drunk. If it is a sugar high, then it's the largest that any of my friends or family have seen because it was like I was seriously wasted." I glanced out of the window again and saw the glistening sea, there was a pretty house on top of a small hill near to the beach. I made a mental note to snap some pictures of it when I had time. I was happy that I wouldn't have to spend any more time with awkward Darcy and his massive ego. Charlie pulled into a car space and I leaped outside the moment he stopped.

Jane got out of the car after me, "Ella? Are you alright?" She asked, every inch the concerned older sister. I nodded and smiled brightly to assure her that I was fine, while trying to haul my old suitcase out of Charlie's massive boot. Suddenly, it was tugged free from my grasp and I spun around, Darcy had just appeared out of nowhere. Again.

"You didn't need to do that." I snap as he sets it down on the tarmac. He shrugs and I feel a bit bad. Picking up my suitcase, I waddle awkwardly over to Charlie, "So. Where are we staying?"

He turns away from his beloved Jane and gesture over to the house I had noticed earlier, "Over there, I'll be with you guys in a sec." He hops over to the boot to get his and Jane's bags out. I feel a bit awkward that it was just us and the boys, people might assume that Darcy and I were together.

Ew.

"Uh, Charlie? Is it just going to be us and you guys? I mean, it isn't like I don't want to be seen with you guys, it's just that you know what the paparazzi are like. They'll immediately publish articles about how Darcy and I are secretly married or something equally embarrassing." I said, putting on my aviator sunglasses in an attempt to disguise myself somewhat.

Charlie sniggered boyishly, "Imagine that! Sorry, Darce boy, but that would be a marriage and a half!" I glanced at Darcy at the corner of my eye and saw that he was scowling at Charlie and flushing angrily, or was it that he was blushing? Nope. It was anger.

I put the thought from my mind and repeated my question. Charlie smothered his laugh and shook his head, "No, my sister is coming any minute now."

Darcy turned a deathly pale, "C- Caroline is coming?" I laughed loudly, wanting to meet this girl who could make the almighty William Darcy react in such a way.

Or maybe I didn't.

Darcy glared and Charlie turned to me, "Caroline is somewhat, uh, infatuated with Darcy."

"She stalks me! Seriously, Charles! Couldn't you have warned me!" He almost yelled, I rolled my eyes. The more I saw of Darcy, the more I wanted to throttle him.

"Sorry, Darcy. Maybe you and Ella can go to the beach instead?" Charlie suggested, hoping to get some time alone with Jane before his sister showed up, no doubt. Darcy shook his head, "Ella doesn't need to trouble herself. I'll go down by myself."

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised one eyebrow, "Who said I didn't want to go to the beach, Mr. Darcy?"

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, making it stand up, "You said you didn't want to be seen with me."

ARGH! Forgot about that.

"Stuff the paparazzi." I said coolly, walking past him and up the little lane that leads to the house.


Once we've packed all our belongings away as quickly as we can, Darcy and I put on our swimsuits and run down to the beach as quickly as our legs can carry us. Caroline apparently is always 'fashionably late'. Who even does that anymore? I decided I wouldn't like to meet this Caroline. We put our towels down on the sand and strolled wordlessly down to the sea.

The waves gently lapped against my toes, not too warm, but not too cold. I started walking up to Darcy, who was standing with his broad back facing me. As much as I hate to say this, but Darcy was very fit, as much as a guy can be without it being grotesque. I tried not to look at him as I stood by his side.

"So. Is Caroline all that terrible or are you being a wuss and over-exaggerating her awfulness?" I said teasingly. He looked at me, fire sparking in his cold blue eyes.

"You'll meet her soon enough." Was all he said, before turning to walk back up to the beach. He stopped, apparently seeing the same orange figure running down the beach to where he stood. He turned to run back to where I stood, but the orange person leapt on top of him, squealing with delight.

"DARCY, MY LOVE! IT'S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN! DID YOU MISS ME?" It squealed. I guessed that thiswas Caroline. She had long orange-y blonde hair that clashed horribly with her over-done fake tan and florescent pink bikini.

Darcy tried peeling her from him, but she was clinging to him like a limpet, still squealing like a piglet. I walked over to them.

"You must be Caroline! Hi, I'm Lizzy. I came here with Darcy." I said, just so I could see how she reacted.

I wasn't disappointed as all the colour leaked from her face and her make-up ridden eyes widened so far that I thought that her eyeballs might fall from their sockets. She turned to Darcy and gave a false, catty laugh, "Ha! That's funny! Isn't that funny, dear Will? This poor, deluded girl thinks she is going out with you! Ha ha!"

Oh puh-leez.

Darcy's eyes lit up and he stepped towards me, entwining his muscular arm with mine, "Actually Caroline, this is my girlfriend, Ella."

My mouth hit the sand. Figuratively, of course. I started stuttering, but Darcy silenced me with a firm kiss. On my mouth.

I started protesting against his mouth, but he cupped my head closer, his hands tangling in my hair. The kiss would of been extremely, unbelievably nice, if it wasn't for the fact that this was Darcy who was kissing me. When he finally broke away, Caroline was gone. He laughed, "I can't believe I haven't tried that before! Thank you, Ella. I hope I haven't offended you."

I recovered myself, "What, exactly, was that?" I hissed, glaring up at him. Sometimes, it sucks to be 5"7.

He looked down at me, something in his eyes that I can't read, "I said I'm sorry. Ella, if it's all possible, could you please allow me to sometime put my arm around you, hold your hand, that kind of thing? It's just Caroline goes way too far, she always clings on to me and french kiss me all the time."

I smirked, "What's in it for me?" I said smugly.

Darcy looked startled, "What?"

"You heard me."

Darcy rubbed the back of his neck, "Uh, I could do a single with you and your band if you like?"

Perfect.

"You're on." I said, walking back up the beach.