AN: I am very sorry for the slow updates, but school has to have the highest priority. I have two more chapters finished, so I will update in a little while, I promise!

Lots of Love, B4E

Chapter 18: Six Months

"Hi, it's me... I'm in Seattle... Look, I don't care what you told me... She's a mess, she think's that everything is her fault, and she needed me... Just listen, she's in the next room and she's going to wake up in an hour. I've written you an e-mail explaining everything, because honestly, I don't think that she can retell her story, God knows it was hard enough for me to write it down... You have to come here and talk to her... You two need each other... Oh just read it!"

"What a funny dream," I thought before I dozed back into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

When I woke up for real, I just lay still in my bed, breathing deeply. I hadn't felt this good since... I don't know. Not like I had felt when I had been with him, but maybe like I had felt right before Port Angeles, when I had started to get my life back on track and was living again. No, I was feeling better than that. Not much, but a bitt better.

I sat up carefully in my bed, blinking from the soreness in my eyes. Well, I had cried a lot last night. Then, I smiled. Alice was sitting at the end of my bed, a cup of coffee in her hands and a happy smile on her face. I wondered what the happy face was all about, then I saw that the doors to Narnia were open.

"So, did you find the lion?" I asked her as I reached for the cup, assuming it was for me because Alice sure as hell didn't drink, nor need, coffee. She looked a bit tensed and confused, then she rolled here eyes and laughed.

"Of course, trust you to name your walk-in closet after a closet in a book," she said and rolled her eyes at me. "You absolute nerd, you know that? And no, I didn't find the lion, but I have to say I'm proud of you Bella." She smiled like a proud mama. "That's actually not a bad collection of clothes you have there." I felt a warmth spread through me that hat nothing to do with the steaming cup in my hands.

"Thank you. I actually picked out everything myself," I lied. She raised one eyebrow at me. Darn it.

"Ok, so maybe Caroline picked out some of the finer outfits and the heels, but half of it is my doing, I swear," I confessed. I had missed Alice so much. It was amazing to have her here, in my apartment. But what was that little box she was holding in her hands? Alice followed my gaze, and gave me a wicked grin as she she tossed me the box.

"Bella, it's not that I think you look bad or anything, but you're a brunet," she told me sternly, and I saw that what I was now holding in my hands, was a box of mahogany-brown hair-dye.

"The hair color really bothers you, doesn't it?" I asked her, a bit smug. It was a bit fun to get under Alice's skin. She narrowed her eyes and got a pondering expression on her face.

"It looks great on you, the pictures I have seen of you in magazines have been absolutely amazing," she said, absentmindedly inching closer to me and starting to run her fingers lightly through my hair. "But it's just not... Bella. And I think it's time for you to stop hiding from the world behind a blond helmet." Her eyes were wide and innocent, too innocent. She wasn't the only one who could catch a lie.

"You just really hate it, don't you," I laughed at her. At the way her jaw clenched just I tiny bitt, I knew I was right. I was about to tell her that I was not going brown any time soon, when my phone rang, Jacks annoying voice telling me to pick up the god dam phone. It was something we had all done one of those way too late evenings when we all should have been in our respectable homes, sleeping, but we were to close to finish a song to stop. We had been at a dead end, so at one point, we had started to make personalized ringtones for each other. Whenever I called Amanda now, her phone would tell her loudly in my voice that it was Blondie calling, and she better pick up, or I might be forced to take more serious actions...

I leaned over to pick up my phone from the night stand, and of course managed to fall out of the bed at the same time. It was only because of Alice's vampiric reflexes that I didn't get hot coffee all over myself in the proses.

"Ouch," I said into the phone.

"Good morning to you too Blondie. Just as reminder, you should have been hare bout twenty minutes ago," Jack told me in a calm, mocking tone. I glanced at the on my phone, it was 10.20 am. Crap, I had over slept!

"Oh, Jack, I am SO sorry! Just give me five, ten tops, and I'll be there," I told him and hung up before he could answer. I got to my feet, and made a list in my head. I had to take a quick shower, get dressed and get down to the others. I was sure it was OK for Alice to tag along, so I turned around to tell her my plan, just to find her spot vacant. Then I heard her voice coming from Narnia.

"Go get cleaned up, I'll find something you can wear, and you'll be down there in no time," she told me, and I didn't hesitate a second to follow her command.

As the warm water hit me and woke me up, I started to think of the task ahead. The Cullen family would have to wait for just a couple of hours, until we had found a name for the album. I was still thinking hard when I came out of the shower five minutes later, and yelled a "thank you" to Alice for the small stack of clothing she had placed on the sink. I pulled on the grey tights, a singlet and the knitted, brown, long sweater that went to the middle of my thighs. I loved the sweater, which had been a gift from Reneé when she had been in town two months ago.

I pulled my hair up in a messy bun on he top of my head, and rushed out of the bathroom not bothering with make-up. Alice was standing by the door, a pair of uggs by her feet and my purse in her pale hands.

"Thank you," I said again as I stepped into my shoes and grabbed my purse. "You are an angel, did you know that?" Her face brightened as she closed the door behind us, and put her arm in my arm as we walked over to the elevator. She placed her head on my shoulder as we waited.

"I've missed you Bella," she told me silently, and I felt a lump forming in my throat.

"None of that now Alice, you're going to make me cry again," I told her, half joking, half not. "We are going to have a little meeting, down in the coffee shop just on the other side of the road. If you want to, I'm sure you can.."

"That's OK, I have some things I need to do anyway," Alice said hastily. "I'm taking a quick hunting trip, I had forgotten how mouth-watering your sent was." she said, nudging me playfully as we stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor.

"Oh, thank's Alice, my day isn't complete without someone telling me how eatable I am," I mumbled, and Alice laughed her high, bell like laughter. I felt something like dread slowly creeping up on me. "But you're coming back, right?" I asked her, worried.

"Of course Bella, I'll be back before the evening falls, I promise."

We said goodbye outside the label, as I crossed the street and she went to the right to find her car. A bell rang as I entered the little, cute coffee shop, which was always empty this early in the morning. The band plus Christopher were sitting at our usual spot, near the back, and they started to clap when I slide into my seat, the one between Johnny and Amanda.

"Oh shut it. I'm almost never late, so give me a break," I told them gloomily as the shop keeper, a nice man called Gustav, put my usual order in front of me; a double, skinny latte, no foam and a belgium waffle with whipped cream. Healthy? No, but it was soooo good!

"So now, that we are all here, I think it's time to start. First of all, we need to decide which songs that goes on the album. Mr. N has put the limit at 15 songs, and I know we have more than that," Christopher told us, taking a worn out, moleskin notebook out of his jacket pocket. He had to go through a couple of pockets before he found his mini-pen too, then he looked up at us, expectantly. Amanda, Jack, Allen and I in turn looked at Johnny, who was the undisputed leader of our little band.

"I knew you were all going to push this over on me," he sighed into his coffee. He took a long sip, then put the cup down and started to count on his fingers.

"The four songs that's going to be on the soundtrack of Sally's Choice, naturally, that's the songs people are going to listen for. So thats, Shine, Wish You Were Here, Just the Beginning and Blame it On Me." Johnny was now holding four finger in the air, and Christopher was jotting down the titles in his messy, unreadable handwriting.

"I really want Where I Stood, These Days and Unraveling, but other than that, I am willing to negotiate," he finished, now holding seven fingers in the air. We all nodded in agreement, Unraveling was Johnny's song through and through, he had written the whole thing himself, and it was one of the most funky songs we had recorded, so that was no surprise. The two others were our first songs together, and there was no way we were giving out and album without those.

"So now there are...," Amanda had to think a little too long before she continued, and I had to hide a smile behind my waffle. Math wasn't Amanda's best friend ether. "Eight slots left," she finally concluded, sending everyone a death-glare that stopped Jack and Allen from laughing out loud.

"We got to have Seattle on it. I mean, come on, out name is Seattle Sunrise, we need to have a song about Seattle on our album," Jack argued. I groaned. Sure, I had written the song, but it was on a really bad day where I was kind of angry at everyone and everything. I didn't really like it, but after a quick argument where everyone sided agains me, I had to bow to the majority. Sometimes, democracy is a bitch.

"But then I want Hope for the Hopeless," I said, and Jack made a face at me. It wasn't that he didn't like the song, he just thought it was amazingly boring after playing it one time to many. But I loved it, and so did Amanda and Johnny, so I got my way. Oh yeah revenge is sweet.

"What about How I feel?" Christopher asked as he wrote, and I almost choked om my coffee. Seriously? We had written the song on a night very like the night we had made those silly ringtones. The song was about how it wasn't all fun to be famous. It was a good song that night, but three days later, when we had recorded it and sat down to listen to it, we all really hated it.

Christopher gave us a hopeful glance, but all hope left his face as he took in our disbelieving faces.

"Or not," he mumbled and crossed out something in his book.

After about an hour full of arguments, negotiations and some extortion, we had our track-list down:

Seattle

Unraveling

These Days

Blame It on Me

Darkness Rond the Sun

Shine

Wish You Were Here

The Music

Hope for the Hopeless

Steer

How Strong Do You Think I Am

Dark Blue

The Scientist

Where I Stood

Just The Beginning

"And now the grand finalé, the album name!" Allen exclaimed.

It felt like I had gone deaf, the silence was so absolute. I couldn't find one good name for the album. Everything that popped into my head was silly, childish or just plain dumb. We all looked down at our hands, thinking hard, but noone seemed to come up with something that was worth voicing.

Then, Jack opened his wonderful mouth.

"Six Months."

It was so simple, two ordinary words that was just perfect for us.

"It took us six months to get this done." Allen nodded

"Six months to get to know each other as well as we do now," Amanda said.

"Six moths to become Seattle Sunrise." Christopher was smiling, and I found myself doing the same. Johnny was right out grinning, leaning back in his chair.

"I have an idea for the cover," he said. Johnny was a man of many talents. Not only was he a musical genius, he was also a gifted photographer. Some people just had it all. As I started to dread a photo-shoot, he drew out his iPhone. Oh no. That phone had been with us everywhere, and I had the feeling that Johnny had taken more than a few pictures of people without their knowledge. After a few seconds he put the phone down on the table and slid it to the middle so everyone could have a look.

I leaned in closer, and my worst fears were confirmed. It was a black-and-white photo of me, sitting in front of the big calender we had pined up on a wall in inside the band-studio, since we spent most of our time in there. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, writing with a black marker on the calender that was already filled up with deadlines for songs, recording times, when we were shooting things for Sally's Choice, etc. My other hand, the one that wasn't writing, was gripping the messy hair on top of my head in frustration, and I remembered that I had been tying to schedule a time for Reneé to come over, and I had been really frustrated because there just wasn't any. I was wearing a simple, white, sleeveless top, and Johnny had taken the picture at an angel, so we could see my left shoulder and part of my face, and the gigantic calender, and my guitar was leaning against the wall just to the right of me.

I looked up to protest, Christopher never gave me the chance.

"Johnny, that's just perfect! If you could just e-mail it to me, and then I'll send it all over to mr. N for approval." Oh great, so I wasn't getting a say in this?

"You guys.." I started, but they overheard me.

"I can do you one better, I'll just send it directly to mr. N," Johnny said and grabbed his phone. Wait, what? No no no, this couldn't be happening.

"Johnny..."

"Send him the track list also, will you?" Christopher interrupted me, and with inhuman speed, Johnny tapped his elegant fingers.

"Sent," he smiled, and I felt my face grow hot.

"But, shouldn't the cover of the album be of all of us or something?" I asked, but Christopher just shrugged as he but his notebook back in his pocket.

"Not really, you are kind of the face of the band, so having you on the cover isn't a bad thing at all." How could he be so sure that a picture taken with an iPhone would be the perfect coverart.

"But, I don't even have any make-up on, my clothes are a mess, not to mention my hair! I look like..."

Yet again, I was cut of by Christopher, who was now getting up from the table.

"You look exactly like you, Blondie, and that's the only version of you mr. N and I want to promote." He placed a hand hand on my shoulder, and looked down at me with a calm smile on his face. "The picture is real, just like your music." Then he turned his back on us and walked out into yet another cloudy day in Seattle. All I could do, was to stare at the man. How he sometimes knew just the right words to say, was beyond me.

A sound from Johnny's phone snapped me back to reality.

"It's mr. N," he said, and all eyes turned to the little black machine in his hand.

"And...?" Amanda said, leaning forward. Johnny looked up with a the widest grin I had ever seen on his face.

"We've just finished our first album people!"