"Ally!" someone calls from downstairs. I sit up. I must have fallen asleep on the practice room couch last night. I stand up and stretch, hearing all of my bones crack. I cringe at the feeling. I walk toward the stairs slowly before I realize something...
This person is inside Sonic Boom... which means they walked through the door. The door I most likely left unlocked! I inch closer to the door, quiet as a mouse. I open it a crack and look out. I see Austin down there, sitting on the counter, waiting for me. I open the door all the way and stumble down the stairs sleepily.
"Did I lock that door?" is the first thing out my mouth when I get to him.
"Yeah, you did. I used the key you and your dad gave me," he tells me.
"We never gave you a key..." I say.
"Yes, you did. Don't you remember that day you asked me to lock up for you when we up late one night, writing a song?" he asks. I rack my brain and finally find the memory.
"Vaguely," I answer.
"Yeah, well you never asked for the key back so I kept it," he says. "And now that you know I have it, you want me to give it back. Right?" I shake my head.
"No, keep it," I tell him. "I might need you to lock up or open up for me again one day." I think about the things he could've done with that key. He could have come out here with Hannah or...
I jump up onto the counter and sit beside him, looking out the open doors of Sonic Boom. It's really dark outside.
"What time is it?" I ask him.
"About five," he tells me.
"Five?" I ask. "In the morning?" He nods.
"Yeah, I couldn't sleep so..." he trails off.
"Well, I'm going back to sleep. Wake me at twelve o'clock," I instruct him. He nods in understanding and I slide off the counter.
"Ally, wait!" he suddenly exclaims. I turn a little and raise my eyebrows. "You didn't want to write a new song today, did you?" he asks. "You have something you want to talk with me about." Again, he knows me way too well.
I just nod, telling him he's correct. At first, it was just a part of the plan. But now, I realize that he knew what I wanted to do before I even knew myself. I turn back around and continue up the stairs. I drift back off to sleep when I lie back down on the couch. Austin wakes me at twelve o'clock on the dot. I lift my head wearily.
"What?" I groan, trying to roll back over and sink into the couch. He stops me and picks me up, spinning me once. Then he sets me down.
"You told me to wake you up at twelve o'clock," he reminds me, grinning a little.
"I did, didn't I?" I mutter. He smirks. We sit down on the couch and I wonder how exactly to start the conversation. "So... Austin..." I finally get out. Great way to start the conversation.
"Ally, I already know what you want to talk about so let's just get it over with," he tells me. Oh, good. Because I had no idea where I was going with this...
"Oh, yeah? And what do you think it is?" I ask him.
"You want to talk about Hannah and a bunch of different things, right?" he asks. I look around.
"Correct," I say, forcing my eyes to focus on his chocolate brown ones. Once I find myself lost in them, I try focusing on his lips. The lips that you just want to kiss over and over again... Try again, Ally. My eyes slide up to his nose. It's kind of big. Very unflattering. So I just look down at my hands as I twiddle my thumbs. He lies back and puts his hands behind his head.
"Alright," he says, "lay it on me." He chuckles to himself. I sigh.
"Well, I—" I start but someone calls my name again from downstairs. "Be right back." I run down the stairs and see Trish standing there with her small, opened laptop in her hands.
"We're connected," she says, smiling. I cross over to her as she sets her laptop on the counter. I look at the screen and see... nothing. It's just a black screen. Trish sighs frustratedly. "Dez, move your butt!" she exclaims. We wait for him to move and after a few minutes, he does. We see Blake and Hannah stretched out on Dez's bed.
"I'll go call Austin and see what's taking him so long to get here," Dez says.
"Dez is here?" Austin asks, walking down the stairs.
"No!" Trish yells. "I mean, um... Ally, you wanna take this one?"
"Uh, Dez was here. You just missed him," I lie, considerably well. Austin starts walking toward the door and Trish casually moves her laptop to where it's facing the opposite side of Sonic Boom. "Uh, did we say Dez? I meant... um... my dad!" I exclaim. Austin stops walking and pushes his eyebrows together in confusion.
"You just said—" he starts but I cut him off.
"I know, I know. Who knows what I was talking about?" I ask with a slight chuckle. "Trish, use your headphones so me and Austin can talk without hearing random things from your laptop." I wink at her and she understands what I mean. "Just tell me if anything... interesting happens..." She nods and takes her ear buds out of her pocket. She puts one bud in her ear and the other end into her laptop. Austin and I sit on the part of the counter opposite the other one and Trish turns her computer around so that we can't see the screen.
"So, you were saying..." Austin urges me on. I open my mouth but close it quickly. How do I start this?
"I... I... I'm getting... tired..." I finally manage.
"But you just woke up," he tells me.
"No, I mean tired... of this," I specify. He swallows.
"Wh-what?" he asks, dumbfounded.
"It's just... this roller coaster we're on. We have our ups and downs but these rides have to end sometime, right?" I ask. "Hannah started the ride and I'm ready to get off. You can stay on there with Hannah if you'd like but... our friendship... it just isn't working out."
"This is just because you're jealous of Hannah, isn't it?" he asks, without a trace of anything in his tone. I look at his face but it has no emotion on it.
"Jealous," I scoff, "sure. Why would I be jealous when she just took what was mine? She drove us apart. We'd probably still be together if it wasn't for her! When you met her, that's when our fights started."
"No, they started..." he trails off because he knows I'm right, probably.
"I don't give a fuck if you sat around your house for a while because you 'felt bad about our breakup'! I don't believe that one bit!" I think it's the first time our actual breakup has been mentioned since it happened.
"None of that was Hannah's fault! It was yours! All yours!" he shouts at me. He calms down a little. No. No. God, please don't do this to me. He only calms down when he's ready for the fight to be over permanently. It wasn't permanent last time but it just might be this time. He jumps down from the counter.
"Ally! Ally! Ally!" Trish exclaims. I ignore her.
"You know what? This ride is officially over. Are you happy now? Take a good look at me. Because I'm never coming back to this amusement park ever again," he tells me.
"Ally!" Trish screams. Austin walks out the door and I follow him to the door. But that's where I stop. I turn to Trish.
"What, Trish?" I ask sadly. She points to her screen.
"Look!" she yells. I turn my attention to it. Blake is lying down on Dez's bed and Hannah is on top of him, kissing him like there's no tomorrow. Dez is nowhere to be found. I feel my eyes light up. Trish grabs her laptop and runs out the doors of Sonic Boom. "Austin!" she screams. He disappears into a crowd of people. "Come on," she tells me.
We take off running through the mall, trying to catch up with him, screaming, "Austin!" from time to time. Suddenly, he's gone. We can't find him. Tears flow down my cheeks. This is it. I've lost Austin forever to... to... Hannah freaking Jordan. Trish sighs and leads me back to Sonic Boom.
"I guess that's it," I whisper, mostly to myself. I walk behind the counter and lie down on the floor, curling up into a ball.
"I'm sorry," Trish says, dropping to her knees and putting a comforting hand on my shoulder.
"I-if... only... he'd... j-just... b-b-believed... m-me..." I choke out through sobs. She cries silently as she watches her best friend cry. That's the only thing I hate about true best friends. They cry, you cry. You can't even help it. She sighs through her tears but it comes out a bit ragged.
"Ally, you can't just stay back here. You have to get up, move around," she says, trying to bring me to my feet. I don't budge though.
"Just leave me alone to die," I mumble. She looks as if she's going to object, force me to move, but she doesn't. She just walks up the stairs to the practice room. About a minute later, she comes back down with a blanket. She drapes it over me and sits on the counter, facing inward. She sings me a Latino lullaby that I know as Arroz Con Leche and I slowly fall asleep. I'm not sure if it was Trish's soft singing or if it was my crying. I have a dream of a flashback. It was the day Trish was teaching me the English version of this song. It also just so happened to be Austin and I's two-month anniversary...
(Italics=Dream/Flashback; Bold+Italics=Song Lyrics)
"In English, it's called Rice Pudding. My dad used to sing it to me when I was little," she explained to me.
"Rice Pudding?" I asked with a small giggle. She smiled.
Rice Pudding
I want to get married
To a lady
Who knows how to dance
Who knows how to sew
Who knows how to iron
Who knows how to open the door
To go out and play
"It seems longer in Spanish," I pointed out. She'd sung it to me before but it had been in Spanish; not English. She just shrugged.
"Sing it back to me," she commanded.
Rice pudding
I want to get married
To a lady
Who knows how to dance
Who knows how to sew
Who knows how to iron
Who knows how to open the door
To go out and play
She clapped when I finished and said, "Good job." I smiled. "Do you want me to teach you the other version?" she asked.
"Is it in Spanish?" I asked.
"Usually, it is but I can teach it to you in English if you want me to," she told me.
Rice pudding
I want to get married
To a little widow
From the capital
Who knows how to sew
Who knows how to embroider
Who puts the table
In its holy place
I am the widow
The King's daughter
I want to get married
And I don't know with who
For some reason, I liked that version better. I don't know why; it just kind of stuck out to me. I didn't even understand the lyrics, to be perfectly honest. I remembered once that she told me that the pace she was singing it, wasn't the real pace. She told me that it was a bit faster but her dad slowed it down for her to make it a bit more soothing. Suddenly, Austin bursted into the practice room and his eyes landed on me.
"Ally, I need you," he told me. I looked at Trish. I gave her a quick hug.
"Thanks for teaching me the song," I said. She returned my smile.
"Anytime," she said. "If you ever want me to teach you another one, just ask." I smiled brightly and let Austin lead me out of the practice room. As soon as he shut the door, he picked me up and kissed me, walking down the stairs as he did. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him back.
I ran my fingers through his hair as the kiss progressed. He carried me out of Sonic Boom and toward his house, opening his eyes every once in a while to make sure he was going the right way. When we finally got to his house, he opened the door. He set me down and we walked inside.
"Hey, Mom," he said as we passed her. Once we were up the stairs, he picked me back up, continuing our kiss, and carried me into his room. He shut his door behind us. He sat down on his bed but against his wall, still kissing me all the while. Finally, his hands dropped down from my waist and they rested on my thighs. We stopped kissing so we could catch our breath. He smiled at me. "Guess what?" he asked. I smiled.
"What?" I asked. He moved me off of him and reached under his pillow. He pulled out a kind of long, silver box. He handed it to me.
"Happy two-month anniversary," he whispered in my ear, pulling me back into his lap. I stared down at it. "Aren't you going to open it?" he asked.
"No. I didn't get you anything so I would feel bad, knowing I didn't get you anything," I explained. He shook his head.
"Ally, you already got me something. Well, actually, your mother got me something and it counts as being from you too," he told me. I pushed my eyebrows together in confusion. "She brought the love of my life into this world." He kissed me gently. I looked down at the box once more and slowly removed the top.
"Oh, my God, Austin," I said. "This is beautiful." I picked up the silver locket. I opened the locket and inside was a picture of Austin and I. It was one of the pictures we'd taken at The Helen Show; just after we'd finished Break Down The Walls and just before the show.
"I bet it'll look even better on you," he said sweetly. I turned around and sat with my back to him as he fastened the necklace onto my neck. After he did, I turned back around.
"Thank you," I whispered. I leaned in to kiss him again and...
… I wake up. I still have that necklace. It's in my side table drawer. Trish is asleep on the counter above me. I don't know what time it is and I'm still not in the mood to get up. The sun doesn't seem to be shining in anymore so it must be either late afternoon or nighttime. Let's just hope Trish locked up the store. It doesn't really matter though, I guess. So I just roll back over and pull the blanket up to my chin. That day was both the best day ever and the worst day.
It was the best because of two reasons; one: Trish taught me something! I mean she actually put effort into something and taught me the song! And two: Austin was so sweet on that day that I was afraid he'd broken another instrument at Sonic Boom or something. But he hadn't. So it was just real kindness.
It was the worst because of one reason: The mere memory of it now kills me.
Sorry it's late tonight. Homework, projects/essays, chores. Review!
LoVe, KeNzIe