"...so it turns out that the laptop was mistakenly taken by his cousin when she left. And he thought it was stolen, so he filed a report with the cops, you know?"

"Look, Carlos, that's great. But do you want to tell me why you decided to bring us together?" James asked indignantly, switching from brushing his hair to looking at the screen of his phone for a moment. "It says 'Cancel all business and be here at three!' So, what's going on?"

"Let Kendall get here first, and then I'll explain everything," Carlos replied evasively, and continued telling James stories, as if nothing had happened. He listened to Carlos distantly as he busied himself with manipulating his already perfectly-styled hair. Even his closest friends seemed to think that James was obsessed with his appearance, but the truth was it was only helping him to stay calm.

At last the tension in the air was broken by a loud and shrill knock, and then the boys recognized Kendall at once. Carlos stood up and, like a homeowner, wanted to open the door, but James was ahead of him.

"Hi," Kendall said uncertainly. "Still mad at me?"

James crossed his arms defiantly and glared at him. Of course he wanted to show Kendall what he'd done wrong, to teach him a lesson, but he couldn't hold a grudge against the man he loved. Once again he regretted his kindness and spoke up. "Do you have any idea how nervous we were? Your mother was exhausted, she thought that something had happened to you on the road. The hockey guys couldn't understand where you disappeared to. You didn't even tell them about the trip! At least Katie called us back later and explained everything."

Kendall lowered his eyes guiltily. Was discussing other people and shifting responsibility onto them, ignoring friends and family, and jeopardizing a career that had barely begun really mature? Kendall now saw in his actions the image, not of a free and independent person, but of a typical rebellious teenager. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"All right, the important thing is that you're okay." James held Kendall tightly against him, not wanting to let him go for a moment. No, not when Kendall had finally become so dear to James. He couldn't bear to lose him.

"Hey, I'm waiting for you guys. Will you be here soon?" came from the other room. The boys remembered Carlos and headed towards the instigator of the event.

"Will you explain what's going on?" James asked more gently.

"That's right. I'm curious, too."

"Make yourselves comfortable." Carlos gestured to the couch and, for some unknown reason, began pulling out several black notebooks. "First of all, I'm glad we're all together at last! Second, I had an idea for a fun and productive way to spend our time: we could write a song together."

"Was it so urgent that you texted us to put things on hold?" Kendall asked rhetorically.

"It's your day off, so no excuses! Maybe it's because you're always rescheduling that I did a little trick," Carlos said nonchalantly. "And if we write something worthy, we might even get Griffin to take a little longer to record Logan's album. A nice gift for a friend, and a chance for us to be creative."

"Well, that's fine with me." James's usual smile returned to his calm face. "Where do we start?"

"In acting classes we were taught that the most important thing is to get into your character, to feel his character and mood. I don't know how well that works with a song, but there are similarities, aren't there?"

Kendall looked at Carlos with disdain. He'd never considered himself sentimental enough to make up a character in his head and give him any feelings. Beautiful rhythm and catchy lyrics were of far greater value to him.

James, on the other hand, was immersed in his thoughts. He closed his eyes dreamily and was transported to the first location presented by his ardent imagination. A concert hall with ceilings that seemed to reach the heavens, luxurious chairs upholstered in red velvet, gilded walls. He felt like a real star. He was not at all embarrassed by the representatives of high society and the numerous film crew. On the contrary, they even fueled confidence. The live music with catchy piano notes pleasantly caressed his ears and tuned him to sing. But seeing the gesture backstage, James felt a little uneasy. What was he going to perform?

The question resolved itself. A young man came up behind him, singing a verse of Count on You, a song they knew well.

James was glad when he heard one of his favorite ballads and felt gentle hands on his shoulders. He didn't even have to turn around to recognize his partner's identity by the virtuosity and fluidity of his voice. And yet, James turned around. He stepped closer to the artist, lightly moved upward to stroke his neck and stared at him with the deepest, most piercing gaze imaginable.

"No, no, no," Carlos's familiar voice snapped him back to reality. "We're wasting time. We need to start with something global, a topic. Do you have any options?"

"I think so," James said, still somewhat disconnected from the outside world. "The song should be about what lights a fire inside each of us. We're all artists, so I suggest we write lyrics where we express our emotions through the image of music."

Kendall, like Carlos, looked at James in surprise. He concluded to himself that James was a much deeper person than he had thought even a couple of months ago. Unraveling his true feelings and thoughts gave Kendall real pleasure.

"Good idea. Now we can move on to the next step!" Carlos exclaimed enthusiastically. "No composer works without inspiration. Give us a few words on what inspires you."

"Well, it's hard to say." Kendall hesitated. "But when we wrote the bonus track for our first album, we were inspired by silence, table hockey, and I think something else."

"Silence, table hockey... Got it!"

"Yeah, but we don't have table hockey. There's only silence for now." James shrugged desperately and took a quick glance around. Maybe we should look for clues in the little things.

"Okay, we'll work with what we've got," Kendall said in his usual commanding tone. "Write up the sketches, and then we'll try to put them together."

Time flew fast. Each of them tried to capture the elusive thoughts and string them together into something even remotely resembling a poem. The success was variable, but a few curious phrases could already be found on each boy's sheet of paper.

"Listen:

In the cage of the mind the thought huddles,

But to the notes of submissive strings

It rises up like it gives us a cuddles,

and lift us above the bleachers on wings."

"Kendall, you're a poet!" James admired him and put his arm around his friend, which embarrassed him a little and made him turn away from Carlos.

"Well, that's something. It's a start," he said with a faint smile. "Let's get on with it!"

On the one hand, the direction was set, as was the rhythm, the number of stanzas, the rhyming. On the other hand, there were restrictions, with which some ideas had to be mercilessly discarded, so the process was slower. Carlos was the first to break the silence. He was clearly delighted by the unexpected hunch, as if he'd found an ancient treasure.

"James, I remembered what else inspired you when we were writing Oh Yeah. Girls, it was girls!"

"Oh, yeah, I was a bit of a ladies' man. But now I'm inspired by something else," James said with a beaming smile, and turned his gaze to Kendall. He noticed him, of course, but again he couldn't find the words to respond properly.

"Even so, guys, we used to at least try to have a personal life," Carlos began, remembering his affair with Jennifer. "Now what, we're men in our prime who are swamped with work. It's no good. It's time to go hunting!"

"You know, man, I think it's time you knew something about Kendall and me," James began when he felt someone deliberately step on his foot.

"Oh, I'm excited!" Carlos jumped involuntarily from the fountain of energy. "So, what do I need to know?"

"That we can meet someone at work," Kendall said. "Don't you have any beautiful actresses in your class? And James worked with a long-legged model. I'm sure they had something!"

James looked over at him with the same unperturbed facial expression, but obvious incomprehension, in his eyes.

"You know, I haven't eaten anything since this morning to keep me in shape for the shoot. Why don't you warm something up for us, Carlos? They say good food inspires you too!"

"Sure, coming right up. Hope you don't mind the corn dogs!"

After the unsuspecting Carlos retreated to the kitchen, James gave Kendall a tangible nudge. "Hey, Carlos is our best friend! Why can't he find out the truth?"

"James, he can't keep his mouth shut. With Carlos's gregariousness, our little secret will be known all over Minneapolis!"

"So?" The young man defiantly spread his hands. "Let the whole of America know what a wonderful and happy relationship we have!"

Kendall wanted to say something, but he heard Carlos' footsteps and pretended that the recent conversation had never happened.

"The microwave does wonders for convenience foods." Carlos grinned, carrying a plate of corn dogs.

"Okay, let's eat, and then we can go on."

After a hearty lunch, the boys decided to take a break, as the slightly tense atmosphere was not in the mood for poetry. Carlos took out a disk with the eighteenth Fifa and turned on the console, and the boys started the match with enthusiasm.

"If a table game inspired us, a virtual one should too," James said smartly.

Everyone was playing well except for Kendall: he was always losing, because he couldn't even focus on simple things. Setting up tactics seemed like a nightmare to him, but luckily the experienced Carlos was happy to give advice. When he stepped away due to natural necessity, Kendall and James were alone again.

"You're better at poetry than you are at acting."

"You know, James, gaming reminds me of relationships... It's complicated, and every wrong move can lead to failure."

"Come on," James suddenly regained his good-naturedness and moved closer to Kendall. "Do you know how to solve two problems at once?"

"How?"

James went into the game's settings and set the difficulty level to a lower level.

"That's it! Don't complicate your life and just have a good time." Kendall laughed and James playfully hugged him.

When Carlos returned, the boys continued writing again. Now the process was easy, even if not in silence. Carlos told his friends exciting stories, and they listened and took parallel notes when inspiration struck.

"So, let's read what we ended up with." From the words flowed inspiration, vigor and everything that the guys had been missing for a long time.

Carlos wrapped his arms around his friends sitting on either side of him. "I can't wait to make Logan happy!"

"Here you go." Kendall handed the phone to his excited buddy, then looked down at the written sheet of paper with pride. He was immensely pleased with the work he'd done and grateful to the initiator of the meeting, for without him the boys wouldn't have gotten together for a long time.

"Eh, the phone was disconnected."

But Carlos didn't want to give up, he wanted to tell Logan right now. In desperation, he dialed Camille. "Hello, it's me, Carlos. Can you talk right now?"

There were sobs on the other end of the phone. Loud, pitiful, hysterical sobs.

"God, what is wrong, Camille?"

James and Kendall looked at each other. They moved closer, but considering their friend didn't have the phone on speaker, they couldn't make out what Camille was saying.

For about a minute Carlos just listened silently and nodded. The boys noticed that his face had turned pale and the corners of his lips had dropped unnaturally. They watched the situation anxiously, waiting for some clarification.

Finally, Carlos ended the call. He was barely able to land on the couch on cotton legs before a haggard James came over to him.