No Rules To Love

Chapter Eleven:

"Thank you! Thank you!" I shouted to my adoring crowd.

I had just finished my opening night on the West End. I had bagged the role of Satine in Moulin Rouge, and everyone loved my performance. The entire audience stood on their feet and clapped wildly. Many of them shouted 'Encore!' and I was happy to oblige. I gave them one last rendition of One Day I'll Fly Away before leaving the stage. I blew kisses and waved goodbye to my adoring audience.

This was the life!

A weight jumping on my bed, making the bed dip disturbed my alluring slumber. I was in a bad mood in an instant because I was having a fantastic dream and I wanted it to last forever. My bed soon started dipping and going back to normal repeatedly. Someone must have been bouncing on it. The bouncing was going to continue until I showed some signs of life. I groaned as I decided I was going to put the person who woke me out of their misery and opened my eyes.

When I did finally open my eyes, Ashley's face loomed over mine and I let out a squeak of fright. As much as I adored my best friend, waking up to see her face glaring at me was not something I was accustomed to. I had no idea why she was doing this, and she had a scary, determined look in her eyes.

"What are you doing here?" I mumbled, my voice hoarse from lack of use during sleep.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Ashley asked. She was far too chirpy for the morning. "I've come to get you up!"

My eyebrows scrunched in confusion, and I checked the clock sitting on my bed-side table. The bright red letters read 8:00, and I groaned before flopping myself back on the pillow. "It's eight in the morning! Why are you waking me up at eight in the morning?" I moaned. I continued before Ashley could even defend herself. "It's our day off! Days off are meant for sleeping!" Ashley knew me well enough not to wake me up early on my day off.

"Not when we've got a party outfit to get, it's not!" Ashley chimed in a high-pitched voice, which was quite annoying this early in the morning. "Come to think of it..." She muttered as if she were talking to herself. "Have you got a graduation outfit yet?"

"Erm... no?" I replied as if I were asking her a question.

Ashley rolled her eyes and scoffed at me. "What am I going to do with you?" She asked. She then started muttering to herself. "Well, that's another thing we need to sort out! I mean, I've already got a graduation outfit, but not a party outfit, and you've got neither, so we better get cracking..."

It was times like this; when Ashley would go off on one, when I would usually tune out and think about something else. Usually, I would have a vague idea of the topic of conversation, but I didn't have a clue about what she was talking about. Perhaps it was the early morning. Or maybe I wouldn't even understand what she was saying if I was alert and awake.

I sat up straighter, pulling the covers tighter to my body to mask my exposed skin, not wanting it to become cold. "What are you even talking about?"

Ashley stopped her monologue and looked at me like I was going crazy. "We're going shopping, of course!"

***

"Ashley!" I whimpered; the sound was verging on something that a belligerent child would make. I was not proud of how childish I sounded. "How many more shops do we have to look around? My feet are killing me!"

"We can go when we've found you something to wear!" Ashley replied. She was sounding like a frustrated mother, dragging a misbehaving child around. Like she was in search of school shoes mere days before the start of the term.

And no, we weren't running lines for a script.

We were trudging around a massive shopping centre in the west of London. Shopping bags, filled with pairs of shoes and countless accessories, weighed us down. But Ashley wasn't satisfied. We had been going around in circles for the past two hours and I still hadn't found a suitable outfit yet. Sure, I'd suggested some decadent dresses to Ashley, but she never seemed impressed by my choice of clothes.