FIFTH HALF ― luke hemmings ✓

#23

In a span of three weeks, I stayed with the boys endlessly overnight.

To Ashton's house with painful choices of food because of his ultimate goal of living healthy, to Mikey's living room with plenty of pizza boxes lying around, back to the pool place, and even in Luke's house where I stayed so silently like it's the first day meeting the rest of the boys. I stayed with them day and night, fit ourselves in my cramped apartment, and had successfully made fifteen songs for the album.

But my reason for that is way too different from theirs. The reason why I wanted to get done with the album was because Oliver's offer was due to come up next month, and I wanted to be there when they finessed it until the very last song and spend the last remaining three weeks with them. My time with them felt limited. Most specially when we're laughing around like the old days, joke around as if we never went through such problems or got exhausted from writing. It was well than worth it to see the finished papers neatly printed inside a folder, and on towards the producers to get it to work everything out.

"Lacey, move your butt!" Mikey shoved me away playfully from the counter as he placed packs of chips on it, plenty of them at that. We were gonna have a house party in Luke's house and they invited almost everyone at Calum's contacts, just to have over some people and celebrate something unknown to them. To celebrate finishing another album. That we continuously hinted over our social media, with Calum almost ruining it as he posted a photo of me in a piano and Luke posting a photo of him at the studio.

As with Luke and I? We decided to stop dwelling over the past and focus on the now. Whenever he's around, I try to be as normal as possible. I try to laugh with him when the rest of the band is around, but never tried to be with him alone. I still... can't. And Calum made sure it didn't happen because I almost beg him not to. He tags me along every damn time and I might just have a lot to thank him for in doing that.

"Do you think it's a good idea if we placed the bottles floating on the pool?" Mikey marveled and if the drinks I was mixing isn't expensive to say the least, I would've showered all of this to him and his ideas.

"It's a bad idea. A very bad one, mate." Luke interjected as he passed by, carrying a plastic of red and blue cups, with plenty of ping pong balls inside. He placed it down in a long and old table of which we they have to carry to avoid ruining his glass one. Everything that could possibly be damaged was kept on his storage room, and what's left of his sleek house was a couple of chairs at the counter and his perfect sofa I knew would get ruined by the end of the night. The parties... let's just say some had zero tolerance over alcohol and tends to vomit everywhere.

"The pool's set, the living room, and the kitchen is done! All we have to do now, is wait." Ashton took a seat right beside me at the sofa while I watch some old reruns of the The Office. Calum followed shortly after on Ashton's side as he placed his foot on another wooden coffee table we had to changed the glass with. Mikey went to seat at the floor right by me and Ashton's legs, and the last man standing, took his seat right beside me comfortably on a three-person sofa. The five of us shared over a family sized Doritos as we watch Michael Scott throw a fit.

Like the old times. And I'm gonna miss them so bad after this.

The house was immediately filled with lots of people we knew from before and now. The photographers we used to hangout with, some of the friends cities and towns away came by to celebrate something they don't know and grab a drink, a ton of them. The boys made sure they filled up the tank with so many beers, I made sure I filled the others with good cocktail mixes (as I could actually boast that I'm particularly good at it), and Calum made sure he set up a pretty good playlist with some of their songs included, of course.