Dreams (Zarry)

Chapter 8

It had been a couple of months since that dream had disrupted my life, even if only for a little while. But it had stayed with me. The memories that weren't real had had a huge influence on my songwriting. I had consulted what I had written down about that dream more than once. I had written about a love that had never existed. I had dedicated a lot of my songs to a person I interacted with for exactly 10 minutes. But nobody knew that. These were my songs, nobody needed to know what or who they were about. The release date of my debut album was coming closer and I had a couple of gigs lined up to promote the album. I was hyped, but felt anxious to actually go on stage and perform.

That dream had me thinking more than once. The things that happened, the reasons why I had left the band, they had been moving in and out of my thoughts. Those things made me wonder if that could be me, if that would be something I wouldn't be able to deal with. But luckily I had those three bastards who called themselves my best friends. They got me out of my funk very quickly. And now I was looking forward to the shows. The first one would be the day of the album release. I had a listening party planned a few days before the release but was not planning on performing that day. It was just a good way of checking out what people thought of the music. It would be an interesting day.

And if nobody turned up for the listening party, I could still cancel the gigs, I thought bitterly. I hoped that wouldn't be the case. But I was proud of what I had produced and that was the most important part for me about making music. It had to be music that I believed in. Nothing else mattered.

On the day of the listening party I had my three idiot friends over at my place. We were all getting ready together. Liam, Niall and Louis were all extremely excited.

"Don't forget about us, when you are all big and famous," Louis joked, but his voice had an edge to it, betraying that this was actually a real worry of his.

"Never!" I pulled him in for a hug. "You are an idiot, but you are my idiot." I laughed and kissed his cheek.

"Eeww," he whined and wiped his cheek, but grinned anyway. Then I pulled the other two close and we huddled in for a group hug.

"I love you guys," I said, getting a bit emotional. "Thanks for always being there for me."

"Now now," Niall said, "don't you get all emotional on us now." He sniffed a little though and quickly turned away. Right then the doorbell rang and I clapped my hands.

"Well, that's it then." I walked towards the door and we were on our way.

It seemed like the venue was packed. I couldn't believe my eyes when I sneaked a peek onto the main area. There were so many people here just to hear my music. I felt humbled and grateful.

I could hear the first notes of the first song on my album and my heart was in my throat. What if people didn't like it? What if they would kick me out, never to be heard of again? I was starting to talk myself into a panic attack when the unexpected happened: Harry Styles had just walked into the room. I couldn't believe my eyes and had to sit down on the couch that was behind me. Niall must have noticed something was up and sat next to me.

"What is he doing here?" I asked no one in particular.

"Who?" Niall asked.

"Harry!"

"Harry? What? Where?" Niall asked, frantically looking around. He of course remembered who I was talking about, even though he had never seen him. I had talked about him often enough.

I pointed at the curly headed boy that had occupied my mind for months now. Harry was just owning the room, smiling and greeting everybody around him. I was just wondering how Harry knew all these people. At first I had thought that he worked at the label considering where we met, but I had been there very often, especially over the last months and I hadn't seen those curls once.