The Butterfly Effect

𝖝𝖛 | 𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔬 𝔡𝔲𝔢: 𝔰𝔠𝔢𝔫𝔞 𝔮𝔲𝔦𝔫𝔡𝔦𝔠𝔦

"No, you're going to sit and speak." Zaire chastised.

"Fuck it. Yes, Ellie, I did say I liked you." Nathan began, shocking Beth with his candor. "But I was drunk and confused at the time. Do I adore you in some way? Yes, but my feelings for you are far too complicated to act on."

"Why couldn't you have told me this one month ago?" She questioned.

"I didn't know what to say. As I said, I was confused and didn't want my confusion to transfer to you. I didn't want to say something I didn't mean either because you'd get hurt, and I'd die if my indecisiveness caused you pain."

"Where do we go from here?" Beth asked while looking at Nathan expectantly. "Are you sure of how you feel now?"

"No. And I'm not sure if I'll ever be." Nathan said. He quickly looked up and squinted his eyes. "I'm sorry, why are all of you still here? This is a private conversation." He asked his bandmates.

"We're here to confirm that every issue is solved. Continue talking." Javier said.

Nathan groaned but continued talking nonetheless. "You don't have to worry about it anymore. I'll make sure that any feelings I might have had are gone by the end of March." Nathan said.

Javier raised an eyebrow as he observed Beth's eyes cast downwards, her top row of teeth clamped down to meet her bottom lip, and her eyes blinking rapidly. "Huh," he mumbled quietly.

"Alright," she said, her smile big and wide. "Everything's fine and we can get back to work." She said before walking up the stairs and disappearing behind her bedroom door.

After Javier's eyes left her retreating figure, he followed Beth up the stairs and locked himself away in his room, leaving the socializing to his other bandmates.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Alright," Andrew clapped his hands. "I'm assuming that the beef between all of you is no longer present, and we're going to scrap the train wreck of last Thursday. Welcome to the first day of production."

"Woo!" Cheers rang out throughout the room.

"Zaire introduced a good format for the album last week. The album could begin with all love songs and then progress to darker themes. It leads into the interlude where you go to the sad songs."

"I like that, but I have some concerns. Wouldn't that jeopardize the pacing of the album? Bunching two moods into two separate parts of the album could get very boring. I'd get tired of listening to five happy love songs back to back." Kian added.

"Who said love songs had to be upbeat?" Andrew rhetorically asked. "There are ballads. All of Me by John Legend is a great example. Heartfelt lyrics, but the song uses dark and deep melodies. Those are the types of songs that make you cry. We want the listeners to cry in more ways than one. Tears of joy and tears of sorrow."

"Goddamn," Zaire mumbled, eliciting deep laughter from his friends.

"I'm sure Nathan has countless songs he's written. The most we have to do is touch up the lyrics and create the music for the words." Andrew said. "Nathaniel, do we have anything worthy in your legendary songbook?" He reached out and grabbed the worn-down journal.

Nathan angrily frowned and snatched it back. "Don't touch my book."

"Yeah, Andrew. What's wrong with you? Nobody gets to touch his songbook." Javier said.

"I've never heard of that rule. I'll keep it noted."

"I have Good News," Nathan spoke.

Zaire shook his head. "We recorded that already, and it doesn't match the album's concept."