Lost Without You

Chapter 7

I feel a strange sense of déjà vu in the way that I'm woken up. Lauren is shoving me, just like how she woke me up the day I came to Chicago. Except this time she's not screaming about us not getting on the road early enough, she's screaming about something else.

"ALLY! HOW COULD YOU NOT WAKE ME WHEN YOU GOT HOME FROM YOUR DATE?"

"I'm sorry Lauren!"

"It's okay," she says as she sits down on my bed and hugs me. "Now tell me everything."

I describe the date to her when suddenly my phone starts ringing. "Hey Alex what's up?"

"Where are you and Lauren? Brian is freaking out, you were supposed to be here 20 minutes ago."

"Shit we lost track of time, we'll be there soon." I say before hanging up. "Lauren we have to leave right now. Rehearsal started 20 minutes ago."

"Oh fuck sorry it's just your date was so interesting."

I laugh and respond, "It's not your fault. Neither of us was paying attention to the time."

We quickly get ready and speed over to rehearsal. When we walk into the main rehearsal room everyone is in the middle of rehearsing Dream a Little Harder with James standing in for Lauren. After they finish that run through of the song Brian makes an announcement. "Okay so now that Ally and Lauren are here we can split up. Ally and Jeff will work with Justin on Take Off Your Clothes in the back room, while Dylan and Meredith will work on A Thousand and One Nights. The rest of you will run through No One Remembers Achmed and Golden Rule reprise with James standing in for Jeff and I'll stand in for Dylan during when needed."

I start walking into the back room when Justin says, "I'm going to head to the bathroom, I'll meet you guys in there in a few minutes."

As Jeff and I walk into the back room he asks me, "So how was the rest of your night?"

"Good, I passed out pretty much right after I got home. How was yours?"

"Well it wasn't as good as when I was with you, so it was just okay." I can feel my cheeks turning bright red. Why is it that I ALWAYS blush around him?

Before we can continue our conversation Justin walks in and says, "sorry about that guys. So you can just sit down and we'll start learning the song. Well you guys will learn it; I already know it. So I think the lyrics are on page 40 of your script, Jeff you start."

From there it takes us an hour to learn the song, which isn't that bad, especially since we know it really well now. Right before we leave Justin says, "You guys seem to have really good chemistry. Which is kind of weird because James said that the chemistry wasn't great when you did Orphaned at 33. Oh shit – wait are you guys together now?"

I look at Jeff and he responds, "Well we had our first date last night, but we were trying to keep it on the down low because well, Ally hasn't agreed to a second date yet."

I smile and say, "yes."

"Yes what?" Jeff responds.

"Yes I'll go on a second date with you."

"Aww this is so cute!"

"What's so cute, Justin?" says B-Hol as he enters the room.

"Oh, well, umm" Justin replies all tongue-tied. "Guys can I tell him?"

Jeff and I laugh and then he says, "Ally just agreed to go on a second date with me."

"Good, Walker and I put in a lot of hard work setting up that picnic. The candy was a good treat but it wouldn't have been worth it if you guys didn't last more than one date."

"Okay well umm thanks Brian. So what did you come to tell us?"

"Oh right I came here with a purpose," he chuckles and continues, "We're actually done for the day. Since next week is hell week I wanted to give everyone a long weekend break but there's a few conditions. Tonight, which is Thursday night, and Saturday night we will all hang out and during these big cast hangouts every song from the show will be preformed. Also if you have a chance you guys should rehearse your songs on your own."

"Okay that sounds cool. Are we ordering in food or are we not doing the lunch as a group thing today?" Jeff asks. Of course he would ask about food, that man is always hungry.

"Nah I have to make some calls so you guys are free to go out. Everyone else needs to finish up this scene so you two can head out."

"Okay thanks B-Hol," I say as we head outside. "So where should we go for lunch? I'm starving." I ask Jeff.

"There's a Panera around here somewhere or we could drive to somewhere else," Jeff responds.

"Panera sounds good."

We begin our walk to Panera when Jeff say, "so should we consider this our second date?"

"Yeah, sure. But this time you're letting me pay for my own food."

He laughs, says, "okay," and interlocks my hand with his. "So what did you think of rehearsal today?"

"It was uh, interesting."

"Yeah, it's kind of a weird thing to sing about."

"Yeah and I don't know like the timing of it was kind of strange."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I was just so worried that we were going to rehearse it when you and I 'hated' each other and even though we weren't talking - well besides as Jasmine and Aladdin - I kind of liked you and I was just nervous. It's just strange how it worked out that we had to learn this song the day after our first date."

"I get that. I was really nervous about rehearsing this song when I first read the script."

"Really?"

"Yeah why are you so surprised?"

"Well it's just that you seem so confident in everything you do. It just never really occurred to me that you would feel nervous about this." I say as we walk into Panera.

"I wanna continue this conversation but we should probably order first."

We each place our orders and pay for our food before finding a table in the back. I take a sip of my lemonade and say, "so you said that you wanted to continue our conversation from before."

"Yeah," Jeff responds. "You were saying how I don't seem like I would get nervous but around you, I'm so nervous. Like right now, I can feel butterflies fighting in my stomach."

"Why would you be nervous around plain old me?"

"You're not 'plain and old'. You're special. I really like you and I just don't want to fuck this up."

I smile and say, "well don't worry because so far you're doing great." Soon our food arrives and it is quickly devoured.

"So I'll see you tonight. I think we're going to Starkid Manor." I say on our way out.

"Yeah I'll see you later."

We hug and then separate in front of the restaurant, Jeff walking towards his apartment and I towards mine. As I walk down the street everything just feels right. It's like for the first time in my life everything is going great. I have amazing friends, a job that I love, and I'm dating someone that I really care about. It feels like nothing could go wrong.