Nothing Else Matters || Aston Merrygold

• Chapter Twenty-four

"Hiiii," I said enthusiastically as I hopped into the car and shut the door. Rochelle drove off from the curb the second I had the door closed, not giving me enough time to even put on my seatbelt first.

They all chorused back some kind of greeting before I asked, "How late are we?"

"We're about ten minutes behind. Doesn't sound much but there will be a lot of traffic and considering it's London anyway, there'll be that extra," Chloe explained to me.

"It's only down the road," I said, trying to reassure everyone as I could see they were all stressing out.

"Yeah and the show doesn't actually start until half five anyway," AJ reminded us. I was kind of relieved that we were running a little late as it meant we would dodge the hustle and bustle of the fans going inside before hand. It was about now that they would be filling into the venue and taking their seats so we would miss the largest amount of them.

"Did you not bring Alaia with you?" I wondered, noticing that she wasn't in the car with us.

"No, I thought about it but after talking to Marvin we decided it was probably best not to because the music would be too loud, fans would crowd her and we didn't really want her to be shown on television either," Rochelle explained and I understood what she meant. She was still only a baby and Marvin and Rochelle were very big on the child protection thing, wanting to keep her from the public as much as they could because of it.

"Seems fair enough," I agreed.

Twenty minutes later and we pulled up outside the venue. It looked clear from the outside but it could be a whole different story from the inside. I picked up my bag from at my feet and climbed out of the car, shutting the door behind me.

"Do you think everyone's gone in?" Chloe questioned, eyeing up the venue from the outside.

"There might just be a few floaters," Rochelle said as we walked towards the entrance and up a few steps.

"We could go the back way?" AJ suggested, stopping before we opened the doors to go inside.

"Can we do that? Don't you have to have some special pass or something?" I asked, looking at Rochelle who would know more than us as she'd done this type of thing herself, being in a band.

"Well we do have our passes to get backstage afterwards, surely they'll be enough?" She said, playing with the lanyard that was hanging around her neck like all of us. Of course, how did we not think of that before.

"Yeah, of course they will be," I said, being the first to lead them away from where we were originally heading.

We went round to the back door and they let us through after a quick show of our passes, they also recognised us as JLS' partners but because of rules we still had to show them. I was glad as it meant we didn't have to go through the chaos that was apparently still waiting. They were late opening the doors as they were running behind schedule with putting everything together and the boys sound checking so there was still a mass of JLS fans waiting to go in. We followed a member of staff through endless corridors before we came out into the main venue. It was only a small place but in a way that was good because it meant it was an intimate show between the fans who were there and the boys. We were sitting in one part of the seating that was left reserved for family and friends only. Some other family members had arrived like all the boys' parents and they were sitting having a chat amongst each other but stopping when they saw that we had arrived.

"Hi everyone, long time no see," I beamed. Some of them I hadn't seen in a while, obviously Aston's parents I saw quite regularly but the others not so much. They all got up and everyone shared a hug with everyone, greeting each other indivdually before we took our seats. I was sat between Chloe and Aston's mum.