Take All the Time You Need

14. Everything I touch, turns to stone

We arrived back at the hotel and I gave the guys a lame excuse about being jet lagged and wanting to go to bed before quickly making my way up to my room. I didn't leave it again until our flight to Paris. I sat between Joey and Logan this time and attempt to make small talk with the two guys, trying my best to ignore the laughs coming from Taylor, Hayley and Brian in the seats diagonally in front of us.

"So whats this stuff about being a kiwi?" I asked earning chuckles from both the guys.

"That's what we call people from New Zealand." Logan answered shaking his head at my ignorance. I blushed feeling a tad bit dumb.

"Have you heard any of Zac's new stuff hes been slowly recording?" Joey asked nodding to his phone.

"Not yet. I keep hearing about it but I haven't gotten a chance to listen" I said sighing as I leaned back into the chair.

"Here. Have a listen. I have a few rough edits of the recorded songs so far. Im sure he'd love the help on how to clean them up a bit more and what would sound best live" Joey said handing me the phone and some headphones.

I plugged up and listened to the new songs going from Flowers, to she said and one unnamed song. The songs themselves were really great until I got to the last one. It immediately caught my attention.

"Does he have a name for this one?" I asked Joey

"I think he talked about calling it My Girl? But don't hold him to that. He's changed the name a ton of times haha" Joey replied back urging me to keep listening.

The lyrics was simple but meaningful and the longer I listened the more I started to love it. Then the second voice came in and my heart nearly stopped.
"Almost my..... girl" Hayley and Zac's immediately recognizable voices sang in harmony. I wanted to take the earphones out but I couldn't, I just listened to her voice, the harmonies, the angelic tones and tried to forget the fact that I ruined it all. When the song finished I gave the phone and headphones back to Joey thanking him before putting my own headphones in to give myself an excuse not to talk anymore and just drift off into my own world.

We landed in Paris and were escorted to the tour bus we would be using for the next few dates. We immediately went to setting up the venue for the show the next day. It wasn't a very tedious task since we had a ton of techs to help but I did have to make sure all the equipment was placed correctly, and it kept me relatively busy so I wouldn't have to accidentally run into Hayley. It seemed that my plan of action was to just avoid her exclusively and pretend none of it ever happened except for the fact that she was everywhere I turned.

I was setting up the Mics and amps when I watched her walk out from the dressing room area into the main stage with Brian taking a look at the venue in full. I rushed, working quicker to try and finish and leave but that just seemed to make things worse as I mixed wires and dropped the mics making myself more frustrated. I finally gave up walking away and asking Ashton, one of the assistant techs to fix it for me while I attended to something else.

When we finished the venue I went to find my bus when I found a note posted to the door of all the three buses we had. On it was a list of names and the bus they would be on. The first bus was full of the admin, techs and security and usually me but I didn't find my name. I looked to the rest of the list for bus two which always had the band members, including touring members and a few of the people they needed close by like Brian. I didn't bother reading it knowing that I wouldn't have been placed there and looked through the third list for the third bus filled with Amin people. I checked three times still not finding my name and then checked the first list again realizing there must have been a mistake. Just as I was starting to get frustrated Andrew who made the list was passing by.