While on the Run

Part IV.

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed, but calm at the same time?

My mom always used to tell me how I thrived amidst a span of chaos. Controlled chaos, that is. I thrive off of being busy and that feeling of accomplishment was the only thing pushing me through the day.

While the boys and I were staying in LA, they were preparing to hit the road and commence their first stadium tour in years. The plan was to tour the first half with their old music and some of their new, individual music thrown into the mix.

On top of that, the boys have been hard at work writing new music for a sixth album. With any luck, they want to debut it halfway through their world tour and continue with playing the new music.

Consequently, the boys are busy, meaning I'm busy. 

From studio sessions, to tour meetings, setlist dilemmas, to costume fittings. Their schedules became non-stop, meaning every moment of our time was spent being planned down to the minute.

This also meant that while originally the boys were to be staying in their own LA homes, it became more of a burden to have them apart than together. Thus, they all temporarily moved themselves into Niall's home.

While at first I was thrilled to have them all under one roof, I am now going out of my mind.

First of all, quadruple the famous singers means quadruple the security. There are, at least, 2 security guards surrounding the house at all times with additional cameras installed everywhere. I shoo'd out a man just a few weeks from placing one into my guest-bedoom. "Over my dead body will these men be allowed to watch me change on a camera!"

The hardest part of all? Keeping it a secret.

That's right... no one was to know that 1D was making a big comeback. Keeping them all separate from one another, on top of keeping them aware from the press was starting to get tiring. But, we slowly fell into a routine.

Every morning at 5:30am I wake up to get myself ready for the day. I would leave Niall's house and head to a nearby coffee shop to grab the boys their regular breakfast/coffee/tea orders and then head back home by 7:30am. I always started by waking up Niall first. That boy only needed the smell of his hot, hazelnut coffee on his bedside table to make him perk up for the day and head into the shower.

Harry was next. He normally took some coaxing to get out of bed. The trick for him is to remove all pillows from the bed so that he had nothing to cuddle. Nothing to cuddle means he couldn't comfortably go back to sleep. Genius, I know.

Louis was quite the drama queen in the morning. There was usually a lot of whining involved, however Niall is normally out of the shower by the time I need help getting Louis out of bed. Liam is just as bad, but I've learned that having his English Breakfast Tea ready for him truly works wonders.

(I knew I would be their coffee-fetcher when I signed up for this.)

Once I had all four boys up and ready for the day, I would send Harry and Louis to the recording studio first. Packed with their security detail, they would make it there by 10am and work on their vocals while I made Liam and Niall clean up around the house. Then, they would switch. 

Dinner was always for 6:30pm. Most nights, if he was home, Liam would cook us up something delicious, however recently we have had to order in because no one has been home. 

The 1D team decided that the best course of action to announce that the band was back together would be to do so at the VMAs.  So while they were working on the best possible surprise plan, the boys had been working towards performing together again.

3 nights per week, the band met with a vocal coach to increase their harmony. 5 years apart has totally changed their vocal tones, thus changing the way they sound together. As I sit in these rehearsals sipping a latte, I can find myself either cringing at the way that Harry's voice overpowers Liams, or get chills by the way that Niall and Harry's voices sound like perfection when blended correctly.

Clearly, we still had some work to do.

"You're telling me you don't remember the words?"

We were all sitting in one of the recording studios late one night when their vocal coach suggested they try harmonizing '18' from their FOUR album.

Harry, however, seemed to have a slight issue with that.

His cheeks went pink as he began shaking his head. "I'm sorry, but I truly don't. The chorus I should have come back to memory once we start singing but everything else is a blur."

"Dude, you sing Zayn's solos, too. Don't forget," Niall added.

"No, mate. I do."

"What are you talking about? I thought I sang Zayn's solo parts in 18?"

"Dude, there's no way."

"Alright, that's enough of that," I added before the conversation went somewhere WAY above their heads. "If I remember correctly, Niall has Zayn's first solo and Louis takes the second one. Try that for now and we can always alter it later."

The boys all nodded, preparing for the song. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Harry pulling the lyrics up on his phone.

I rolled my eyes. If this is what bringing back old music was going to entail, it was going to be a loooong month until we headed on tour.

I can only imagine what choreography rehearsals were going to look like.