The Unexpected

07 || The Penis Game

I step out the front doors of the store I work at to find something for lunch. I only have a half hour break, and I don't know where to go. I'm only about three feet from the entrance of the boutique when a tall platinum haired boy catches my eye.

"Michael Gordon Clifford. Is that you I see?"

"Skye.... Skye..." He blushes the tiniest bit because he doesn't know my middle name. To be honest though, I only knew his because I've been in love with him for three years now.

"Amber Whitfield," I say as I laugh.

"Well, yes, it is me. I am here to take you out for lunch." My stomach instantly fills with butterflies as he links arms with me, and I have to try my hardest to not let the excitement show on my face. But then I remember my short time slot to eat; the smile drops from my face instantly.

"Michael, I only have, like, twenty-four minutes now. I can't-"

"I had Luke talk to Beth," the tall boy says, putting his hand up to stop me from talking. "You're done for the day. Business was slow anyways." He shrugs as he says this, as if it's something they do all the time; just tell people to let their friends go home from work early.

"...fine," I say as I send a cheesy smile in his direction. He makes a funny face in response, crossing his eyes. Goals. This is goals.

"Whoa, don't break your face. You're smiling a little hard there," Michael chuckles. "It's too pretty for you to ruin it." The almost invisible compliment nearly sends me into a fit of giggles, but I hold back. Instead, I pretend to be offended, but Michael thinks I'm being serious. I can tell he's trying to think of what to say so he can recover, but I stop him.

"I'm kidding. Now where are we eating?"

____________________________________

Shockingly, we're at a pizza place. Who would've guessed? Not me that's for sure. But, the pizza is incredible just like Michael said, so I'm not complaining. I like pizza anyways. I could live off of it for years.

Michael hasn't been able to stop talking about the music they've been working on. He's so excited and his eyes are so animated. He hasn't been allowed to tell me anything specific but from just the vague details he's given me, I know it's going to be their best album yet. He wrote a lot of the songs, and Ashton wrote the most. He says they're going for a slightly different sound, but that they haven't evolved too much.

As he's talking to me, all I can think of is how this is what I used to dream of. Back home in America I'd make up stories in my head of me meeting one of the boys and us falling in love. I know that Mikey and I aren't in love, but just sitting here with him as he describes their third album is surreal. God definitely blessed me with a miracle when this beautiful boy recognized my face. He shouldn't have recognized it, but he did, and I can't help but feel special because of it.

Now I'm not saying I'm letting this get to my head. I don't suddenly think I'm flawless and can get any guy I want. That's not what I mean. I feel special because someone who's in an entirely different universe decided to pull me out of mine and bring me into theirs. And that doesn't happen. Ever.

That's the problem with being in love with bands. You can love them endlessly and have this gut feeling that deep down if you met them, they'd fall in love with you. If only they could just meet you for two seconds, they'd know you're the one (at least for a while). But that doesn't happen for two reasons. One, it's already so hard to meet them because they've grown so much in fame and there's always so many people there, but even if you had the perfect scenario and met them all alone and got to tell them everything they've done for you and how much you love them, it's not significant to them. That's reason number two. It's not insignificant in the way that they don't care, but in the way that you're one of millions who have tried to tell them the exact same thing. They'd say thank you and that they love you too, and then their life would move on and you're back to being just another fan. And like I said, it's not because they don't care. It's because you are literally in two separate universes (oops a third reason. I lied). There's the people that meet and know everyone famous whether they are or aren't themselves, then there's people that were meant to live an ordinary life. These two people don't mix; they don't visit each other's universes. It just won't happen. It can't. But for some reason, for Michael and I, it has.