Josephine
After our late night I decided instead of going to the studio I could go to my favorite coffee shop and write a bit. I have a few emails from some big artist asking if I can come up with something for their song, musically not lyrically but it's still a big deal for me. I bite my lip to hold back the loud squeal begging to be let out.
Niall Horan: Hey Josephine, I've heard a few of your drum beats and I was hoping I could interest you in adding some in my newest song. It's still under wraps but I can send you a demo and see what you come up with. All the best, Niall.
I email him back, Hey Niall, wow this is huge. I'd love to! Just send me a demo of your new song and I'll see what I can come up with. I look forward to working with you. Love, Josephine.
I click send and bury my face into my hands to hide the cheesiest smile my face is displaying. I take a sip of my iced coffee, and look up from my computer. Worst timing in the universe.
I'm staring into the side of #86's head. I take a deep breath and keep my head down to continue working. I'm sure I'm red in the face from just looking at him but I try to keep my composure. I start typing out anything, to anyone. I just need to distract myself.
He grabs his coffee and sits at the table across from me, grabbing his phone as he sits down. I grab my phone and start playing some music, quiet enough to still be aware of my surroundings, but loud enough to invade my thoughts of him.
I get lost in 'In My Life' by The Beatles, reminding me of a much simpler time. When I first heard this song I was very young and was infatuated with George Harrison. Little me had good taste, what can I say? But it was Christine McVie that inspired me to pursue music as a career. When I lost sight of my passion I would turn on 'Songbird' by Fleetwood Mac, and remember why I love music.
I listen to a track another artist had sent me with my eyes closed, resting my head on the wall. The girl's voice is so soft and delicate, it's beautiful. I lift my head opening my eyes trying to focus them, but end up focusing on a pair of blue eyes that are staring back at me. I look away subtly, but he holds his stare. You'd think he'd look away because he was just caught but no. I pretend like the staring felt indifferent to me, and continue working.
"Were you at the game yesterday?" He speaks up, thank god my music wasn't loud enough to not hear his question.
I pull an earphone and say, "The devils' game?" I ask, coyly, pretending like I wasn't staring at him the entire game.
He nods his head, "Yeah I was there with my friend." I respond back to him as he nods again.
"Hmm, thought I recognized your face, and bomber jacket." He smirks again, before getting up and sitting across from me. That damn smirk, fuck that "God gives his toughest battles to the strongest soldiers." logic. I'm weak.
"Is that so? When did you see me?" I push my lips to the side to hide my smile. He tilts his head to the side and gives me a look that just screams 'don't be coy'. I do a good job of hiding my smile, by biting my cheeks.
"On the ice, on the bench, walking to my car. Couldn't escape you." He lists on his finger, flirting with me, he's too good at this, make him stop. "Jack." He says, extending a hand towards me.
I take his hand in mine and reply with, "Josephine." We shake hands and I close my computer taking off my other earbud. "Center?" I ask, holding eye contact pretty well.
"Yeah, 86 on the ice." He responds, furrowing his eyebrows at my usage of terminology.
"Oh you scored yesterday, assisted by Hischier and Wood, right?" He nods again, with a smile. "Good job, it was a great shot." I add making his eyes slightly squint. He bites his bottom lip trying to hide a smile, but failing.
"You know a good amount of hockey, when did you get into it?" He asks, taking another sip of coffee. Then leaning forward, resting his elbows on the small white table between us.
"Since I was able to understand it, my dad played." He makes a surprised face, and then says, "Me too, both of my parents played for the US teams. What did your dad play?" He asks the question of the hour. I don't hide who my dad is obviously, it's just really annoying sometimes when hockey players only want to meet your dad and want nothing to do with you.
I take a big deep breath in and say, "The Devils, actually." His eyes widen then I say, "Reggie Lee." Wondering if he has an idea of who that is but who am I kidding, if you know hockey you know Reggie Lee.
"Get fucked." Jack says, his mouth hanging slightly open and slowly piecing things together in his head. I giggle softly before saying, "Josephine Lee." revealing my last name and extending a hand again to reintroduce myself.
"That's absolutely crazy, wow. Not what I expected at all." He shakes his head and continues the conversation with me. We press our phone screens to check the time at the same time, and when we look up we both realize we have to go.
"It was nice to meet you, Jack. I'll look out for you at the next Devils game." I say with a smile as I begin packing up my things to leave.
"Likewise. For, uh, both things. Pretty girls keep me going at games." Finally showing some nervousness but he hides it well with the smirk he wears proudly before walking out of the coffee shop behind me.
I get to my house setting everything down before texting Mere about what just happened.
Me: I'm gonna shit myself.
Merebear🧸: Why😭😭
Me: Just ran into Jack Hughes at my favorite coffee shop..
Merebear🧸: YOU'RE LYING
Me: and called me pretty, and sat with me to just talk
Merebear🧸: Holy shit!
Me:Then told me to look out for him the next time I go to a game, he said he'd do the same because and I quote, "Pretty girls keep him going." I type out.
Merebear🧸: I totally jinxed it last night I'm so sorry, but on the bright side YAY! Now we haveee to go to another game.😭😭😭
I turn off my phone and yell into my hands. I pull my hands away from my face, and while my throat slightly raw, a smile comes up on my face, pissing me off because this was not supposed to happen.
I get out of my coffee shop clothes to put on some cotton shorts and a tank top. I turn on New Girl and cuddle up on my couch with my huge weighted blanket and favorite pillow.
My phone vibrates after a few episodes and I flip it to see what it was in case Niall already emailed me back. Which isn't likely but the anticipation of working with him makes me so nervous to work with him.
My facial ID unlocks my phone immediately to see a notification that scares the shit out of me. @jackhughes started following you
I throw my phone across my rug and start giggling. "Ew, what the fuck left my mouth."
I shake my head and unpause New Girl, trying to get this dumb crush out of my head. I end up falling asleep, having a dream I was Jess, Jack and Nick and some other hockey players were Schmidt and Winston. Needless to say when I woke up I knew this crush was going to bug me more than I should let it.
I push my blanket off of me and grab my phone from where I threw it. I grab my phone like it's a disease and open it to my Instagram. I look at the notification from a few hours ago and click follow back. I blow out a long breath, a little nervous for what might come from this.
I text Mere that I followed him back to which she responds with "Yay!" and confetti flows down my screen. I chuckle at the text, and turn it off to clean my house before I decide to go to my music room and start making some music.
To start off my music routine, I prepare my voice with some vocal exercises, and massage my hands to prepare them for being hunched over an instrument for a while. Usually after a long studio session I have the worst shoulder, back, and wrist pain.
I look through my music journal and find a song I've been working on. I've got all the lyrics down. I'm just not sure how I want it to sound. After a few warm ups I get an idea for how to sing the chorus.
"Oh,oh oh. Oh I know. Ooh I like that." I say to myself, opening up my voice memos app to record the idea.
"I should probably go, no go, yes, back home." Wanting go and home to have a slight croak to it towards the end. I'll keep it softer only having a slight rasp but towards the end it'll go to like a tired, fighting voice.
"I'm a genius." I say to myself as I come up with a drum beat to go with my singing. I hum out what I'm wanting the rest to sound like, using different color pens to symbolize different things I want in the song.
For instance I draw a green zig zag going up to signal getting louder, a wavy line going up means singing higher, and so on. I usually need a second opinion on my music so I'll probably call Aaron Dessner in the morning to solidify and reassure my thoughts on this new song.
For now though I spin around in my chair until my phone vibrates again. I bounce out of my spinning state and grab my phone.
@jackhughes hey:) He dms me.
I can't do this, especially not tonight at 6:00 pm. I have to go out.
I call Meredith, waiting for her to pick up my leg bounces in anticipation. "Hey babe." She responds happily.
I get straight to the point and say, "Wanna go out?" To which she responds with "Did Jack text you again? Is that what this is about?" She interrogates me.
I huff into the phone and drop onto my chair again. "Yeah he did text me, but I also just want to get drunk." I make a noise with my mouth making her sigh into the phone.
"Well let's go, but if we're both getting drunk let's get
an Uber." She says, making me smile.
"Okay yay, thanks. Mwah, love you!" I hardly give her time to say I love you back by the time I hang up.
I throw on a black bra that makes my boobs look insanely good, and a mesh top that shows my bra, but I make it work. Pairing it with some leather pants and boots, I take a look in the mirror while I throw on some earrings, spritz on some perfume, and take a Uber to Meredith's house.
Once she gets in the car we head downtown and get to business. I don't even remember being tipsy. All I remember is being sober then being on stage drunk as shit singing a Luke Bryan song.
I run my hands through my hair and sing "Baby, we'll remember what to do. To drown out every distraction, it's time we made it happen. Strip it down, strip down. Back to you and me like it used to be." I giggle into the mic and spin around making a show of my karaoke.
"When it was an old back road with an old school beat. Cowboy boots by your little bare feet." I take the mic off the stand and grab Meredith's hand to pull her close to me, as drunk girls do.
"Dirty dance me slow in the summertime heat. Felt my belt turn loose from these old blue jeans." Meredith dances against me as I wrap an arm around her shoulders.
I take the lyrics a little too seriously and take my top off leaving me in my bra. But since my bra kind of looks like a crop top no one really cared, but I mean tits come on now. No one was going to be opposed to seeing good tits on stage at a bar. I toss my top at some random man as I walk off stage and walk out of the bar with Mere running behind me.
"I feel on top of the world!" I smile, locking arms with her, and resting my head on her shoulder. "Wanna end the night at that sports bar and get some food?" I ask her slurring my words slightly.
"Omg, yeah. You read my mind." she smiles looking down at me. We walk in asking for a table for two, trying our absolute hardest to act sober. Once the hostess leads us to the table we start giggling uncontrollably.
"You're good at this." Mere giggles, near tears, holding her stomach to try and ease the stomach pain from laughing too hard away. I ask the waitress if we can have two kids' menus to color, and we order our food.
"I want french fries, a Dr. Pepper and cake please." She starts giggling as she writes this all down. "Fun night?" She asks. "So much fun. I'm trying to forget about this super cute boy." I roll my eyes, making her laugh again.
Mere orders, and we start coloring our hearts away. "Josephine?" I hear a deep voice say my name with some question to it. I lift my head from the table, drop my crayon and see Jack with a few of his teammates.
I look at Meredith momentarily and say "I'm going to kill myself." She starts laughing, making me die laughing. He walks over to us, telling the boys to come over with us. Jack sitting beside me in the booth, and Nico sitting next to Mere.
"Look me in the eyes." He says, making me widen my eyes and stare into his baby blues. "She's drunk." Jack says. I look over to see Mere's face in between two of Nico's fingers for him to say, "This one too." Before chuckling slightly.
"Yeah we're sobering up here." I giggle, shaking my head to get his beautiful eyes out of my head. We continue coloring as the hungry hockey players sitting with us order with the waitress I spilled my heart to.
"So what did you guys do?" Nico asks us, making me lift my head from the dirty table to respond. "We went to like three bars and got obliterated." I say struggling to say the word obliterated.
"She sang the best drunk girl karaoke." Meredith giggles, peeking the boy's interest. As I devour my french fries and cake with my Dr. Pepper I start feeling less drunk. Making me more aware of myself.
"Hey Mere." I say, getting cold and rubbing my arms with my hands.
"Yeah, babe?" She answers, picking her head up from the back of the booth.
"W-Where's my shirt? I had one on, right?" I ask very confused as to why I'm only in a bra. Mere looks me dead in the eyes and answers all the questions swarming my brain right now.
"During your drunk country karaoke you pulled your shirt off and threw it at some man." She says. I look deeper into her eyes to make sure she's being for real, but I know that's something I'd do. I press my lips together to hold back my laughter but fail. I die laughing even shedding a few tears from laughing so hard.
"Oh my god, that's amazing. Can't wait to see that on the internet." I grab a napkin and dab my eyes. Jack looks at the goosebumps on my arms and takes off his jacket to give it to me.
"Thank you, I really wish stripping wasn't my thing when I black out." I tell him looking into his eyes.He looks like he wants to say something but instead he bites his bottom lip before nodding, but like always the smirk pops out.
"Don't look at me like that, I'm not sober enough for this." Jack chuckles and he tells me more about their game tonight.
When Nico and Dawson ask how I know hockey so well I give them a drum roll and tell them my dad's name, leading them to freak out.
"I just saw Reggie Lee's daughter's boobs." Dawson says covering his eyes and rubbing his temples, making Jack kick him under the table.
"Ignore him." He says, apologizing for Dawson's mouth. I shake my head and lift a hand to say, "No it's an honor to let you see a legend's daughter's boobs." I joke, causing him to fist bump me.
Once our night is over Jack makes sure we get into our Uber, making me text him once we are home. "Okay but text me, don't just ignore the message and get wasted, okay?" He says confirming that he is completely aware of why I went out tonight. Busted.
"Yeah, I'll text you." I rub my forehead, and fist bump the other to boys before just waving at Jack. A hug is too dangerous right now, if I know what it's like to touch Jack Hughes, I might never want to stop.
A.N// Okay how are we feeling about Jack just popping out everywhere. Just when Josephine thinks she lost him there he is. He's so cute though, ugh I love him! Hope you enjoyed, Lottie<3