A/N: I fully realise this is LONG overdue, but here we goooo, at LONG last, I am updating BBE. I realise I haven't updated since June or something horrendous, but I honestly didn't realise how many of you wanted to read this! I'm very flattered that you've stuck by it, and I promise you I won't wait seven months before I update again :P much love and sorry again! Maddie xoxoxoxo
'Well done for all turning up on time,’ Matt congratulates us, as we gather outside the coffee shop. The weekend seemed to fly past up to this point; I feel so nervous right now that my stomach is doing little flips.
Levi and I discussed this yesterday during our shift in the book shop. Thankfully we managed to stay civil towards each other, though that was probably because I ran off with the dusters and various polishes before he could protest. We reminisced over how nervous we both used to get before gigs. You could always tell that I was nervous, thanks to my shaky hands and laboured breathing, but Levi was much more subtle; he used to go three shades paler. Then, after the first note, we’d get sucked into the music, and forget all about the fact that we were performing in front of so many people.
‘I wouldn’t have dared not to turn up on time,’ Eddie whispers to me, making me chuckle.
‘I heard that,’ Matt informs him. ‘Right, shall we go on in?’
Carrying my guitar, I follow Levi, who is also carrying his guitar, along with a small amp for himself and for Jamie. Matt’s going to be playing the in shop piano, while Eddie’s carrying his Cajon drum.
As we go in, I hear a cry of: ‘there they are!’ Looking up, I spot a rather gorgeous guy heading over in our direction, his dark eyes twinkling and his messy, ruffled hair making him look simultaneously sexy and dishevelled. Wow.
Levi waves at him. ‘Guys, this is Jude,’ he introduces us. ‘He got us the gig; he works here on Sundays.’
Ah. Jude. Now I recognise him; he used to be in the year above us at school, one of the hottest boys in school. I’m pretty sure he used to be a dancer too, which didn’t really go with the whole ‘popularity’ thing, but he seemed like a nice enough person.
‘Hey,’ Jude says, running one hand through his mussed up hair. ‘If you follow me, I’ll show you where you can set up.’
Following him, we move round the cute little tables, maneveuring our instruments in an attempt not to hit anyone in the face. People are sat there, sipping coffee, and they look at us in interest, clearly wondering if we’re going to be any good. I can only hope and pray that we will be.
Jude directs us to a little corner of the shop where the piano is. It’s in full view of the entire shop, with some stools set up ready for us to sit on.
‘Thanks,’ Levi tells him. ‘I’ll catch up with you later, yeah?’
‘Sure thing,’ Jude replies. ‘Shout if you need anything!’
Jamie opens his mouth, as if he’s about to shout, but Eddie covers it up with one hand. ‘Look, your girlfriend’s arriving,’ he distracts him.
We turn, and so she is. Along with a whole group of friends, there’s Jamie’s pretty girlfriend, Helen, her dark eyes sparkling warmly as she spots him and waves. He winks back at her as she goes to get a seat nearby us. Jude’s there almost instantly to take their orders, looking extremely gorgeous in his waiter’s outfit. Yum.
But anyway, this isn’t a game of Spot the Hot guy. I’m here to perform. Levi and I tune up our guitars together, settling onto our chairs to do a quick sound check. All appears to be in order, so, with a quick glance at Matt, who gives us a nod, I look at Levi.
‘Ready?’ he whispers.
I nod. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’
I glance up, around the room, and spot my friends shuffling through the door, attempting to find a place to sit. This place has suddenly become rather packed; Jude’s rushing around with the other waiter to get all the orders through. Willow waves at me, looking all proud, like she always does.
Then, Eddie taps his sticks together, once, twice, three times, and then I start to strum. Levi joins in, followed by Matt and Jamie, until the sound of our music swells around the room.
Closing my eyes, waiting for the slight pause before I start to sing, I realise suddenly that my mind is blank. Oh crap! This always happens! I can’t think of a single word! I can’t-
Then the pause comes, and without even thinking, my lips move to the music, and I start to sing.
People applaud. Well, thank goodness for that.
Opening my eyes, continuing to sing, I glance around the room. Imogen appears to be sat in the corner, her eyes on Levi. He’s not looking at her, all his attention focused on watching his fingers move across the guitar. Then, he closes his eyes to sing the harmony. The effort he puts into singing is mind blowing; you can see the way his eyelids crease with the high notes, a tiny mark between his eyebrows appearing.
It’s perfect. The harmony, I mean. The song appears to be working well, and everyone’s clapping along, sipping their coffee. The shop is packed, absolutely packed, and I see a huge amount of people from school there, along with some who were obviously just in the coffee shop because they wanted a coffee, rather than because they wanted to come and see us.
The song finishes, and we move on to the next one swiftly, as Matt planned, under the cover of uproarious applause. It’s very flattering to think that they all enjoy our music so much.
The rest of the show goes well. Continuing to sing various songs, the audience get behind us, and cheer loudly at every opportunity. I glance at the others, to see that they’re all smiling as much as I am.
‘This is amazing,’ Levi murmurs, as we get out the music for the next song.
‘I know,’ I reply. ’I’d forgotten how much I loved performing. You get such a rush of adrenaline.’
‘Exactly.’
Then the strumming starts again, and our voices rise and fall to the music, in unison the entire time. It’s almost as if we have some sort of connection.
We move through songs together, and in that one moment there, I suddenly realise that I haven’t felt this happy in a very long time. Music is such a huge part of my life; I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it. Maybe it isn’t particularly ideal to have to be sharing it with Levi, but I have to make the most of it, right?
When we finally stop, the coffee shop bursts into applause and cheering, people standing on their feet and shouting our names. I look at the others in delight, grins plastered all over our faces.
‘That,’ says Jamie, ‘was immense.’
‘Immense? Man, that’s old! You’ve got to say a word like awesome,’ Eddie tells him, giving him a shove.
‘Awesome?! I was using that word yonks ago!’
I roll my eyes at Levi, laughing at the silly boys behind us. He smiles back, opening his mouth to say something, when Imogen flings herself at him. Great. Trust Imogen bloody Cooper to burst in.
‘You were incredible!’ she tells him, wrapping her arms around his neck, squishing the guitar between them. Yeowch, that looks painful. Levi does look rather uncomfortable with the guitar digging into him, but he bravely smiles at her, letting her kiss him.
Then I’m distracted as Willow, Tasha and Kieran make their way over, hugging me, telling me how amazing we were. Well, not the latter. He doesn’t pay much attention to any of Tasha’s friends. Instead, he pats Levi’s arm, a little awkwardly. ‘You did good, little brother.’
‘Thanks,’ Levi says, removing the guitar and smiling up at him, Imogen still in his arms. ‘I’m glad you liked it. I didn’t know you were coming, though.’
Kieran gestures to Tasha. ‘My woman dragged me along.’
Tasha hears him and spins round, slapping his arm. ‘Oi you. You said you’d be happy to come!’
He raises an eyebrow at her, which she shrugs off, spinning back round to tell me how amazing I was and which her favourite song was.
The coffee shop starts to clear, and Jude heads back over, holding hands with an extremely pretty girl. As he nears us, he whispers something in her ear which makes her roll her eyes at him, and then blush at the same time. I recognise her too; she was his dance partner when they were at our school, and they somehow fell for each other. I don’t know the details, but they’re extremely cute together.
‘I read an article about them in the paper,’ Willow tells me, as they head our way. ‘When they left school, they decided to take a gap year before uni, so they could enter competitions and things. They’re the European champions at the moment, did you hear that?’
‘Wow; they really are good then,’ I say, looking at them with new found respect. They must be amazing dancers, which begs the question why Jude is working in a coffee shop on a Sunday morning.
‘Thanks for coming to play,’ Jude says, as he reaches us. ‘This is my girlfriend, Kyra; she absolutely loves your music.’
Kyra nods. ‘You’re amazing! Are you going to be recording it?’
I look at Matt, and shrug. ‘We’re going to see how it goes,’ I tell her. ‘We’ve literally just reformed!’ I notice Jude has been watching Kyra the entire time, he can hardly take his eyes off of her. He looks rather enthralled. Bless.
‘Let me know if you do record anything,’ Kyra says. ‘I’ll be your first customer!’
‘God, she’s obsessed,’ Jude tells us, with a teasy wink at his girlfriend. ‘I think she loves you more than she loves me.’
Kyra raises an eyebrow at him. ‘We’ll see about that, mister,’ she tells him, tugging him by the hand away from us, Jude licking his lips in anticipation of what‘s to come. Whatever that is. ‘Thank you for playing!’ she calls, as they leave. ‘It was fantastic.’
Awww. I love seeing couples in love. It gives me hope. I’m not sure if Levi and I were ever like that to others. Did people ever look at us and think how adorable we were? Probably not when we were fighting. We weren’t adorable then, definitely not.
As we pack up, Matt decides it’s time for another pep talk, and folds his arms to address us all. ‘Right guys, that was a brilliant first gig,’ he begins. ‘But-’
‘Oh leave it, Matthew!’ Eddie protests. ‘Can’t we revel in our success for a few more short minutes before you press our noses to the grind once more?!’
‘There’s no time to relax, Eddie!’ Matt argues. ‘That was all old material.’ He pauses, looking over at me. ‘Zoey, Levi?’
‘Mm?’ I say warily.
‘Could you try writing some more songs for the band?’ he asks. ‘I think we could do with some new material.’
‘Uh-’
‘Well-’
Levi and I look at each other nervously, neither of us wanting to agree to something the other would be uncomfortable with.
‘It wouldn’t be a problem for me,’ Levi says, looking at me cautiously. I notice his eyes flickering to where Imogen is hovering nearby.
‘Um, me neither,’ I reply, and Matt claps his hands together.
‘That’s sorted then! Okay, so, rehearsal Tuesday lunchtime?’ he asks, and we nod, scribbling it down on our hands.
‘Er, excuse me,’ says a new voice, and we turn around. Oh my.
Before us stands the richest person in our school; rich and therefore cool. Surrounded by a group of friends, I wonder how I didn’t notice that he was attending our gig in the first place; he’s hardly one who doesn’t make his presence known. Yep, that’s Jethro for you- his parents are rich enough to have a mansion style house, and as he’s very good looking and up himself enough to flaunt his wealth all he can, pretty much anything he does turns into ‘The Jethro Show‘.
‘Can we help you?’ asks Matt, sounding suspicious, and I don’t blame him. What would he want with people like us?
‘Yeah,’ Jethro replies confidently. ‘I’m having a party next Saturday, and I thought you could play.’
My jaw drops. Levi inhales sharply. Eddie drops the Cajon drum with a start.
Taking our shock the wrong way, Kael holds up a hand. ‘You’ll get paid! You can even stay over the night, it’ll probably be a late one. I just need a band, my original one pulled out.’
Matt swallows. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re having a house party, and you want us to play?’
Jethro snorts, and the rest of his friends join in, nudging each other and laughing. ‘House party sounds a bit too formal, mate. My parents are out, so I’m inviting a load of friends over. We’ll need music!’
Some people have stupid amounts of money, I realise, looking at how casual he is about this whole thing.
‘Sure,’ Matt replies. ‘What time?’
A few minutes later, when Jethro has left with his friends, Matt turns to us with an ecstatic look on his face.
‘This is bloody amazing!’ he says, hugging the nearest person. It happens to be Kieran, who looks horrified, and shoves him off quickly. ‘Ah, sorry about that.’
‘I can’t believe he wants you to play!’ Willow exclaims.
‘Oi!’ Jamie says. ‘We’re not that bad!’
Willow blushes. ‘I didn’t mean it like that! I mean… it’s just that he’s so rich! He could have had anyone, and he chooses you!’
‘I object again!’ Jamie protests. ‘We’re good!’
‘It’s a bit worrying though,’ I say, biting my lip. ‘If it’s going to be one huge drunken brawl, are we going to be okay there?’
Levi laughs. ‘Zo, they want us to play! If it was a drunken thing, they’d probably want some less relaxing music than the stuff we play.’
I smile, realising his point. ‘You’re right, yes. You can dance to our music, but not rave.’
‘You’ll be fine, anyway, Zo,’ Tasha tells me. ‘You can fight off a few drunken people if it gets to that.’
‘Do you want me to come with you, just in case?’ Willow asks.
Jamie laughs. ‘To be her body guard?!’
‘She’s got all of us!’ Eddie says, proudly. ‘We’ll defend her!’
‘I don’t need defending!’ I protest. ‘I was just… well, saying. It should be a fun night, shouldn’t it?’ I add, trying to swerve the conversation away from protecting me. Levi was looking at me kind of strangely during that.
‘It won’t just be fun,’ Matt informs me. ‘It’s excellent for our publicity. Playing at the richest boy in school’s house will do wonders for our reputation, Zoey.’
‘Yeah, Jethro is a trend setter,’ Levi adds. ‘And more people will hear us; some of them have got to like what they hear.’
‘Well, what have we got to lose then?’ I ask. ‘We’d better get rehearsing.’
As we finally make our way out of the coffee shop, Eddie and Jamie talking excitedly about all the different types of things they can do at Jethro’s party, including crowd surfing, I realise just how far we’ve come in such a short time. Already we’ve got a serious gig, far more serious than any of the gigs we got before. I can’t wait.