“Sydney, are you even listening?” Ashton says, waving a hand in front of my face snapping me out of my thought process and making me jump.
“What?” I shift my gaze from each of them and realize they’re all staring back at me.
“You’ve been staring at your food for the past ten minutes and haven’t eaten any of it,” Michael mumbles while grabbing a piece of bacon from my plate.
“Oh yeah, sure Michael, you can have that” I scowl as he shoves the piece in his mouth.
“I asked if you knew what we were doing today,” Ashton says between chews.
Grabbing my phone, I type in my code and look up the boys schedule for the day. “You’ve got sound check at noon and then interviews before you go on for tonight,” I say locking my screen and putting my phone back in my pocket.
“So we don’t have any time to go out and see anything?” Calum slumps forward in his seat and pouts.
“What state are we even in right now?” Luke says while patting Calum’s back.
“We’re in Florida I think,” I say trying to remember what the managers said last night before I fell asleep. “I know we’re here for a few weeks if that makes you feel any better Cal.”
“Can we please for the love of God go to Disney World?” Ashton practically begs.
“And you’re the oldest,” Luke chuckles.
“Personally, I’m with Ashton on this one,” I say raising my hand in agreement. “Tomorrow, you guys have all afternoon free, so I’ll go with you Ash.” I smile as I watch his face light up with excitement.
The rest of the boys agree to go with us as I start to clean up the rest of breakfast before they run off to get changed.
Luke’s the first one to come back out and join me. He’s wearing his signature black skinny jeans with the rips in the knees and his “YOU COMPLETE MEss” shirt with his red snapback. I couldn’t help but check him out.
“If you take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he grins.
“There’s nothing to look at though,” I counter, giving him a quick smirk.
He opened his mouth to say something else but was cut off by Calum and Ashton who were in the middle of a serious discussion about who owned the beanie Calum was wearing.
I glanced back at Luke who was still looking at me while playing with his lip ring. He was so effortlessly hot it was annoying.
He and I have a complicated relationship. We’ve been flirting with each other from the second he and I met. The others swear that there’s sexual tension between us and have placed multiple bets on how long it will take before we hook up. None of them have won. I’ve been around for three years now and Luke and I have never gone past cuddling.
There’s a small part of me that wants to see what would happen if we ever got past the just friends who flirt thing. But the bigger part of me knows that if I cross that line, there’s no turning back and god forbid anything bad happen, it’ll ruin everything. I’m not willing to take that risk, and neither is Luke.
Pulling myself out of my own head, I directed my attention towards the window and peaked outside, seeing a small mob of girls forming around the gates to the venue.
“You’ve got fans lining up outside already, I’d head in now before it gets any busier out there,” I suggest, nodding towards the door to the bus. “Go make some girls the happiest people on earth.”
Without any hesitation the boys opened up the door and headed right over to the fans, who were more than excited to see them. I snuck out of the bus a few minutes after and trailed behind the boys. This was one of my favorite things to witness. They brought so much joy to people just by being themselves and to know they had that power, but were still so humble made me so proud of them.
I scanned the crowd of girls and noticed one in particular, crying towards the very back of what was now a mob. Looking back at the boys and the guards that had shown up when they stepped outside, I hopped over the edge of the fence unnoticed.
I weaved my way through the crowd towards her slowly. “Hey,” I gave her a warm smile as I approached.
“Hi,” she mumbled, trying to wipe her tears.
“I saw you from the front and I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh.. yeah I guess, I just can’t get through and I’ve been waiting here since Friday and this group of girls just came in and shoved me to the back. This was the only chance I had at meeting 5 Seconds of Summer and I can’t even see them now.” A few more tears rolled down her face as she bit on her bottom lip.
“Are you going to the show tonight..?” I asked hesitantly.
“N-no, it’s sold out and I couldn’t afford it even if I wanted to.” She sobbed a little louder and I instinctly pulled her into a hug.
“What’s your name, love?” I pulled away slowly and wiped her tears.
“Claire..” She huffed and took a few deep breaths.
I put her head in between my hands and wiped off her tears, fixing the make up that had smudged with my thumbs. “Well Claire, my name is Sydney, and I will be damned if I let you miss out on meeting those boys.”
“Thanks, but there isn’t really much we can do, there’s no way any of these girls will move,” she mumbled and tugged at the hem of her shirt.
“They don’t need to move silly,” I grabbed her hand lightly and led her towards where I had jumped the gate moments ago. “We do.”
As we approached the gate, she looked at me puzzled before pulling her hand away from mine. “Listen, Sydney, I get you’re trying to help, but jumping over the gate is going to get both of us kicked out of this entire area, if not worse,” she said with fear in her eyes, causing me to giggle.
“I promise you, you wont get into trouble. Now no more tears, the boys don’t know what to do when it comes to crying girls,” and with that I hopped over the gate and waited for Claire to do the same. There were a few girls a couple feet away gasping at my actions and waiting for a guard to haul me away, but they didn’t.
Claire still stood on the other side, in complete shock at my actions. “I promise you, Claire, you will not get into trouble by hopping this fence with me,” I eyed the girls watching us. “Not you though, you stay there.” I said giving them the ‘I’m watching you’ look.
After a few more seconds of convincing, Claire slowly climbed over the gate and landed on her feet beside me. I grabbed her hand and tugged on it lightly, pulling her towards the boys who were about ten feet ahead of us.
“Hey guys, can you come here a minute?” I said loud enough to get all four of their attention.
I glanced back at Claire who had suddenly gripped my hand much tighter and was hiding herself behind my small frame as the boys approached.
“You’re going to get into trouble if you keep going off on your own without a guard,” Calum said, mimicking my speech I had given him earlier.
I rolled my eyes and stepped to the side revealing a very nervous Claire. “Okay so, this is my new friend Claire, she’s been waiting here since Friday and is very eager to meet you all,” I looked back at her and gave her hand a light squeeze. “Right Claire?” She nodded and bit on her bottom lip.
“Well I think Claire is a beautiful name,” Michael said, enveloping her into a hug. She let go of my hand and hugged him tight.
The other boys each gave her a hug and signed her CD case. After a few photos together, I walked her back to the gate and helped her climb back over.
“I can’t believe I just met 5 seconds of summer,” she squealed excitedly. “Thank you so much, I don’t even know how you did that but I love you so much.” She pulled me into a tight hug.
“Don’t worry about the details,” I giggled and pulled away from her. “I’m just glad I could help you out.” I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear and smiled wide at her.
“Hey Claire,” I heard Luke yell as he ran over to us at the gate. “Sydney mentioned you didn’t have tickets for tonights show and the boys and I thought that was unacceptable so..” he reached into his back pocket and pulled out two front row tickets “these are for you and a friend.” He gave a genuine smile as she pulled him into an extremely tight hug. After a few more seconds of screaming and hugging she thanked us both again before running from the crowd to go find her mom.
Luke glanced at me and threw his arm over my shoulder, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “You shouldn’t be jumping the gates. These fans know who you are now, it’s not that safe anymore.”
I looked up at him and sighed. “She had no idea who I was and all the other fans were much more focused on you.” I gave him a soft nudge before shrugging his arm off of me and shooing him back towards the fans.
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Luke and Sydney are really cute omfg. Please feel free to comment and like this. I'd love to hear feedback :)