Hello Beautiful

“I can’t believe you did that,” Nick whispered to me, his breath tickling my neck. I giggled.

“It just seemed like the right thing to do. After all, her dad did help save my life!” I said, defending my choice to pay a visit to David’s daughter, who, like he had said, was a huge fan. She had practically kissed Nick. I wasn’t too worried about him liking her anymore. She was only ten.

“Excuse me, I was doing just fine with you on my own!” Nick retorted.

“Yes, but your knowledge doesn’t go any further than mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” I said, laughing at the incredulous look on his face.

“You did not just say that,” he looked at me with sarcastic menace.

“Whatcha gonna do pretty boy?” I laughed again.

“You better start running,” Nick said.

“Oooo, I’m SO scared.” My voice dripped with sarcasm.

“Oh you should be.” He chased me onto the bus.

I ran to my room and turned around quickly to lock the door.

I almost made it. “Haha, not even you can beat me,” he said laughing, as he made a very graceful entrance by crashing through the door at top speed and pouncing on me, pinning my body to the bed. He looked down at me, grinning like an evil... an evil... ummm... CURLY HAIRED MONSTER!!! Yea, that’s what he looked like.

I groaned as he pressed his hands into my chest, holding my body to the bed. My bruise was still there and it hurt A LOT.

“OW! Nicky, that hurts!!! Get off!” I whined.

“Whoops, sorry Laura.” He rolled off me, slid over the edge of the bed, and hit the floor with a Thump!

“Ow.”

I laughed at him. “Nice.”

“Shut up,” he said jokingly. “How do you feel?” he asked, all traces of humor gone from his face.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It hurts a little when I breathe, but that’s it.”

“Do you want some ice?”

“Yea, that would be nice, and some aspirin if you have it.”

“Ok, no problem.” He walked out my door, to get the ice from the freezer and the aspirin from the medicine cabinet. I lay back down on the bed and grabbed my iPod. I hit shuffle and my one of favorite songs came on, Hello Beautiful. That’s what I was listening to on repeat when Nick came back in with the ice, the aspirin, and a glass of water. He glanced at the screen.

“You don’t ever get tired of this stuff? You hear it at the concerts every night and Joe’s always blasting it on the bus and in the car. Why do you listen to it constantly?” He looked genuinely curious.

“Well, just because I hang out with you guys every single minute of every single day doesn’t mean that I don’t still love your music. I listen to it so much because every time I hear it, I relate to it in a different way.” I pulled my shirt off so that I could put the ice on the bruise. I reached for the ice pack, but Nick just moved his hand forward and placed it on my chest. I shivered; it was really cold. I took the aspirin with the glass of water he had brought me.

He looked very lost in thought, if you know what I mean. I didn’t bother him, I just sat and watched him thinking. It wasn’t very hard to do, considering how hott he was. After a minute, he spoke again.

“You said during the interview that you had more songs that you’ve written. Can I see some of them?” he asked, still pressing the ice pack to my chest with his left hand.

“Sure, just reach under the bed and pull out what you find.” He looked at me curiously. “Go ahead. Nothing’s gonna bite your arm off.”

He stared for another half second, and then stuck his right arm under my bed. His eyes widened in shock as he pulled out a fistful of composition books, about six in total. I smirked at him. “Are all of them full of songs?” he asked in astonishment. By ‘all of them’ I was assuming that he was talking about the other 250 or so notebooks that I’m sure he had felt under my bed just now.

“Well, each notebook holds one song.”

“One song?” He looked at me questioningly.

“I only write one song at a time. I work on the whole thing, music, lyrics, everything, all at the same time. You see where different sections of pages are marked off, like dog-eared? I split the notebooks into sections. One section is for guitar; one is for drums, keyboard, lyrics, rhythm, and whatever else goes into the song. At the end off each notebook, there are about seven to ten marked pages. That’s the completed song. The rest of the notebook, if you flip through it, is full of crossed out words and notes and rhythms, so I always put a perfect copy of the completed song at the end of the book.” I pointed things out to him as I said them, so he wouldn’t be confused.

“Are you serious?” He looked at me like I was crazy.

“Perfectly,” I said, giggling at his expression. It felt weird when I laughed, so I looked down and realized that the spot on my chest where he was holding the ice pack had gone numb. I pulled his hand away to look at the bruise. It was still there, it still hurt, and now it was really cold.

I took away the ice and placed his hand against my chest. It was so warm after that ice. I giggled and sighed in contentment.

“Whoa! That’s freezing!” he said, almost pulling his hand away. I held him back.

“Yea, but your hand is warm.” I smiled at him. He smiled back and pressed his body close to mine. Since I was still lying on the bed, he was practically on top of me, but I didn’t care, I was just happy to be warm. He wrapped his arms around me and I snuggled my head into his chest, still chilly.

He started singing softly in my ear:

Hello beautiful
How’s it going?
I hear it’s wonderful
In California
I’ve been missing you
It’s true...

I drifted off listening to my favorite song.