From GuitarGuy92 to xoJadeBabyxo

“Okay, this is getting way too Cinderella Story for me,” Charlie said, holding her hands in front of her so that I’d stop speaking.

“Yea, I was thinking that too,” I stated, looking away from Charlie’s questioning eyes while pulling mindlessly at the loose thread on my comforter.

Charlie hadn’t asked any questions the entire ride home from the dance. When we got in, we both stripped of our gowns and got ready for bed. Charlie then took residency on my bed while I recounted the night’s events. It was now a bit past 1:30 a.m. and all I wanted to do was stop over analyzing the situation, go to sleep, and forget this day had ever happened.

But of course Charlie wouldn’t let that happen. “So what are you gonna do?” she asked.

I released a very long sigh before allowing my eyes to meet hers again. “The only thing I can do,” I answered. “JadeBaby is gone. Nick Jonas is never going to hear from her again.”

I had come up with that decision on the car ride home.

“And will he be hearing from Allegra?”

Charlie’s question caught me off guard. I hadn’t even thought of it that way. I finally released another sigh. “I can’t very well ignore him,” I replied. “But we’ll only ever be in the ‘just friends’ category.” I saw Charlie’s eyebrows meet in confusion. “A socialite can’t be with anyone that’s not a socialite,” I elaborated, not bothering to hide the disappointment in my voice—it was useless around Charlie.

She pulled me closer to her and gave me a hug. “I was afraid of this,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“I know you Allegra. Once you let your guard down and start to let people close to you, you get too attached—especially with guys. When you fall, you fall hard. And despite everything, you always end up hurt.” I opened my mouth to rebut that statement, but Charlie cut me off and continued speaking. “I knew that when I let you go into this friendship thing. And while Nick had the potential to treat you right, I warned you that his friends were different. I was hoping that I wouldn’t be right. That maybe somehow they’d see what an amazing person you were and that that’d be enough. But I was right. They won’t accept you two and now you’re hurting,” she elaborated.

Her words made my throat tighten with emotion. She was such an amazing friend, always looking out for me. But in this case, there was nothing she could do. “It’s whatever,” I croaked out, trying to clear my throat simultaneously.

Charlie pulled back so that I was looking at her. “No. It’s not whatever,” she said with a frown on her face. That frown quickly transformed into one of determination—a look I knew meant she was going to offer her opinion. “I say fuck it. Tell Nick who you are, how you feel! You deserve to be happy more than anyone I know and if Nick Jonas is your happiness, then damn it go after him!”

I know her too well.

I shook my head at her. “As much as I want to believe that would solve everything, you and I both know it’s not that simple. It won’t do anything for me. It might just ruin everything. I’d rather have him in my life as a friend than as nothing at all,” I stated. Charlie frowned at me, opening her mouth to say something else before I cut her off. “Just drop it Charlie,” I begged in a resigned tone. I really couldn’t talk about this anymore. “We should go to sleep. It’s late.” With that, I got up and pulled down my sheets, yanking them so that Charlie would get up as well. She did so reluctantly and went to her own bed.

Just before I slipped into unconsciousness I heard Charlie ask, “Are you sure you don’t want to tell him who you are?”

“Yup. Trust me, by tomorrow, he’s going to have forgotten all about me,” I replied into the darkness before drifting off to sleep.

Except I had been wrong—so wrong. The following morning it seemed all anyone could talk about was the ‘mystery girl’ Nick Jonas had spent the night with. Walking to breakfast I heard his name come up in almost every conversation I walked by. Every girl in my Saturday morning Chemistry Lab was saying they were the mystery girl, which resulted in arguments amongst various females. Truthfully, I didn’t understand why it mattered until lunch time. I had been sitting on the steps of the Rec Center reading a book while eating a wrap when Charlie ran up to me, shoving a vibrant blue piece of paper in my face as she sat down next to me.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Look at it!” she demanded.

I glanced down at the paper and my eyes widened. There was a sketch of my silhouette in the center with a headline that read “Have You Seen Mystery Girl?” in big, bold, black letters and several pieces of paper that could be torn off—each one reading ‘Contact Nick Jonas’ and his number.

“What is this?” I asked again, this time because of pure shock.

“They’re all over campus. He’s looking for you,” she hissed the last part so that only I could hear her. “There are girls lining up on the main quad trying to convince him they’re his mystery girl,” she added.

Suddenly every female’s behavior earlier made sense. “That’s crazy!” I exclaimed.

“I know! Especially since none of them are you!”

I felt all the blood leave my face and then quickly rush back. I looked around and made sure no one had heard her before scowling. “Will you keep it down before someone hears you?!”

Her mouth dropped in shock as she realized the meaning of my words. “Aren’t you going to tell him it was you?” she asked in an incredulous tone.

“Of course not!” I replied, handing the flier back to her. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“But Allegra—”

“Charlie, please just leave it alone. Just friends, remember?” Honestly, I had spent too long trying to let go of this. I didn’t want to keep talking about it—I couldn’t. Charlie dropped the subject with much struggle. I could see her fighting herself on whether to say what she wanted to say.

I managed to change the subject to something else for a while, but a few minutes later I heard Charlie gasp as she stared mindlessly at something at the foot of the stairs. When I turned around to see what she was looking at, Nick was jogging up the steps, an irritated look on his face.

“Hey Nick,” Charlie called as he ran past us, barely giving me a chance to collect my thoughts—which were all over the place just at the sight of him.

He stopped and glanced back at us, relief displayed briefly on every feature of his face. “Hey guys,” he said, walking over to where we were sitting. He stood a few steps below us, leaning against the hand rail and crossing his arms across his chest. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Not much, just talking,” Charlie replied. I shot her a quick glance.

“How about you?” I asked.

“I was just about to grab lunch. Today’s been crazy and my blood sugar is kinda low,” he explained.

“I never knew you were diabetic,” Charlie said, looking at me once more. I didn’t dare meet her gaze. Of course I knew. I had found out GuitarGuy was diabetic back in November—but I never knew Nick was. It was weird to think about all the things I now knew about Nick knowing he was GuitarGuy.

“Why don’t you go grab something to eat?” I suggested, knowing he needed it. GuitarGuy had told me that when his blood sugar was low, he was…less than pleasant. Just by the way Nick was holding himself I could tell he was in one of those moods.

“And then you can join us,” Charlie added. I opened my mouth to say he didn’t have to but I was cut off by his response.

“Okay, I’ll be right back.”

When Nick was inside the building and I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me, I turned to Charlie and asked, “Charlotte Costa what are you doing?”

“Eating my lunch,” she replied as she tried—and failed—to hide her deviant smirk.

“Charlie,” I probed.

“I’m not doing anything,” she defended.

“Yes you are!”

“Since when is it a crime to ask a friend to join us for lunch?”

“Charlie, please don’t say anything to him. I don’t want him to know. Please,” I begged.

I knew Charlie didn’t approve of my decision to not tell Nick about my identity, but she was my best friend—I expected her to support me in this. She placed her hand on top of mine and said, “Don’t worry about it, I won’t.” I let out a breath of relief.

“You won’t what?” Nick asked as he sat down two steps below us, dropping a full tray of food on the step between us.

“Won’t…give away the ending to the book she’s reading,” Charlie replied hastily. “Wow, hungry much?” she asked, changing the subject.

Nick gave us a quizzical look, trying to assess our strange behavior, before shrugging it off. “I like food,” he stated simply.

There was a brief silence as Nick took a bite of his taco. “So, how’s the search going?” Charlie asked.

I nearly choked on my sip of water.

But Nick didn’t notice. He was too busy rolling his eyes. He swallowed his food before saying, “You guys heard about that, huh?”

“How could we not? There are fliers all over campus,” Charlie replied.

“Yea, it’s not exactly what I was expecting. I’ve seen dozens of girls today and none of them are the one I’m looking for,” he said with a sigh. “You guys wouldn’t happen to have seen her, would you?”

Charlie blatantly looked at me, which prompted Nick to do the same. “I wasn’t even at the dance so I wouldn’t be of any help. Sorry,” I quickly stated. I felt horrible about lying to him before the words were even out of my mouth, but I had spent the better portion of last night trying to convince myself that not telling him the truth was for the better—for all of us. I couldn’t go back on that decision now that I had accepted to live with it.

The disparaging look Charlie was giving me didn’t help make me feel better either.

She looked disapprovingly at me for another second before turning back to Nick. “Nope. I didn’t really get a good look at her, sorry,” she said. I released a breath, thankful she was keeping her word about not saying anything. “So, who is she anyway?”

So much for that. I shot Charlie yet another look. What part of drop it doesn’t she understand?

Thankfully Nick was too occupied by his thoughts to notice my weird behavior. “I don’t know. I started talking to her online a few months ago but we never met in person until last night. She didn’t get a chance to tell me her name,” he answered.

“Interesting,” Charlie said. We were all silent for a few seconds before Nick spoke up again.

“I sound crazy, huh? Trying to find this girl?” When his eyes connected with mine, I felt my heart jerk in my chest. There were so many emotions swimming in his chocolaty brown eyes—confusion, curiosity, worry, a faint trace of hope—but most of all vulnerability. The look in his eyes told me he was really worried about what we thought, but he was hopeful that we accepted what he was doing.

“Nah, not too crazy,” I said, my heart doing that jerk thing again. If I wasn’t going to tell him the truth the least I could do was pretend I supported him on this.

“She must have really been something if you’re going through so much trouble to find her,” Charlie commented. I didn’t send her a reproachful look because I was curious about what his response to her comment would be.

Nick let out a wistful sigh and got a foreign look in his eyes. “I’ve never met anyone like her before. I feel like I can tell her absolutely anything without her judging me. She’s pretty, smart, and had a subtle sense of humor. She was awesome,” he said. I saw Charlie’s lips twitch in a gentle smile aimed my way as I prayed that my cheeks weren’t as red as I felt them. “But none of those girls were her,” Nick added, coming back to reality.

“How will you know when you find her?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“She’ll know what she left behind,” he answered simply, returning to his lunch.

“Which was?” Charlie asked, sending me a sideways glance as I racked my brain, trying to think of what he was referring to.

It dawned on me right as he reached into the tight confines of his skinny jeans and produced the lost item.

“This charm bracelet,” he replied.

JB—JB—JB—JB—JB

“Okay, so I definitely think that graph 7 is the derivative graph of graph 4. It’s a straight line with a slope of 2 so it matches the parabola’s slope,” I said looking up at Nick. But he wasn’t paying attention. He was staring mindlessly out the window, lost in his own thoughts. I had a feeling he was not thinking about our calculus project. “Nick?”

“Hmm?” he hummed, snapping his head back in my direction.

“The calculus project,” I hinted, tilting my notebook towards him.

“Right, sorry,” he said, leaning forward in his seat and bracing his forearms on his lap. “What were you saying?”

I let out a sigh. We had been assigned a small project today in AP Calculus due at the end of the week. I was surprised when Nick asked me if I wanted to be his partner, but I accepted. Since we could get extra credit for handing it in early, we decided to work on it right away. But Nick had been too tired after baseball practice to meet anywhere. He suggested we work on it in his room. I had been extremely reluctant, but he managed to talk me into it. Okay so maybe he was just lucky that Charlie had been in the room with me and threatened me if I didn’t agree to meet him. So now I was sitting on one of his bean bag chairs as he sat on his couch—his mind on something else.

“Are you too tired to work on this? We could totally do it another day,” I suggested, already closing my notebook.

“No, no, no, it’s not that,” he hastily assured.

“Then what’s wrong?” I asked, concerned by the stressed and worn expression on his face. I sensed something was off with him all week.

“It’s just this whole search thing,” he said, leaning back on the couch and closing his eyes, releasing an irritated sigh.

“Oh,” I said, quickly growing uncomfortable. I should have known.

He leaned forward again before he started to vent. “It’s just that it’s been an entire week already! I don’t get it. We had a great time together at the dance. She was even going to tell me her name before Mike and Jimmy interrupted us. She seemed so familiar too, so I’ve tried to think of all the girls who’s names start with an M—Melissa, Melanie, Meredith, Marissa, Macy—but none of them are her!” I bit my bottom lip to stop myself from giving myself away. That night I had been about to tell him ‘it’s me, Allegra’. “I just don’t understand why she hasn’t presented herself yet. I must have sent her a dozen e-mails and countless IM’s but she hasn’t replied to any. I just don’t understand why she’s avoiding me!”

“Maybe she’s had time to think and is afraid to tell you who she is,” I commented, looking down at my fidgeting fingers and ignoring the comment he made about his attempts to reach me. I had gotten every single one of his e-mails and had avoided being on AIM too much. I did receive several of them, but those went ignored as well.

Honestly though, I was still surprised that he hadn’t figured out it was me. I had been careful not to be around him as much all week in case he did figure it out—but he hadn’t. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me—really looking at me—and I would freak out, thinking he had finally figured it out. But he never said anything to me. He still had no clue.

“Afraid? Afraid of what?” he practically scram at me, startling me.

I flinched away from his loud tone. “I don’t know, it’s just a theory,” I mumbled.

He released a sigh and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“It’s okay.” A brief silence enveloped us. “Why do you want to find her so bad?” I couldn’t help but ask what it was that still had him searching after a week of no contact from…me.

He was silent for a while as he thought over his answer. “She just gets me,” he finally replied.

I had nothing to say to that.

He finally released a defeated sigh, running his hands through his curls as he leaned back on the couch. “I don’t even think it matters. I’m starting to think I’m never going to see her again.”

I couldn’t help but feel terrible seeing him this way. It was obvious he really wanted to hear from the internet version of myself, but I still wasn’t sure if I should tell him the truth.

I mean, what would he think if I just randomly told him I was JadeBaby? Would he even believe me? Or would he think I was just another one of those girls that’s been trying to get with him all week by throwing themselves at him? If there’s one thing I’ve learned about him is that he’s tired of people trying to use him to gain popularity. Would he think that’s what I’m trying to do?

As all these questions ran through my head, Nick got up from his couch and walked over to his bed, sitting down in front of his keyboard. I didn’t notice until the melody he started to play penetrated the silence between us. I was still amazed by his musical ability, so this tune made me gravitate towards him. It wasn’t until I was sitting next to him on the edge of his bed that he started to sing.

I've been alone so many nights now
And I've been waitin' for the stars to fall
I keep holdin' out for what I don't know
To be with you, just to be with you

So here I am staring at the moon tonight
Wondering how you look in this light
Maybe you're somewhere thinkin' about me too
To be with you, there's nothing I wouldn't do

And I can't imagine two worlds spinnin' apart
Come together eventually

And when we finally meet, I'll know it's right
I'll be at the end of my restless road
But this journey, it was worth the fight
To be with you, just to be…

Holding you for the very first time, never letting go.
What I wouldn't give to feel that way...
Oh...

Oh, to be with you...

Oh, and I can't imagine two worlds spinnin' apart
Come together eventually.

And when you're standin' here in front of me
That's when I know that God does exist
'Cause He will have answered every single prayer
To be with you, just to be with you, yeah
You...

Once he was finished singing, we both sat in silence. That had to have been one of the most beautiful songs I’d ever heard—and I had been the inspiration behind it.

I was speechless.

“Where is she Legs?” Nick asked in the quietest voice.

The vulnerability in his voice and the torn look in his eyes made me want to confess everything. He was truly torn up about this and it was all my fault. But then I remembered why I had made the choices that I did. Nick wanted to be with me—the internet version of me—but we were from two different worlds. We would never be accepted together.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.