In This Starless City

The sun was up before I was the day my flight would be leaving, but I found myself lounging in my bed, wide awake, anyway. It wasn't that I wasn't looking forward to going on tour or anything like that. No, that wasn't it at all. I suppose I was just too much of a homebody.

I knew I would miss my home in New York City while I was away. I'd lived here on my own (with the exception of my band and other friends) for almost four years. I could almost navigate myself around this city blindfolded by now. That also reminds me of how much I was going to miss all of my friends; except for those of them that will be along with me, but they were practically my family.

My actual family, however, didn't live in New York, or in North America, for that matter. They were in London, my original home town, probably anxiously awaiting a phone call from me. They were, after all, the reason behind where I am today. They had paid for my ticket to the United States because they had a hunch-- or maybe they knew all along-- that I would get a chance at success with my musical abilities.

And, low and behold, they were correct. Just a year after arriving in New York City, I was in a band with some of my closest friends with two albums out and a fairly well-known name: Charlotte Melancholic. Band name was half my idea seeing as Charlotte is my name.

The sound of an ambulance screaming down the street shook me out of my reverie and I blinked at the bright blue sky that shown between the roofs of the sky scrapers that towered across the street from my apartment building. It was a little past eight thirty and my flight to LAX left at ten thirty. My band members probably weren't even awake yet. That was my job; I was the motherly figure, of sorts, of our friendship.

I threw my hand down on my bedside table and felt around until I finally found my cell phone. Then, I dialed the next in command: mister Nathaniel Hawk, the lead guitarist of Charlotte Melancholic.

The line rang four and a half times before it clicked alive, but no one spoke for a few moments. Then, a groggy voice asked, "Hello?"

"Nate, what are you doing still asleep? I thought you said you still had to pack?" I rolled my eyes as he groaned in exhaustion into the phone.

"I've got plenty of time to pack, Char," he tries to assure me half-heartedly, but I wasn't fazed. I knew for a fact that he didn't even know what time it was, and I was about to prove it.

"Do you know what time our flight leaves?" I ask stealthily.

He chuckled; I had asked him this before. "Ten thirty," he answers.

I nodded, knowing full well that he couldn't see me. "Now, do you know what time it is?"

There was a pause and I knew he was wondering where I was going with this. "It's six forty five," he guessed, finally.

I smirked. "Now look at the clock and try not to blow out my ear drum."

There was a long stretch of silence as Nate presumably shirted in his bed to look at his clock. Then, he let out a loud expletive before an even louder chain of "oh my God's. Anticipating this reaction, I already had the phone at an arm's length away, smiling smugly.

"Why didn't you tell me it was that late already?" he asks, breathing heavily as I assumed he was shoving any belongings he could reach into his suitcases.

"What fun would that've been?" I sniggered as I, too, kicked my blankets away from me and climbed out of bed. "You want I should alert the other troops of our departure?"

The sound of movement stopped on the other end of the phone and I laughed quietly again. "Haven't you called the others yet?"

I slid out of my pajamas and into a pair of jeans and a tee shirt. "Nope, not yet."

He gave an exasperated sigh and went on with his frantic packing. "We're so missing our flight," he mumbles.

"Probably, but all the more reason to be fashionably late for our tour manager." I said as I wheeled my luggage to my car.

"Leave it to you, the only girl in this band, to refer lateness to fashion." He laughed, slightly.

"You get packed, I'll call the others, and I'll be seeing you at the air port in an hour." I closed my phone and the trunk of my car, swinging my keys around my index finger as I walked to the driver's side and climbed in.

Cue the butterflies.