You Belong With Me

Taylor’s P.O.V.

It seemed like time was flying by with the speed of light. It’s been a whole month since Alex’s first therapy session and I finally started to notice an improvement. There would still be times when he got depressed, but they were few and far between. He was finally starting to go back to the Alex he used to be, or at least some semblance of him.

A few weeks ago, my parents, Robert, Alex, and I decided to have a confrontation with Melanie. She was still not making any progress and continued to blame other people for her mistakes. We each took turns saying how much her behaviour hurt us or affected us and suggested that she see a therapist. At first, she seemed surprised at some of the things we said, but she eventually realized that we were right. She began to see Dr. Greene and now she was doing much better. She found that she might never recover from losing her son, but she had to move on, otherwise she might lose the other one. After months of misery, things were finally getting better. Finally.

While you're sitting around thinking 'bout what you can't change
And worrying about all the wrong things
Time's flying by, moving so fast
You better make it count 'cause you can't get it back

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
And what you've been out there searching for forever
Is in your hands

Oh, and when you figure out
Love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
Seem so small

I groaned as “So Small” by Carrie Underwood began to play and smacked the snooze button on my alarm clock on a Friday at the beginning of February. Five minutes later, I heard a knock at my door and unwillingly opened my eyes.

“Come in,” I groaned. My mom burst into my room.

“Look outside!” she exclaimed happily.

“What’s happening?”

“See for yourself.”

I slowly got out of bed, walked over to the window, and opened the curtains, which were only closed when I was asleep or changing. When I looked out, all I saw was white.

“OH MY GOD, IT’S SNOWING!” I screamed, jumping up and down. I always got really excited when it snowed.

My mother laughed and said, “I know and I just checked the news. You have a snow day!”

“Yay!” I ran over and gave her a hug. It really was ridiculous how excited I was. “I’m going to call Alex.” My mom left the room and shut the door behind her as I grabbed my cell phone and excitedly dialed Alex’s number. We decided not to stay together last night because we both had a lot of work to do and we usually distracted each other when it came to homework unless we needed help with something.

“Hello,” came his groggy voice from the other end. I must have woken him up.

“Hey yourself,” I responded.

“What’s up? Why are you calling me so early?”

“Open up that curtain and you’ll see.”

I looked across and saw a hand appear and pull the curtain away. He looked over at me in amazement.

“OH MY GOD, IT’S SNOWING!” he screamed and I laughed.

“Yup, that was my reaction too. My mom just came in and told me we have a snow day!”

“Awesome! You know what this means, right?”

“No, what does it means?”

“Snowball fight!”

“Oh crap.” When it came to snowball fights, I was usually the one on the receiving end, if you know what I mean.

“Yeah, that’s right. You’d better watch your back. Don’t think I forgot about last year.” Jack, Rian, Zack, and Alex teamed up against me and pummelled me to the ground with snowballs. Then, they made a giant pile of snow and picked me up and dropped me in it. What great friends I have.

“This year, it’s going to be different.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I will threaten Jack, Rian, and Zack to be on my side and then you’ll be the one getting pummelled.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see about that.”

“We will.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“You bet it is! You call Zack and Rian and I’ll call Jack. Meet me on my front lawn in an hour.”

“It’s on and will do,” he said and then he hung up the phone.

I called Jack and then began to get ready. It was obviously going to be really cold, so I put on some thermals and wore many layers of clothes on top in addition to a winter coat and heavy snow boots. By the end, I looked like a giant Eskimo with gloves, a hat, and a scarf. I decided to leave my cell phone inside because I did not want it to get all wet in the snow.
As soon as I stepped off my front porch an hour later, a cold, wet snowball came hurling through the air aimed straight for my head. I ducked as I watched it hit the ground behind me.

“Damn it! I missed!” I heard Alex say from behind a bush.

“Dude, your aim sucks!” said Jack, who must have been right beside Alex.

“It’s not my fault she ducked!”

“You should have gone for her stomach or something. That way, even if she ducks, you have a better chance of hitting her.”

“You do realize I can hear every word you guys are saying, right?” I laughed.

All of a sudden, both boys appeared from behind the bush and began chasing and throwing snowballs at me. I screamed as I ran for cover. I finally got far enough ahead that I ran behind a tree, which gave me enough time to gather up some snow to turn into snowballs. When I peered around the tree, I saw that they had stopped running, so I began pelting snowballs at them as fast as I could. To my surprise, they actually hit their targets.

“Oh, that’s it,” Alex said after he got hit. “You’re going down now.” He came at me with a snowball in his right hand. I turned away from him and ran for my life. Too bad I was a slow runner. In almost no time at all, he tackled me to the ground and crashed the freezing snowball to my face.

“Alex, you asshole,” I said angrily sputtering from the snow that landed in my mouth, yet laughing at the same time.

“What? You deserved it,” he laughed. He was sitting on my thighs. He turned around to look at Jack, who was sitting about twenty feet away from us and laughing his ass off. “Hey, Jack, come over here and help me bury Taylor!”

Jack got up and started walking toward us, but then I started yelling at him. “Jack Bassam Barakat, you stay where you are or I swear I won’t be your best friend anymore!”

He stopped to consider what I had just said, but then he decided I wasn’t being serious and continued to walk until he reached our side.

“Good boy,” Alex said in an approving tone.

“What is he, your pet?” I asked.

“Woof,” Jack answered.

“All right, now let’s do this,” Alex said. He continued to sit on me as he threw snow across my chest and arms. Jack joined in and pretty soon the only parts of my body that weren’t covered in snow were my head and where Alex was sitting. If I tried to move, they would just pile more on, so I learned to stay still.

“Jack, go knock on my door and tell my mom to grab my digital camera. It’s on my night stand. We need a picture of this!”

“Alex, I hate you!” I said with all the hatred I could manage. I was getting really cold and wet and I was afraid of becoming hypothermic from being buried in the snow for so long.

“Liar. You know you love me,” he said smiling sweetly at me. He didn’t know just how true that statement was. I stuck my tongue out at him and he just laughed even more.

“I can’t believe you did this to me,” I pouted. “I can’t even feel my legs anymore because you’re sitting on them.”

“We just have to wait for Jack to take the lovely picture of you and then I will let you up.”

“You better, otherwise I’m going to tell on you,” I threatened.

“Aw, does wittle Taylor need to go back to kindergarten?” he joked.

Jack finally came running back with the camera. “Smile!” he said as he held the camera up in front of his eyes and took the picture. I looked angrily at the camera as Alex smiled delightedly like a five year-old on Christmas.

“Ok, we took the damn picture; now get the hell off me!” I said a few seconds later.

Alex laughed as he lifted himself off me and then offered me a hand so that I could get up. My legs gave out from being stiff for so long, but Alex and Jack caught me before I could fall and helped me brush off the snow all over my body. They helped me walk to my front door since my legs were tingling because they fell asleep under Alex’s weight.

“I’m going to go in and get a nice warm shower because I’m freezing. I’ll call you guys when I’m ready to meet up again,” I sad a few minutes later after I had finally regained all the feeling in my legs.

“Ok we’ll probably do the same thing,” said Alex. ‘Jack, you can borrow some of my clothes if you need to.” Jack nodded.

“I’ll see you guys soon,” I said as I walked into my house and shut the front door.

~~~~~~~~~

Ok, I’m ready, I texted Alex a half an hour later. You guys can come over here. I don’t feel like getting all bundled up again and my legs still feel kind of weird.

Be there in a minute, responded Alex.

I decided to time them just to bust their chops, but, to my dismay, it took them exactly one minute to get here. They walked in and found me sitting by the fireplace in the living room at the front of the house. “What are you doing?” I asked as they began to sit down.

“Can’t we sit?” Jack asked confused.

I shook my head. “Nope, not unless you make me a fire and some hot chocolate. You owe me that much after you buried me alive before. Now, get to it, boys. You owe me that much. Shoo.” I held up my hand and waved them away. They both stared at me with surprised looks on their faces. “You think I’m kidding?” I asked, giving them the death stare.

“Where are the logs?” Alex asked, not daring to argue with me. Sometimes, he was smarter than he looked.

“Over there next to the fireplace,” I pointed.

It proved to be highly amusing watching Alex and Jack try to figure out how to make a fire. Eventually, Alex had to call his father to ask him how to do it. Fifteen minutes later, we all sat in front of a crackling fire with mugs of hot chocolate in our hands.

“So where are Rian and Zack? Didn’t you invite them?” I asked Alex.

“Yeah, of course I did. They couldn’t drive here because the roads were too slippery,” responded Alex.

“Yeah and I walked since you guys are close to me,” said Jack.

“Gotcha.”

“It sucks that they had to miss out on all our fun earlier,” Jack whined. “We would have buried you a lot faster with two more sets of hands. At least we’ll be able to show them the awesome pictures though.” He perked up at his last thought and I smacked him on the arm. “Ow!” he said, cradling his arm to his body and pouting at me.

“That’s what you get for ignoring my threat and burying me against my will and then taking a picture of it! I guess you aren’t my best friend anymore.” I turned away from him.

“Oh, come on, T. Swizzle, you know you can’t resist the awesomeness of your Barakuda for very long.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” I huffed.

Jack came around to face me, looked me straight in the eye and gave me the best puppy dog face he could manage. “Taylor, I want to be your best friend forever and ever and ever. Please forgive me. I promise to never bury you in snow and then take a picture of it ever again.” He turned his lip down as I considered what he just said and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Ugh, damn it, I really can’t stay mad at you for long, can I?” I laughed. Jack shook his head. “All right, you’re forgiven.”

“Yay!” Jack jumped up and gave me a hug. It’s a good thing I had put down my hot chocolate a moment before.

Alex’s phone started to vibrate, so he took it out of his pocket.

“Should I answer this?” he asked. “I don’t recognize the number.”

“You might as well,” I said. “Maybe it’s someone you know calling from a different number.”

He looked at his phone for a second and then shrugged and answered it, “Hello?” There was a pause as he listened to the other person’s voice. “Yes, this is Alex Gaskarth. Who am I speaking with?” There was another pause and his eyes grew wide as he heard what the other person was saying. “Oh man, are you serious?” He put his hand up to his forehead and his mouth fell open in surprise. He ran to get a pen and paper and then came back. Jack and I just turned to each other with mystified looks on our faces. “That’s amazing! Thank you so much! We’ll be there!” He hung up the phone and sat back down on the couch with a bewildered look on his face. “Oh. My. God,” he said breathlessly.

“Who was that?” Jack and I asked at the same time.

“That,” said Alex “was the manager of Hopeless Records, a new record label. They heard our music online and they’re interested! They want to meet up with us next week to talk about a record contract.”

“Holy fucking shit, are you serious?” Jack asked, his mouth hanging open. Alex nodded. “Whoa...I don’t even know what to say right now.”

“You guys, this is huge!” I said excitedly. “After all that hard work, you are finally going to get signed! I’m so proud of you!” I jumped up and gave each boy a hug.

“Wait a second, why aren’t you more surprised by this news?” asked Alex suspiciously.

“What do you mean? You guys are talented, so it doesn’t surprise me that a label would want to sign you.”

“No, that’s not it,” he said scrutinizing my expression. “You did something, I know it. Taylor, what did you do?”

“Ok, well I might have stumbled upon this website that just so happened to mention new record labels and I might have accidentally sent them some of your music. It was bound to happen sooner or later; I just wanted to speed along the process.”

Both boys gave me the biggest smiles they could muster. “Taylor, you’re amazing!” Alex said as he lifted me off my feet and spun me around.

“I am pretty amazing, aren’t I?” I joked as he put me down.

“This is so surreal, all of it,” he said. “I still can’t believe it.”

“I can,” I stated. “You guys sound awesome. Any record label would be lucky to have you.”

“Thanks, Tay,” said Jack. “I’m going to go call Zack and Rian and tell them the news and then demand that they get their asses over here to celebrate. Snow be damned!”

“How are you feeling, rock star?” I asked after Jack left the room.

“Overwhelmed, but happy. This is actually the happiest I have ever felt. I can’t even describe it.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Seriously, Taylor, thank you so much for doing this for us. I can’t even begin to tell you how much this means.”

I smiled at him. “It was all worth it then.”

“What about you? Did you send any of your own music in?”

“Not yet. I’m still trying to work up the courage.”

“Well, we’re going to have to work on that because the world deserves to hear your talent and I refuse to let you get away with not using it. Besides, how are you going to tour with us if you don’t have a label?”

“Do you really mean that?”

“Of course I do! I want you with me on our first tour. I want it to be just like every other concert we have ever performed at together. It has always been the Alex and Taylor show and it will always be the Alex and Taylor show.”

“Well, technically it’s the All Time Low and Taylor show, but I get your point. It would be so amazing if we could tour together. We’d see the world.”

“It’d be like a dream come true,” agreed Alex.

Jack came back into the room and announced that Rian and Zack had freaked out just as much as they did and said they would be right over. Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang and Jack answered in. The three boys filed into the living room. I went into the wine cabinet and took out a bottle of red wine and five glasses. Usually, I didn’t steal alcohol from my parents, but this was a special occasion. I filled the wine glasses and served them.

“I would like to propose a toast,” Jack said holding up his glass. Everyone else followed suit. “Here’s to dreams coming true.”

“And to the people that make those dreams come true,” Alex said looking straight at me and smiling. I felt my stomach flutter.

Everyone clinked their glasses together. The rest of the night was spent in celebration. Jack, Zack, and Rian crashed at my house that night because they were too drunk to go home and Alex just slept in my room with me like always. It turned out to be quite an interesting snow day.