The Best Is Yet to Come

“Do you guys know him?” Emily asked awkwardly, her eyes flickering between the stunned guys and the smiling Alex.

“You could say that,” I whispered and gently waved back at Alex. I could feel Josh’s eyes glaring at my hand like lasers. I sunk back into my seat and focused on my drink.

“He’s Jasey’s ex,” Max said bluntly and was the first to unfreeze from the band statues. I widened my eyes meaningfully at him and he mouthed his apology to me. I rolled my eyes with a sigh.

Athina and Emily gaped at me.

“No way!” Emily cried and there was a pang of jealousy in her voice. Charlie cleared his throat. Things between the two had picked up in the past week. She shot him an apologetic look but her eyes flickered back to the bartender.

“He’s mint!” Athina breathed, taking him in as she sat down in her chair.

“Why the hell did you break up with him?” Emily demanded from me and I physically winced. I screwed up my face and cringed, imagining the look on Josh’s face. Emily seemed to cotton on that my current boyfriend was sitting right next to me. If you listened carefully, we could probably hear his teeth grinding together. “Oh… right.”

“Nice one Em,” Matt laughed nervously doing his best to ease the thick tension.

She recoiled from under Josh’s fierce stare. I looked around to smile at him tentatively. He jerked his head towards the back and knocked his chair backwards as he stood up forcefully. With a groan, I followed him towards the back of the bar where it was quieter. Our table, familiar faces from school and Alex were watching us.

Josh pulled me into a corner.

“You know the weird thing is you don’t look shocked to see him?” he whispered bitterly to me.

I didn’t answer, folding my arms and looking guiltily at the wood flooring.

“How long?” he asked, staring at me in utter disbelief.

I wasn’t going to lie to Josh. I didn’t want an argument about this.

“I ran into him the other day when you were on tour,” I explained with a heavy groan and I ran my fingers through my hair. “He saw me in the park and we went to get coffee for a catch up.”

“A catch up?” Josh asked, pronouncing each word carefully like he wasn’t really processing them.

“Yes, a catch up, I talk about you and the band and everything that’s happened in the past year. Wait a moment… I’m not allowed to speak to him?” I questioned angrily.

Josh’s mouth pulled into a hard straight line and he was holding in a retort. He knew I had every right to speak to Alex even if he didn’t like it.

“He was the only person here that I could talk to,” I whispered harshly. “You were on tour.”

He bared his clenched teeth at me for a moment as he struggled for a response that wouldn’t come out. I watched him chew over his words. I didn’t want any more shit this month so, with a gentle smile, I slipped my hands around his waist and kissed him gently. He didn’t respond at first but when I pulled away he sort of leant with me as if not wanting to stop.

“I only have eyes for you,” I repeated what he’d told me months before. “I promise.”

With a resigned smile, he nodded and looked away.

“And I do believe we’re going to miss the other, more talented Franceschi sibling,” I teased, reaching up on my tip toes to give him one small peck.

“Oh ha ha,” he said sarcastically as I led him by the hand back to our seats. With a quick glance I saw Alex’s torn face watching us, a wrung up bar cloth in his hand. My heart sank into my stomach as we rejoined the happy, bubbling group of perfect friends.

Elissa’s set was amazing but I think I was one of the few on our table to pay attention to her beautiful music. Athina, Emily, Josh and Max were all watching the bar with different expressions. I did my best to ignore everyone and focus on the wonderful music Elissa was filling the bar with. Every time we wanted a new drink, despite my offers, everyone beat me to it with glances at Josh’s fixed frown.

“That girl is watching you,” I heard Athina whisper to Matt. A blonde was assessing the back of Matt’s head. He turned around in ‘surprise’ but he couldn’t hide the small smug smile.

“They’re all watching the table,” Emily added in a hushed voice, her eyes locked on the table of smiling girls. One met my gaze and looked away to whisper something in her friends ear. I would put money that Athina, Emily, Georgina and I weren’t the most liked people at the table.

“Told you you were getting famous,” I noted, nudging Josh in the side. He wasn’t paying attention.

“Elissa!” Max cried, focusing all of our attention for the first time on the glowing woman walking towards us. She looked incredibly happy.

“That was brilliant!”

“You have a beautiful voice!”

“Can see where he gets it from.”

“Amazing Liz.”

“Thanks guys,” she laughed, smiling joyfully at us as if the music she’d just played was filled up inside her. She was just radiating happiness.

“Drinks on me,” Josh said, squeezing his sister’s hand as he got to his feet. I made to get up but Chris beat me to it. I growled and sunk back down into my seat. Max raised an eyebrow at me but I just shook my head.

“Best set yet,” I said softly to Elissa, pulling out Josh’s seat for her to sit on. “You’re gonna beat this lot to it.”

Before Elissa could reply, Emily kicked me under the table. Surprisingly, Georgina cried out in pain too. I shot Emily a glare but followed her jerking head towards the bar. Confusion flooded my mind at first. Alex was at the opposite end of the bar to the guys and was serving a boy I recognised from my English class. Then I found Josh and Chris standing and talking to two girls as the other bartender mixed our drinks.

They were in heels, extensions down to their waists, and short skirts that were revealing a bit too much. They were leaning provocatively on the bar but were chatting friendly to the guys. Josh actually laughed at something one of the girls said. I knew all the girls around the table were watching but the rest of the boys were still chatting away, not noticing.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like how anger started to burn in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like the stab of jealousy through my chest. I yearned to do something about it but knew there was nothing to be done. I couldn’t controlled who he talked to. This was something I was going to need to learn to manage.

I noticed every detail. The girls did their best to hold their gazes with wide flirtatious eyes. When they did look away, they assessed the boys with hungry eyes. They said things to please them because the boys were laughing and smiling. The skinny dark girl put her hand on his arm and I thought I was going to lose it. I dug my nails into the bottom of the chair before standing up and storming pointedly over towards the bar.

I rolled my eyes at Alex when he looked at me, nodding my head towards the guys, he laughed and shook his head. I slid my way in between Chris and Josh, sliding my arm around Josh’s waist and pulling him to grab his attention.

“Need any help carrying the drinks babe?” I cooed, my voice surprisingly high. I don’t think I’d ever called Josh ‘babe’ but I wanted to make my point. He and Chris exchanged a confused glance but I smiled, pleased, when the girls looked at each other miserably.

“Uhhh,” he started, baffled but I was pleased when he slid his arm around me too. I smiled falsely at the girls giving me evils.

“Come join us later if you want,” the smaller of the two said, her eyes flashing meaningfully to the boys before they turned and walked away. Locking my teeth together, I turned around and picked up the drinks Josh had bought for me and Elissa and went to sit back down. Josh caught my arm on my second trip up.

“What the hell is going on?” he whispered, his lips inches from my ear.

“If you’re going to be jealous about Alex, I can be jealous about some stupid random whores okay?” I hissed, sliding out of his grasp to fetch Athina and Emily’s drinks. “Hi Alex.”

***

The band actually couldn’t go anywhere local anymore without being noticed. It was becoming really… annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I was really pleased for them but it was tiring to listen to mindless compliments and to be glared at by girls I didn’t even know. Was this the life I wanted? Josh and the guys were happy enough with their fame, but did they realise the effect they were having on some of us? I knew the rest of the girls weren’t exactly happy with the hateful attention towards them. Wait. What was I even thinking? Life without my boys? Life without Josh? That was worse. I was just going to have to suck up my pride and grin and bare it.

I soon noticed it was Emily, Georgina, Lucy and I, the closest to the band, who were getting tired of the attention. Charlie and Harry were loving it, girls were all over them but it was to get closer to the band. It was ridiculous! Athina had fame in her own right thanks to her band – Consort With Romeo. It was at their latest concert things started to get more noticeable.

“I think I’m actually starting to hate this,” I breathed, staring blankly at the group of girls talking to Dan, Matt and Harry.

“Don’t think anything of it,” Georgina assured. I turned to look at her calm face. How could she not be bothered by all this? “It’s part of the deal,” she explained, laughing at my horrified face. “You can’t expect girls not to go after them, I bet they’ve even had their fair of flirting from boys by now.”

I laughed meekly, sinking lower into the squishy booth chair at the back of the venue. Consort With Romeo were tearing it up but I just didn’t have it in me to get up and party. I wasn’t happy at the moment and I couldn’t really place my finger on it. I’d patched things up properly from all the mistakes I’d caused but I still wasn’t happy in my life.

“When was the last time you saw Chris properly?” I asked Georgina whilst watching Ashley and Max heading towards the bar with some pretty skinny girls. Lucy was watching them resentfully.

“Ummm.” He hesitant pause turned my full attention to her. “I don’t know.”

“You too huh?” I asked miserably. “They’re so busy. So much damn band practice!”

Georgina smiled weakly.

“It’s what they want to do. We can’t get in the way of their dream.”

Damn it. I knew she was right but I couldn’t help the feeling of pining for Josh in the pit of my stomach.

As we finally came into the start of February things didn’t look any better from our points of view. I wanted to punch so many girls it was unbelievable. I did find someone I could rant and rave to – Alex. He was strangely understanding but I didn’t care, he was the only one that would listen to my trivial troubles.

What was wrong with me? Did I really think Josh would cheat? No! That was silly… But then I thought of Terri and how she’d forced herself on him. It wasn’t like a situation couldn’t happen like that again. What if he got really drunk and went along with it? Alex was the one voicing these fears to me.

Worse trouble came in the form of Amelia and Genna. I ran into them at college. I’d been polite and such since the incident with Ashley but we’d more or less kept our distances. They oddly reminded me of how Katie reacted when she started fucking off with other people. I got glares, awkward smiles, and uncomfortable conversations. Then I realised there was shit going around about Josh and his band. Apparently they were abusing their position and sleeping around with some desperate fans.

It was Booley who pulled us over to one side to ask about it.

“No!” Josh and I exclaimed loudly causing him to take step back.

“And…” Booley paused, hesitantly watching us, then he looked at me. “Apparently you’ve been fucking that Alex kid.”

“Oh dear God,” I breathed whilst Josh’s fists clenched together. “It’s the same as before except it’s flipped! It’s him I’m supposedly fucking now not you!”

“Great I can go sock him one, he did me,” Josh growled and I winced at the bloody memory.

“Please just leave it,” I asked quietly. “Booley none of this shit is true and it’d be very nice if you could tell people that.”

Then he was off to his next lesson leaving me alone with Josh. I looked up at him and smiled awkwardly.

“Neither of us have been sleeping with others right?”

There was a flicker of a smile on his face but he shook his head.

“I think I’m going to kill them,” Josh finally said, staring off into space as if he was picturing scenarios.

“You already have a song for this,” I argued. “You can’t get anything else out of this case, leave it to me.”

Josh grumbled something in reply before turning on his heel and leaving for his class. He never gave me hugs anymore, or kisses goodbye, things were becoming… different.

I wandered around, looking for the two culprits in my free lesson to keep my focus on them instead of my increasing troubles with Josh. I found them sitting in the college café. Trying to keep a maturely calm face, I walked over and raised my eyebrows at them.

“Jasey?” Genna acknowledged me but I could hear the snide edge in her voice. She pushed her fringe out of her eyes to look at me.

“Why are you spreading shit around?” I asked bluntly. “None of us fucking need this right now.”

“We’re not spreading shit,” Amelia said without looking up at me. “We can’t help it if people hear what we’ve heard off other people.”

“That’s utter crap,” I spat. “Jeez, my friends have been right for ages! You girls are bad people.”

Amelia and Genna exchanged a long look and I let out a sound of disgust. Words could not escape my mouth. I was slightly wounded that they didn’t give a shit about me when they’d been my ‘friends’ for ages. With tears of anger forming, I stormed from the café and decided to go for a walk. Josh was in class it looked like there was only one person I could turn to…

***

“Don’t even think about it,” Alex reassured, pulling his head down after checking it had finally stopped raining. My hair was wet, my hands frozen against the empty take away coffee cup.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I’d ranted to him for about an hour about how girls were made of nothing but crap. I liked venting my anger by ranting, it was very soothing… But it did seem Alex was the only one up for listening to the shit I had to say.

“Don’t mention it,” he chuckled, unzipping his hoody and putting it over my shoulders. Ahh crap. I wanted to protest but I was fucking freezing! Too many memories, good and bad, came flooding back.

“Right, I better get to class,” I sighed, turning to face him, glancing at the building. A few passing people were staring at us. I HATE RUMOURS. Feeling like I wanted to punch one of the ogling passers by, Alex swept me up in an unexpected ‘goodbye hug’. Despite it being short and sweet, it was enough time to realise he did that a lot, unlike some people I knew. This just added another dash of anger to my bubbling poison at the pit of my stomach. I pulled away and said goodbye, heading towards the building but stopped at the sight of Josh. He was staring at me, irritation etched on his face, accompanied by three interested girls from his history class.

Could things get any worse?

***

“Alright I’m sorry!” Josh’s voice hissed in my ear from small device in my hand. I began pacing my bedroom to try and calm myself down. “I forgot about it okay?”

“Forgot? Forgot we arranged to meet at seven?” I growled fiercely back. “The one chance to be alone this week and you forgot?”

“I’m only human Jase! I didn’t do it on purpose!”

“I stood outside that cinema for an hour, alone, in the rain,” I punctuated each syllable as the anger pounded against my veins. I glanced in the mirror at my drenched hair.

“I am really sorry! I got caught up at Max’s, we were talking about ideas of the album and then Sarah and Cat came around-”

“Who?” I demanded, clutching my phone tighter. I knew those names.

“Sarah and Catrin, from our college? They know Max,” he explained as casually as he could, but there was something in his voice. I couldn’t tell if it was guilt or the beginnings of anger. Then I could hear the defensive edge that pushed me over the line. “And what does it matter who they are? I thought you an Al-”

I hung up there.

I took all my strength not to throw my phone out of the window.

***

“Have you talked to him?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

I wasn’t sure of my response. I felt so strongly that I was in the right that it was overpowering my pining within.

“I just can’t take it anymore,” I sighed, slipping down my chair even further and pressing my fingertips to my temples. “I’m sick of all the fake people, all the fake shit that comes out of people’s mouths. I’m sick of getting glares from jealous girls. I’m even sick of people that I thought were friends. I mean Charlie really hurt Emily and Matt.”

“What happened?” Alex interjected, leaning forwards, raising his eyebrows in curiosity. I sighed again, resisting the urge to roll my eyes at telling the tale yet again.

“A few days ago they went out to this party sort of thing, or get together or whatever, but it was through the band that everyone got the invite.”

“Oh Laura’s place? Yeah! I think I saw them for a bit, her house is huge mind,” Alex laughed but fells silent at my glaring expression. “Sorry.”

“Well, I turned it down cause I still hadn’t spoken to Josh and really glad I didn’t. I wasn’t up for watching girls all over them. Well apparently, Charlie and Harry got as much attention as the band but the rest of the girls got shoved to the side and spent the evening listening to spiteful comments.” I recalled a few of the names Emily had said they’d been called that evening. Poor Georgina. I took a deep breath and carried on. “Well after a few drinks, Charlie can get… a bit too cocky. He was with the band all night and had all these girls around him talking utter shit, tugging on his shirt, hand, flirting like fuck and he was enjoying every fucking minute of it. I think Emily left with Lucy at that point because they just couldn’t take it anymore. Matt was telling me the other day how Charlie, Harry and people are only interested when there’s a party or a performance or whatever where there’s loads of people. They’re getting pretty sick of it all.”

“And it’s just the guys yeah?” Alex asked slowly.

I frowned at him, picking up my coffee to take a long sip of the now cold liquid.

“What’d you mean?”

“What, you don’t know? I guess it kind of makes sense, I mean Emily and such left…”

“Alex what are you talking about?” I demanded, slamming my mug down.

“Summer tried getting on Josh,” he said ruefully, watching me carefully.

I bit down extremely hard on my tongue. Summer? Summer? My friend Summer? The adorable cute Summer that was always so lovely and innocent? Summer who’d been a great friend to me, to us all. I didn’t speak. I let Alex carry on.

“They were in the dining room, it wasn’t just Josh mind, she was trying it on with all of them,” he added quickly and for some reason, I really wanted to cry, but again, I held my tongue.

With a shake of my head, I got up to my feet and left Starbucks. I couldn’t handle this anymore.

***

I finally answered on the twelfth attempt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the phone.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I groaned, climbing into my bed. I was so tired. “Josh please, I need to get some sleep.”

“I’m sorry I forgot about our cinema trip,” he tried, there was real innocence in his voice. “Please Jase?”

It wasn’t just about the cinema trip. I wasn’t just upset about him forgetting our date. I couldn’t handle the girls, the fake shit, the lies, the hectic schedules, the lack of a normal life. I wanted to say all this but I didn’t.

“Goodnight Joshua,” I replied in a heavy sigh, slipping into my covers, letting my head hit the comfy pillow. I closed my phone, letting it drop out of my hand and I was out within two minutes.

I had really weird dreams that night. There was this buzzing that came and went, like a fly was following me, but every time I turned around, there was nothing there. I kept hearing my name too. Josh’s muffled voice but he was never in reach. He was always stood miles away from me, leaning forwards and calling for me. All these girls kept beating me to where I couldn’t get. I saw Summer, always three steps ahead of me, her eyes in slits, a smug smile on her painted lips. Charlie came along, he hooked me around the waist and pulled me away from where I was. I passed Dan, Chris, Matt and Max who watched me go without concern and then he dumped me next to Alex. Strong Alex, glowing with some beauty of an angel, his arms wrapped around me trying to comfort me but at the same time, not letting me escape. Josh appeared opposite me, watching me in Alex’s arms with a look so full of hatred it physically hurt. Then there were these loud thuds, like a bird flying into the glass over and over again. I kept hearing my name and the buzzing all the while, Josh was glaring at me like I was dirt on his shoe. When he turned, there was a bloody knife sticking out of his back-

I woke with a start. My heartbeat surprisingly fast. I rolled onto my back, trying to think about what I’d just dreamt before it slipped through my fingers like water. The expressions on everyone’s faces – the acceptance, the hatred. I shivered, glancing at my window, I’d forgot to shut the curtains. The sky outside was a coral pink tinged with orange, the sun was rising over the house opposite. I shivered. I’d also forgot to close my small window. Unable to take any of the cold, I climbed out of bed and yanked the freezing handle shut. Then I paused. There were stones littered on the window sill outside. I frowned, glancing around my room and noticed two on my carpet. Someone had been throwing stones at my window?

Suddenly very awake, I launched myself at my bed and searched for my phone. With a loud groan, my worst fears were confirmed. I had twenty missed calls and seven new messages all from Josh. They changed in tone from pleading to angry.

The last text read ‘Forget it.’

Josh had come to my house in the early hours of the morning to apologise. My heart slid into my knotted stomach as I tried and tried again to get hold of him. He wouldn’t answer.