Catastrophic Happenings

Austin tried to make sense of his emotions as they finished their lunch. He had been around Azalea constantly for the last few weeks, but had never sensed any intimate feelings for her. He couldn’t understand how strong feelings could come up so suddenly. They were hardly even friends. But looking at her now, with her boyfriend’s arm around her shoulders, Austin realized that he wouldn’t feel jealous if there wasn’t something he desired that he couldn’t have. And the realization was hitting him now with full force, like a flash flood.

And it was probably the worst time for him to deal with his crush on Azalea. They would be spending the majority of practice together since they were in charge of lyrics, and Rick was so adamant about getting their first song finished. And in close proximity would be Ben, the boyfriend. Austin sighed and started to put more time in between his bites. He wanted to delay the start of practice as much as possible, but despite his efforts they were making their way to Azalea’s basement sooner than he would have liked.

“So I know that Cade and Sammy have been working on some music and Austin and Azalea have spun out some lyrics. But neither of you has anything completed. I’m gonna give you guys each an hour or two to finish what you have, and then we’ll get together and hopefully before it gets dark we’ll have some sort of a song put together. Deal?”

They all nodded, then Cade and Sammy headed towards the instruments while Austin, Azalea, and Ben made their way towards the couch.

Azalea took Ben’s hand and said, “Hey sorry, babe. I didn’t know that Rick was going to have us work on making a song all day. You should go; it’ll be really boring if you stick around.”

Austin rolled his eyes and plopped down on the couch, waiting for them to finish.

“No, it’s okay,” he smiled.

“No,” Azalea emphasized. “Go hang out with your friends or something. And I’ll call you when we actually start playing music.”

“You sure?”

She nodded, and planted a quick kiss on his lips. “Now get out of here.”

“You better call me to come back,” he warned. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said before he let go of her hand and walked towards the staircase.

“Ready?” Austin asked impatiently when she sat next to him on the couch.

“Yes,” she declared before reaching behind to fetch her laptop off of the side table. Much to Austin’s dismay Azalea convinced him that typing the lyrics was more efficient that a pen and paper.

While they waited for her computer to load, Austin thought of ways to subtly find out more about Ben.

“It’s a shame Ben didn’t make it to our gig last night,” he brought up. “We killed.”

She frowned, “Yeah, it sucked. But there’ll be plenty more opportunities in the future.”

“So how’d you two meet?”

“What are you doing?” she asked defensively.

His eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”

Azalea shrugged, “What’s with all of the questions? You don’t have to do that, you know. I’m not one of those girls that only talks about their boyfriend. We have had conversations before this.”

Austin tried to play it off, “Just curious to see what kind of crazy guy would date you.”

“Very funny,” she replied dryly.

Azalea turned her attention back to her computer and didn’t speak until after the document was pulled up. “I’ll tell you what,” she said to Austin as she remembered the conversation that took place over lunch. “I’ll answer whatever questions you have about Ben and I if I can find out about ‘she who must not be named.’”

Austin immediately tensed up at the mention of his ex-girlfriend. He weighed the proposal in his head. It wasn’t worth it.

“So about these lyrics?” Azalea asked smugly in victory.

He glared, “Yeah, we should get on those.”

Azalea scooted over on the cough so they both could see the screen. She sat Indian style so her leg was practically overlapping his and every time she’d type her arm would rub against his.

Though the song they were working on wasn’t about love, their closeness made Austin have erotic words cross his mind too frequently for the next two hours.