I Believe in Yesterday

Bailey's POV

The morning sun was rising and the orange rays beamed off the leaves on the trees and also into the windows of my car, forcing me to flip down the visor. Light dew was sprinkled over the blades of grass, still in the process of evaporating into the warmer air. I drove down the familiar streets, curving around turns that I could probably take with my eyes closed.

In the midst of adjusting my rear view mirror to see my reflection, my pocket continued to persistently vibrate from my cell phone, meaning someone was impatient for my arrival. I simply ignored it, again, and went back to fixing my short brown hair in the mirror. After tucking a chunk behind my ear, I put my attention back to the road. I could hear a bag of my luggage fall off the back seat and hit the ground after I took a sharp turn too fast. Sometimes I forgot that Alex and Rian’s neighborhood wasn’t a freeway; I drove to their house too much.

I had been driving for twenty minutes and finally came across a small white house. I pulled into the tightly packed driveway and parked next to two recognizable cars. Along side Jack and Zack’s cars, a big SUV was waiting to be packed up. Outside, luggage was lined up across the driveway. Suitcases, boxes, instruments and other random junk the boys felt they needed, were all waiting to be loaded into the truck and driven to be loaded onto the tour bus.

I hopped out of the car, a little spark inside me jumping excitedly, and proceeded to pull my white skinny jeans down and adjust my pink v-neck. A little chill from the late morning air hit my bare arms as I walked around to open the car door, revealing my luggage for the trip ahead of me.

The suitcases and bags in from of me reminded me of when I moved out to California for college. That was two years ago; time had gone by so fast. Of course, now I wasn’t moving and there were a lot less cardboard boxes. It would look like this again when I’d have to back to Stanford in January once fall semester was over.

I grabbed the heavy bags and threw them over my shoulder and carried the rest in my hands, adamant on making only one trip. As I walked past all the items the boys had placed outside, I felt a twist of anticipation in my stomach again, energized for the day ahead of me. Before I tapped on the door, I felt my back pocket vibrate again but not even a second later, the door swung open and a very distraught Jack stood in the doorway.

Wearing black skinny jeans and simple red tee, his black hair had blond highlights that had grown out to the tips of his long bangs. With a phone in his hand, the impatient look on his face turned excited once he saw that I had arrived.

“THANK GOD! Bailey is here, guys!” I didn’t hear anyone share in the same enthusiasm that Jack had, but he grabbed my arm and I felt myself being yanked in the door. The smell of coffee slapped me in my face after I stepped inside the house. The warm, brown painted walls added to the homey smell of morning that always lingered in Alex and Rian’s house. Jack quickly unloaded some of the bags from my shoulders and I followed, letting the rest of the bags slip to the floor.

“Um, hi?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, hi. Look. We need you to make breakfast,” he said in a hurry.

“We?!” I heard a voice shouting in contradiction to Jack from another room.

“Yeah, okay fine, I need you to make breakfast.” He started to pull on my arm to try and yank me towards the kitchen.

I barely had time to slip off my flip flops before I started to be dragged behind Jack, catching my foot and stumbling on the rug. “Jeez, calm down, Jack Torrance.”

“I can’t! Alex is refusing to cook! And I’m hungry!” After Jack brought it up, I noticed that was the only thing missing from the aroma of the house; Alex always made breakfast. When I entered the kitchen, I saw said chef sitting at the kitchen table with his feet up on the tabletop, playing on his iPhone and a smirk on his face.

Walking past him, I smacked the back of his head, making his hood fall off his head. “Bitch,” he muttered, pulling the hood back over his messy brown hair and going back to playing on one of his apps. I smiled silently at him, knowing he didn’t mean it. Alex and I had grown so much closer over the past two years. The weirdest thing about that was that Alex and I didn’t have a lot in common. We had different interests, different senses of humor and different views on things but got along well. With Alex added to Jack’s persistency, the combination really brought me out of my shell.

As Rian entered the kitchen, I was leaned up against the center island counter. In one of his hands was a coffee cup and tucked under the other was a box full of disorderly papers.

“Hey, Bailey,” he greeted me cheerfully. He still hadn’t shaved, so the stubble on his chin was about as long as the hair on his shaved head.

“Hi, Ri,” I smiled back; his smile was so infectious. After we exchanged greetings, I pulled out a pan to make French toast for Jack.

“I love you, BayBay!” Jack screamed, grabbing onto my arm and sobbing lightly. I tried to lightly shake him off, but he just clung tighter, so I let Jack create his scene for a minute while I waited for the pan to head up.

“Pah!” Alex scoffed from behind me. “Having Bailey cook is almost as bad as not eating at all.” I made an offended face at him. “Don’t even look at me like that, Bailey,” Alex laughed at me. I couldn’t hold the face anymore and let a tiny smile show. I was a horrible cook; I couldn’t deny that. Living with Clara sure didn’t improve my catering skills. I brushed the insult off, not letting it bother me, and dug around in the cupboards to find ingredients to mix into the egg batter.

As my fork twirled in the egg batter, my mind wandered. Instead of Alex, Jack and Rian’s voices, I heard others clouding reality.

I started taking out the ingredients we would need to make the pancakes and Sam got the stove ready.

“Bailey Olivia!” I heard Jade yell from the living room. “Where is the remote?!”

I snickered to myself and patted my sweatpants’ pocket where the chunk of plastic was resting.

“You are such a mean sister,” Sam joked and ruffled my hair before starting to stir the ingredients in the giant mixing bowl.

I smirked and swatted his hand away, “I know.”

After spilling the bowl full of batter down my front, Sam burning his fingers and breaking one of our mother’s special plates, we finally got the pancakes baking. I didn’t mind all the troubles though. Even though pancake Saturdays went a little smoother than that, I still enjoyed baking with my brother.

“Are the pancakes ready yet?” Jade asked bored, dragging out the syllables.

“Yep!” I carried the plate of pancakes over to the table, Sam grabbed the peanut butter and syrup and Jade grabbed the plates and silverware.

“Okay!” Sam clapped his hands together and looked around the table. “Jade, chocolate chip pancake for you. Plain pancake for Jazz. And blueberry for me!”

“Thank you Samuel,” I said with a high pitched voice as I batted my eye lashes at him. He sneered back at me for using his full name with his green eyes that were the exact same color and shape as me and Jade. His hair bridged the gap between Jade’s thick, dirty blonde hair and my dark, stringy brown strands. Sometimes it felt like he wasn’t two years older and was the triplet of Jade and I never had.

A quiet exhale of breath came from my mouth when the memory ended and I faintly heard more footsteps approaching the kitchen against the wood floor. From where I stood swirling my fork around in the yellow eggs, I could see Zack enter from the same way Rian had, carrying even more papers and folders. He smiled at me and set down his load to walk over to me. I stood, still preoccupied with swirling the egg covered bread around, but I felt his arms drape loosely around my waist from behind. He let them rest lightly and then planted a kiss on the back of my neck. After mumbling a greeting into my skin, I tingled a little from the touch and smiled cheekily at his charm.

Flipping the dripping bread over in the pan, I turned around as it sizzled and wrapped my arms around my neck. “Good morning to you too,” I stated, giving him a quick kiss on the lips.

I could start to smell the waft of French toast and turned to walk with Zack to join Rian and Jack at the island. “What are all these papers for?” I asked curiously, shuffling though the piles of paperwork.

Rian looked up from sorting the papers into folders. “It’s all the information about the headliner.”

“Isn’t that Mickey Flyzik’s job?” I asked dumbly, studying the papers with directions, bills, layouts and instructions. Matt agreed to go with All Time Low on their first tour straight out of high school, and surprisingly enough, he has stuck with them ever since and has been a great tour manager. I didn’t know how he did it; to get all four boys to cooperate was a convoluted process.

I heard Alex speak up finally with another loud scoff. “Yeah, he had everything organized and dropped it off last night with some of his other stuff so he didn’t need to load it today. But dick hole here,” he waved distractedly at Jack, “decided to sleepover last night.”

“Hey! We’re besties!” Jack defended.

“And what does he do at two in the morning? Wake up my dog and chase him around, consequently, knocking over all the fucking papers.” Alex finally tore his eyes away from his phone and looked up at me. “Hence the reason all the papers are in a mess, not in their correct folders, we’re forced to organize them so Matt doesn’t flip, and I’m not making breakfast.”

After listening to Alex, it made sense that Jack wanted me to make breakfast. Of all people, I would be the last person Jack would ask for breakfast. But Jack never accepted responsibility, so I’m sure that Alex’s punishment of not making breakfast didn’t bother him.

I nodded and shot Jack a look. “When is Matt coming over, by the way?”

“He’s not,” Zack said, shuffling through papers. “We’re picking him up at his house later today. He just wanted us to load this in the trailer, because when he meets us to load the bus, the trailer won’t be there. He’ll just have his luggage to load instead of all the manager shit.” I nodded again, knowing all the tour plans worked out perfectly.

I was surprised at how well the guys got the tour put together and accomplished. I was positive there had been outside help as well as experience, because hell, the four boys could not do it on their own. They were going on their first headlining tour after their first full length album was released, so everything had to be perfect. They had been on plenty of tours before, but they were really excited about this particular one.

I, on the other hand, had never gone on tour with the boys. I had visited them for a couple days when they were close by California or Maryland, depending on the time of year, but I had never tagged along on a full tour. The only time I went with them was to record So Wrong It’s Right, and trust me, there was no process to them there.

The tour would last through November, perfect timing for me to go off to college again to start the winter semester. I couldn’t have been more excited to have time to travel with the boys I loved. School, jobs and family had always gotten in the way before, but I had a feeling that by taking the short fall semester off, it was going to be just like old times.

I was pulled out of my smiling thought by yelling from Jack and Alex. “Ah fuck! The house is going to burn down! Oh fuck, get the fire extinguisher!!”

I jumped in surprise and turned back to the stove, where the French toast was completely black and smoking in a burning pan. “Ah shit! Shit!”

“I’m glad Bailey sucks at cooking; you deserve it, Jack,” Rian laughed, turning off the burner for me and cleaning up his stove. I dropped my jaw in offence, but after pointed looks from all four of them I stopped and accepted Rian’s comment.

I stared at the black piece of bread with a scrunched up face. When someone else made the breakfast for me, and then I ate the fluffy food, always worked out better.

“Where’s mom?” Jade asked with a mouth full of fluffy pancakes.

“Work.”

“Dad?”

“Work,” Sam replied wryly. I laughed a tiny bit under my breath. We usually got the house to ourselves Saturday afternoon to hang out without being bothered by our friends or doing homework.

I felt my phone vibrate against my leg in my sweatpants and I reached in to get it.

“Hey! You have the remote!” Jade yelled and pointed an accusing finger at me. I looked down at the supposed-to-be phone in my hand which instead held the T.V. remote.

Sam was chuckling beside me and Jade reached across the table to try and grab the remote that I stole from her instead she knocked over Sam’s glass of milk with her elbow.

“Jade!” Sam yelled surprised and stood up quickly to avoid the milk spilling over the edge of the table.

“Oops,” Jade smiled cutely and I just laughed at the two.

“You suck,” Sam stated, a smile peeking through his statured face.

“You love me.”

Sam glowered a bit but then broke in to his cheeky grin, “Yeah…I do.” He started wiping his pants with his napkin and then proceeded to throw it at Jade’s head.

“Ha ha, Sam peed his pants!” I giggled and pointed at Sam, taunting him.

“Hey, shut it, Jazz.” He ripped a piece of his pancake and flung it at me. Smiles broke out on all our faces and we each reached towards the center of the table to grab the pancakes of the plates and started throwing little dry chunks at each other. The feathery cut up pieces were getting stuck in my bed hair and going down my baggy sweatshirt causing the smell of the pancakes to overwhelm the kitchen and flow into my nose along with the warm smell of sweet butter and the sound of all of our laughs that swirled around in the air.

“Jack!” I laughed, pressing my head to my shoulder to try and avoid the little pieces of burnt bread that were being thrown at me. “Jack, stop!” I never let him beat me up, I always fought back. Locating some of the pieces that had hit me, I started to fling them back at him.

“Hey! Grease on the papers? Matty will not be happy,” Rian warned us. I looked around at the pieces of bread and decided to leave it up to Jack. Instead, I slid over next to Zack, bumping into his left shoulder, where a tattoo of a storm was inked.

I looked up at him and studied his thick jaw line and hard, focused eyes. His curly hair was long and falling over his hazel eyes and as we stood close, his skin was heated and muscles were prominent, meaning he most likely had already worked out his morning.

A little blush rose in my cheeks once Zack turned his head to look at me and caught me staring. He simply smiled attentively and then moved his foot to tangle with mine as we stood.

“So, why didn’t Matt come over in the morning like me? You just make me come over early and no one else?”

“Shit, Jazz. You’re just full of questions this morning, aren’t ya?” Alex said smiling crookedly at me and poking my side as I he left the kitchen.

“Supposedly,” Rian said scandalously, “Matt is bringing along a “friend” and they are last minute so they need to finish packing.”

“Really? So I’ll have someone who isn’t a grimy, grubby boy on the bus with me? Yay!” I was excited to make a new friend; she would keep me company while the boys are busy. Melanie was tagging along too, but it would be fun to meet someone new.

“I hope she is a lesbian.”

Alex walked back in the kitchen with a paper and looked at Jack, “Damn, what did I miss?”

The rest of us were silent and looked at Jack for some explanation. When didn’t get one, Zack spoke up for all of us, “What the fuck would that do, Jack?”

“Well, Bailey is a girl and Matt’s “friend” is a girl-”

“Unless Matt’s gay…It makes sense.”

“-we could totally get them drunk and then they will make out!”

“Dude,” Zack said, pulling me towards him.

“Oh come on, Zack,” Alex protested. “You can give Jazz up for a night. It’s for the good of the group.” Jack smiled goofily and held out a fist for Alex to pound.

Zack laughed and complied, “Yeah, she’s pretty sexy. I guess I shouldn’t keep her all to myself; girl on girl action, bra!”

“Great!” Rian clapped his hands. “This way we won’t need that stack of ones we packed, guys.”

I looked around at the amused faces of the four boys. “Hell no!”

“Oh come on, Bailey. It would just be that one time, cheese whiz.”

“I don’t care, I wo—what?”

Jack cocked his head to the side and looked at me, “What, what?”

“Jack,” Zack said confused, “Did you just say cheese whiz?”

“Yeah…?” All four of us stared at him blankly, completely blown with confusion. Jack looked confused too, but he didn’t understand why we thought it was so weird. “You know, like, when you can’t believe something? ‘I can’t believe it, cheese whiz!’”

I decided to speak up for all of us, “Umm…I think you mean ‘gee whiz,’ Jacky.”

I giggled and smiles crept on the boys’ faces at Jack’s face. “What? But…but…Dammit.”