Hold On Till May

Aurora woke up the next morning to hot, heavy sensations draping her entire body, making her feel like she was being suffocated by nothing but heat. She opened her eyes expecting a bright, sunny NYC day, but that's the opposite of what she got. It was storming; it was storming the type of storm that she loved more than life itself. Through the hangover, she forced a smile, okay that it wasn't bright and sunny. Anyway, that would make all of them feel shittier if it was that way. She looked down at her body, trying to figure out what was making her feel such warmth and realized that the boys at her sides were sprawled out in odd positions due to their drunken slumber. Zack's leg was laying across both of hers with his foot landing against Alex's shin, Alex's arm was resting carefully across her stomach with his hand tucked in underneath her back, and both of the boys had their heads smashed up against her. Alex's head in the crook of her neck, Zack's right up against her arm. She smiled at the sight of the two of them even if it looked absolutely ridiculous, but then she frowned at the thought of moving and possibly waking her two precious friends. Slowly, she tried to maneuver her way out of their grips, waking up Zack by accident. Alex was too heavy of a sleeper to nudge awake softly.

"Morning?" Zack asked. His voice was scratchy and sleepy, making Aurora crack a tiny small.

"Yes, dear." She finished climbing off of the bed and walking through the mess that was Jack and Rian on the floor that lead to the bathroom. She giggled and rolled her eyes at the sight of them almost cuddling because Rian wasn't usually a part of the accidental sleep cuddling equation.

Before entering the bathroom, she dug through her purse and pulled out a bottle of Advil for her friends, setting it in the middle of the table so they'd be sure to see it no matter what.

"Mom?" Jack mumbled in his sleep loud enough for Aurora to hear as she started the shower. He slowly awoke from his deep sleep and rubbed his eyes for what felt like a lifetime to him. In fact, he almost fell back asleep in the process. Finally, he sat up and groaned while trying to lift his head. Looking over at Rian who was curled up against his said, he frowned, not realizing what was happening. Jack spotted Zack stumbling his way towards the couches with a sour look on his face. "Morning, buddy." Zack raised his hand towards his friend before Jack himself got up from the floor, groaning in agony from the hard floor beneath him, and made his way over towards the couches. "Nervous?"

Zack slowly turned his head towards Jack and analyzed his face, trying to figure out why he was asking this question the second that he woke up. "You too, huh?" The boy sighed and looked down at his knees with a empathetic smile.

"I mean, yeah, of course." Jack tried to shrug it off, but on the inside he was feeling like he was about to throw up all over the hotel room. And it defiantly wasn't from the booze that the group consumed just hours before. Jack and his feelings weren't something that he ever tried to reach out to someone, but Zack knew exactly what he was feeling.

"We're going to do good, man." He smiled over at his friend who looked like he was ready to fall back asleep, but Jack just started to chuckle nervously at his statement. Neither one of them knew how to exactly feel.

In the background, they heard a shifting sound as Alex was waking up, tossing over and over in the twisted bed sheets. "Aurora." He mumbled a few times while searching for her in the darkness of his own eyelids. Suddenly it struck him that she was nowhere near him and he slowly sat up in bed, trying to figure out where she could've gone and where he was, actually. That is until he spotted the rest of his band sitting in the lounge area of the room and the shower turned on.

"She's in there." Jack said while pointing towards the bathroom door. Alex raised his hand and placed the other over his eyes, sighing until he could fully collect himself enough to get the motivation to stand up and walk to where his friends were. It took him a while, but he finally did what he needed to do. He, like Aurora, was also happy that it was a dreary day outside. It made him feel less stressed about the band situation.

He sat on the couch that was adjacent to theirs and looked at both of them with a serious look. "I'm fucking hungry," he complained. That was the only thought that was going through the teenagers head, but both of his friends seemed to agree from the get-go, smiling relentlessly at the thought of food while simultaneously trying to calm the emptiness in their stomachs.

Aurora stepped out of the bathroom, fully dressed and ready to face this day that seemed to be like an anxious dream for the four teenage boys. She looked down at the ground and the still sleeping Rian while knitting her brows together with a confused look on her face. "Is he okay?" She pointed at him and walked past him loudly, trying to wake him up on her way back to her bag, but it didn't work. "Or alive. Is he alive?" Her voice was still filled with confusion, but this time there was a little of unnecessary panic.

"He's fine," Alex assured her. Rian was the lightest sleeper out of the five of them, but right now, that wasn't the case. Alex started to lean over as much as he could without falling to the floor all together and started to kick his friend in the side. When that didn't work, he placed his bare foot on Rian's face. In one sudden movement, Rian jerked awake, getting a little mad when he saw what was on his face. "See, told you." Aurora pursed her lips and stared at her friend on the floor.

"Good morning, sunshine." She smiled at him with her eyes wide open. "You hungry?" Rian nodded his head, still not in the mood to put words together and let them come out of his mouth. "I'll go get something from the lobby." Right then, all of the guys' faces looked grateful for having a tiny framed girl friend that was almost immune to hangovers after she got over the initial shock of it after waking up.

"I love her," Alex said while shaking his head and smiling to himself after the left the room. He meant it, but he also meant it in the way that his friends were thinking: they loved her because right now she was going to play the mother hen and get them food.

+++

It was five p.m. and they were off to blow the minds of record executives. All five of them were nervous. You could see it on their faces, hear it in their voices, and tell by their every movement of their shaking bodies. It wasn't normal for any of them to get this way, but this was going to be a huge thing for them and they were almost sure that they could ace this and play their little hearts out and win them over.

That is until they got two calls in a span of seventeen minutes and thirty-two seconds that were going to change this entire weekend.

They were just starting the engine of the band when Jack got a call from the record exec. He was excited to take the call, thinking that they were going to remind them about their appointment and tell them clearer directions.

"Hey, Randy," Jack greeted as slyly as possible, making the others chuckle at his voice. That is until his face dropped and his voice filled with utter disappointment. He said that he understood, that it was fine, followed by a series of mhm's and uh-huh's until he said goodbye. His friends waited for him to break the news, but he stayed silent with a defeated look on his face. "Fuck!" Jack screamed, punching his fists into the seat in front of him, making Zack's body move forwards with the force that came from Jack's skinny frame. "They signed someone last night!" He screamed with a ironic laugh, trying to make something terrible for the band into something humorous before it could become something funny for them. "He said he'd get back to us some other time because he really likes our sound."

A sea of groans and cuss words came from the four teenagers. All tight eyed with clenched jaws, feeling Jack's anger.

"Bullshit." Alex shook his head.

"This was a waste of a weekend." Rian added.

Zack just tried resisting pounding the dashboard, but didn't want for the car to go back to Baltimore in shreds.

"I'm sorry, guys." Aurora choked out, in disbelief of what was happening.

They sat in silence for the next thirteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds. They just wanted to make sense of everything, wondering if it was something that they were doing wrong with their music or if they should just give up because they were too young to go on about a dream. They were just high schoolers, who would want to sign them? But it's what they wanted, they were so close to being signed that they could almost taste it.

The silence was broken by Alex's phone ringing, making him scoff, not wanting to answer a phone from his own mother. "Hello?" His voice was filled with anger. He stayed silence, his face going into terror mode. His eyes searched for Aurora's in the dark van. He gulped and thanked his mom for calling with his voice trembling, not knowing what to do or say. "We'll be there as soon as possible," he assured Isobel. He hung up, the teenagers awaiting for more disappointing news to be dropped on them.

"We need to go back as quickly as possible." His voice was much more calm and collected than it had been when he was talking to his mom.

"Why?" Rian urged him to start talking.

"Something happened," he started to say, looking at Aurora with a sympathetic face and stopped, taking a deep breath in and searching for the correct words to say. "She said that everything was okay right now, but we need to get back because… because, uh, Mallory, is in the hospital right now and we just need to get back because she wants Princess to be by her right now." He gulped again, all four of the boys looking at her, searching for a reaction to overcome her. Her perfect weekend was ruined because of her mother, but right now it was something that she was used to. It was a tragedy in her mind because sometimes she just wanted a chance to be a normal teenager, without worrying about playing the parent to her own mother. "My mom is with her right now and so are Rian's parents." He told the girl. All she did was nod her head and laugh the same way that Jack did earlier.

There were no tears being shed just yet, just more silence and sympathetic hugs as they walked back into the hotel to gather their things and check out early.

"Unbelievable." That was the first thing that she said with an angry voice and a sorrow-filled face.