Time After Time

“Okay, so... I think the first step is to determine of what kind of job that you guys want. Of course you can do any casual job, for sure, but I think there will be higher pay if you guys work as musician. Maybe you can play as support band or something like that. What if we do this? Let's find the best music related job available in this area, then if you guys think there's still time and energy left and you want to work more, I can help you in term of making resume and applying for casual job. How does that sounds?”

“Brilliant.”

“Great.”

“Pure awesome.”

“Sounds promising.”

Rose smiled in relieve to know that the guys are pleased with her plan. “I know it's not going to be all fun and holiday, but hey, we got goal, right? Just sacrifice your time and then you can go back being really happy as a band again,” she said. Young Guns smiled.

“Alright, then,” said Gustav. “Let's do this.”

“I'll call Dan. I'm pretty sure he's not doing anything and he can let you guys know about what kind of job that you can do as musician.”

Everyone nodded in agreement while Gustav explained, “Dan is Gab's boyfriend. He's in a band as well and he also write songs and everything, so I reckon he might be a good place to start...”

Dan's full name is Daniel Butler. He was pretty much a complete opposition of Gabriella Hay. Gabriella had long dark hair, brown eyes, fair skin, slightly chubby cheeks, talkative (especially when it's about rock band) with cool, complicated looking clothes. She wear mostly black and bold colours with eye-catching pattern and picture. Dan, on the other hand, was tall, had light green eyes, skinny, pale and had light brown hair. He didn't talk much and he looked completely calm, almost uninterested, when he came to Gilbert's house.

“It's a great honour to meet you guys in person. Daniel Butler. Just call me Dan,” he said as he shook his hands with all Young Guns. He was as tall as Gustav and he wear plain brown T-shirt and dark blue jeans. He looked tired with black circle under his green eyes, but he always look tired as long as Rose could remember.

They sat and they talked about working opportunity as musician on that area. There were more job opportunity in Sydney and they can manage it by going to Sydney with car every once in a while. Job comes and go, so in the meantime, they will start working casual job in place like retail shop or even supermarket. Rose thought it was amazing that Gustav, John, Si, Ben and Fraser were quite adapted with the fact that they need to work hard, just like normal people.

Ben told Rose that if he weren't playing drums in Young Guns, there's a very high probability that he's working in a retail store now.

Days were flowing by, effortlessly, as they worked and worked and worked and worked hard every weekdays. On the weekend, they would treat themselves with a mini holiday to tourist places and Rose guiding them. Even though everyone was working really hard, the guys realised that Rose was the one who worked the hardest. She cooked for them and went home the latest at night. On one fine Saturday morning, when autumn slowly creeped unto Illawarra escarpment, Gustav woke up at seven in the morning to find Rose preparing breakfast for him and his best friend.

“Good morning,” he greeted her.

Rose gasped, “Oh! Gustav! Good morning. You're up early.” She smiled on the sight of him.

Gustav smiled as well, but his smile turned into long sigh as he said, “Rose, you're working really hard lately we barely see you. It's not like we don't like it. It's nice to spend some more time with Lestat. Everyone just love him.” He chuckled. “I can't believe you live for years with a creature that needs grooming every single day—the guys have fun with that, though.”

Rose chuckled as well.

“Gustav, all I want is to donate a big amount money to Young Guns.”

“Rose…”

“What?” she shrugged. “I really want you to sing again. What's wrong with another Young Guns' fan to work hard so she can donate more money for Gustav Wood's surgery? They're a very good band—ouch!”

They were already close, but Gustav jumped at her, hugging her so hard she almost felt like he was strangling her.

"Ouch! Ouch! Gustav! My back! Too—tight! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"

There was long silent as he softened his hug.

“… thank you, Rose. Thank… you… since the beginning, you are always… there… for me… even though I didn't tell you anything…”

She could hear him crying as his voice got hoarsed and hoarsed, so she cried as well. Tears were falling from her eyes, almost silently, before she spoke and she could hear her voice getting croaked and husky as well.

“No. Don't thank me know… thank me when you're back on stage, performing for the first concert for Young Guns' new album.”

He tightened his hug again, but Rose didn't mind.

“Okay, Gustav?”

“Okay, Rose…”

He hugged her for another minute before he pulled back and stroked her cheeks with his hands. Rose shuddered. Her face was completely red. She knew she'd looked weird because she just cried. But she smiled, because Gustav was smiling as well.

Another week passed and another weekend came.


On the next weekend, they watched movie together in Gilbert's big living room after they pushed all the sofas and coffee tables aside. They wanted to go out and have drinks before, but then they decided that they were too tired and staying at him and watching movie is the best option. They found some old movie in Gilbert's DVD collection and the movie was fine, only that the soundtrack really made everyone sleepy. It was so dreamy. There was a lot of scene on the forest, meadow and desert where all they can hear are wind, chirping birds and also soft music.

Before they knew it, everyone fell asleep, including Lestat who slept while John and Fraser were stroking his fur, but Rose and Gustav, who somehow managed to talk about the similarity between the main character of the movie and the main character on Stephen King's novel. After a while, they ran out of things to talk about and Rose just lied there, sleepily.

“Hey Gustav?”

“Mm?”

“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered.

He nodded, also sleepily, “What is it?”

“Sometimes I think whether my father would look like Gilbert... he has obsession for things that I would never understand. I don't know him at all and sometimes I wish even though I know that there's nothing I can do about it.”

“That's alright, Rose,” he whispered back. “There's nothing much we can do by regretting the past. I am blessed by having my mother but my father is just out of the question.”

She looked guilty, even though her face was almost wiped by the dark of that living room, “I'm sorry that I talk about father with you.”

“That's alright,” Gustav repeated as he closed his eyes. “No matter how I feel about him, he's still a part of me and there's no point of pretending that he isn't.”

“You really are a grown up, aren't you, Gustav Wood?”

“Well, one day you will be on your late twenties as well, Rose Lette. You've reached your early twenties so far. But now just be a good girl and go sleep.”

Before she fell asleep, she mumbled, “Now that I think of it, I'd rather have you as my father, Gustav. And I will be the sweetest daughter ever for you.”

He looked like he wanted to say something. But Rose was already sleeping.

It was small moment where she gave him a small pieces of her, slowly but deeply.


The next day, while they were having lunch with salad and roasted turkey, Si grabbed a broom out of nowhere and he started to pretend that he was playing in a gig. Before Rose knew it, everyone joined and even Gustav attempted to sing “Brother in Arms” in a mockery way. Lestat joined with high-pitched howl and everyone laughed.

“That was a great gig!” Ben shouted, as if there were audience in there.

“It was indeed great!” everyone shouted to the imagined audience as well.

Gustav sighed and chuckled, “I really want to go on tours again.”

“That's our dream for this moment, right?” Fraser chuckled.

The guys nodded.

Suddenly, Fraser asked, “Do you have any dream, Rose? I mean, being in a band and go touring again are our dreams as Young Guns, but how about you?”

Rose looked confused for a while, “Huh? Oh, yeah, I want to raise a child.”

“What?”

“I want to raise a child,” Rose smiled, even though everyone could see that she was slightly embarased of this. “I know. It's weird. I mean, I don't think I'm good for anything, but I want to... you know... leave a trace of my existence in this world. Probably I'll adopt a child from an orphanage and then raise them as my own child. I'll do that when I saved enough money when I'm twenty five years old.”

“You'd make a great mother, I can tell,” Ben nodded. “You should adopt me, because then you'll have to cook for me everyday.”

“You should adopt all of us,” corrected Si and they all laughed while Lestat barked.

“But why adopting, though?” Gustav asked. “Don't you want a child on your own? Your own blood and flesh and everything?”

Rose inhaled, “I'd like to. But the thing is that I can't make child alone.” She chuckled, “It's a big thing, you know, having baby with someone. I don't know about anyone else in the world, but for me, I just don't want to have a child and then... they're going to be alone, even though that kind of alone is alone without a father or alone without a mother... or without both.”

Gustav stared at her. He was the only one who understand what happened with Rose's parents, but the guys didn't.

“Oh,” Rose understood when she looked at Gustav. “I didn't grow up with my parents. They died when I was really young—can't remember a thing about them. They were also, well, bad people. Because of that, almost nobody in their families want to take care of me. I don't exactly know what happened but I know that I'd end up on an orphanage somewhere if Angela, which is my deceased mother's cousin, didn't decide to take care of me.”

Rose smiled when she saw the guys' face.

“Aw, I'm sorry, I make you guys look slightly gloomy.”

“No... that's alright. What happened then? Were you sad because... well...”

Rose shrugged, “I was. Being a child, I don't understand why some things happen. I was behaving as good as I can, and I wonder what was wrong with me—why my own parents didn't want me and decided to leave me, somehow? I was angry and sad all the time when I didn't understand. It wasn't pleasant. I don't want another kid to have that kind of experience, let alone my own child...”

She chuckled.

“But that's just me. I have a pretty simple dream. I think the world is kind of sad now, and I want to add a little more happiness there. What I do by raising a child who feel loved is not more than a ripple, but a little ripple will go far, because, well, it's a ripple.”

“I'm one hundred percent with you in that,” Fraser nodded.

“Me too,” Si nodded as well.

Ben and John also gave their, “Me too.”

“And we're all be their uncles,” Fraser added as he grinned. Rose chuckled, “Oh yeah, Uncle Fraser, Uncle John, Uncle Si and Uncle Ben.” That was when she realised that Gustav hadn't say anything. So she tried to pull him into the conversation as well, “Do you want to be Uncle Gus, Gustav?”

Gustav stared at her, and he smiled when said, “Uncle Gustav? Well, I'd rather be Daddy Gustav for your child.”

Rose didn't see that coming. She could feel her face was getting red all over again and she was so happy yet so ashamed because she didn't exactly know how to react at that moment. She felt like she just died, right there and went straight to heaven. The guys were cheering and chuckling to Gustav's respond.

“Ahhh, that's right. You'd better be the dad, Gus.”

“'Daddy Gustav'. It has a ring to it.”

Si nodded, “And then you guys both can have a child with weird middle names, since both of you have weird middle names already...”

This fact distracted Rose, “Eh? So you're also have weird middle name?” she asked Gustav, who nodded straight away. Rose didn't realise that she had no knowledge of Young Guns' full name. “It's Gustav Tomas Skjerdal Wood,” he said.

Rose giggled, “I can't believe it. Our names are even in the same formula; first name, normal middle name, weird non-English middle name, last name.”

Gustav nodded. He looked amused and he chuckled, “That's right. Rose Julie Svetlana Huk-Lette and Gustav Tomas Skjerdal Wood.”

“Alright, Mr Skjerdal and Miss Svetlana, go have babies already!” Ben clapped his hands, followed by everyone else. “Yeah! And they will be half-English, one fourth Norwegian and one fourth Ukrainian!” Fraser said. Si something that sounded like, “Julie and Tomas!” in the background. Rose laughed.

In the end, Rose tried to make the topic lighter by saying, “You guys are funny. I'll think about that. Just focus on the money for surgery now, okay?”

“Alright, Mother.”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Absolutely, Mummy.”

“Woof woof!” Lestat barked.

“Nooo. Stop it. I don't want to be a mother of five sons who are taller than me already—plus one son that has fur and paws.”

So they laughed again.