Love in Music

The flashes were blinding. The noises were confusing. The only stable feeling was Grace’s steadying hand that was tucked into the back pocket of my shorts. I moved forward clinging to her wrist as the guard guided us towards the car waiting for us.

I felt the breath of relief fill my lungs and I grabbed a seat, Grace taking the one right beside me, our hands were shaking as they clung tightly to each other, resting in her lap. I watched as the other girls all piled inside the car, Kate was slightly white; Luce had an arm wrapped around her.

The car door was slammed shut behind us, Frankie jumped slightly from in front of me. The car was still surrounded and the noise slightly muffled. We lurched forward before slowly rolling through the pressing crowd. Eventually we escaped and the car sped onto the busy London roads.

We stayed mostly quiet as the car rolled through the streets, each of us processing the experience of being shoved through intrusive, yelling bodies of strangers.

“The part that’s getting to me is that we haven’t even performed together yet.” Frankie said quietly. Her eyes not meeting anyone’s, instead they stayed trained on her fingers resting in her lap. I frowned at her. It was odd to see Frankie so nervous, so unsure of her self.

“They’ve seen us all sing on YouTube.” Luce shrugged, her accent seemed thicker then usual. Like it was harder for her to speak English than Spanish at this point. “And the whole knowing One Direction thing.”

“I would hate to be one of their girlfriends.” Gracie added, her hand still holding tightly onto mine. I looked up and my eyes met Kate’s. She looked almost apologetic. I shrugged minutely at her before looking out the window.

It’s not like I was expecting to be a girlfriend of One Direction. I had already told all the girls that I wasn’t girlfriend material. Boys didn’t like me like that. A thought that was proven as Louis hadn’t contacted me at all since I hung out with his sisters and him over a week ago. My texts had been unanswered and I felt too pathetic to try and call him. So I left it. I didn’t mean anything to Louis. And soon he wouldn’t mean anything to me. He worked his way under my skin and now he can work his was out from under it. I wasn’t going to fight him on that.

“We’re here girls.” Geoffrey said from the front passenger seat. “We’ve arrived behind the building where it’s closed off. You won’t have any trouble here.”

The car stopped and Frankie slid the door open quickly, taking a deep breath once she stepped out. We all followed suit and Gracie finally let go of my hand. I wiped the sweat that had gathered, from both of our hands, onto my pants quickly.

Geoffrey guided us towards a back door and we all stepped through.

“Look at you girls, using the popstar entrance. Look’s like you’ve made it already.” Harry was the one to greet us as the door shut behind us. The sunlight was cut off but the hallway ahead was lit with lights. Harry and Niall stood in front of us, practically beaming.

“Popstar entrance?” Kate questioned them both.

“Yeah, you know. Sneak in behind the building because too many people out front: Popstar entrance.” Niall explained joyfully, throwing an arm around Grace’s shoulder and guiding her down the hallway, we all followed behind.

“Guess you girls don’t need good old One Direction helping you out anymore.” Harry winked at me. I laughed and shook my head at him.

“You guy’s are the reason they’re so curious about us in the first place.” I bit back at him. He fell into step next to me and grinned charmingly.

“So how was it?” He asked more conversationally.

“Nightmare.” Frankie muttered turning around to glance at us both before continuing to follow Niall through a door.

“Wait until the screaming girls.” Harry added, throwing an arm around my shoulder as I almost headed in a different direction to everyone else. I stumbled slightly and used Harry for support before allowing him to continue guiding me through the buildings.

Everything finally grew familiar as Niall stopped at the elevators and hit the arrow button that was pointed up.

“I’ll leave you girls in their capable hands. I have some security issues I need to work out. I’ll come get you when you are finished.” Geoffrey waved goodbye and headed in the opposite direction from where we came. Frankie started laughing.

“He thinks you both are capable.” She snorted out, an arm wrapped around her stomach as she find the idea hilarious.

“Oi!” Niall protested as we stepped into the elevator. I smiled widely and laughed with Frankie. It felt good to laugh, I felt like my insides were wired up so tight that they had forgotten how to laugh.

The doors opened and we walked down the hallway to Simon’s office. Harry barely knocked before barging into the room. I grabbed his arm trying to stop him but he only pulled me along with him. I sighed exasperatedly and shook my head at him.

“What if he was in a meeting?” I exclaimed waving to where Simon and Jen were at Simon’s desk.

“Or doing something more, you know, under the desk.” Frankie waggled her eyebrows before taking a seat on the couch where the rest of One Direction was sitting. I watched interestedly as Jen flushed red and refused to meet Simon’s eyes. I shared a look with Harry who waggled his eyebrows exactly like Frankie. I laughed loudly in response.

“Well I’m glad the paparazzi didn’t scare you off too much.” Simon sighed, falling into the chair behind his desk. Luce snorted and sat down on the ground in front of Frankie, Kate sat down next to Liam, the colouring coming back to her face. I watched as Grace eyed the seat next to Louis who was playing on his face uninterested. I gave Grace a pointed stare; she sighed and fell into the seat next to him. I rested on the arm of the chair next to her. I could feel Harry’s eyes on me; I ignored him.

“Since everyone has found out about you both there isn’t any need for us to announce the last of you. So we’re going to skip straight ahead to releasing a short video of you all.” Simon shuffled through papers in front of him, obviously not worried that the press had sabotaged his plan. I watched amused as Jen leant forward and grabbed a piece of paper from the pile on the table and placed it in front of Simon. He took it and smiled at her before looking back at us all.

“The boys have been recording some of your training. The video’s are with our editors now, once they’re done we’ll record a quick video of you all introducing yourselves and release it online as well as a date for when your first song will be released. So that brings us to you five creating a name for yourselves. I’m sure you’ve been thinking about it so choose one and the run it by our advertising department. If they agree, we are set. Any questions?” Simon stood up, grabbing some more papers and ruffling through them.

I watched him, feeling mute as my mind ran through everything he said. Video, then first song release date. Group name? I had not been thinking about a group name. I glanced towards the other girls but they weren’t meeting my eyes. I did however find Louis’ already staring at me.

“No? Good. I have a meeting to get too. Jen will talk to you about everything else.” Simon waited as I belatedly realised he wanted us to leave. I stood up, pulling my eyes from Louis and headed towards the door. I stood to the side as everyone piled out and Simon disappeared, almost instantly, down the hallway.

“Lets go down to my office and I’ll explain everything else that needs to be done.” Jen said softly, probably noticing how quiet we all were. The shock was present on all of us. The One Direction boys seemed to be quiet out of courtesy.

Everyone began following behind her obediently. I found myself staring directly at Louis. He hesitated before taking a step towards me, opening his mouth. I shook my head and quickly moved to follow the rest. I couldn’t deal with Louis right now. I had a million other things my mind was trying to process, the thought of adding Louis to the stress was more than I could handle.

I could hear the soft fall of his feet behind me and when we stepped into the elevator I was crowded into the corner by him. He glanced from me to the wall constantly as if fighting with himself whether he should do something. The other girls seemed too busy in their own minds to notice or to help.

I stood there patiently keeping my eyes focused on the tattoo that peaked out from underneath Louis’ shirt. I had always hated chest tattoos so to get through this ride I was going to cling to that hate. I gritted my teeth and glared, not caring that I might look deranged to anyone else in the elevator.

We squished ourselves into Jen’s office, her space not being as big as Simon’s. She grabbed paper off her desk and handed them to us girls.

“We need you usernames and passwords of all social networking sites your girls use. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, Tumblr, any site you can think of. Then I can take it to our tech team and they can set up security systems for you. Every teenager in the world is now searching for your names. We need to block them from private access to anything you don’t want them to see. Just letting you know now that our team will delete anything that the press will try to use against you. You’re just starting out girls, your image has to be clean.” We all nodded without complaint and I immediately began listing all the sites information I had used. Even the sites I hadn’t used in ages.

“What Simon said about the name; you don’t have to come up with it straight away, just start brain storming or something.” Jen added calmingly. I nodded as no one spoke a word again.

“Girls, are you okay?” She asked quietly, we all looked up to meet her eyes. I realised the nervous tension in the air. All the boys shifted and traded looks between each other. They thought we were being doubtful about this. “You can’t back out now.”

I shared a look with the girls before Frankie turned to Jen and shook her head. “We don’t plan on backing out Jen.” The tension in the room relaxed and I continued listing usernames on the sheet moving it slightly to the side as Zayn tried to peer over my shoulder.

“Why don’t you boys go get some lunch for everyone.” Jen made sure the boys knew it wasn’t a question. One by one they quickly filed out of the room and Jen came around the front of her desk to stare at us five. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair feeling like I was under the gaze of a schoolteacher.

“How are you girls really?” Jen’s face softened considerably and I relaxed into my chair.

“Nervous.” Kate muttered. Grace nodded violently from the floor in front of me.

“Yeah like throwing up nervous.” I noted that she did look a little green. Luce patted her back.

“You girls know we aren’t going to throw you out there until you’re all ready.” We all nodded at Jen’s words. I did trust me them and I trusted that they knew what they were doing but it was still a shock.

“There was probably a better way to go around this but the paparazzi pounced before we thought they would.” Jen moved back to get her laptop and placed it on the coffee table in front of the couch. Luce and Grace moved the papers out of the way. “See we’ve kind of been hiding some things from you. We’ve kept you too busy to constantly check the Internet and that was kind of the plan.”

I watched as Jen typed in Frankie’s full name into Google and pushed the laptop towards us. My mouth fell open at the sites that appeared under the search bar. I scrambled for my phone and typed in my name quickly.

There were news articles from gossip magazine, as well as so many articles speculating who I was. There were Tumblr accounts already made just centered around me. Jen was right, I hadn’t been checking the Internet. I had barely touched Facebook since I got here. My Twitter notifications had been turned off, since my name had been plastered over the boys Twitter I had been too afraid to check it. I hadn’t stumbled over myself while looking through Tumblr so I hadn’t noticed any of this. My YouTube account had been receiving considerable more subscribers and comments but I hadn’t really checked it either.

The most shocked part, however, was the moment I hit images. Photo after photo appeared. The top photos were when I was with Louis.

“I’ve been in magazines?” I exclaimed loudly after noticing the writing over some of the pictures of Louis and I walking together through the mall. One looked like a front cover. I looked at Jen for confirmation.

“Not many, but people have been suspicious of Louis and you together. Which, actually, is something you two need to talk to our marketing team about.”

“There’s nothing going on.” I almost snapped at her. She didn’t respond to my outburst and I instantly felt guilty.

“That’s not what Louis says.” She told me softly. It was my turn to not respond. I just looked at her. The thought of Louis saying we were anything but nothing to each other was, well, infuriating.

“Yes, well we can’t always take what Louis says to heart now can we.” I grumbled looking back down at the finished sheet in front of me, trying to ignore the looks I knew were being thrown my way.

“Right well what ever that is,” Jen made a circular hand motion towards me. “has to be fixed, quickly.” I glared back down at the piece of paper, tapping the pen against it.

“Go down to the lunchroom, I’m sure the boys will have food for you now. I’ll be down later.” Jen said after a moment of quiet. We gave her our pieces of paper and left the room.

“Belle.” Luce began but I shook my head.

“I’m tired okay and the day isn’t over yet. Can we just not talk about Louis Tomlinson until I’ve at least had a nap.” I rested my head on her shoulder; she placed a kiss on my head and guided me towards the elevator.

I didn’t want to think about what Louis had said to Jen, I didn’t want to think he meant more than he did. Louis was the one who decided not to talk to me for a whole week, a week where we were hounded constantly by the media. The one week where we probably needed the boys more then ever.

We walked into the lunchroom to see all five boys standing triumphantly around a large table full of food. I couldn’t help but smile at their proud faces.

“We got as much as your favourite food as possible.” Liam spread his arms wide, his eyes practically shining. I laughed at the boys and moved to the table already debating which piece of cake I wanted to eat first. My eyes widened as I dived for another plate.

“Tim Tams.” I screeched snatching one off the plate and immediately taking a bite. God I had missed eating these at home.

“See. Everything.” Niall said around a mouthful of his own food.

“What about alcohol?” Frankie peered around the table.

“Coffee do?” Zayn motioned towards the coffee machine. Frankie sighed but walked towards it.

“That will have to do for now.” She grabbed a mug as I called out what I wanted.

“Any questions?” Harry joked.

“Yeah, how did you get Tim Tams?” I asked Harry while trying to coax Luce into taking one. She took a bite and smiled widely.

“Well that’s a secret that we can’t share.” I didn’t miss the look that Harry sent towards Louis. I didn’t take the bait or even acknowledge Louis. He was stressful and right now my life needed to not be stressful.