The next day when I came home after work the atmosphere at the apartment luckily seemed a bit less tense than yesterday. Instead the nerves about our concert tomorrow night had started to kick and especially Em was feeling very anxious during our last rehearsal. Both Aida and I knew that there was nothing we could do to help her calming down except for kicking her out on the stage, give her a microphone and let her sing.



Before I went to sleep that Friday night I got a message from Niall, who hadn’t stopped calling me and leaving messages on my phone for the last two weeks. But I couldn’t talk to him, not yet. No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out what to say and whether I was ready for meeting his eyes again, knowing that that would break my heart.

One time he’d actually been at our house asking for me, Em opened the door to tell him that I was still at work and he’d left as he got there – looking terrible with a sad expression on his face.



His message said: “Your concert tomorrow night at Dirty Dicks. Can I come?”



I took a deep breath before taking the first step towards forgiving him, when I wrote: “Yes.”


Suddenly my pulse started to pump faster and my breathes became heavier at the thought of meeting him again. I was looking forward. But at the same time I was scared as hell. I didn’t sleep at all that night but luckily my body had kind of gotten used to my terrible lifestyle after not having eaten much in a few weeks, smoking loads of cigarettes and no sleeping.




We had decided to spend all Saturday doing anything else but play – this way we all always felt a lot more focused and relaxed if we didn’t overthink everything until the concert.



So we went shopping. We borrowed Harry’s car and bought furniture for each of our bedrooms. I got a closet for my clothes and a night stand from a second hand shop in Kensington. We ended up driving back and forth three times, one time for each. None of us got a bed, since they were way too big and then there wouldn’t be space any other stuff in the car.



I couldn’t help but feel grateful that we all had a fulltime job when I thought of all the money that it cost to move, especially to a whole different country. Furniture, food, bills, rent… I couldn’t wait till we got established properly!




That afternoon I had decided to Skype with my family before we would leave for the concert.

Except for a few text messages I hadn’t talked to any of them since we said goodbye almost 3 weeks ago. And to see their faces again was an absolute relief. I almost started crying when my mum smiled at me and said hi, I wanted her to hug me and feel her arms around me in the middle of all the mess. We talked for a bit, before Niels jumped in front of the camera asking the inevitable question:


“So how are things with da Niall-boy?” he winked at me.

“Uhm… things are fine, not much to tell,” I said forcing a smile on my lips. I wasn’t going to tell them about our problems it was simply too complicated and what I didn’t need was five people in Denmark telling me how to deal with it.


The rest of the conversation was a bit of a struggle to me. Smiling, laughing and nodding seemed so very far from I really wanted to do at that point; lying down under the covers and stay there forever.



I took a steaming hot shower, somehow hoping that the water would wash away some of my negative feelings. And whether it was real or just in my crazy mind, it actually helped a little bit. My head felt lighter and the nerves about the concert had started taking over completely.




Both Em, Aida and I walked around the apartment feeling incredibly restless, sometimes Em would do a weird sound that apparently helped warming up her voice, while Aida and I kept slapping our hands together to keep them warm.


We had all gotten ready and since we were only going to play in a bar we had decided to dress relaxed, so Em wore some black Dr. Martens with yellow laces, dark grey skinny jeans and a black Le Fix t-shirt with rolled up sleeves, while her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

Aida had put on an oversized red t-shirt that she used as a dress, an oversized black cardigan over her shoulders and her worn-out white All Stars. She revealed her bare legs that still had a little tan left from the summer.

I was wearing black All Stars, a pair of black stockings, a big dark green oversized shirt and the other great love of my life; my big gold wrist watch that dressed up any outfit. I had put my hair in a loose low bun.



We only waited for the clock to turn 7, so that we could leave. We were supposed to do a sound check at half past seven, before the concert at 9 o’clock. None of us had had any appetite to eat any dinner.



“Please stop doing that!” Aida suddenly exclaimed towards when it dawned on me that I had been drumming with my fingertips against the kitchen table for a while now.

“Oh sorry,” I said and started walking around like the others to keep my head concentration on movements instead of suicide.



At exactly 7 o’clock we all put on jackets and went outside without a word. And then we walked next to each other heading towards the tube without saying a word. We sat in the tube without saying a word. We walked towards the bar, where the only thing that was said was “This way” by Em a couple of times.



When I shook the manager, Andy’s hand my “Hello” was the first thing to say and it felt a bit weird talking again. He showed us the stage where the old piano that belonged to bar stood.


It was beautiful; and old, wooden piano like the ones you see in the old movies. I sat down and played a few notes trying out how the keys felt. The sound of it was old as well and not always perfectly tuned by it just made the whole playing so much more charming and I smiled as we tried out “Copenhagen” as our first song at the sound check.


The atmosphere at the cozy and very classic old bar made us all relax a bit. We tried out a few more of our songs.



“Wow, you guys sound really great!” Andy said when we had finished the sound check.

“That’s because you’ve only heard singing karaoke drunk at the Career Bar,” Aida said and the middle aged man smiled. He got us some beers to drink until the concert. I glanced down at my gold watch to see that it was 8.15 already.


“Uhm… Do you think there will be any people listening to us at all?” I asked Andy nervously.

“Of course!” he chuckled. “Dirty Dicks is famous for our concerts with up-coming bands on Saturdays, people love it. They usually start arriving around this time.”

“Are you sure?” Em asked glancing around at the few people sitting at the round tables.

“Dirty Dicks has existed for decades. Do you think we would’ve done that if it wasn’t because of loads of guests every single night?” he said to her.


His comment calmed Em down I think, she didn’t glance around the room with a worried face all the time anymore.

“Want another one?” he asked me when he saw how fast I’d emptied by bottle but I shook my head.

“No thanks.” I could already feel the effect of the beer, since I hadn’t been eating anything and I thought it might be a good idea to stay reasonably sober through the concert.




Andy was right. A few minutes later people started arriving. And there were loads of them. For each time the door opened I felt a bit relieved and a bit more scared at the same time. My palms started to sweat as he showed us the way in to a room in the back where we could sit until the clock turned 9.



It felt like an agonizing fifteen minutes we had back there. When Andy came in and told us to get ready, I turned towards the girls' pale faces.


“Let it rain,” I said and reached out my hand and they smiled instantly knowing what I was talking about.

“Raindrops,” Aida then said and placed her hand on top of mine.

“Iceman,” Em chuckled and put her hand at the top.


What we said was from the movie, Along Came Polly, where there was a hilarious minor character who said all these shitty lines. Through the years of our friendship he had become an inside joke that we didn’t use as much now as we had done.


We pressed each other’s hands when we heard Andy’s voice saying: “Give a warm welcome to The Rookies!”



We had decided on that name a few years ago when we first started playing together. I walked out of the room and up at the small stage to sit at the piano that stood at the right side, followed by Em who had a stool and a microphone placed on the middle and as the last one Aida, who sat down at her chair in the left side of the stage picking up her guitar from its holder on the way.



“Good evening,” I said, since I had always been the best at presenting songs in the beginning where the others would always feel a bit too nervous. I looked around the room for the first time and saw nothing but faces. Face upon face, eyes upon eyes were closely spaced together around the entire room. I didn’t glance for too long suddenly afraid that I would look in to the ones that I knew would make me cry.


Instead I kept concentrating on talking. “We’re The Rookies. Tonight we’re playing a mixture of our own songs and also a few covers of some you might know. We just moved here to London a few weeks ago from Denmark, so this is our very first concert here and we’re very excited and absolutely thrilled to see all these people. Thank you so much.”


People smiled and clapped at my little story.


"Uhm… The first song that we’re going to play for you is one I wrote not very long ago during my gap year after high school. I had just gotten back from a 3 month long trip to Guatemala where I had been volunteering at a home for orphan children. Having planned this for a long time I at this point spent a lot of time wondering what to do now and constantly worrying about the future. And so I wrote this song about living in the present and trying not to worry too much. It’s called So Mournful The Elegy, So Comforting the Hymn.”



I turned towards the piano, corrected my microphone and placed my hands on the keys. After taking a deep breath I started playing the light notes that started the song. I was actually the one to sing the first verse alone and I did my best not to sound too shaky, despite the huge amount of nerves I had.


An old man said live one day at the time
Who can add a day to his life by worrying
Though we’re young
We’ve seen what worry can do
So embrace the worried songs we sing to you

So mournful the elegy
And so comforting the hymn
So mournful the elegy
And so comforting the hymn



Aida joined me on the guitar on the chorus and so did Em on a lower second voice. She also sang the second verse alone. The song was very pure and innocent which fitted her voice perfectly and at one point during her verse I glanced out at the audience to see all of the eyes only looking at her completely spellbound. I joined her again on the second chorus with a lighter second voice this time, while Aida took over on the deeper one.


To finish the song we held the last note without any instruments and because the last word was hymn it made kind of a humming effect. Em always had her eyes closed on this ending and the audience didn’t do anything but listen and stare until she opened her eyes and smiled at them.
They were loud. Much louder than in the church in Denmark a few months ago. At first I felt kind of surprised that all that applause was for us, but as the concert went on I almost got used to it, cause they didn’t become less loud, more likely the opposite.



The second song was Gone which Em had written both the lyrics and the melody for and on this one we had decided that I was going to play the violin as an intro and an outro along with the guitar. It gave the song a bit of a jazz twist that turned out also fitted Em’s voice really well.



We played Copenhagen as the third song and it made me incredibly thrilled to hear that the ending that I myself loved so much was received by the audience just as much joy and admiration. After this song the applause lasted longer than it had done all night.



Em and I played To Open Up My Heart, followed by Aida’s song, If The Stars Were Mine. This one had some beautiful chords on the guitar so we had decided to leave the piano out to make Aida stand out more. While they were playing I alternately looked down and my hands and at the audience. That was until I suddenly recognized a face in between the others.



Perrie was smiling at me from the left side where she sat next to Zayn at one of the small round tables. I smiled back at her feeling my heart beat faster and faster as I noticed the other familiar faces of Harry, Louis, Eleanor and Liam – who by the way didn’t take his eyes off Em at any point. I knew what was going to be the next face for me to notice and I had to take a deep breath before I let my eyes travel further to meet the blues ones next to Liam.


Niall was looking straight in to mine and I felt my stomach turn more violently than it had done for the past few weeks. I had to look away for a second in order not to throw up in the middle of our performance, so I quickly went back to looking at my hands.


After another deep breath I decided that I was ready to meet his eyes again feeling that I already missed them and so I did.

He was still looking at me the exact way as he’d done seconds before. He wasn’t smiling, instead his face showed an expression of sadness, apology, hurt and pain. It was killing me to see all those feelings on a human that I found so amazing and that normally showed the opposite.
And yet I couldn’t let go of him. I sensed how the music suddenly was silent, how all the people around disappeared one by one so that it was only the two of us left in the entire world. Just me and Niall. And I couldn’t figure out whether I was happier than ever or… scared.



The loud applause from the audience brought me back to reality as Em and Aida had finished their song. It took me a few moments to realize that it was my turn to play a song alone now and suddenly I felt my heart beat enhance its speed more and more just like it had did it before.



“Okay,” I stumbled, “uhm… The next song is one I wrote very recently actually and I’m going to play it alone. The song is…” I felt my palms beginning to sweat even more than before the concert as I forced myself to fulfill my sentences. “The song is about the danger and damage that love can bring. You give yourself in the someone in the hope of it being the right choice, but sometimes you might find out… that it’s not.” I didn’t look at the audience afraid that I was going to break down and cry, so I just ended the presentation by saying:

“It can take a long time to get over such disappointments, in some cases you might never get over it. This is Fix a Heart.”




I began the song by playing a few simple chords. I had chosen this to be a pop song so both the melody and piano underlined that.


It’s probably what’s best for you
I only want the best for you
And if I’m not the best then you’re stuck
I tried to sever ties and I
Ended up with wounds to bind
It’s like you’re pouring salt in my cuts

And I just ran out of band aids
I don’t even know where to start
Cause you can bandage the damage
You never really can fix a heart



I sang my heart out. With every note and every word I wanted not only Niall to feel the pain that I felt, but the entire audience. I didn’t really care what people might be thinking of the song itself or my performance, I just wanted to know that I had tried to convince them about something.
And so I sat with my eyes closed through most of the song letting my hands play what they wanted to play and my voice sing what it wanted to sing. I had to force myself back to reality and finish the song the way that sounded best, or else I could have gone on and on for ages.


I placed my hands on the last chord, played it and let it sound through the room. I felt the seconds of that chords becoming longer and longer and it wasn’t until I opened my eyes that people started clapping with hesitation. At first it seemed like they didn’t want to break the silence after the song, but after a few moments the applauding enhanced second by second. I looked at Em and Aida who were just staring at me also clapping their hands together time after time.


I knew what I had to do to finish the performance and to hopefully accomplish what I’d wanted to with this song. I looked up at the bright blue eyes that were so very similar to mine, the only difference between them now was a tear escaping his.

Notes

I've now got 10 votes! Yes, thank you soooo much! Big love to all of you <3

Here are some links to the songs that the girls play during their concert, so that if you want to listen to it while reading, it really makes the experience a bit more alive:

So Mournful the Elegy...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of1JEtHVeso
Gone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7FutzVv8KI
If The Stars Were Mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLFKKY5RHxc
Fix a Heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2oDQG6BLNQ