My heart skipped a beat as I had to rethink it several times before I realized that it was an actual tear that was slowly streaming down Niall’s cheek.

I don’t know what effect I had hoped my song would have on him but this both made me feel like I had accomplished what I wanted and at the same time I felt awful to see him cry because of me.




It was very difficult to continue the concert after that, but we had to since we’d been hired to play for an entire hour. I pulled myself away from Niall’s eyes which only made me feel even more awful.


I could tell that both Aida and Em were also finding it a bit strange to continue, but luckily Em brought us back to our senses by presenting the following song when the applauses had faded out a bit.


The song was called For You and was the first one that we’d all written together about a year ago and the most beautiful thing about was really that it made all of our qualities stand out; My light and airy voice, Em’s edgy and soulful, Aida’s deep one were all enhanced by a great arrangement of voices in the chorus that I was very proud of having made, tight chords played in a rhythmic way to show Aida’s skills on the guitar and a melody in the verse that had such a delicate and innocent touch to it that was one of the brands of Em’s song writing.

The combination of the melody and the guitar that both had almost opposite qualities the result was one we were all incredibly proud of because it always some kind of a very powerful effect on every audience and this was no exception.



Then it was time for the song that Em would be singing alone without any instruments. Before she began she looked at us with a worried face, but then took a deep breath.

It was so simple, light, clear and beautiful. Aida and I found ourselves looking at the audience to see them looking spellbound by her voice for the thousand time that evening and I almost smiled when I saw Liam sitting with his mouth open and wide eyes.



After another long applause when she had finished we all looked at each other with a grin on our faces as Aida started presenting the last song:


“So the last song is actually a cover that we did recently though it’s a song that we’ve been singing for fun and loving for years. It might not seem like the most obvious song to do an acoustic cover on but it turned out to be something that we’re proud of and that we’re very happy to play for you tonight. It’s called Mama Lied and is written by Tower of Power.”



Some of the people around the room knew the song and raised their eyebrows in doubt of what this was going to sound like.


I turned toward the piano since it was me who had to begin by playing the horn arrangement from the original version. This was a point in the concert where the old piano sound really came through.


I played some powerful bass in my left hand and some fast chords in the right to make it sound like the arrangement made by Tower of Power.


And as we had done it at the Career Bar and for the past many years, Aida sang the first verse, me the second and Em the third. On the choruses Aida played some rhythmic light chords to make it sound more funky and we all moved to the rhythms of the song.


And as we had predicted and hoped for people immediately started clapping along. Em made them sing along with her on the chorus where there weren’t any instruments and like true live performers we let the audience sing the chorus many times before Aida and I joined in on our backing to finish it.




The next thing I remembered was people standing up cheering, shouting and applauding incredibly loud. Through the many people I spotted our friends smiling wider than anyone else in the audience.


At that point – for the first time in more than two weeks – I felt completely happy. All problems with Niall, all disappointments and all bad feelings were gone. And I could cry tears of joy at the feeling of this pureness, but I controlled myself to just smile, stand and bow holding Em’s hand. She had noticed my sudden happy face and wrapped an arm around my shoulders with a smile.





“You guys are fantastic!” Andy exclaimed when he met us in the room in the back a few moments later. My ears were still ringing from all the noise from being on stage.

“What a great place to perform, Andy,” Em said.

“Yeah, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity,” I agreed not being able to stop smiling.

“My absolute pleasure,” the elder man said. “If you want to, you can perform a set of other songs sometime?”

“That would be great!” Aida shouted a bit too loud, probably still feeling completely high from the performance.

“I would like you to play songs that you didn’t play tonight, since a big part of the audience come here every Saturday. So when can you have another set of songs ready?”


We all looked at each other confused, it was clearly that none of us had ever written songs on command.

“Well, uhm…” Em stumbled, but Aida took over.

“In a month,” she said with a confident nod that convinced Em and I, despite our fear growing inside us, that it was a good answer to his question.

“Great, so that’ll be… Saturday the 17th of November?” he said looking up from a calendar that he’d just pulled out.

We all nodded still not getting exactly what he had just asked us for.

“Now,” he said and made us pull us together, “the payment… I’ll give you 1000 pounds for each performance, cause that’s what I normally give the bands who are playing here. Is that okay?”



All of our eyes stood wide open as I yelled: “Hell yeah!” just as loud as Aida had done it seconds before.




Andy left the room moments later when he had written a check to us on 1000 pounds. Em stared at it in her hand looking like she couldn’t believe what she saw. She squealed, Aida squealed and I squealed. Man, this was good!



We went back to the stage to pack our stuff. On our way we were congratulated by loads of people still sitting in the bar having drinks. I seriously couldn’t believe how great this felt.


“Want a beer?” a voice said and handed me a green bottle. I looked up in to Eric’s brown eyes and smiled.

“Yes please,” I said.

“You were really good,” he said and I could tell by his face expression that he really meant it. “I didn’t know you played the violin?”

“I do. Mostly folk music though so this was a bit different,” I said nodding.

“It’s because. I’m a percussionist in a folk band and we could really use a good violin player. What do you say?”


I was speechless though I couldn’t stop smiling like a fool. “Well. Yeah, I guess we could try that.”

“Great!” he said. “Can I get your phone number then, so I can call and give you the time for our rehearsals?”

“This is not one of your cheesy excuses, is it?” I couldn’t help but ask, but he just laughed while pulling out his phone.

“Give me your god damn number,” he said and so I did.

“Listen, I have to go home, I have to get up really early tomorrow so… I enjoyed your concert, you guys sound beautiful.” He pecked my cheek and I felt completely stunned and scared of his gesture at the same time. “I’ll call you,” he said walking away with one of his stupidly confident smiles on his lips.



I followed Em and Aida who I saw were, to my horror, heading towards the boys. Aida turned around to look at me with an encouraging expression on her face, knowing that this was very hard for me.


It’s time, Maja, I thought to myself as I breathed heavier and heavier looking down at my feet forcing them to move forward in front of each other. Now the next step was so look up and face the one person that I’d been hiding from the last two weeks.


Niall was walking past the many people and straight towards me.


For a short moment I seriously considered to just turn around and run, but then I composed myself. I wasn’t walking anymore, that wasn’t possible for me, but the fact that I stood still looking him in his eyes was more than I had expected from me.


He was now standing right in front of me and as I saw his face clearly I could tell that he looked like utter hell. He had tired bags under his eyes that were now red around his blue iris and didn’t look like he had gotten any sleep or rest for ages.

We stood there for a bit without any of us saying a word, I was mainly being stubborn and wanting him to begin the conversation, while he looked like he was struggling to find the right words. He finally decided on, “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked.


I didn’t give him an answer to begin with but I ended up nodding. I followed him to the front door getting more congratulations on the way from people sitting around the bar. Right before we went outside I glanced over at the rest to see all of them staring in our direction and so I continued out the door.



We walked for a bit in silence, until he pulled himself together to say something really unnecessary:

“I don’t know what to say…”

“Find out,” I said sounding a bit cooler than I meant it.

“I uhm…” he began and I looked at him, but he had his eyes nailed to the sidewalk. “I’m sorry.”

He stopped and made me do as well. I didn’t say anything, still expecting him to elaborate an apology.


“I’m so so sorry, Maja,” he continued. “About everything. About the fact that I got so drunk back then, way too drunk to know what I was doing, even though that’s not an excuse, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you, I’m sorry that I treated you so bad, I’m sorry that I don’t deserve you, you would never do something like this to me and honestly I don’t know why I didn’t have the guts to tell you the truth, but I promise, seriously I promise that if I have the slightest chance with you I will do anything to make you trust me again, even though I know it will be difficult after what I did.”



Exactly as I had predicted and feared I didn’t have a clue of what to say. I wanted to hug him, I wanted to kiss him as he stood there looking so helpless and lost, but at the same time I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t trust him enough.


“How’ve you been?” he then asked when he realized that there was not much for me to say.

“Not good,” I just said while looking down.

“You look tired,” he said studying my face.

“So do you,” I replied and he nodded.

“Haven’t slept properly since then. Have you lost weight?”

“What’s that kind of a question?” I frowned my forehead but knew that it was true.



Suddenly he let out a huge and deep sigh and had tears overflowing in his eyes. “I can’t believe I did this to you!” he exclaimed and I couldn’t help but get a bit scared of his desperate behavior.

It killed me to see him like this and I was now no longer capable of stopping myself from stepping forward and hug him. I instantly felt his arms wrap around me tightly, like they would never let go.


I had imagined thousands of times how it would be to hug Niall again, but I didn’t expect me reacting like I did. I let out a sob in his chest feeling his hand brush my hair over and over again. It felt both so well-known but also strange at the same time to stand their feeling his warm embrace around me.


But other than that one single sob and two tears I didn’t do anything else. I didn’t feel the need to cry for real, I thought to myself that I might have used my amount of tears for this entire year up.

Suddenly reality pushed my own needs to aside and without thinking about it I pulled away from him, though he looked a bit like he could have gone on forever. But he soon knew by my face expression that I wasn’t ready to give in to him again so early.

“Let’s go back to the others,” I said already feeling full of so many thoughts and considerations that I could explode any minute. He nodded and followed me back to the bar. Someday very soon we would finish this conversation but now wasn’t the time for any of us.


Inside Dirty Dicks there were luckily still loads of people sitting around and Niall and I walked towards our friends who were all having beers at a few of the small round tables. I immediately felt their glances at us when we got closer.


“Jesus, will you guys stop?” I asked when they were also completely silent as I grabbed a beer from the table. Louis instantly started singing very loudly the chorus of Mama Lied and I couldn’t help but laugh at his stupid attempt to make fun of the a bit awkward atmosphere.

Notes

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