And as I predicted, music turned out to be the exact and only thing I found helping on my mood that evening. I felt so grateful that the girls were now home and that I wasn’t left alone with my own crazy mind anymore that would take over completely whenever it wanted to.


Aida, Em and I mostly practiced the covers of the pop songs, which went pretty quickly since they were songs that we’d been playing for years together and that had been improved as we all had gotten better as musicians and as a band.


“Okay,” Em said after a few hours of rehearsing, “we probably need about two or three more songs to make the set list an hour long, I think it should be some of our owns since there are not much of them at this point. Any suggestions?”

“Uhm,” I began hesitating, “I have a couple, you know… there’s always Blue Eyes, and then… this new one that I finished this week actually. I thought it might be useful.”

“Really?” Aida asked. “Well, what are you waiting for then? Let’s hear it!”


I smiled as I started playing the recording that I’d made on my phone.

“I thought about maybe some country guitar and a bit of percussion…” I explained to them as they were listening to the song.

“That is cleverly written,” Em gushed. “Like really.”

I blushed mumbling a “thank you” back to her as we waited for the recording to end.


“Okay, so if we do that and Blue Eyes, then we only need one more,” she then said looking back and forth between Aida and I.

“I don’t think I have any left that I would want everybody to hear, you know,” I admitted now turning my glance over at Aida as well praying that she would save us.

She looked like she had trouble deciding what to say as she sat there scratching her scalp a couple of times trying to avoid our eyes a bit.


“Well…” she began, “uhm… I did write a song a few weeks ago when I was a bit sad because of, you know… all that mess with Harry and stuff, I’m just not sure whether I want to reveal it to people and he will probably be at the concert also. I’m exposing some feeling in it, can help but think that it’s a bit embarrassing.”

“Try to play it for us,” I said in the most comforting tone I could manage, I really wanted to hear an emotional song written by her, since that would be a very first.

Luckily Aida nodded while getting her guitar ready, it was easy to tell that she was nervous about presenting it, even to Em and I, who knew her better than anyone else.


The chords were simple and so was the rhythm, but the melody… I have no words to describe that, it was incredibly beautiful and simple, but yet not, it fitted the lyrics so well, I genuine thought that it sounded genius.


Give me love like her,
'Cause lately I've been waking up alone,
Pain splattered teardrops on my shirt,
Told you I'd let them go,

And that I'll fight my corner,
Maybe tonight I'll call ya,
After my blood turns into alcohol,
No, I just wanna hold ya.

Give a little time to me or burn this out,
We'll play hide and seek to turn this around,
All I want is the taste that your lips allow,
My, my, my, my, oh give me love,
My, my, my, my, oh give me love,
My, my, my, my, oh give me love,
My, my, my, my, give me love



After another verse and chorus I felt myself getting lost in the song just as Aida did, knowing what it meant to her.

When she’d finished both Em and I sat speechless just staring out in the air. It wasn’t until I heard Em snuffle that I was pulled back to reality that was in this case sitting in my room in front of my piano next to my two best friends, exploring them as people, they both kept surprising me with their many talents.

I noticed that I too had a tear travelling down my cheek at that point.

I have no idea how long it went before any of us said anything, but I know that Aida was the one who interrupted the silence.


“I thought that we could maybe make a B part, since I only made a verse and chorus. Maja, you could make some voices and we probably have to transpose it in to a higher key, so that Em can sing the melody…”

“You should sing the melody,” Em cut in still just staring out in the air. “I could never sing it the way you do.”

Whenever she said something like that in the way that she did, like there was nothing to discuss and that what she said was a fact that couldn’t be changed, the rest of us had no choice but obey, since she wouldn’t change her mind ever.

“I’d be honored to play that song with you,” was all I could say.



We didn’t rehearse any more after that, the atmosphere was too delicate and rare and I think we were all aware of that and didn’t want to destroy it. It had been a long time since a song had had this impact on me and I couldn’t help but find it a bit weird cause Aida was never the one to write the most songs in our group, but mainly lyrics and the guitar playing, so I kind of wasn’t expecting a melody that was so thought through and perfect like this one in Give Me Love.

So instead we all went to bed after that, knowing that Aida would force us all up early in the next morning to go to several exhibitions in different galleries. When I lay in bed I looked at my phone for the first time in a really long time, at least so I discovered since everything had gone completely bonkers. A ton of messages, tweets and a few missed calls was all over my iPhone and I started going through them one by one, starting off with the messages, I couldn’t help but still feel a bit scared by Twitter and Facebook, knowing that they were now filled with as much hate as praise now that I was with Niall, if not more.


The latest received message was from Eric.


Hi Maja, just texting to say thank you for yesterday, it was so much fun. And again, I’m sorry for what I did, I really hope that we can remain friends, especially now when you’re in my band as well J xx Eric.


I quickly texted him back that everything was fine between us, though I still did feel extremely guilty thinking about what had happened last night and it didn’t help to see the next message was an incredibly sweet one from my Niall.


Hi cutie! Hope you had a great time rehearsing with the folk band yesterday, I did miss you at the studio though… Anyway, I want to say thank you for helping us out. I don’t think you have any idea how big a relief it was to finally feel that that song was right. Looking forward to see you again soon, when are you free??! Xoxo


I smiled the entire time reading that one, I probably looked like a fool answering him:


Hi Niall, I’m so glad to hear that, you can always make me smile! Don’t know when I’ll have time again though, going back to work on Monday and the weekend booked up, you know. What about Monday night? Miss you already!


That answer was probably sounding as foolish as I looked, but I didn’t care, feeling my mouth reach from ear to ear. And that didn’t change when I saw that the rest of the messages were from the other boys, all thanking me the same way Niall did, it really did make me feel warm inside getting all this positive response to my help with the song, even though I didn’t think I’d done anything special.


But there was nothing like Twitter or Facebook to bring me back down to Earth seeing all the vile and rude comments and stuff that I was receiving. The hate had started building up quite heavily, because the fans of One Direction now knew that Aida, Em and I were close friends and living together, which only made the picture of “the mean group of girls stealing the all the boys” even more discussed. I wasn’t being hated as a person alone, except for the girls that were mostly a fan of Niall’s only, but now we all were more likely hated as being part of our group and not being counted for anything.


Of course I knew that it was no good to read any of it, but anyway I couldn’t resist the urge to read tweet upon tweet, comment upon comment and with each one my confidence was being poked over and over again, until it felt like it really wasn’t existing no more. So despite having had fantastic evening I ended up falling asleep struggling with the negative thoughts that people apparently had about us.



I was very delighted though to wake up to a much better mood which I constantly were trying to keep by pushing away any of the things that I’d read the night before. I jumped out of bed around 8 o’clock and went straight towards the bathroom to take a shower, noticing on the way that none of the girls were up yet, or at least not until the twenty minutes later when I walked in to the kitchen with a towel around my hair seeing them sitting at the table waiting for the coffee.

“Good morning,” I said as I sat down lidding up a cigarette.

“Morning,” Em said preparing some cereal in a bowl for herself.


It wasn’t until several minutes later I discovered that something was wrong. Aida had been sitting staring down at the table top finishing cigarette after cigarette, but without as much as making the slightest sound.


“Aida…” I began after having gotten an approval nod from Em, who had noticed the same as me. “Is something wrong?”

She looked up at me like I’d scared her by suddenly talking.

“What? Oh. No, not really,” she just said, but none of us believed her, so I kept asking.
“Are you okay? You look a bit pale.”

“Just feeling a bit sick, maybe a cold or something,” she quickly answered without looking up.

“Oh, well don’t you think we should stay home from the exhibitions today then?”

“No no, we have to go!” she suddenly exclaimed and now we were the ones to get really surprised by her sudden loud voice. “I have a portfolio I need to show to all the people that will be there, I need to make some contacts if I’m ever going to have a shot in getting some jobs in photo and films.”

“Okay, okay, we’ll just go then,” Em smiled looking like she was trying to figure out what was the reason for Aida’s behavior, but none of us asked about it anymore, she clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk, only about the clothes she had to help me with finding an outfit for the day, because what the hell do you wear to a fancy event like that?!


She picked a navy blue dress for me that had a quite open front and thin straps almost reaching the knees along with a white blazer and some nude Christian Louboutin stilettos.

“Put your hair in a low bun and put on some red lipstick and thick black eyeliner,” she said looking thoughtful at my outfit and I immediately obeyed her order.


She herself was wearing a red dress that was somewhat loose, but a thin black belt in the waist showed her feminine figure and her bare legs were also revealed. Along with that she had added some black leather boots with a pair of white socks peeping up at the opening and a worn out leather jacket. Her hair was a bit slicked back making her look very fashionable and modern together with the black eyeliner.


Em wore a loose black dress that was a little shorter in the front and a white knitted cardigan over it with a pair of simple black high heeled plateau sandals. Her hair was in a tall ponytail and only a little bit of makeup as always.



The first exhibition was at the The Photographer’s Gallery where Aida worked, so we started up heading towards the tube to get to Soho.


“Which photographer is the exhibition for?” Em asked as we walked up the stairs in the Oxford Circus tube station.

“Mark Cohen,” Aida said. “Even he says so himself that galleries can’t sell his photos, because they’re not very optimistic but more like capturing some special moments that might else be forgotten. I just find his work so beautiful.”

Listening to how she spoke of photography it was clear that this was her true passion; photography and movies.


When we’d paid at the entrance of the gallery we walked in and I couldn’t help but already notice my heels hurting a bit after not having worn any for a good couple of weeks now and with my total lack of skills in this area I had to constantly keep on practicing walking around in those things.


“Wow,” I gushed the second we walked in gazing around the big white room with the photos that had a vintage touch to the editing.

“Am I right?” Aida said walking around as we followed her. “Look at this light.” She pointed at one of the big frames. “It’s like the perfection lies within the imperfections.”

Even though I had never had much interest in the same stuff as her it wasn’t very hard to love Mark Cohen’s work as its honesty was worth admiring for hours.



And so we walked around, mostly one by one actually, among the many other people at the gallery drinking champagne and mingling with each other, I guess Aida wasn’t the only one here who wanted to make some contacts at this exhibition. But she didn’t look like she was very busy trying to show the photos in the black slim briefcase in her hand as she was standing gazing at this one picture of two black women, one of them talking on the phone. I smiled at her cute silhouette, she suddenly looked so small next to the big frame.


About an hour and a half later Em and I were getting a bit tipsy from all the champagne in the morning and we had to concentrate on behaving mature and sober around all these important people, while Aida was talking to a different person each minute, showing her briefcase and handing out phone numbers. I couldn’t help but thank the booze, since it helped sedating the pain in my feet from the high heels, but I was very careful not to drink too much because of only having eaten an apple for breakfast.


“I was thinking that we could maybe get some lunch, before we went to the next one, we have about an hour and a half break now,” Aida said.

“Sure,” Em said smiling and we headed towards an Italian restaurant nearby. I ordered some Caesar Salad, the same as Aida and Em got a risotto with mushrooms and parmesan cheese.

We ate and talked. Or. Em and I were talking, but Aida’s quiet and sad mood hadn’t gone away at all and after about half an hour of not saying one word Em couldn’t resist the urge to ask her once again:

“Sweetie, something is wrong. Can’t you tell us what it is?”

Aida just let her eyes travel between Em’s and mine like she was considering how to begin.


“It’s…” she began and I felt myself getting really curios to hear how she would finish her sentence. “Uhm... Last night after our rehearsal my mum called. And she… had something to tell me.”

“Okay,” Em nodded in her comforting and friendly voice that I loved so much, cause it always made me feel like everything was going to be okay, no matter what other conditions that might affect my mood. “What was that?”


I started to get a distinct feeling that it was something serious that she was going to tell us. Really serious. That was when the tears suddenly had built up in her eyes, over floating down her cheeks and making her let out a loud sob hiding her face in her hands.

Notes

Hi guys, please leave some of your fabulous comments and votes, I love getting your response to my story! I really feel so honored every time one of you take a a few moments to give me your opinion, it brightens up my mood!! Love my readers!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3