Skybreak [not to be continued]

XXII

Waking up, I was slightly confused to my surroundings. Instead of a sofa which I thought I would awaken on, my face was pressed against a hard surface as Cal shook me while two unclear voices laughed in the background.

Shaking my head, I tried to clear the foggy feeling that had been gathering in there. The room seemed to form around me as I recognition that I had not fallen asleep at 5 Seconds of Summer's house but at a table in a cafe.

I sighed, despairing with myself.

My brain recognised the clear voice if Ashton laughing and I groaned, fed up with his relentless teasing.

"Ashton, please, what is your problem? I don't understand why you hate me so much - in fact, I'm completely baffled. So why do you have to deliberately go out of your way to make me feel bad."

Taking another deep breath, I carried on. "I don't know what I did to you which has made you so annoyed at me; Michael and Ashton, hate me. I know I lied to you but I just didn't want sympathy because my friend had been killed and so I thought it would be best if I just pretended to be someone else - it was only for a few months, after all. But I want to go back to before everything happened, before I did whatever I did wrong, when we sang Green Day and wrote songs about non-existent situations because I liked that, and one day, those songs might even get you signed. So please, forgive me for whatever I did and just trust me: I'm not lying anymore."

Not even realising my breathing was now uneven and my eyes filling with tears, I tried to breathe silently as a majority of the people in the cafe were looking at us. All four of the boys were looking down at their laps, slightly ashamed of themselves.

"Sorry." I murmured, trying to sink back into my chair. "That might have been a little out of order."

The faces of Luke, Cal, Ash and Michael were still emotionless as I picked myself and my guitar up and strolled briskly out of the café, unable to cope with them.

I didn't go far from the café, only walking a couple of minutes until I reached the river bank where I lay down my guitar and began to sing. I'd been writing more songs, but many of them were still a working progress. Recently, I had been singing my own song as well as the usual selection I did, and the crowd always seemed to enjoy it.

As I was hanging my guitar strap around my neck, a voice in the distant caught my attention. Turning into the direction I thought it was coming from, a body ran into me. I stumbled backwards, gripping onto my guitar to make sure it wasn't damaged. Annoyed with the anonymous person, I turned to complain but stopped in my tracks as I recognised the iconic fringe.

"Michael?" I asked the boy in front of me, who started awkwardly while holding his bulky guitar case.

"Uh... hi." Michael avoided my eye contact as I waved at him. "I'm sorry. Ashton doesn't trust you, and I trust his judgement of people so I'm still not sure what I think about you."

Too many thoughts ran around my head: why didn't Ashton trust me, and why was Michael so dependent on Ashton's opinion?

Instead of answering any of these questions, I just gestured to Michael's guitar and asked him if he wanted to play.

"We could do American Idiot, or I Miss You if you like Blink." I suggested as he strapped his guitar to himself.

He started playing the amazing introduction to the song and I joined in playing the underneath line as the crowd joined in with the well-known song.

"Welcome to a new kind of tension, all across the alien nation. Where everything isn't meant to be okay.

Television dreams of tomorrow, we're not the ones who're meant to follow. Convincing them to walk you."

After we'd finished the song, we both burst out laughing.

"Please can we sing I Miss You?" I begged Michael. "It's one of the best songs on my iPod, and that's saying something as I have over five thousand songs on there!"

Michael sighed, before digging out an old and battered piece of paper from inside his case. He sheepishly smiled at me before showing me what was written on there: 'I Miss You Bass Line, as tabbed by Calum Hood.'

I laughed again, and let him skim through it as the small crowd awaited our performance. After a couple of minutes, he began to play the bass line as I clipped a capo on the neck of my guitar ready to play the chords.

Michael and I continued to sing but as soon as we reached the beginning of the chorus, a gust of wind blew Michael's music from the railings where it had been tucked while he played, into the open waters of the River Thames.

The audience and I noticed, but neither of us said anything and so when we finished, it was evident that Michael hadn't noticed.

"I played it without the music!" He exclaimed, as I smiled proudly at him, before breaking the news of what had happened to his beloved music.

"Michael, um, your music..." I trailed off as he realised it was no longer where he had left it. "It's in the Thames." I finished as he stared beyond me to the single sinking sheet on the river's surface.

His smile sank as the paper finally drifted below the water and he looked at me like a little injured kitten. It took a lot of my willpower to not just hug him and stroke his head.

"I'm sorry Mikey, but at least you can play it off by heart now..." I joked, glad when it did replace the smile on his face.