Long Way Home ~ Reggie Peters

Chapter 5: Flying Solo (Edited)

(Zach's POV)

Me and the boys, minus Alex, sat in the studio, shooting off ideas for Julie's lyrics and jamming out together.

Although I still disagree about the thought of invading Julie's privacy, I decided to just give it a go. I still can't believe I lost over a pair of sad puppy eyes.

"Hey Reggie, what do you think of this riff?" Luke asks him and begins playing the riff. Reggie and I nodded along.

"Sweet, I'm feeling that," Reggie responded.

Then Luke turned to me, "Zach?"

"Well, I'm thinking a little bit of something like this," I say as I add in a rhythm guitar line. Luke and Reggie smiled.

"And then I come in with a little—" Reggie adds a bass line and the three of us jammed together.

"And then Julie comes in with her killer lyrics," Luke added.

"And Sunset Curve is reborn," Reggie says enthusiastically, making us smile.

"Guys, you aren't supposed to be playing out here alone," Julie says when she walked into the studio.

"But we're not alone," Reggie says as Luke wraps his arms around the three of us, smiling at each other. "'Cause we always have each other."

Julie only rolled her eyes and she unplugged Reggie's amp cord.

"But we had the volume level on one," Luke defends.

"But we rocked it on volume ten!" Reggie adds. "Do you want us to play it again?" 

Julie only looked at us deadpanned as she unplugged mine and Luke's amp cord.

"I really don't think she does," I whispered to Luke and Reggie.

"Yeah," Reggie agreed quietly as he sets his bass down.

"We've actually been waiting for you to come home," Luke says excitingly. "Okay, so we have pretty major news to tell. We had a band meeting earlier and..." Luke points to Reggie, who did a drum roll. "We wanna invite you to join Sunset Curve! And no, you're not dreaming."

"Oh," was all Julie responded.

That didn't sound like the reaction we're expecting.

"Oh. Oh, she said 'Oh'," I muttered to Luke.

"That's what you say when you get socks on your birthday, not when you're invited to join the most epic band ever!" Luke explains and Julie sighs.

"Sorry, I'm honored, but I can't think about anything but Flynn right now," Julie says. "She's still mad at me for lying, she hasn't even texted me back."

"Yeah, you're in a tough spot," I say sympathetically.

"Yeah," Reggie muttered.

"So you wanna join the band?" Luke asks quickly, I smack his chest and gave him a look.

"Read the room, dude!" Julie says before walking away.

"Oh, come on! We need you and you need us because you need music," Luke says desperately. "We found this poem that you wrote, and the three of us, we added this really cool melody to it. It sounds awesome!"

"Where'd you find that?"

Uh oh.

"Uh, definitely not in your dream box," Luke says as he grabs Reggie's arm and pulled him in front of him.

"You went through my stuff?" Julie snaps as she stomps towards Luke, making me and Reggie move out of the way.

"I-I know, but---"