Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
TW: Blood and pill usage (pain killers)
Gypsy
It had been seven months since Casual came out. The album had blown up on social media and some of our singles even reached Billboard Hot 100 for a bit. We was beyond grateful for everything and even now I'm still in disbelief. We went out on a short tour that consisted of about ten shows or so. All in small venues, but all so special. Seeing how many people were willing to show up and spend money on us felt so overwhelming in the best way possible. I can feel seven-year old Gypsy screaming inside.
"Gypsy get up!" Julia barged into my room, not even bothering to knock. Julia had scouted us out while we were singing at a bar. She told us "You all have something nobody has seen in years, and that's really special." Which has stuck with me ever since. For years people have told me I was made for the sixties and seventies and I thought that was the best thing anyone could ever say to me. I was infatuated with the music, lifestyles, architecture, and most of all, the music from those decades. Everything about it, even the worst parts were mesmerizing to me. The fact that I get the opportunity to make music inspired by the icons who paved the way with my best friends is still surreal.
I rolled over and groaned into the silk pillow case underneath to my head, "Why." I practically whined. The sun beamed in through the sheer curtains draped over my window, basically blinding me.
"Because, it's your first day back in the studio since y'all released the album. I brought you some coffee by the way." She said before swiftly leaving. After tossing and turning for roughly ten minutes I finally got up and made my way to the bathroom to do my business.
"Ugh, this is why we hired you." I smirked at the sight of the coffee sitting on my kitchen counter.
"You hired me because I'm amazing." Julia joked from behind her laptop. I swear she's always on that thing. I made us each a slice of toast accompanied by some eggs and strawberries and sat down next to her.
"Here you go love." I said with a terrible British accent as I slid her plate over to her.
"You're a life saver." She bit into her toast and smiled. "Love you!"
"Ew, don't chew with your mouth open!" I grimaced. As soon as we met, we just clicked. She felt protective over me I guess since I was so young. After practically inhaling my breakfast I moved to my bedroom and got dressed. Some jean shorts, a simple white tank top, and a floral vest to spice it up. I added some accessories and grabbed my sunglasses that I never left the house without.
"Ready?" Jules said as if she had been waiting for hours. Amelia, Hazel, Grace, and Elias were all sitting in the living room waiting for me as well. They probably have been waiting for hours, I wasn't a morning person.
We piled into the Volkswagen van we bought to make traveling as a group easier, letting Julia drive. All of us minus Julia lived together because we figured it just made sense. Julia lived down the street from us so she was always around us when she wasn't working on other stuff.
Hazel kicked my foot to get my attention, pulling me away from my phone. "Hm?"
"Did you know Harry Styles works in the same studio as us?" She smirked.
Everyone knew I had a slight crush on Harry, especially because of his singing. It was always a playful crush though. "Really?" Butterflies filled my stomach at the thought of being within thirty feet of him.
"Don't get involved with some douche bag singer." Grace advised. She was right, most famous singers were arrogant jackasses.
"You don't know if he's arrogant or not. He seems nice." Elias chimed in from the front seat.
"Elias is right." I defended. "We've never met him and from what everyone says he's super nice."
Amelia nodded in agreement. "My cousin met him in London a couple months ago and she said he was super sweet."
"Just be careful." Grace said. I nodded and went back to scrolling on my phone.
**
"Hey!" Silas' head popped up from above his computer when he saw us walk in. Silas was our producer and collaborative song writer, aka our life savior.
"Hi!" I hugged him before moving on to greet our other producer, Chris.
"I'm so excited to get back into the studio." Hazel smiled. I sat my stuff down on the floor and took a seat next to Chris on the floor.
"So. You guys released Casual about half a year ago, meaning fans will start to get antsy in about four months, wanting another album. I'd recommend aiming for your next album to come out around September this year, putting you at a year and two months after Casual came out." Silas explained to us. Julia was writing stuff down in her notebook, nodding along while the rest of us were intently listening. With Elias, me, and Silas all writing the songs along with input from the rest of the band, we'd get done with the main part of the album in the next four months or so.
"I think that's an achievable timeline. I mean, nine months is a fairly good amount of time. Four months for writing, five months for everything else?" I said.
Grace and Amelia nodded along, I could tell they were both already brainstorming ideas for the songs. "Yeah. That sounds good." Elias agreed.
"What direction do we want to go though? Stay the same as our last album, or change it up a bit?" Hazel asked. Julia had mentioned getting someone to do a feature on a song to spice things up and it wasn't a terrible idea.
"Well, people loved how your last album sounded and it did really well so I think if you guys stuck to that track it'd be a success." Chris recommended. He was right, our album did amazing. It was so cool to see how everyone portrayed our songs differently and everyone could relate to something we wrote. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears were put into it so when all of our hard work paid off it felt really good.
"If you guys did release the album in September, how would you guys feel about starting the tour in like February of next year?" Julia suggested.
My head hurt from thinking so far ahead. Thinking in the future wasn't something I enjoyed because I was scared of the uncertainty the future held. "Sure. That gives us enough time to practice and prepare." Elias said.
"I'm gonna go to the bathroom real quick." I said, in desperate need of a break. Sometimes I would just start feeling really nauseous for absolutely no reason and usually it meant a nose bleed was about to start. I grabbed my bag and walked out of the studio then wandered down the hallway until I found the bathroom. "Fuck..." I mumbled to myself as I tried to quickly open the bottle of Ibuprofen. I went through more of these then I should because something always hurts. My head hurts the worst most of the time. I dry swallowed a couple of Ibuprofen then splashed my face with some water. My hair was thrown into two rag doll braids and it looked messy as always. Talking technical stuff wasn't really my forte. I usually let Julia and Elias talk about the technical stuff, especially if it came to numbers and math. Blood started to drip out of my nose so I grabbed a wad of paper towels and tipped my head back in hopes of stopping it. I walked down the hallway and out to the car, still holding the paper towel to my nose.
"You shouldn't tip your head back, blood could run down the back of your throat and cause your stomach to be irritated." Someone said from beside me.
"Thanks." I muttered. I lowered my head, now seeing who gave me the advice. "Oh. Hi, I'm um- I'm Gypsy." I said. I went to shake his hand but realized I had blood on it.
He chuckled at my nervousness. "I'm Harry. Nice to meet you."
