After All This Time

Chapter Forty-Four

It had been a couple of hours since the main part of the wedding, some funny speeches had been made by all of us, drunk speeches, but everyone had calmed down, and was now sitting around hanging out. Dad left almost immediately after his speech, thank god, Sloane and Luther had been slow dancing for an hour, Viktor was outside taking a break, Klaus and Ben were rummaging around the hotel, and Diego and Lila were sitting down leaning against the side of the stage. But Five and I were wasted, but the version of wasted where we were calm and wide awake, but still not fully conscious of the things we were doing. Around an hour and a half ago, I had moved onto red wine and drank over half a bottle, and who knows how many more shots of vodka. Five had just been drinking a little bit of everything, which added up to a lot. To the point where he was on the stage singing along to the songs that were playing throughout the room. While I laid on the very edge of the stage, using his blazer as a pillow, hanging halfway off of it with the bottle of wine in my hand staring up at the ceiling and watching him sing, which was rather relaxing and soothing.

"Come on in, Sit right down, Mr. Lonely," Five sang into the microphone, while I lip synced, "You're too late, Miss Heartache has gone, Mr. Sadness will move in tomorrow,"

Then a song popped into my head that I wanted him to sing along to, if it was in any of the records by the booth. So, I stood up and caught my balance, my vision spinning but I still managed to walk some-what normally. I took another drink out of my bottle as I barely made it up the stairs, I dropped to my knees and started to flip through the records in the crates stored under the booth. But the only problem was that I couldn't read any of it clearly. But thankfully I knew what the case of the record looked like. I pulled one of the crates out and flipped through it as Five continued to sing, and I didn't find it, even though I must have flipped through around 50 records. So, I put that case back and pulled the second out of the three cases and started flipping through it. And after flipping through around 35 or 36 records, I found the one that I was looking for, even though I almost passed it while searching. I pulled it out and set it right next to the player and put the crate back. As I stood up, I picked up my wine bottle and took another two sips and waited for Five's song to end.

"No offense, But you know, I'm still looking." Five finished, with one arm holding out a bottle of something, and the other pushing the microphone away from himself.

The song faded out, and I carefully took the record off of the set and put it back in its sleeve. Then I got out the song I wanted to play and set it in its place, before adjusting the speed and setting the tonearm on the edge of the disk. I pressed the play button, and it started to play throughout the whole room. Everyone in the room seemed to take notice that I was at the booth playing a song, and watched me. A downward-sounding guitar note played, followed by one that was upward, then it continued the rest of its iconic intro. I grabbed my bottle and made my way out of the booth area and back to the edge of the stage.

I looked up to see if Five recognized the song, and right on que, he sang the lyrics, "The world was on fire and no one could save me, but you."

I made it to the stage and was about to lay down, as I was doing before, but Five stood the microphone back up and walked to the end of the stage and held out his hand, and I gladly took it.

'It's strange what desire will make foolish people do'

Lila pulled Diego up from the ground and held his hand as she pulled him outside to look at the sky with her 'champagne.' He pulled me up on the stage and then we stepped back over where the microphone was and he started whispering the lyrics of the song to me as he held me close and slow danced with me, "And I'd never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you," His arms wrapped around my waist a bit more than before and gazed into my eyes, his pupils dilating even more as he did so.