Meant To Be

I Want To Write You A Song

There's no use in being sad before it's even happened 

Try to live a little in the moment 

But I've never been one for ignoring the stars when they're already falling 

And her name sounds like something I've already lost 

  - Falling Stars 

"What are you doing?"

I smile at Holland's face, slightly blurry through the screen of my phone. I've got him propped up against my water bottle on my desk, and am typing away at my computer.

We're both so busy it's practically the only way we can see each other these days - if I work at the same time. Or face time him when he's got down time in the studio.

I think FOUR's working on their next album right now, and I think it's going good, but Holland's being pretty tight lipped about the whole thing. I get it. I get the pressure around making something creative when there's already a ton of expectations.

"I'm writing," I say.

"I know," he says. "But like, what?" He grins at me through the screen, all cheeky smile and messy hair.

I sigh. "I have to write this short story for my fiction writing class," I say, waving my hands about as I talk. "It's nothing that special."

"You should write me," he says. "I could be a character in one of your stories."

"You want me to make you a character in one of my stories?" I say.

Holland grins cheekily, dimple showing. "I think I'm pretty good inspiration," he says.

When he teases me, his accent always comes out thicker - or maybe it's just that he's back in England. Maybe its just that he's no longer so tired that he's slurring all of his words.

"I think maybe you should write a song about me," I say in response, but that just makes him grin wider.

"What makes you think I haven't already, love?" he asks, quirking an eyebrow.

I gape, mouth open. "What?" I say, but he just smiles. Yeah, I guess it had crossed my mind that I could get a song written about me - the hazards of dating a musician - but I didn't expect it to be so soon. The hazards of dating a musician currently working on their next album, I guess.

"Can I hear it?" I ask, butterflies in my stomach.

"You'll have to wait for the album," he says, and I stick out my tongue. "Besides, it's not done yet."

"Fine," I say. "And there's a small chance that I base some characters off of you. Or at least get inspired by you. Also - it's a completely different thing. Writers do horrible things to their characters. You don't want to be one."

"Are you doing horrible things to fictional me?" Holland asks.

"No," I say. "But there is no fictional you. There's like - bits of you."

"Bits of me?" Holland says, and somewhere along the way, the conversation has gone from teasing to serious.

"In everything," I say. "Bits of you in everything."

It's true, is the thing. There's bits of Holland in everything I do now. Why would my writing be any different? My writing, which is like as close to a pure reflection of my inner mind as you can get.

It's not what people think, is the thing. It's not writing myself into stories or even stealing obvious, real, concrete things from the world around me. It's the distilled essence of it all. It's the vibe of it, as much as I hate using that word unironically. But it fits. It's like - I can take all these little bits of Holland, all these little bits of me, and put them into a character.