When We See You Again

Chapter 22

*Maddie's POV*

"You're adorable" He chuckles. I'm frozen in shock. He kissed me. We kissed. It was amazing. "Maddie?" he asks when I don't say anything.

I snap out of it and nervously laugh, "Sorry, you short-circuited my brain. I don't even remember what we were talking about"

He kisses my forehead. "You were amazing me with your song writing" he laughs.

Ugh, I'm such a dork. Why did he kiss me? I'm nothing special, but he still kissed me. What does that mean? "Right...yeah my lyrics. The girls don't know, just you and one other person."

"Someone else knows?" he questions.

"Yeah, Andy. Andy knows." I answer.

"Wait, Andy? Like, the Andy who helps us with our songs, Andy?" now he's really confused.

He's kinda cute when he's confused. I giggle. "Yeah him. I've been texting him since you guys released What Makes You Beautiful, he helped with that song. I thanked him for helping you guys. We became friends after that. I check on you guys through him. I know when you guys are struggling to connect verses together, and I help. I don't know the content of the songs I help with though. He's pretty vague about the songs, which I'm sure he has to. It normally goes like this: I check in, he eventually tells me that there's a song or two that isn't where you want it to be, I send him what I have written down. I never cared about the credit, I just wanted you guys to succeed." I tell him everything.

He stares at me; amazement and recognition written all over his face. "You're the writer we've never met."

"What?" my turn to be confused.

"You didn't really think he'd let you not get credit for helping did you? He created a pen name for you. You're still getting credit for helping. We've met everyone who helps us except one person. Andy kept telling us that we knew everyone. He was telling us the entire time and we didn't know it. We thought he meant that we knew everyone he knew." he laughs as his realization.

"I see. I guess that's ok, nobody needs to know it's me. I just write to help myself. If something can come from it then great. If not, it still helped me. That's all that matters." I pull out the other book I have written lyrics in. "You wanna see the one I sent him?" I ask, handing it over to him without an answer.

He reaches for it. "Sure," He opens it and I can see the recognition in his eyes as he sees the lines that helped them. His eyes widen further when he sees the sheer amount of the lines I have written as he flips the pages. "You said you write to help yourself? What do you mean by that?"

"Well, as I said earlier, they are thoughts and feelings. Writing them down helps me feel more in control of my emotions. Plus, I get to write away the feelings I no longer wish to hold on to. Writing them means I get to feel all of my emotions and pack them away so I can focus on what I need to, it's my outlet." I answer.

"Are you ok?" he looks up at me before continuing, "A lot of these lines are sad as stand alone lines" his features show concern, his eyes filled with worry.

"Honestly?" I sigh, I didn't think I'd be having this conversation yet but I guess it's time. "I'm better than I was. You guys have been gone for a long time, you've missed a lot. There's a lot of things we went through, still going through. It's gonna take time to be ok. I know most of my stuff is sad; most of what I keep from the girls is sad, most of what I'm trying to keep from you guys is sad. That's ok, because I'm still feeling sad and moving forward. All the lines correlate to something I was going through. It's progress. I wouldn't say I'm ok, but I'm working on it."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Liam whispers almost as if he's afraid to speak in fear of breaking me.

"I don't need to. That's why I write. But you want to know what you've missed, so point to a line and I'll tell you the story. How about that?" I compromise. If he wants to know, I'll let him in. While I'm still not sure what the kiss means, I know that no matter what happens I need him in my life. Whether it's as friends or something more, who knows maybe he was just caught up in the moment. It'll be his decision.