A little over half an hour later the cab dropped us off in front of a house in a suburb just outside of the city. We paid the cabbie and walked up to the front door as he drove off. Jack knocked on the door quickly before twisting the doorknob. "Hey Alex! We're here!" he called in. "Living room!" came the reply, clearly the two were good friends. I followed the guys through the house and into a nice, modernly furnished living room. I saw the back of the guy they called Alex's head, he had longish brown hair and was reclining on the couch, feet up on a coffee table. "Hey Jack, hey Danny, hey Pete." he said naming off the guys as they walked past him and sat down on the sofa. I paused for a second, looking towards Danny. "Hey Alex," Danny said, "we brought a friend with us today." and he beckoned me to come sit by him. I stepped foward shyly and walked towards Danny, slowly pushing a strand of my dark-brown hair behind my ear. Now that I was on the other side of the couch I could see that Alex was a bit tan and had eyes about the same color as Jack's and rather large eyebrows. He was cute too. Like really? Why did all of the super cute boys suddenly appear out of nowhere when I ran away from home and all manage to know each other? At least one of them has to be gay, or taken, with my luck.
"Hey there beautiful." Alex said, smiling, snapping me out of my thoughts, "What's your name and which one of these losers are you dating?" "I'm Lorelei," I said, blushing at the idea of him thinking I was dating one of the guys, "I'm not dating any of them, I just moved up here from Maryland, they're my neighbors, I'm friends with their other neighbor, Hayley." He looked at me for a minute and said, "Maryland, eh? My old stomping grounds, you wouldn't happen to have lived in the Baltimore area?" he says. 'Great,' I thought to myself, 'hottie number 4 here is actually from Maryland. Guess I have to pick a city now.' "No, actually," I said, "I lived in Salisbury. But I didn't live in Maryland my entire life, I just moved there before high school, I'm actually from Tenessee." "Figures." he said, "I would've remembered seeing a girl like you around town. So, what brought you to the Big Apple?" I looked down and over at Danny's hand, casually resting on the couch. "Bad situation at home, had to get out, called Hayley, she offered me a place to stay, I don't want to talk about it." I said quickly. "Gotcha, I won't pressure you for the dirty details." Alex said, smirking, "If you ever need to talk to someone I'm here though." he tagged on at the end. "So will I!" Jack and Danny said at the same time. Pete rolled his eyes. He's a tough nut that one, I don't know what it is about him, but he seems to like acting like he's too cool to talk or something. None of us really spoke on the cab ride here. He probably just has a hard time opening up to new people, I'm like that too, but I don't act like a total ass about it, I just tend to be quiet. But I like Jack, Alex and Danny, they're nice. "Thanks guys." I say blushing a little. "Alright, let's start band practice guys." Danny said, "Lorelei, you wanna come down now or do you want to hang out with Alex?" "I'll go with you guys." I answered, smiling. Danny stood up and held out his hand, "Come with me then." he said. "Have fun you guys." Alex said, "I'll be up here if you need anything." Jack gave him a little salute wave and down into Alex's basement we went.
DANNY'S POV
As we walked down the stairs into the basement I couldn't help but think about how much of an ass Pete was being to Lorelei. He's probably just grumpy because he just broke up with his girlfriend and he didn't like that Jack and I were kind of hitting on a new girl right in front of him, with full knowledge that he had just gone through a bad breakup. I know they had been fighting for the past couple of weeks, but I'm kind of sure he's grumpy because she broke up with him. Which, in his mind, is totally messed up. I shake it off and lead Lorelei over to the couch before walking over to my drumset and sitting down. "Alright guys," Jack said, "we really have to practice today since we booked a recording studio for tomorrow so we can get some demos done to submit to different records so we can try to get signed." Pete and I both said, "We know" and "Got it Jack" though Pete still sounded grouchy. 'Can't he just get over it for now and just play.' I thought to myself as I tapped my drumsticks together before starting to play the song Jack had said we were playing first.
