Downside Up

Chapter Nine (Who'd Have Known - Lily Allen)

A few days went by and all I could think about were the chats I had with Connor and Tyler. We were constantly talking on Skype or through Twitter DMs and sometimes we tweeted each other links, that we wanted to share or funny pictures, that would tease the other one.

Since I told Tyler about how I invited him and Connor to stay with me for a few days and he apparently had never heard about it, the talks between Connor and I had gotten a little bit awkward, because I surely didn't want to bring the topic up a second time – I'm not that needy – and he tried to ignore it at any costs.

Tyler had promised me, that he would come and bring Connor along, no matter what, but I wasn't too sure if it was going to be that easy. Maybe he had already planned something with the O2L boys or he had meetings to attend.

If my wish, to have them both here with me would destroy his YouTube career, I could never forgive myself. In ever.

So there I was, back again, having one of my late night existential crises and I wasn't sure about what to do. Sure I could call either Connor or Tyler and distract myself from my thoughts, but that wouldn't help much.

Instead, I decided, I had to pour out my heart and all my thoughts to someone trustworthy. I did a quick time check before I opened Skype and clicked the small call button.

It took only a few minutes until my call got answered.

"Hello", the young woman said, smiling brightly at the camera, "I feel like I haven't seen you in ages!"

"Hey Zoe", I replied, greeting her with a small smile myself. "I was figuring that you were really busy in the past month and I wasn't too bored myself tho ..."

She cut me off with her cheerful laugh. "You don't have to excuse yourself, sweetheart! I know that you don't mean it! Let's just say that I'm very happy you called!"

I let out a small sigh of gladness before I responded. "Me too, Zoe, me too."

Her face immediately grew concerned. "That doesn't sound like the happy and cheerful Troye boy I know – what happened?"

"See, Zoe, I don't even know myself. I just thought that I might be helpful to have someone figure it out with me because there's no way that I'm finding the conclusion on my own."

"I'm always here to help you, you know that?", she asked.

"Yes, I do."

"So", the petite girl interrogated, "tell me about what's been going on on your side of the globe. We barely hear anything of you folks down under there here in Britain."

"Well – not too much actually." I trailed off, trying to think of some exciting news, but there weren't too many.

"We're having a host student from Europe staying at our house for about a year, so that's something."

"Boy or girl?", she asked excitedly.

"It's a girl", I told her, "and her name is Olivia, but everyone calls her Oli. She's about Tyde's age and I barely got to know her yet. She seems quite unapproachable, but maybe that's just because due to the new environment and the fact, that she is surrounded by strangers."

"I'm sure she's a nice girl, once she got used to your family", the British girl agreed.

"But what's about you? What are you working on right now? Any big projects you yet can't tell me about? Are you planning on coming over here sometime soon?"

I smiled sadly and shook my head.

"Not really, I'm sorry to disappoint you", I replied. "I'm writing on some new music, but I'm not sure if I'm going to publish any of it and maybe Tyler and Connor are coming to visit me sometime soon, but nothing's set yet."