Dangerous: A Marcel Styles Fan Fiction

27: Forever

27: Forever

   “Are you sure this is the right address?”

   “He said four-ninety-six South Grand Avenue, right? This is four-ninety-six South Grand Avenue,” Georgia Rose assured me as she pulled into an empty space in the lot in front of a small building with a neon sign which read: “Birdcage Karaoke Bar.”

   “This is a bar,” I stated as she killed the engine of her car. “We’re minors.”

   “He did say ‘dress older,’ didn’t he?” she purred with a shrug as she started to climb out.

   I followed her into the parking lot. The lights illuminating it shone and brought some beams into the forming dusk. I could see Georgia Rose decked out in a short, leather skirt, tall black boots and a shimmering blouse. She’d put her blonde curls up and had even slipped on a pair of fake glasses which, admittedly, did make her look somewhat in her twenties.

   She’d dressed me however as a modest hooker. She’d forced me to put in my contacts – which also forced my eyes to remain wide – and had stuffed me into a red dress with thin straps which reached just above my knees. She’d done my hair up much like hers and made me wear high, red pumps.

   Together, we made our way toward the doors of the club, seeing a little ways from the door, a boy standing there in tight jeans, a plaid shirt with a plain white one beneath it, boots and curls. Marcel shot me a dimpled grin as Georgia Rose and I approached him and he greeted me with a kiss.

   “Are you fucking crazy?” I asked with an involuntary smile. “We can’t go in there. Like, we literally can’t, we’re not old enough.”

   “We can’t, but my brother can,” Marcel said. Before even Georgia Rose could react, Marcel pulled from the pocket of his jeans a brown wallet, and flashed us the driver’s license inside. The name “Harry Edward Styles” was printed on it.

   “The resemblance is uncanny,” Georgia Rose muttered, only focusing on the picture, even though that was the least important fact on my mind.

   “You stole your brother’s license?!” I demanded.

   “No, he let me borrow it, since I’m practically his doppelganger. Celebrities do illegal things too. Now, c’mon,” he spoke. Marcel led us over to the door, slipping his arm over my shoulder.

   An uneasy feeling bubbled in my gut. Was sneaking into some dive karaoke bar with my boyfriend really worth his sex? As we entered the lineup of people obviously much older than us, I voiced my thoughts about this. “No offense,” I said, “But I don’t really consider watching wasted people making fools of themselves on stage really entertaining.”

   “Well, you pretty much just described my brother’s band, and I know you like them, so I’m just going to say I don’t believe you.”

   I rolled my eyes at him, but continued to follow. My heart began to race as we approached the door, but we were waved through and able to enter the bar. The illegality of this act nagged at me, but I brushed it away. After all, I had fun at the Hollywood sign despite the trespassing, didn’t I?

   The inside of the bar had a dance floor at one end and a stage at the next where drunken patrons sang their hearts out completely off pitch. In the middle was the bar and tables and chairs which were cluttered with customers. We found an empty table and Georgia Rose and I sat. Marcel went to get us drinks.

   “This is so cool,” Georgia Rose raved.

   “This is so wrong,” I pointed out with raised brows.

   Her hazel eyes locked on me and her expression matched mine. “Come on, V. It’s not like you haven’t done anything wrong before,” she purred. “You’ve trespassed at the Hollywood sign, you’re dating a kid who got arrested, and I’m pretty sure your parents would kill you if they knew you lacked a hymen.”

   “Shut up,” I begged.

   Thankfully, Marcel soon returned to us which no longer left me alone with the nosey blonde. He handed us each bright colored drinks which displayed different liquid densities as they were yellow on top and progressively morphed into pinkish red at the bottom. I’d watched enough Big Bang Theory to know they were tequila sunrises. How drunk was he trying to get me? Meanwhile, Marcel himself just had a beer.

   As some amateur finished her song, I took a sip of the fruity drink. The burning bite of the alcohol made my mouth tingle. The crowd began to clap for the amateur woman, even though her voice had almost made blood begin pouring from my ears.

   “You should sing something, V.” Georgia Rose suggested, grinning over the rim of her glass.

   I gave her a quick mock laugh then let my face fall before declaring, “No.”

   “Come on,” Marcel begged with his adorable dimpled grin which made me avoid his gaze so I would not be struck with guilt. “I’m sure you’ll be great.”

   “Please, V!” Georgia squeaked. “What’s that one song you liked by that emo band your dad worked with last year?”

   I knew the band she was talking of and, along with myself, I felt the need to defend them. “Fireflight aren’t emo,” I told her. “They’re Christian rock.”

   “Whatever,” she said, “You should go sing it.” She paused, meeting her gaze with Marcel’s. “There are male vocals too.”

   “Yeah,” I muttered, “A whole two seconds of them.”

   I didn’t know how long they’d been in cahoots – whether it was the next three seconds or the past three hours spent sending texts back and forth – but they worked a magic of peer pressure. Marcel eventually rose and guilted me into following him to put in a request and a good minute or two later the deejay announced out to the entire bar:

   “Alright, next we have a duet sung by Veronica and Harry!”

   Marcel – under his alias – dragged me up onto the stage in front of the waiting eyes of the bar’s patrons and handed me one of the two microphones. His emerald eyes met mine and he smiled. I kept my expression neutral, though I did feel a strong desire to hit both of my friends with steel chairs.

   The slow music of Fireflight’s song began to play opening with a melodic, haunted merge of guitar and bass lines. I didn’t have to look at the TV screen displaying the words to know the song’s lyrics and, therefore, didn’t break my locked gaze away from Marcel’s. My heart was racing with the nervousness but somehow my tongue formed the sentences I wished to sing.

   I would have sung anything but this. It was another of Georgia Rose’s plans. The fact the only song I had memorized by Fireflight was a love song was something the blonde used to her advantage to make this date more romantic than I wanted it to be. I’d already confessed my uncertainty about my feelings towards Marcel to her, so why was she trying to push us together? The song just made it worse. It was a melody of false promises entitled Forever by Fireflight, admittedly a more beautiful love song than any I’d ever heard.

   “Oh, tell me you’re here; that you will watch over me. Forever. Oh, take hold of my heart. Show me you love me. Forever.”