Tour Bus Troublemaker// c.p.

•24•

After a shower and breakfast in the hotel lobby the next morning, Charlie and I wheel our suitcases to the bus.

"This is strange," he states randomly. I glance up at him while walking.

"What's strange?" I ask curiously, causing him to shrug before lugging his suitcase into the storage space of the bus.

"It's been a while since it was just us two," he remarks and helps me haul my bag up. I sigh, slightly disappointed.

"Yeah," I answer and he smiles a little down at me, leaning on the bus.

"It's hard to believe we're already almost two months in the tour," he shakes his head, still staring at me.

I nod and glance down at my Adidas shoes.
"Yeah," I mutter and nervously bite my lip.

His phone begins to ring from his pocket. He glances at it and gestures to the small device in his hand.
"Got a phone interview with Ryan Seacrest," he explains and I nod, watching him stride away and answer.

I scroll through my phone for a while as he chats on the phone with Ryan. I log onto Instagram to find more and more hate comments.

@mendesssssbaby: Kristen is a whore she never deserved Shawn anyway

@shawnsfav027: @kristenlahey slut

I sigh to myself and feel my chest ache. I wish I could explain the whole situation. I wish I could take certain things back. But most of all, I wish I could have never met Shawn in the first place.

Soon, he's done and walks back over to me.
He smiles a little.
"C'mon," he nods towards the bus and we climb in.

We get comfy in the living area as he turns on the flat screen TV, which I hadn't seen on yet. He turns on Netflix and looks at me from the couch, patting the spot beside him patiently. I do as he gestures and take a seat next to him as he slides an arm behind me.

He puts on the movie 'Mean Girls.' I love this movie, don't get me wrong, but I give him a confused look as to why this is his first choice. He laughs softly and shrugs.

"What? I'm a sucker for teen girl movies," I laugh and lean into him some more, now resting my head against his chest.

We watch in silence for a while, aimlessly staring at the movie I had now seen over a thousand times. Obviously not paying much attention to the film, my mind was on other things.

"Charlie," I say his name and feel him shift a little under my body.

"Hm," he sleepily wonders.

"What caused your panic attacks?" I ask, now thinking it might be an inappropriate question.

He sighed rather contently.
"When I was young, like middle school," he began.
"I was terribly stage fright. Any time I thought of performing in front of lots of people, I would psych myself out, like, really bad."
"My parents, they would take me to therapy and all this other shit, but, all that really helped me was singing. Alone, in my room, just me and my keyboard."
"One day, my mom heard me in my room. She was so happy, calling me amazing and whatnot. And then, I found myself enrolled in Berklee College of Music. And from there, I started YouTube, which actually really helped my anxiety just to know that people enjoyed my singing and my covers of popular songs. Aaaaand, yeah," he finished and nodded to himself. I smiled and he laughed lowly.

"Sorry to give you my whole life story practically," he apologized with a grin. I shook my head, smiling back at him.

"I love hearing about you," I respond and his cheeks turn slightly pink as we both turn our attention back to the movie.