Walk-On

Ch 1 - Meeting the Boys

COMMENT! 

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Ch 1 - Meeting the Boys

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“Liam, slow down!” I yelled at my best friend, whose death grip on my arm was pulling the entire appendage out of its socket. His long legs were carrying him a lot faster than my short ones were propelling me, and he wouldn’t calm himself down at all. What did I expect though? The boy kept his emotions in check pretty well, but there was no hiding his excitement at this. Nobody would be holding their excitement at this. 

Today was the day he was introducing me to all of his band members. Today was also the day they got a call that they were officially going on tour for the summer. So all in all, I couldn’t really blame Liam for his overly hyper state of mind. But I could blame him for the pain it was causing me. 

As we rounded a corner in the gigantic building I used the extra momentum I gained in turning from being the smaller one and kicked him in the back of his knee, sending him tumbling down until he could use the wall to correct himself. He spun around, releasing my arm from his grip-of-steel. “What was that about, Gwendolyn?” 

I winced. Liam knew I hated my first name, and he only used it when he was upset with me. Well, two could play that game. “You were hurting me, Liam Chance.” 

His eyes narrowed, just like I knew they would. I knew him too well. It only took me a few seconds of his gaze to understand that this was about to backfire in my face. “I apologize, Gwendolyn Rose, but perhaps it would help if you weren’t the size of a garden gnome.” 

The laughter bubbled up inside of me until I couldn’t contain it anymore, and I reached out to him in attempt to keep myself from rolling on the floor. Liam was always the serious one, and to even hear him say the words “garden gnome” in a setting where he wasn’t entertaining a landscape artist was preposterous. He cracked a grin but held onto me, and as soon as my laughing fit was over he resumed his quick pace. “Come on, Gwen,” he urged me, “the guys are waiting.” 

We turned down another hallway and I knew we were getting close as soon as I spotted the first poster hanging on the wall. It was familiar, since I had the same one rolled up in the corner of my bedroom tucked out of sight. A friend at school had bought it for me the day it came out, thinking I would appreciate it, and for all intents and purposes I did enjoy having it. But when I got home, unrolled it, and stuck it to my wall along with the posters of Adele and The Script, it lasted for about five minutes before I took it right back down. It was too freaky having Liam’s “smoldering” look glaring down at me when I went about my everyday activities. Doing homework in front of it was weird enough, but the final turning point was when I imagined getting dressed in front of it. There was just no way. 

I also had the poster of the five boys all together that hung a few feet down from Liam’s in this hallway, but it was strategically positioned behind my dresser so that Liam’s body was covered and out of sight. When he came over and saw it I blew it off as the only open space on my walls, but it honestly took me over three hours to rearrange everything to cover the excess wall area up. It was still uncertain as to whether Liam had seen through my lie or not. 

There were posters hanging of the other four individual guys as well, and I was happy to say it was the first time I had ever even laid eyes on them. I mean, honestly, I had kind of been out of the loop on his whole band thing until today. It’d been a pretty down low operation. Liam had somehow snuck out a copy of one song and played it for me, but other than that, I had no benefits from being a band member’s best friend. 

I also had been given no benefit from being their agent’s daughter. 

When I asked Dad about it, he spouted off some kind of technical stuff that automatically made my mind go into hibernation mode, and so I gave up. I figured that it was all going to be out in the open soon enough, and by the news Liam had given me today, I was right. There were already posters, and one song had been released (ironically, the day after Liam snuck me that song I heard it premiere on the radio), but tomorrow would be the release of their second single, and the information about their upcoming and already recorded CD. Then only a couple of weeks and a third single later, and the tour dates would come out. Liam was beside himself with excitement, and I put on a faux smile and joined him.