Pathways // Gawsten [Book 2]

19 - Lies & Deceit

For the first time in a long time, Awsten was nervous. Geoff couldn't remember a recent time where Awsten had been nervous about an interview, but he knew it was their first interview in over a year and the questions they were about to asked were going to open up healing wounds. He stared at Awsten, watching the boy who was fiddling with his hands and the bottom of his shirt, anxiously checking his phone every two minutes.

Seconds later, he felt his phone begin to buzz in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see it was Jawn calling him. He furrowed his eyebrows and stepped away from Otto and Awsten, ignoring the concerned look on Otto's face.

"Hey, what's up?" Geoff asked, confused.

"I know your interview is soon but your management wanted me to tell you something," Jawn said, and Geoff could tell there were nerves laced through his voice. 

"What is it?" Geoff asked and bit his lip, bracing himself for what was going to happen.

"They're asking you to lie." Jawn said bluntly, and Geoff cursed under his breath. He covered his mouth and moved further away from his friends,

"Why?! What do they want us to say?" Geoff whisper-yelled down the phone, anger pulsing through him.

"You can't mention Awsten's arrest, you must say you weren't involved at all - meaning you didn't know about it until..." Jawn paused,

"Until what?" Geoff seethed,

"Until you went to go find Otto who had ran away." Jawn sighed.

Silence echoed down the phone as Jawn's words settled in. 

"You've got to say that it was a friend who died if they ask, and that people twisted the story to make drama... I'm so sorry Geoff, I know this isn't going to be easy," Jawn muttered apologetically,

"Yeah, no shit." Geoff snorted, and suddenly noticed Awsten waving him over, "Got to go... Tune in?"

"Definitely." Jawn said and ended the call.

Geoff sighed and stared at the blank screen before swallowing and putting his phone in his back pocket. He put on a fake smile and walked over to Awsten as the three went onto the set and began the interview with the interviewer.

-

The interview started relatively normal, and the interviewer was very respectful. She had been asking about their time in London, and their last music release and how their music was going to develop in their new releases. The boys were beginning to calm down and began to think that maybe they had been over reacting, until the setting changed.

"Now, the questions everyone is asking... What on earth happened this past year?" The interviewer asked. All three boys looked at each other before Geoff opened his mouth.

"At the beginning of December, Otto left to go back to Houston unannounced..." Geoff began, and quickly saw Otto hit Awsten softly on the back to knock the confused look from his face,
"He left his phone and everything and didn't even tell us. I was out at the time and Awsten discovered the empty room and panicked."

"I'm sorry but if you found your best friends bedroom empty with all his belongings left behind, wouldn't you panic too?" Awsten retorted,

"When I got back to the house, Awsten had called the police, and soon we were being questioned about it all... they obviously thought something more had happened to Otto, and because police in the UK and US don't often cooperate, they wouldn't have known days later that Otto was in fact just in Houston... Not that we knew that either."