Was I hearing things, or did my dad genuinely just say that The Wanted were going to be here, in this club performing over the next two weeks? I looked at him with disbelief for a while. I couldn’t believe that The Wanted were coming here and I’d possibly get to meet them. In case you hadn’t guessed already, I’m quite a big fan of them. If I was going to possibly get to meet them over the next two weeks that I was doing my work experience for, I had to learn how to act calm and normal and avoid making a complete idiot of myself.
“Dad, did you just say The Wanted?” I asked, just to be sure that my dad had actually said what he’d said.
“Yeah. Why, do you like them?” he said.
“Like them? I love them! But, why are they coming to this club? It’s not exactly the hottest place in town..”
“Well, you know they’re doing the official Comic Relief single for 2011?” dad asked, I nodded. “Well, they wanted to help earn a bit of extra money for Comic Relief, so they’re doing a few smaller gigs here.”
“Oh.. right.” I said, “Anyway, these dressing rooms that need cleaning, where are they?”
Dad showed me to the back corridor of the club where there were about 8 small dressing rooms for guests who performed at the club. It was hard to believe that in a few hours time, The Wanted would be occupying 5 of these dressing rooms and I’d get to clean them. I probably wouldn’t even get to meet them though. I’ll just clean their dressing rooms and then I’ll be sent off to do something else and told to stay away from them.
“Right Grace,” dad said as we got to the dressing room corridor, “With each dressing room, empty the bins, wipe the tables and clean the floor.” he ordered.
“Yes dad.” I sighed, pretending to salute him. He grabbed a bucket of water and handed it to me, along with various cleaning products. I stared at them with confusion for a while; I never really did much cleaning at home so I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Dad walked off, leaving me with all the cleaning products. I turned to look down the corridor at the 8 dressing room doors. This was going to take me forever.
---
Two hours later, I was on the last dressing room that needed cleaning. The time seemed to fly by, which surprised me as I thought it would go painfully slowly. I finished wiping the floor of the dressing room I’d been cleaning and stood up, sighing. I threw the floor cloth into the bucket of water and picked it up. Smiling to myself, I felt proud of what I’d achieved. ‘Dad better be paying me for this..’ I thought to myself.
“Thank God I’ve finally finished that.” I said to myself, picking up the bucket of water.
I turned around to walk out of the dressing room and was about to open the door with the hand that wasn’t holding the bucket. Before I could touch the door handle though, the door flew open and hit me, causing me to drop the bucket of water which splashed all over me, the floor, and the person who had just opened the door. I stood there looking down at the wet floor. ‘Great.. now I’ll have to clean it again..’ I thought.
“Sh.it, I’m so sorry..” the guy who’d just opened the door said, “I didn’t know you were there..”
“It’s alright.” I replied. I looked up at the guy who was in front of me and almost screamed as soon as I saw him. “Y-you’re..N-N-Nath..” I stuttered.
“Nathan Sykes? Yeah, that’s me.” he laughed, “And you are?”
“Grace.” I managed to say.
“Nice to meet you.” Nathan smiled, “You seem a little young to be working in a club like this. What are you, like 16?”
“Yeah, but I’m 17 next Friday.” I told him.
“Oh right. So why are you working here?” he asked.
“Work experience.”
Nathan just nodded. There was silence between us for a while as we just stared at each other. I was afraid to say anything in case I ended up making an even bigger idiot of myself. I’d just spilled water all over a member of my favourite band and he probably thought I was such an idiot. He didn’t seem too bothered about it though.
“Sorry I got water all over you.” I said shyly.
“Don’t worry about it, it was my fault anyway.” Nathan replied, “Here, let me help you clean this up.” He took a towel from off the dressing room table and bent down to start wiping the floor. I took another towel and began to help him clean the puddle of water. The towel was soaked through as soon as I put it on the floor, and there was still a @#!*% of a lot of water to clean up. Within 10 minutes we’d gone through about 4 towels between us, and the floor was still pretty wet.
“We’re gonna be here for ages cleaning this.” Nathan joked.
“Well if you hadn’t hit me with the door, none of this would have happened!” I shouted, but with a smile on my face. I mean, how could I possibly be angry with Nathan freaking Sykes?
“I’m sorry!” he laughed, hitting me with the wet towel.
“Hey! What was that for?” I squealed, hitting him back.
“Oh, it’s on..” Nathan stuck his tongue out at me.
We both stood up and started hitting each other with the wet towels we were holding. It didn’t really matter that the towels would make us wet, because we were already soaking from when I dropped the bucket of water. The final straw of the fight was when Nathan threw a towel at me and it hit me right in the face. As revenge I picked up a soaking wet towel and wrung it out over his head.
“Dude, you got my hair wet!” he laughed.
“Aww diddums.” I said sarcastically.
“Well, well, well..” the two of us were interrupted by a voice from the doorway and looked up to see Nathan’s band mates, Jay McGuiness and Tom Parker, “We’ve only been here 20 minutes and Nathan’s flirting already..”
“Shut up Jay..” Nathan turned around to face Jay.
“What happened to you two anyway?” Tom asked.
“I was cleaning the dressing room and Nathan hit me with the door and the bucket of water spilled everywhere and we were trying to clean it up..” I explained.
“Why are you two so wet then?” Jay asked.
“It’s a long story..” Nathan said.
“Riiiiight.” Jay nodded, “Well, you better get dried off cuz we gotta rehearse in 5.”
“Alright..” Nathan replied as Jay and Tom walked off, “I guess I’ll see you later then.” he smiled, turning to me.
“Yeah..” I smiled back, “Bye.”
Nathan left the dressing room and I started picking up all the towels. We’d made a right mess of his dressing room; dad was going to kill me. It was fun hanging with Nathan though, and he seemed like a really nice guy. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he liked me. No, I can’t think like that. So what if he did like me? I didn’t want to like him back because I’d promised myself I was swearing off boys for good, no matter how lovely Nathan was.
