The Middle - Volume Two ✔️

Chapter 15

Jamie

"Welcome to New York!"

"Patrick... don't."

"It's been waiting for you!"

"For fuck sake."

"Welcome to New York, welcome to New York!"

I laugh as we drive into the city. Patrick's excited, we all are, so Jay finally agreed to let him play Taylor Swift over the stereo. I hate this song, but I am enjoying Patrick singing along to it. It's fitting in well as we drive into the city, the four of us together, for the first time. This is fucking exciting.

"First stop, the hotel." Jay announces, as he actually starts paying attention to his built in Sat Nav system. Getting to New York is easy, getting where you need to go is the tricky part.

But Jay's a confident driver (who wouldn't be in a huge, brand new Range Rover like his?) and he gets us to the hotel no problem.

"Okay, it's around 1:30pm now, the audition's at 3. We have time to grab some food after we check in." Joel says, as we lug our shit out of Jay's car.

We make our way into the hotel, and I'm surprised to see that it's actually not that fancy. Moneybags Montgomery usually books us into more upmarket establishments, but this place seems...normal. Which I am totally happy about.

I notice Jay giving me some serious side eye as we head into the hotel lobby.

"I'll go get our keys, you guys wait here." He says, and I understand. He's gonna be checking into three rooms, not two, like the guys think. I'll cover for this.

"So." I say to Joel and Patrick, stopping dead in my tracks and allowing Jay to walk off to the reception desk alone. "What should I wear to the audition?"

Patrick raises both eyebrows and Joel frowns. I knew this would grab their attention, I don't give a fuck about what I wear usually, and the boys know it. This has effectively stopped them from trying to approach the front desk with Jay though. Mission accomplished.

"Does it matter?" Joel asks me.

"You look fine in anything." Patrick says casually, waving his hand dismissively.

"Great, I'll wear my pyjamas then." I say, and they both laugh at me. They know I'm kidding around.

After checking in at the hotel and dumping our overnight bags in our rooms (Jay and I leave our stuff in the same room, so as not to arouse suspicion. And the second we're alone, he confirms that he did in fact book a third room for him and Erin to spend the night in...) we head out for some food, then make our way over to the venue for our audition. And I gotta admit, stepping into the space, I am a little nervous.

Jay drove us here with our instruments, and we leave all our stuff in the car and step into the place to check it out first. It's a bar and stage venue, kinda like the Grill but smaller. It isn't busy at all, in fact, there's no one here besides us and two other guys; a couple of scouts from Blue Light Records.

They're totally friendly (Tony and Bobby) and make us feel super welcome. They tell us how this works (it's pretty self explanatory - it's an audition for a potential recording contract, so, we play them some songs and see what they think afterwards), then we get our instruments set up on the stage. Once we're good to go in our positions on stage, I realise I am actually totally fucking nervous. This is weird, standing on stage in the middle of the day, preparing to play our songs for two random guys. Playing in front of huge crowds at the Grill is totally different, and somehow, much less stressful. Playing for a few friends in my garage is also totally different, as there's no pressure. This is a completely different ball game, and when Patrick taps his drum sticks together, counting us in to Sensitivity, I swallow hard in an attempt to bury my nerves.