The Pop-Up Shop

Chapter Twenty Two

RUEL'S POV

I hug Kacy and say goodbye before she walks out and another girl walks in with a bag. 'Hi, how are you? What's your name?'

'I'm Grace. I'm good, how are you?' she replies as she sits next to me. 

'I'm great' I smile and she pulls her bag onto her lap with a smile.

'So I have a fan account actually and I came up with an idea and a lot of your fans sent in messages and pictures um, so we put them in a book so I wanted to give you this.' she pulls out a book and I flick through the first pages.

'Oh my god. This is so sick. Thank you' I reply and she smiles

'There's also a couple pages at the end that we all want you to react with April to.'

I nervously laugh and blush and put the book at my feet and let Grace explain the pose she wanted to do. We took the picture before I thanked her once again and gave her a hug.

As I sing to the camera in the green room Joel finally puts it down and laughs. I grab the hat from the floor and put it on April's head as she sits on her phone. She looks up and smiles at me leaning around her shoulder

'Kiss for the birthday boy?' she smiles and leans up as her lips meet mine. 

Her kisses were the best, they made me more and more in love with her.

'Ruel, come get your mic packs' Nate says before I groan and give April one more peck.

Beau as he hands me the mic packs and I hi five him with my head before Nate comes down the hall, slapping me on the way and then continuing to talk to my mum. 

I was trying to eavesdrop, maybe it was something about my birthday, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. 

Soon enough, I was onstage with 1,000 people in the audience screaming my songs and jumping to the lyrics. The music stops and I see a figure wearing a mask walk out onto stage. I take off the mask to reveal my mum before blowing the candles out and thanking her. The crowd sings happy birthday and it made my heart so full. I couldn't have asked for a better crowd that night.

We were all back in the tour bus that night and April was sitting in between my legs as we flicked through the fan book that grace made for me. 'Oh yeah. She said something the last page. To react to it with you'

April frowns in confusion before she turns to the last page of the filled up notebook and my heart skips a beat as we see all the leaked photos of us or screenshots of us walking out together. 

April turns a page back to see a massive message from my fans supporting us and our relationship. 'You're fans are too sweet. I can't keep this from them anymore. We have to tell them'

'Yeah, especially after this. How about on your birthday? That gives us time to mess with them'  she laughs and nods as I kiss her neck. 

She closes the book and turns around to meet her lips with line. I smile into the kiss and her body lays on mine. 'They're gonna figure it out anyways. Especially after Shawn'

'Wait. You're coming to my Shawn shows?

She sits up and I see her eyes widen. She definitely didn't mean to slip up on that

'Uh, no?'

'Liar' I accuse but she shakes her head.

I wrap her in a hug, pulling her back onto my body and gives her lots of small pecks as she laughs. 'Ok ok, fine. Yes I'm going'

This made me less nervous about the whole experience. She was going with me.

I hugged at her the runway of the airport and gave her one more kiss before she smiled and scanned her ticket 'I love you' I whisper as she smiles at me and blushes before she disappears onto the plane.

'Oh, so you guys dropped the L word?' Nate says as I turn to him.

'Well, I did. I don't think she knows she hasn't actually said it back yet. But if she's not in love with me then that's fine' I shrug it off, it really wasn't a big deal to me, I know she cares.

'Do you wanna watch her plane leave?' Nate asks

'Yeah, do we have time?' I ask, changing my answer from the last time she left. 

'We can make time' he nods and I smile at him as I take a seat and watch her plane take off into the sky and back to Melbourne. 

Obviously I was already missing her but I knew the exact amount of days I was seeing her. And I couldn't wait anymore.