Overlap

Van

🌼2018🌿

I lay back on the settee with my legs kicked up over the arm, guitar resting on my chest as I struggled with the right words for the last song on the album.

It was about her, of course. Most of my songs were these days, little lines about her disguised in the middle of songs about someone else. Even though I hadn't seen her since New Years Eve, even though we'd only spent that night the same way we spent all our time together. As friends.

Bondy said we'd been lucky to see her that night really, that she'd been taking on all these extra hours at the childrens home I hadn't known she worked at, and had traded one night off for new years eve for about two months worth of shifts in January.

Well now it was February, it was cold, dreary and I was adamant that I was going to write her a happier song than that Fender track that still haunted me every time I heard it.

Then again perhaps thats why I was struggling so much to come up with any half decent set of lyrics for her, because the ones which weighed heavy on my mind conjoured up too vivid an image. I couldn't ignore them, i couldnt view her in a light less tragic and yet she'd never been tragic to me. Though we hardly spoke, only in broken up text message conversations with silences that spanned weeks, I found myself dwelling on the thought of her every night. More intensely than ever before. And always asking myself the same questions. Always just wanting to know whether she was alright. Whether she was working herself too hard - which Bondy always worried she was. Whether her and Niall were still more off than on these days, whether he was back for good or a faded memory. Whether Andy was still lurking around in the background because I hadn't believed her at New Years Eve and the longer I was left to think the encounter over, the more convinced I became that I was right not to. That there was something going on there. Something worth worrying about too.

I tried to pick out another little riff but I knew I'd have to leave this one to Bondy, I'd be lucky if I even got a melody together at this rate.
It was winding me up that I couldn't write for her, that I couldn't give her what she really deserved; a whole song all to herself, not just a couple of lines threaded through a song about a girl who'd left me broken hearted not so many years ago.

I kept trying to picture her, how beautiful she'd been when I'd first seen her across the room at New Years Eve. She'd been wearing this little floaty dress, like some wayward hippie type, ethereal and moonlit, giddy drunk smile on her lips. And her smile had seemed to sparkle all the more so when she'd turned and seen me. She'd looked divine, for a second I had struggled to breath, and all I'd really wanted was to fall at her feet there and then. To get down on my knees and confess it all to her, that she deserved the whole world, the I wanted to be the one who gave it to her.

For a second those thoughts had stunned me. Knocked the wind right out of me. Because at first it felt as though they had come from nowhere at all. As if they'd hit me like a double decker bus out of the blue.

But the minute I'd pulled her into a hug and she'd wrapped her arms around me, the moment she'd chosen to hide behind me and beg for my protection, from her brother and his wind up merchant mates, I'd realised that actually nothing much had changed.

One way or another I'd always felt that way for her. She'd always felt some kind of precious to me.

"Alright lid whatve you got?" Blakes fell down into the seat opposite me, beer bottle to his lips as he kicked his feet up on the table.

"Shite that's what," i smirked playing the opening chord because so far I had a string of lyrics that could be a verse but I still wasn't sure, "Why does it take, the eleventh hour, for us to make the simplest of calls, you don't have to decide, everythin in one night, I'll do whatever you need love..." i trailed off, "its shit, it doesn't flow, I'm just gonna park it..." i shrugged them off before either of them could try and do me the favour, being polite, tell me its got potential.

"Who's it about?" asked Blakes, probably about to reel off a bit of decent advice for once, about clearing my head of them before I carried on, but Bond just cracked a grin and stood up, cut him off.

"Eponine int it?" he looked at me with a smirk, "dont try an hide it either lid, i saw you at new year..."

"You saw nowt Bond," i smirked grinning along because he was right and he knew he was right. There was no point arguing and it wasn't like he cared all that much anyway.

Id always shrugged his strange comments off as jokes before, at his birthday when he'd told me I'd be doing him a favour, at the flat when he'd thrown his hands up in the air and slurred something about how I should just shag her.

At New Years Eve when he'd berated me for turning up late, told me I coulda been her midnight snog. That there wasn't anyone else he'd let try it.

"Its just a verse and its shit," i shrugged, "so it doesn't matter anyway, it won't even make it onto the album,"

"Maybe you should make sure it does..." said Johnny, looking me dead in the eyes as if that was the warning. As if the roles had changed completely. He was the big brother and he was threatening me to date his sister, practically begging me not to keep my distance.

I licked my lips, swallowed a lump in my throat at the thought, because it was a thought which ingrained itself deeper on my mind every time I saw her.

It was just a shame that I probably wouldn't see her for awhile.

"He's keen," smirked Benji tipping his bottle back and downing the last of it, "how longs this been goin on? You're predictable as fuck you know that right mate," he grinned, enjoying the way I squirmed over it.

"Fuck off," i chuckled, "you don't have to rub salt in the wound like," i grinned and pushed my hair from ny face, "I don't know like, coupla years?"

"Really?" he raised his brow a little shocked, one of those impressed sort of smirks but I just shook my head.

"Nah, its not you know... I just like her don't I, we don't see eachother often enough to even call eachother mates like, but its just you know, she just a nice lass and you know, its just hard to tell whats goin on like, we live these completely separate lives and I only really know her in the moments our lives overlap you know... I don't really know her at all..."

And as I said it something in my mind seemed to fall into place. I trailed off, jaw sort of slack as the cogs started ticking. Benji just grinned and clapped his hands together, pushed himself up and took a bow as if to say right, my work here is done. And it was.

Just like that the whole song seemed to fall into place.

And just like that we'd recorded it, the last track of the album.

"I go straight from mine, to work, to y..."

The last syllable cut out and left us all sitting in the studio behind the glass, sitting quiet and satisfied.

For a moment we all sat there, suspended in silence and I bristled with anticipation, waiting for their verdict. For the lads and our producers to say something. Anything about it. The finished product which meant so much to me, more than they could imagine.

I was desperate to hear what they thought because I knew I wouldn't be able to hear what she thought for months yet.

She probably wouldn't hear it until the release.
But it was her reaction i craved, her thoughts I needed to hear. So when the lads all went round one by one saying things like "class mate," "gonna knock the socks off the label like," "A think a just shit me kecks that was so beautiful," I still found no satisfaction and I knew I wouldn't rid myself of this restless feeling until she heard it.

This song that I had written about us, and the half hearted, nothingness that was "us." How stubbornly I was holding onto the idea that there might still be a chance for us somehow, if our paths kept crossing the way they sometimes did, when she needed me the most. If our lives kept overlapping the way they sometimes did when I needed her more than anything else in the world. Even if perhaps I never quite realised until after the fact. 

AN Absolutely wank update i know, sorry lads this will get good again soon i promise x