Ever After (Sequel to Once)

Modern Love

I catch a paper boy

But things don't really change

I'm standing in the wind

But I never wave bye-bye

But I try, I try

There's no sign of life

It's just the power to charm

I'm lying in the rain

But I never wave bye-bye

But I try, I try

Never gonna fall for

walks beside me

(Modern love) walks on by

(Modern love) gets me to the church on time

(Church on time) terrifies me

(Church on time) makes me party

(Church on time) puts my trust in God and man

(God and man) no confession

(God and man) no religion

(God and man) don't believe in modern love

How the hell had I let this happen?

The night was black out the window beside me, a thick darkness from the heavy fog we had entered into. We had long finished our show for the evening, already on route to the next destination for over an hour now, but I still couldn't sleep. How could I, with the scene from today playing in my mind on loop? Every time I closed my eyes it was there, like a DVD with a glitch, doomed to replay the same clip over and over.

She was there, I should really say. I could just see her now, standing in the kitchen chatting with Lizzie while the golden sunlight coming in from the window practically made her glow, just as she had been a few hours before. I hadn't known she was going to be there when I climbed down from my bunk, Liz had been monologuing in the kitchen about the importance of reducing single-use plastics.

So it was a bit of a shock when I saw Ally instead, quietly listening with both her hands wrapped around a cup of tea. My eyes found her immediately, not a second after my feet hit the floor. She was wearing a spaghetti-strap dress with a gingham pattern, and one of the ties had fallen down her right shoulder, resting gently against her arm. The casual way she leaned against the table so just the right amount of sunlight soaked up her essence, she could have been a portrait.

In all honesty, I probably looked at her for a few seconds longer than I should have. Or at least what was normal when there was another person standing in the room. She was just so impossibly perfect sometimes that it was hard to look away.

Ally finally noticed me there after a moment, turning towards me with her signature raised eyebrow above her pink, puckered lips. "Oi, what do you want?" she asked, not in a mean way, just a general curious tone. She always spoke with her hands, and her cup of tea sloshed from the quick rotation and her words, raining a droplet on the linoleum below.

By the luck of whatever is holy, I didn't say the words that immediately jumped into my mind. I don't think there would have been any recovery from them if I did, I probably would have suffered from retroactive embarrassment for the rest of my life. But that didn't stop my brain from jumping to it's knee-jerk reaction to her question, which was so simple it only had one ingredient.