gotta kiss myself, i'm so pretty. @janehaywrd - Tumblr Blog

you act like you just saw a ghost.

“Shit, you’ve still got it bad, huh?”

Mason kept his focus on trying out different chord progressions to find the best fit for lyrics written last night in a notebook he’d left open in front of him on the coffee table. He hoped continuing to play his guitar would be taken as a hint he had, like, zero interest in discussing why he had such a sudden burst of inspiration when the band agreed to take a small hiatus to regroup after Jane left. They needed to decide how to move forward but Mason had remained quiet during most of those discussions, simply stating he’d continue to work on new songs no matter what everyone else wanted to do.

Spencer, however, had no issue with still showing up whenever they’d normally meet for practice, even if he’d usually find Mason sitting on the couch instead of hanging in the garage where they used to rehearse. He liked to think of himself as the glue that kept the band in good social standing. How hopeless would the twins be without him? And Roderick? Forget it. He couldn’t straight up abandon them, even if nobody felt up to playing shows any time soon.

The biggest upside to everyone thinking you’re the asshole of the group? Nobody gives you too much crap when you’re blunt ‘cause they totally expected it by now.

“Did you even get to hit that before she left?”

The music stopped then and Mason pulled the guitar in a little closer to his chest, like some kind of security blanket that could protect him from questions he didn’t want to answer. “…What are you talking about?”

“Hate to break it to you, bro, but Songs About Jane already got used by someone with a way better voice than you,” Spencer leaned back against the arm of the couch with his arms crossed. “But it’s almost cute you haven’t hooked up with anyone else when it’s been-”

“Like, two months,” Mason sighed. He knew the exact number of days it had been since Jane boarded a plane to Boston, but he hated the thought of anybody knowing that he had kept track of something that depressing. Why make himself seem more pathetic?

“You two weren’t secret dating or anything?” Spencer asked and Mason shook his head. “Well, that’s what I’d do,” he went on, glancing downward for a moment. “Your sister can be a little psycho about wanting to know all of our business and I don’t think she’d take it well if any of us jumped into a relationship.”

“She’s not psycho,” Mason huffed, lazily strumming his fingers along the strings of his guitar just to give himself something to do. “Mads just… likes to feel… I don’t know… involved? Maybe she can be a little overbearing but I think it’s sweet she cares enough to want to protect all of us.”

“Even when she’s trying to protect you from Jane?”

If you knew the McCarthy twins at all, you’d realize pretty early on that Mason took Madison’s side even when he disagreed with her. He supported his sister no matter what and he valued the bond they had more than anything in the world. He loved Madison, flaws be damned, and he always thought of her as the most important piece of his puzzle. For instance, if Madison had chosen to go to Boston, Mason would’ve started an action plan to make it possible for him to be there, too.

Hell, they never stopped sharing a room even when their parents found a bigger house the summer before fourth grade. Every year, their mom or dad would ask if they thought they’d finally reached an age where they wanted to be separated, but they both hated the idea of sleeping in different rooms, especially if it meant letting go of all their late night conversations about how they couldn’t wait to be out on the road someday.

Mason told Madison everything. That’s just how they worked. Or at least that’s how it used to be. See, he couldn’t tell Madison the finer details of how he felt about Jane or what he had done with Jane. NO WAY, JOSE! He once admitted he considered Jane the prettiest girl in the school during a game of Truth or Date and, holy moly, Madison never let him live it down that he hadn’t said her, as if any teenage boy should respond to that question with his sister’s name.

It felt awful not to fully trust Madison with something as big as falling for a girl, but he cared so much about Jane that it scared him to imagine anybody trying to talk him out of that feeling. Madison would’ve been the sensible one to tell him it could rip the band apart. Or she would’ve pointed out that you can expect to tie down a girl as strong and independent as Jane. Or she would’ve simply thrown a fit about Mason putting his energy into trying to win over a girl when he should be focused on their inevitable rise to fame.

Whatever the reason, Mason had never really told Madison the extent of his feelings for Jane, and he had never really talked about much of what had happened between them. Even so, he assumed Madison had an idea. She probably used her twin telepathy to figure it out and then added Broke Mason’s Heart to her list of reasons to be angry with Jane for leaving, let’s be real.

“You not saying anything kind of proves the point I wanted to make.” Spencer reached over to take the guitar from Mason’s lap and propped it up against the couch to force his friend into actually engaging in conversation without a distraction. “Madison’s amazing, we all know that, but you can’t let her run your whole life, especially when it comes to you wanting somebody as much as you want Jane.”

Mason shifted uncomfortably and slowly drummed his hands on his knees. “It’s not… She’s not the reason we didn’t work out,” he admitted, wetting his lips anxiously and lifting his shoulder sheepishly. “I could’ve asked Jane out so many times and I could’ve done something to make her want to stay, but I couldn’t be the guy who made her feel like she needed to stay when she deserved to go.”

“So you’re telling me you were actually trying to be fuckin’ noble instead of a total pussy?”

His nose wrinkled and he fought the urge to gag. “…I don’t think I’d put it that way.”

Spencer mulled this over for a moment and then punched Mason’s forearm. “Alright, well, I think that’s bullshit and you just wussed out and now it’s too late but whatever you wanna believe, dude.”

Deep down, Mason knew that Spencer’s version of events had a lot more truth to it than his. Of course he never wanted to stand in the way of Jane achieving whatever the future held for her, but he had also kept his mouth shut because he had been too scared of rejection or what could happen to their friendship if they somehow failed as a real couple. He had never really dated anybody back then, so he felt like the odds of staying with his middle school crush forever probably didn’t lean in his favor.

But it was hard to be around Jane now and not feel like some small bit of hope existed that they could work it out. She had dated some other guy, right? And he had, you know, tried to make a relationship or two work in the past couple years. Maybe now that they were older they could finally learn how to fit together the right way.

“I think the best selfies managed to squish in a second person,” he nodded, smiling at the memory of that old travel book filled with their ridiculous plans for places to stop while they drove across the country. It had been filled with Post-It notes and they’d highlighted the most exciting facts. Mason had even doodled in the margins of a few pages. “We can definitely make it through some of the old checklist. For sure.”

Mason never would’ve guessed that Go Wildcats! would get their first big break without Jane being a part of the band, but he felt lucky that she still got to be a part of that experience, even if she wasn’t technically in their little circle anymore. He hoped that everybody could get along enough for the two bands to build a brand new bigger family, but he wasn’t about to hold his breath when it came to Madison cooperating with that dream.

He didn’t want to rain on Jane’s parade though. “It’ll be amazing and we’ll get to do so much together and, yeah, I’m just… so glad this is happening,” he rambled, glancing toward the door and letting out a sigh of relief that Madison didn’t somehow know that should be her cue to storm out ready for an argument about why exactly Jane had no right to be acting all chummy with Mason.

Time had gone by and they had lost track of each other at some point but Jane still seemed the same in too many ways for Mason to really feel as if they had truly grown apart. She still loved vinyl and milkshakes and that meant he still longed to be the only boy who kissed her underneath the stars of cities he barely knew.

“Wait, are you saying I’m too cheesy to know what’s cheesy?” He tried his best to seem offended but his narrowed eyes and frown only lasted so long before his face brightened up into a playful grin. “I will gladly accept that being my biggest problem as long as you don’t use that as an excuse to keep me from record hunting and sharing shakes with you. That’s way too high on my bucket list for me to get shut down before we even get started.”

janehaywrd

“Can I ask you a question? Like… girl to girl, or whatever?”

Jane looked up from her guitar, shooting Tina a curious look with furrowed eyebrows. She sat back a little against the mountain of pillows behind her on her bed. “Is this about, like… something that I’m really not going to want to discuss?”

Tina looked confused for a moment before her cheeks were flushing and her eyes were widening. “God, no, I’m not asking you a sex question,” she said quickly, tone somewhat exasperated that Jane would bring that up in the first place, as if she hadn’t been the one to say girl to girl in the first place.

“I was just clarifying,” Jane pointed out, giving her a look for a moment before she was smirking a little to herself and shaking her head. “Anyways, you were saying something about a girl-to-girl question?”

Tina took a seat next to her, tapping her finger on the open notebook sitting by Jane’s knee, a pen sitting on top. “It’s about your songs, more than anything. Like… the inspiration behind them, I guess.”

Jane stiffened for only a moment, shooting Tina a slightly perplexed look. “You know that I was going out with that Robbie guy, and—”

“Not those ones,” Tina was quick to cut her off. “I meant the, like… the nice ones, I guess. I mean, there has to be a story there, right?”

Yeah. There was totally a story there. A story about a boy who was the human equivalent of Gumby, who had a head of curly hair a big, bright smile that always made Jane weak in the knees. A story about a boy who Jane never should have walked away from, but did, because maybe she was just sort of selfish sometimes.

“I think everyone from every song has a story, Tee.”

“You are being annoyingly vague,” Tina countered, shooting her a glare for a moment and shaking her head at her. “Are you going to actually engage in any sort of details or do I just need to play connect the dots on my own and figure it out from there?”

“It’s just… a guy I went to high school with,” she said with a shrug, and clearly that wasn’t enough to make Tina any more convinced, if the look that she was sending Jane right then and there was of any indication. Jane rolled her eyes, shooting her a pointed look and lifting her shoulders into a shrug. “His name is Mason,” she said, and she didn’t really remember the last time that she’d said his name out loud. “We were in the band together before… everything, I guess.”

“You were dating a dude in the band?” Tina’s voice raised a couple pitches and she leaned forward, as if that was the one hook that had finally suckered her into this conversation once and for all. “How did I not know this?!”

“We weren’t dating,” Jane was quick to argue. “We just…” she fell quiet a second later, because even if she’d known Tina for well over a year and even if The Other Sister had started to have a relatively decent following among the YouTube and hipster blogger crowd, that didn’t really mean that she was at that level with Tina. She didn’t know if she was at the level with Tina, or with any of the girls, really, where she wanted to talk about Mason.

The Go Wildcats! chapter of Jane’s life was a chapter of Jane’s life that was personal to just her. It was hers. She didn’t want to share that with everyone else – she didn’t want to share them with everyone else, because they were her friends, and they were their stories.

Maybe it was stupid. It was probably really stupid, actually. Very, very stupid. But that as the way she felt. She wanted something to hold onto, and something that she didn’t have to talk about.

“It’s a long story,” she finally said with a shrug. “Complicated, or whatever.”

“Do you guys still talk?”

“Yeah,” she said, but she wasn’t really sure if a few text messages back and forth and a couple phone calls at two in the morning could really account for much. “Yeah, he’s great. He’s… you’d really like him. I mean, everyone who meets him loves him. He’s Mason.”

Not everyone loved Mason like Jane loved Mason, though. That was the kicker. That was the thing.

After Jane bored Tina enough with her simple and short-winded answers, Jane found herself grabbing her phone from where it sat beside her, and going right to Mason’s number. Before she had the chance to talk herself out of it, she pressed Call, and brought the phone to her ear.

It rang once, twice, three times. She was holding her breath all the way up until the sixth and final ring, when Mason’s peppy voice came through the other end in the form of an outgoing message followed by a beep.

She had half a mind to hang up, to lose her nerve right then and there and just hang up. But she’d already called, and she’d already let the phone call go into the actual leave a message part of the process, and that meant that Mason was going to have to check his voicemail at this point anyway, even if just to hear the sound of her hanging up.

He already would know that she had called, because it would show up as a missed call. There wasn’t any way that she could really get herself out of the situation at this point. So she might as well just roll with it.

“Mase, hey,” Jane finally spoke up with heart hammering in her chest. “I, uh… I kept trying to come up with some reason to have to call you while the phone was ringing, and I didn’t really come up with anything. But I just wanted to say hi, I guess. I miss your voice. And you, in general. You’re a very easy person to miss, Mason McCarthy.” She bit down on her lip, swallowing hard and trying to blink fast before any tears could decide to grace her eyes with their presence. “And now that I’ve filled my pathetic quota for the day, I guess I’ll let you go. Call me later?”

Even right now, even standing in front of him, talking to him, looking at him right now… she still missed him. Did that make sense? That seemed like it shouldn’t make a lick of sense. But she did. She still missed him. Because even if he was here with her right now, even if they were standing across from each other and about to spend the next few months together at all times, she still missed him. Because they were together in the physically together sense. But that was it. That was the only way they were together right now.

And that hurt more than she really cared to admit.

Here he was, talking about that old scrapbook they’d made what seemed like a different lifetime ago, and all the plans they’d made for when Go Wildcats! finally got to go on tour. That was the way that it should have been, really, and Jane… Jane screwed that up. Jane wished she could stop thinking about how much she screwed that up.

It wasn’t that she regretted her success. It wasn’t anything like that. It was more that none of it really seemed like the way that it was supposed to happen. She was so, so happy, but that didn’t necessarily mean that it felt right. None of it did. It didn’t feel like it was the way that it was supposed to be.

“My selfie would be honored to be mixed with your selfie,” she said with a slightly timid smile, as if that was a sentence that actually made any sort of sense. “And I actually brought the book with me,” she added on a beat or two later, nodding her head back at him. “I didn’t realize I still had it with me until I was unpacking and saw it there. But I figured if anything deserved to go on tour, it was the book.”

Something about hearing Mason say how excited he was for everything just sort of made Jane hurt even more than she already did, but she still nodded her head back at him and shot him her biggest and brightest smile. “Maybe it’s not the way we really planned it or anything, but I think it’s still going to be enough to knock our socks off.”

A moment later, at the mention of vinyl shopping and milkshake sharing, her face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “That reminds me,” she nearly blurted out in a tumble all at once, “I’ve been compiling a list of the last standing legit soda shops in America and the best record stores. So you and me are going to make it our mission to hit up every last one of ‘em. The bucket list sort of demands it, you know?”

She was glad that he still remembered that, that he still thought about that. That he still wanted to do all of these things with her. Despite everything and even with everything that had happened between them, this remained the same. And that meant…a lot.

Jane stepped forward without even thinking about it, and her arms were locking around him like that was exactly where they’d belonged all along, holding him in close and not moving to let go. Her heart was beating out a lullaby against her chest, and her eyes squeezed closed as the two of them swayed back and forth. “I’m really, really happy to see you.”

#001 #c:mm

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PORTLAND!!!!!!! THANK YOU SO INCREDIBLY MUCH FOR AN EPIC FIRST NIGHT OF AN EPIC TOUR!!!!!!!!!!!! You were a dream from which I NEVER want to awake. #OurOwnTour. XX - J, K, T, & S.

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janehaywrd

you act like you just saw a ghost.

masmccarthy

“I don’t think I can talk.”

Mason blinked back at Jane hovering awkwardly in her doorway and he knew instantly that words would fail him, too, until much later. He figured Jane would probably be on a plane to Massachusetts by the time he came up with the melody to the first song he’d write about missing her. They’d had months since she received her acceptance letter to mentally prepare for what would be the last night they spent together, but, holy smokes, standing on her front porch with keys in hand actually felt a million times worse than when she broke the news.

“Then screw the darn party,” Mason said, coming about as close to cursing as he ever did. “Let’s go for a drive instead.”

Jane lifted an eyebrow and he very quickly realized just how furious Madison would be if they ditched out on her meticulously planned going away bash. They all sort of guessed she intended for it to be taken as more of a guilt trip than a happy send off but, yeah, not showing up would basically be a death wish.

“Okay, okay, how about we just.. take the scenic route?” He suggested, his eyes filled with the kind of hope he only ever experienced around her. She made him feel light on his feet but also lifted him in a way that made him feel better, stronger, tougher. Enough that he’d risk arriving so fashionably late that his sister might never forgive him.

“I could live with that,” Jane nodded, smiling back at him like she hadn’t looked on the verge of a breakdown, like, three minutes earlier.

As always, Mason kept his word, even if that literally meant keeping his mouth shut. He drove past the street where he and Madison grew up, and then he just left his foot on the gas until they weren’t in Lima anymore, until he wasn’t quite sure where the heck they were, honestly. Oh, and in case you’re not aware, it’s pretty dang hard for a McCarthy to last more than a few minutes in silence with someone else.

Mason wholeheartedly believed he could communicate with Madison telepathically, and therefore he didn’t need to exclusively rely on speaking to get his feelings across around her, but everyone else, whether they liked it or not, needed to be subjected to his knack for rambling out anything that popped into his head.

The more cynical among us might argue going all my lips are sealed around Jane had more to do with being afraid of what this night meant for them than anything else but Mason always looked back on the hour he spent behind the wheel with her in the passenger seat as this magical experience that proved just how comfortable they could be together. It certainly helped she kept her hand on his knee most of the drive and he had even leaned over at a red light to press a quick kiss to her lips before it turned to green.

“So, we’re almost there,” Jane sighed, watching familiar neighborhoods slowly drift by outside her window once they’d reached the last few minutes of their little journey.

“And you can talk now,” Mason said, glancing over at her with a warm feeling that started in his stomach then spread through the rest of his body. “Mission accomplished.”

“I can talk but… not about what we should be.” She shook her head and slid her palms over the pleats in her skirt. “Is that okay?”

CW dramas had set up Mason to expect some emotionally draining conversation about how much it would hurt for Jane to leave before anything significant could ever happen between the two of them. If not that, he secretly hoped for a slightly comical admission of feelings filled with so much quirky sincerity that it would make Wes Anderson’s heart swell and burst.

He didn’t get either of those things.

And that might’ve been his fault.

“Of course it’s okay!” Mason insisted, sounding way too cheerful given the circumstances. “Please don’t feel like you need to wow me by going all poetic about the end of our childhood. I already know what an awfully great adventure this will be.”

To this day, Mason wonders what could’ve happened if he hadn’t given in that quickly. What if he had pushed Jane just a teeny tiny bit? What if he had asked her to give him, like, five minutes to be completely honest?

Playing the ‘What If?’ game felt too dangerous most nights and he’d try to tell himself that everything happened for a reason. Jane needed to go to Boston. Telling her how much he loved her that night might’ve changed everything. Jane might’ve chosen to stay and, okay, she’d still be in Go Wildcats! but she wouldn’t be getting the amount of attention someone as talented as her deserved.

That didn’t stop him from writing song after song about her. Mason tried to be subtle about it. He tried to hide how much he missed her, how much regret he felt about keeping quiet, but his friends always noticed the throwaway lines here and there that gave it away. They had been so worried about distance being the reason they’d grow apart but they hadn’t prepared for the possibility that something else could be the beginning of the end.

Madison would assume that meant ultimate betrayal or something equally nefarious but Mason often worried if Jane resented him for being too afraid to be upfront about what he wanted. What if she looked back on that drive and didn’t feel magic or nostalgia but actually saw it as proof that Mason McCarthy wasn’t as brave as he wanted the world to believe?

He wanted to tell her now. He wanted to kiss her again. But he didn’t. He just stood there, and he kept his gaze on her, and he just listened, nodding enthusiastically the way he always did when she spoke, as if anybody could feel that strongly about Spencer’s hair choices. “RIGHT? I think it would be the strangest thing but I still want to know what it’s like.”

Unfortunately they couldn’t keep the conversation as light as he would’ve liked. Something about going years without seeing someone who used to be right at your side most nights makes it hard to avoid the inevitable I missed you exchange. Mason had practiced countless versions of this moment while standing in the shower, pretending he could see Jane’s face in his fogless mirror. He’d come up with all these ways to catch up that didn’t feel forced or awkward until the water ran cold and he still had shaving cream swiped along his jaw.

Much like that night at her door, he arrived at the moment he’d been expecting still feeling as unprepared as he did when he first agreed to take the opening spot on tour. He’d assumed it might be weird to speak face-to-face again, but he thought he’d at least grown out of getting so tongue-tied around girls as gorgeous as Jane. No such luck.

“I’m, uh, I’m… a little scared, too,” Mason admitted reluctantly, “but I can’t think of anything better than jumping right into this big adventure together, especially after all those forevers where we didn’t do anything with you at all.”

He might as well have tossed whatever theoretical script he had worked on tirelessly right out the freaking van window on the way there. Hopefully she wouldn’t be, like, super offended by what he had said, especially when he genuinely meant that he looked forward to getting to spend time with her after such a long separation.

Mason’s entire expression practically lit up when Jane complimented their latest EP but she turned to check on the closed door for some reason, leaving him to only mumble out a quick thanks instead of scooping her into his arms in a celebratory hug the way he would’ve liked.

It also occurred to him that she might have some idea how they’d been if she paid attention to the songs they’d written. But, duh, he’d anticipated she’d ask. That’s, like, Small Talk 101. He could handle this.

“We’ve been incredible!” Mason gushed, proudly going all two thumbs way up on the situation. “The band’s great… Well, Madison’s still convinced she’s involved in the world’s most unlikely love triangle but we’re making it work.” He smiled at her and then shyly stared down at his feet, stomping on some discarded cigarette butt like he had smoked it himself. “I’m looking forward to knocking out a bunch of states on my quest to take a selfie in all 50.”

He didn’t practice sounding that lame, for the record. It just came naturally.

“What about you? Any big ideas for the road? Secret missions? Scavenger hunts? Are you trying to track down something special or did you already find me?”

He did practice that part.

janehaywrd

“If I were the sort of person who would actually put my seal of approval on inter-band relationships, then I would totally be saying right about now that we might be looking at a love triangle rivaled only by Miley, Nick, and Selena.”

Jane was only half paying attention, the other half of her currently engrossed in whatever episode of America’s Next Top Model was next up in the marathon that had been playing on TV all day. She reached for the bowl of popcorn and dropped a few pieces into her mouth, keeping her eyes on the screen. “What’s wrong with Lindsay, Aaron, and Hilary?” she asked. “Or—”

She was quickly cut off by Madison slapping her hand away from the popcorn bowl. “Lindsay, Aaron, and Hilary? Are you even hearing yourself?” Madison reached for the remote to pause the television before plopping back down next to Jane and grabbing her friend by the shoulders, turning her around to look her in the eye. “Jane, this is a big deal. This could be how we wind up on the cover of Us Weekly for a seventh consecutive week.”

Jane did, for the record, know how Madison planned to wind up on the cover of Us Weekly the first six times, but that’s not really the sort of thing that needs rehashing right now.

Only debating for about a moment or so, Jane finally turned back to look at Madison, raising her eyebrows pointedly at her. “Okay, you have two minutes to finish your diatribe. Go.”

Madison looked at her with wide eyes, as if this was the most stress she’d ever been put under in the entirety of her sixteen years. She cleared her throat, folding and unfolding her hands in her lap for a second before nodding her head that she was, in fact, ready for the challenge.

“Well, you see, Spencer gave me a ride home from that party last weekend when he totally didn’t have to do that. I mean, we’re not talking about any, like, he-walked-me-to-the-door action or anything like that, but still. He drove me home! But the kicker…” she trailed off, placing her hand on Jane’s knee and patting it. “The kicker, Jane, is that Roderick was in the car, too. And Roderick…” she cleared her throat, as if this was the big part of the story that she had to be listening in on with the most apt of attention. “He let me ride shotgun.”

For a moment, Jane could do nothing more than blink back at her. It wasn’t until she saw Madison giving her The Look (also known as: narrowed eyes and lips slightly parted in disbelief) that she realized that that was not the appropriate response. “Jane, this is a big deal.”

Jane sat back against the couch, clearing her throat for a second and shrugging back at her. “I don’t really know if it’s as… big of a deal as you’re making it out to be?”

Madison’s jaw was already well on its way to hitting the floor as Jane continued.

“Not that you’re not a catch,” she was click to clarify, “because you are, and anybody who chooses to date you is very, very lucky, I promise – it’s everyone else’s loss. But I’m just not really sure if Spencer is looking at you and seeing his future girlfriend, is all.”

Madison chewed down on her bottom lip for a second, and then she was waving her hand at her a second later and shaking her head. “No, no, I just don’t think that you’re really seeing what I’m seeing, J. You don’t see Spencer in that sort of way, so—”

“Did you miss the part where he was making out with that guy with the long hair at the party last weekend?”

“That wasn’t a guy, Jane, oh my god. Just because she looked more androgynous, that doesn’t mean that she was—”

“—Mads, we’ve been over this,” another voice broke through into the room, a voice that very quickly made Jane sit up a little higher without even realizing it. Mason hovered in the doorway for a second, keeping his gaze fixed on Jane for a few moments longer than necessary before he was moving back over to Madison. “Spencer was definitely making out with a guy. At any rate, you are much prettier than who he was making out with, but who he was making out with was, in fact, of the male persuasion.”

Madison’s jaw snapped shut for a moment, glaring between the two of them and letting out a groan a few moments later. “NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME A RIDE HOME LIKE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO.”

“YOU WANTED TO GO HOME AN HOUR BEFORE WE WERE READY!” Mason argued, as if that was the sole reason that Madison hadn’t rode back with them. Not that she hadn’t wanted to go home early – because she had – but it wasn’t like her lack of presence in the car was exactly an unwelcome presence.

Jane could still taste Mason’s kiss on her lips, for the record, and he tasted like the very first Dr. Pepper that he’d ever drank.

Her eyes looked down at her lap for a second before she was standing up and smoothing down her skirt. “I should probably go and let you guys… get back to this debate,” she said, taking a couple steps away from the couch but brushing her shoulder against Mason’s in the process, definitely maybe on purpose.

She didn’t make it far before she was turning back to Madison. “Just remember that you are way bigger than all of this boy drama, and with or without a guy, you’re easily one of the fiercest girls I know.”

Madison pouted for a second before she was beaming back at her and standing up from the couch to drag her right back where she belonged. “Speaking of fierce,” she chirped, plopping back down onto the couch with Jane in tow. “We have a lot more America’s Next Top Model to watch.” She turned her head to look at Mason, raising his eyebrows at him as more of a challenge than anything else. “Are you going to watch?”

Mason’s eyes only stayed on Madison for a few seconds before he was looking back at Jane, as if he wanted to know what her opinion on the matter was before he reached any sort of decision.

Jane’s response was to nudge Madison a little further down the couch so that she herself could scoot over, patting the empty space right next to her on the couch. “I think you should stay.”

He had stayed, for the record, and maybe they’d grabbed a blanket at some point as an excuse to hold hands under it without Madison seeing what was going on and going off into another speech about inter-band dating. Madison loved both of them to death, of course, but as a couple? As a couple, Jane wasn’t really all that convinced that Madison would nearly be as gung ho about the situation.

Just like now, for instance. This was a huge break for Go Wildcats! obviously, but that didn’t mean in any way, shape, or form that Madison was excited about it. Because she wasn’t. If anyone seemed to be dreading this whole thing, it was her. She had just always been really good at acting like she was fine with everything – because that was Madison’s thing. She would flash you her biggest and brightest smile, and she’d say something that you wouldn’t even realize was an insult until twenty minutes had passed.

Jane loved Madison, and Jane still considered Madison one of her very best friends even if she knew she probably couldn’t anymore. She didn’t know how she was going to get that trust back, but somehow? She would.

But Mason…? Mason was a totally different story. Mason still left her weak in the knees, and Mason still gave her butterflies in her stomach. She’d listened to every song Go Wildcats! had put out over the past few years. She’d absorbed every lyric, she had them down to the point of memorization, to the point where if they needed their lead guitarist back she could hop up on stage with them right then and there and perform every single song.

She knew the lyrics had to be about her. Maybe not… maybe not all of them, but a good sum of them. She could tell by the way Mason sang, by what he sang. There were hidden messages everywhere, the kind where you could blink and miss them entirely, the kind where had you not been directly involved in the secrets in the first place, you might not have noticed them at all. But they were there.

Did those feelings still remain? Was it bad that she kind of hoped they did?

Maybe she’d just wanted Mason to ask her to stay that night before she’d left. Maybe that would have changed everything. But any time she thought that, she beat herself up quickly afterwards, because she wasn’t the kind of girl who needed someone to tell her what to do. She didn’t need someone to ask her to stay. If she’d really wanted to stay, then she would have. Right? Wasn’t that the way it worked?

She had journals filled with songs about the lost relationships, massively written apologies over everything she hadn’t done or hadn’t said. Some were to individual members of the band, or the whole group themselves. Most were for Mason, but that really couldn’t come as a shock to anyone.

Mason had said that he was scared, but he’d also said that he was excited for them to all jump into this together – and so was she. She was terrified, but she was ready. Jane felt a smile curve up fairly quickly onto her face when he mentioned Madison and the infamous love triangle, looking down at her feet and letting out a small laugh. “She’s determined if nothing else,” she said lightly, before she was looking back up and meeting Mason’s gaze. “I’m glad that you guys are doing well enough to earn not one, but two Mason McCarthy thumbs up, though,” she added on a moment later.

“And I sort of hope that some of those selfies might involve a second person in them, because I’m pretty sure I still have that travel book we got about what our first tour would be like and we had a lot of tourist stops that we insisted we had to take pictures at.”

Mentioning that she’d once been a part of the band somehow seemed to hurt worse than she’d thought it would, and she was biting down on her lip a second later. “It’ll be a lot of fun, though, you know? All of us together again. Kind of, at least.”

What Mason said next was enough to make her break out into the biggest, most genuine smile that she was pretty sure she’d had in a long time. That was just the sort of effect that Mason had always had on her. Mason could always make her smile with what he said, and how he said it.

“I did find you,” she played along. “Our worlds literally collided and everything. But other than that, I don’t really know. Try and find as many record stores as I possibly can? Devour a milkshake in every single city?” She scuffed the toe of her shoe along a pebble.

A beat and a moment of internal debate later. “I think the top thing on my bucket list is hanging out with you guys. Is that cheesy? I feel like you of all people can’t really give me a solid account on whether or not something is cheesy, but I figured it was worth clarifying anyway. At any rate, it’s the truth.”

#c:mm #001

janehaywrd

you act like you just saw a ghost.

masmccarthy

Being a twin meant scoring yourself a best friend as soon as you came kicking and screaming into the world. Or at least that’s how it had always worked for Mason and Madison. He’d met some fraternal and identical siblings who struggled with not only finding their own identity but also getting along at all. Whenever he saw that dynamic, he felt pretty ridiculous for ever being impatient or annoyed with Madison constantly fawning over him and always stepping in to protect him without him asking for her help. This seemed ideal compared to imagining the two of them being at each other’s throats all the time.

He never noticed how being, like, totally inseparable could be intimidating for other kids until Roderick came along in the second grade. Mason spotted him first and immediately decided it would be amazing to finally get a real audience member for his and Madison’s after school performances. Not that he wanted to stop lining up all their stuffed animals and action figures right away or anything. He just felt like it would be nice for a living, breathing human to watch them sing.

You know, that way they’d be more prepared for when their parents actually returned home from their latest tour across the country. Mason could not endure a repeat of last time when he had asked what they thought, wide-eyed and out of breath, only to hear the most brutal round of constructive criticism you can imagine.

Roderick straight up avoided the twins for a good week or two until they decided to simply corner him by the water fountain after recess to bribe him with unlimited snacks and a movie of his choice if he promised to come over Friday afternoon. He would later admit he had agreed out of fear but honestly the guy can’t imagine his life without the McCarthies.

It had been different with Jane. See, in the same way Mason specifically targeted Roderick, Madison zeroed in on Jane as soon as she walked through the double doors of their school. She tugged on Mason’s sleeve, nodded her head to the left and Mason picked up on what that meant without either of them speaking a single word. He knew that his sister desperately wanted a girl friend - someone who could sleepover and understand her in ways that he and Roderick didn’t. They were getting older and it just wasn’t in the cards for a couple of boys to be everything that Madison needed.

To tell the truth, much of Mason’s initial enthusiasm for befriending Jane had been completely based on wanting the best for his sister. No matter what, to this very day, Madison remained his top priority above anyone or anything, so he reluctantly put every ounce of his energy into allowing another girl into his tiny social circle. Most twelve year old dudes would be thrilled by this but Mason had never been much like the other boys in his grade. He had bigger hopes and dreams than trying to find a girlfriend to hold hands with during lunch.

Or technically he had resigned himself to deciding Madison would let him know when that could be in the cards for him. Along with the person who she found most suitable to win his heart.

Mason never expected to feel as connected to Jane as he did once they started talking. Like, really talking. Not just chattering back and forth over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while Roderick drummed his hands on the edge of the cafeteria table. He could still remember the nights when Madison crashed out first and Jane snuck out of bed to meet him in the basement, both of them in their pajamas with their hair a little messy. Because of course Madison would insist Jane take the bottom bunk while he slept down there on the world’s most uncomfortable couch.

He didn’t care though. He knew it would mean feeling closer to her when he crawled underneath the covers the next night.

Sometimes he felt like he’d give anything to go back to that time. When things had been simple and he had been so sure Jane saw him as more than an honorary brother. He knew the way she smiled at Roderick and he knew the way she laughed with Spencer. Mason sensed something bigger between them, something that would linger in his head and his heart long after he watched her walk away at an airport with the sting of tears in his eyes.

Jane, as usual, had a better grasp on the present than Mason did - or a least a better way of making it seem like she did. Mason always admired the way Jane lived in the moment and how those big risks ultimately paid off in the form of big rewards. She had accomplished so much since she decided to drop out of Berklee, and Mason found it hard to resent her for how her choices had affected the rest of them, especially when he could see her now after dreaming of that for so long.

“Well, I don’t know if the hair guru himself can take all the credit,” he shrugged, relieved to find she hadn’t lost her sense of humor since the last time he stood in front of her with his heart pounding and his palms sweating.

At least this time eventually saying goodbye wouldn’t feel so damn final, right?

“I’ve been trying to convince Spencer to finally grow his out but he’s still not on board,” he went on, standing a little straighter and starting to sound a bit more confident. Talking about the others helped take away some of the pressure of navigating through how to express his own feelings about their situation.

Naturally she would say something to knock him off his game again as soon as he started to feel settled. Mason suspected he should feel grateful for Jane’s self-proclaimed happiness but mostly he felt anxious to find out her motivation for asking them on the tour in the first place.

“I’m really glad we’re here, too,” he said quietly, taking a few small steps toward her but stopping once he worried that getting too close too soon would be seen as acting presumptuous about how she thought of him. “It’s been… forever? Maybe two and a quarter forevers but I stopped counting when we got halfway to the first one. Way too depressing after that.”

He crossed his arms but somehow managed to keep his eyes on her. “But I’m excited to see you every night.”

Wait, crud, not like that, he thought, holding his breath for a moment. Well, okay, like that definitely but don’t make it sound like that.

“I bet your stuff sounds so good live, you know? I can’t wait to hear it.”

janehaywrd

“We need to talk.”

Spencer took a step back as if that, somehow, had been the equivalent to Jane reaching out and smacking him. He blinked back at her in confusion for a few moments, as if he was seeking out some sort of punchline that he wasn’t receiving. “You and me?” he finally clarified, and Jane gave him a look that very clearly indicated that she could not believe he was asking such a thing. “You know I’m Spencer, right? I’m not the first pick for a heart-to-heart to, like, any of you.”

Jane pushed her way into his house anyway, retreating to his living room and pacing back and forth for a few moments while she felt Spencer’s eyes burning into the back of her head from where he stood in the doorway, as if he was anticipating a second head to sprout out of her any second now. “You okay?”

“I got into Berklee,” she finally blurted out, spinning back around to face him. “Berklee College of Music. In Boston.”

Spencer seemed to get a better grasp of the situation. At least, sort of. He pushed up and away from the wall, taking a couple steps closer to her and raising his eyebrows. “As in, like, the biggest fucking music school in the world?”

“Well, contemporary music school, but…” she shook her head a second later. “That’s not the point. The point is, I got in, Spencer.”

His jaw fell into a sort of half-smile, eyes widening. “Hayward, that’s fucking huge.”

“I know,” she gushed for a moment, even going so far as to take a few steps closer to bridge the gap between the two of them and pull him into a hug. Spencer wasn’t really much of a hugger, not usually, but Jane had somehow, someway, managed to wrangle it out of him every now and then.

Not as much as Madison did, of course, but everyone was typically too afraid to really say no to Madison in the first place. So when Madison wanted to hug you? You let her hug you until your ribs cracked. The End.

Spencer squeezed her back for a moment before pulling back away. “Holy shit, have you told everyone?”

And just like that, all of her reasons for coming there in the first place all came rushing back to her. She was grounded back to reality at a painfully fast rate, taking a step back and shaking her head. “No, uh. That’s kind of why I’m here,” she said with a small shrug. She swallowed down a few words before she was looking back at him and biting down on her lip. “It’s Boston, you know? And we… we had all those plans to stick around here? And go to Ohio State, and keep Go Wildcats! going and… and I’m sort of ruining that if I go.”

“You can’t just not go,” Spencer pointed out flatly, shaking his head back at her. Maybe that was one of the bigger reasons that she’d gone to him in the first place, Jane realized. Because Spencer? Spencer was blunt. Spencer would tell her the way it needed to be, and he wouldn’t necessarily mince words about it. Neither would Madison, of course, but the problem with going to Madison first would be that Madison would approach the situation with the most extreme cases of tunnel vision. She would tell Jane that it was great, obviously, but that the band had to stick together. That was the plan. That was the way it was supposed to be.

Roderick would tell her to do whatever made her happiest, and Spencer would tell her to take the opportunity and run with it because it was a big deal.

And then there was Mason, of course, but Jane especially couldn’t Mason this. She could not tell Mason.

Not that he wouldn’t be happy for her or anything, because he would. Of course he would. She could practically feel his hug encompassing her right then and there, making her weak in the knees, picking her up off the ground, and leaving her breathless. She could vividly feel the hug. But there would be too much pain and sadness tacked onto it, and… and she didn’t know if she was really ready for that just yet.

Actually, she wasn’t entirely confident that she could tell Mason about getting into Berklee and still be considering going to Berklee at the end of it. Maybe they weren’t officially a thing or anything like that, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t a thing. Maybe they’d never fully come out with it, but neither of them had been seeing other people for a solid two years at this point, and… and that didn’t mean nothing.

She couldn’t tell Mason. She couldn’t even think about telling Mason.

“I know,” she said to Spencer, voice shaking as she moved to perch herself on the arm of his couch. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you want to do?” Spencer asked.

Jane’s head fell into her hands for a moment or two, trying to even out her breathing and looking back at him through slotted fingers. “I want the whole band to move to Boston so that I don’t have to make any sort of definitive decision about any of this.”

“You’re going to Berklee,” Spencer countered, taking a couple steps closer to her before he was sitting down on the coffee table in front of her.

Jane shook her head quickly back at him. “I don’t know if—”

“—Jane,” Spencer cut her off, looking at her with eyes that didn’t hold even the faintest trace of doubt. “You’re going to Berklee.”

And she did. That was the thing. She left. And it killed her. And she cried the entire flight to Boston, and she hated it for the first few weeks. And then everything had started to… change.

…and all of those changes had somehow brought her to right where she was right now. All of those changes had led to her band’s music getting a massive YouTube following, and getting a few songs featured on a few television shows. From there, they had become MTV’s Artist to Watch, and the rest? The rest was just sort of… history.

She hadn’t even stayed at Berklee once everything had started taking off. Maybe that was what she beat herself up over the most. Maybe it could have always been Go Wildcats! She loved The Other Sister, and she loved her friends, and she loved what they had become, but… but that didn’t mean there wasn’t always going to be another hole in her heart that they would never really be able to fill.

Not that The Other Sister was huge or anything, really, but they didn’t need to be. Even getting the opportunity to do any of this in and of itself was a bigger thing than Jane ever, ever could have imagined happening. And it was the kind of opportunity that she couldn’t let Go Wildcats! miss out on, either.

Maybe Madison would still hate her, and maybe Roderick and Spencer would feel like constant buffers, but…

…but god. There was Mason.

She’d had a boyfriend in between, a boyfriend who had sparked a lot of angry, and heartbroken, and female empowering songs, but… but there was only one Mason McCarthy, and Jane missed him more than she’d ever really known it was possible to miss someone in the first place.

She wanted to hug him. She wanted to tackle him. But she didn’t. She just stood there, and she just kept her gaze on him, and she just listened.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to get him to ditch the whole 2003 J.T. thing he has going for him,” she said with a small laugh, realizing a moment or two later that she was still referring to herself as part of the we that she hadn’t been a part of for over two years. God. She hated that, too. “And I really can’t picture him with a head of hair. Can you?”

When Mason built up the courage to approach her, she wondered if she needed to follow suit, help them come closer, and closer still. She was a coward, though, so she didn’t. She’d always taken pride in being the brave and confident and bold one, but… but now? Right now, she didn’t really feel like any of those things. Not at all.

Hearing Mason talk about how long it had been, about how much he’d missed her without using those words… it was enough to make her stomach twist into those same knots they always did when it came to Mason. “It’s been… a lot of forevers,” she said softly, wetting her lips for a moment and shaking her head back at him. “Way more forevers than we are ever going to do again, because I really don’t think it’s worth it.”

He couldn’t wait to see her every night, and she was positive that she was taking that in the wrong way, but it made her heart lurch in her chest ever the same. He clarified a moment later, saying something about the band sounding great live, and she could do nothing more than remind herself to not back at him. “Yeah, no, I’m…” she trailed off after a second, giving him a nervous, but honest, smile. “I’m actually sort of… terrified,” she admitted a little bashfully, shrugging her shoulders back at him.

“But with you guys here, I mean… I can’t imagine anything better.” She could. She could imagine the divide never really happening in the first place – but with the certain circumstances? This was definitely the best case scenario. “I’ve had your new EP in my car since the day it came out. It’s a miracle it’s not, like, shattered yet.”

Her eyes went to the closed door for a moment before going back to Mason. “How, um… how have you guys been?” she asked. “How have you been?”

#001 #c:mm

janehaywrd

you act like you just saw a ghost.

masmccarthy

He should’ve said no. God, he should’ve listened to his sister when she not only ordered but begged him to turn down the offer.

Why did that rare reflex to go against Twin Code always happen when his decision would put him - no, them - in the most awkward positions? What was it about Mason McCarthy that made him feel compelled to do what he believed to be the right thing even when it tied his stomach in knots?

He knew a band as small as theirs couldn’t just turn up their noses at the chance to play in cities he’d never seen with his own eyes. Go Wildcats! had a pretty decent following online but he knew that Jane already managed to catch the eye of bigger media than hipster bloggers. What could be so bad about being associated with a literal cover girl?

The Other Sister announcing the tour immediately brought on a rush of attention that made him feel certain he had done exactly what the band needed to jump to the next level. Mason totally accepted a pretty big percentage of the people who followed them recently might’ve only bothered to type Go Wildcats! into Google after reading that Jane Hayward once played lead guitar. He preferred to focus on the fact this curiosity had actually translated into real support.

At least doing that kept his mind off their messy history.

When Jane left, the band took a short hiatus to figure out how to move forward. Mason preferred to perform without being tied to an instrument but he quickly adjusted to playing while he sang. You know, after Madison pouted and sulked and raged her way through the audition process for a replacement. She trusted Roderick and Spencer but she had no interest in bringing someone else into their circle.

Mason knew she secretly hoped Jane would hate Berklee and choose to move back before the spring semester started.

But why dwell on the ugly parts of the past, right? He held on tightly to the possibility that this tour could be a fresh start - a new beginning for all of them. Maybe hitting the road together would bring back all those feelings of a shared dream that had created such a strong bond in the first place. Maybe Madison would remember why she used to see so much good in Jane.

The only issue with this plan, of course, being that Mason had spent the last two years trying to forget the way Jane used to make him feel.

That’s why he suddenly realized he should’ve listened to his gut and said no. No amount of exposure for the band could be worth how freakin’ unsettled he felt now.

“Remember to make direct eye contact! Keep your chin up and your shoulders back,” Madison advised as they approached the warehouse, standing between Roderick and Spencer a few feet behind Mason. “It’s important to not give off the impression we can be walked all over.”

Usually she liked to take the lead but everybody voted Mason make the first move here ‘cause he got them into this mess with his absurdly optimistic pep talk outlining why they absolutely needed to be on this tour.

“We don’t know these other girls yet so it might be best if you let me do most of the talking,” she went on, as if Roderick and Spencer had any plans to do otherwise. “Mason can deal with her.”

Mason swallowed so hard he wondered if the rest of the band could literally hear him gulp like in all the cartoons he still watched when he couldn’t sleep. He turned then with every intention of protesting that Jane’s name needed to stop being Voldemort-levels of unspeakable if they planned on calling a real truce.

Naturally this would be the moment Jane chose to push through the door and cause it to collide with Mason, who hadn’t exactly been paying attention enough to put his hands out in time to stop it from hitting him.

Spencer and Roderick laughed about his misfortune right up until they saw Jane. They took that, along with Madison’s obvious irritation, as their cue to go quiet.

“Hey, it’s okay…” The corner of Mason’s mouth twitched for a moment, like he wasn’t quite sure if he should trust his instinct to smile, but all it took was the memory of how she used to say his name to leave him breathless. Well, that and her eyes, if we’re aiming for honesty. “You look great.”

“I think you mean stunning,” Madison piped up, always capable of throwing out a compliment that somehow felt more like an elbow to the ribs if you actually knew her well enough to pick up on her tone of voice.

“It’s really good to see you,” Roderick chimed in, most likely attempting to ease some of the tension.

“Yeah, we can’t wait to catch up later,” Spencer added and stepped forward, grabbing a hold of Madison’s arm to drag her toward the door. “But we’ll let you two get a head start while we meet everyone else.”

Mason rolled his eyes at Spencer winking at him as they all disappeared inside. “So… I guess you can see not a lot’s changed with them.”

janehaywrd

They weren’t so much friends growing up as they had been family, pretty much since day one, since Jane had moved to town in the sixth grade. Her father was a Marine, and growing up in a military family meant that, you know, you moved around. A lot. Jane had bounced from place to place her entire life, never really being anywhere long enough to form attachments, or find that one place where she fit in – and that could all, pretty simply, say that Jane didn’t really very many friends from birth-through-sixth-grade. A few elementary school sleepovers and birthday parties here and there, but not those kinds of friendships. Not like the ones that you saw in the movies.

The movies, by the way, made being the new kid look a lot easier than it really was. But that’s not the point. The point was that when her dad retired the summer before Jane turned twelve? She was finally going to get to have a shot at a normal life. She would actually move somewhere and be able to stay there.

And that was when Lima, Ohio had come into play. And Lima, arguably, was where Jane Hayward’s story actually began.

She met the twins first, all bright eyed and loudly speaking over each other with linked arms as they marched up to her and insisted on showing her around. They coordinated their schedules with her to see if they had any intersecting classes, and they gave her a spot at their lunch table, which was where she met Roderick, who had his headphones in and merely gave her a nod of the head and a tight-lipped, nervous smile. Madison had pulled his headphones out earbud by earbud, swatting the back of his head and telling him that they had company, and that there was “no time for rudeness!”

Jane deduced at this point that Mason and Madison probably didn’t invite new people to their lunch table very much. And that was oddly flattering. After that first day, it sort of just became a thing. She gained a permanent spot at their table, and over time, she began to open up and blossom out and talk about herself more, letting them into things that people had never really cared to know before.

That was when everything changed. That was when Jane really realized what it was like to actually have friends. Madison invited her over for sleepovers every Friday night on the dot like clockwork, and Roderick let her swipe his MP3 player (yes, his MP3 player, because those were still a thing in 2007) long enough to put some new music on it.

By ninth grade, newbie junior varsity football player Spencer Porter was rounding out their lunch table as a fifth and final member, and Jane was still having a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that this was actually her life now. By this point, ordinarily, in the years between sixth and ninth grade, Jane would have been at three different schools.

But not this time. This was the longest that she had ever stayed in one place, and she loved that.

Somewhere along the line, though, as mentioned previously, they weren’t really friends so much as they became her family. They were a solid unit, a house undivided on anything other than pizza toppings. But eventually, as could really be expected, Jane supposed, some of those friendship bonds crossed the line from friendship to something… more than friendship. But not in the familial sense. In the… you know. The other sense.

Jane had always written poetry growing up – poetry that had somewhere overtime turned into song lyrics – but Jane didn’t realize until she was fifteen that the subject of all of her songs had curly dark hair and a tall, lanky frame, and a big, bright smile. And that changed, you know, everything. Because Jane, as it turned out, had no idea how she was supposed to handle a crush!

…especially a crush that wasn’t one-sided, but she’s not really sure if she can get into that sort of thing right now. Maybe that’s a different story to get into at a later date when the subject of all of those songs wasn’t standing in front of her right now eight years after the beginning of everything with their world suddenly under a whole new set of rules.

After the initial Mason sighting, of course, Jane’s eyes panned across everyone else, catching sight of Roderick, and Spencer, and Madison, who was calling her “stunning” in that way that meant that she didn’t actually think that you were stunning at all. (Or that if you were stunning, she wasn’t happy about it.)

She lifted her hand in a wave to the people who used to be her entire world, nodding her head at Spencer for a moment before nodding her head back toward the door. “They’re inside and really can’t wait to meet you,” she said with a bright smile, as if she hadn’t had to listen to Tina complaining all morning about how their opening act so should have been The Teenage Dreams.

Madison’s eyes found Jane’s as she made her way begrudgingly up the steps, her gaze following her until she was out of sight entirely, Roderick pulling up the rear and giving Jane a pat on the shoulder in that awkwardly adorable way that was essentially just Roderick.

She kept her focus on the door as it closed before finally turning back to Mason at the sound of his voice, which still, by the way, made her stomach do the same somersaults that it always had.

“I think a lot has changed with them, actually,” Jane pointed out, crossing her arms over her chest only to uncross them later. “I mean, Roderick’s hair is standing up a lot taller these days,” she added on a second later, trying to lighten up the situation and giving Mason a sheepish smile. “Which I’m sure we all have the hair guru himself to blame for, right?”

Jane debated about what she was supposed to do next. Did she hug him? Did she shake his hand? Did she pat his shoulder? She settled for leaning back against the railing and keeping her arms exactly where they were, at least until she could figure out a more solid plan of action. “It’s… really good to see you,” she said, voice a little softer than she originally anticipated it being. “Honestly. I’m really happy that you guys are here. Stupidly happy.”

Was she allowed to say that?

#001 #c:mm

you act like you just saw a ghost.

She didn’t know why she was so nervous. Wasn’t that absurd? Did she even really have a reason to be nervous?

Okay, yeah, she kind of did. She kind of had, like, twenty different reasons as to why she could (and should, honestly) be nervous for what was about to happen. It wasn’t even the shows that were getting to her. It wasn’t the idea of going on tour, it wasn’t the fact that this would be the biggest opportunity that she had ever gotten.

Those weren’t any of the sources for her nerves. She could handle every part of that.

No. Jane Hayward was nervous because of what went along with a tour -- and opening act. Specifically, this opening act. Them. And really, at the end of it all, she didn’t feel like she actually deserved to be nervous about any of it. She was the one who had left. She was the one who had bailed. So why would she get to feel nervous or worried about seeing them?

They had left on good terms, admittedly, but then she’d sort of... drove all of those good terms into the ground. Not that she really realized it at the time or anything, considering her primary thoughts consisted of being positive that her friends would be so excited that she’d found another group of people on the other side of the country to make music with.

Yeah, not so much. Which she realized when Madison unfriended her on Facebook, and she knew that she’d done something to shake up the entire balance that had been the going of things since they were in junior high.

And that was on her. And she knew that. Admittedly, she hoped that the tour would somehow... resolve everything.

Not that anyone knew it or anything, but she had recommended them to her PR team when they’d been tossing around opening act ideas... and they’d stuck. She knew that it was all part of a gimmick, really, some sort of “these kids all grew up together and now they’re touring together!” gimmick to bring in as many fans as they possibly could. It was also Jane’s second chance at really setting everything right between the friends who had been considered more of her family than they were anything else.

They were meeting up in New York this week for a few last-minute full-show rehearsals before taking off for tour on Tuesday. And that meant that Hey Wildcats! was going to be here, like, any second. As in she would be seeing her old friends for the first time in nearly two years, like… really soon.

“If you keep pacing like that, I’m going to get whiplash,” Kitty pointed out dryly, eyes peering up from her magazine for no more than a moment or two before she was looking back down. They were all sitting backstage at a warehouse in Tribeca that wasn’t much different than the venues they would be playing all across the country, and they were waiting for the band to get there so they could get over all the initial tour prep.

Jane bit down on her bottom lip, looking over her shoulder at Kitty one last time and shrugging at her. “You can’t blame me for being a little… apprehensive,” she pointed out with a slight shrug of the shoulders. A little apprehensive, however, was an understatement. You wouldn’t have this many knots in your stomach if you were just a little apprehensive.

God. Was she going to be sick? She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t do this.

Maybe she’d somehow made it the past two years without this bad of a guilty conscience, but that Jane was a figure of the past now. Now Jane was nervous. Jane was freaking the hell out.

“J, are you okay?” Tina asked, but before Jane could respond, she was muttering something about needing air and making her way toward the large doors near the back.

She pushed hard, a little too hard, really, considering she felt the door hitting someone else the second she reached sunlight. “Shit, sorry,” she said, lifting her eyes a moment later only to catch herself looking right back at a ghost.

A ghost named Mason McCarthy, to be most specific.

Not that this should really come as a shock to her, or anything, considering he was part of Hey Wildcats! and therefore was going to be part of the tour with her for the next few months, now, but… wow.

“Oh,” she cleared her throat and straightened her stance a moment later, giving him a slightly uneasy smile, head tilted to the side. “Mason. Hi.”

#001 #c:mm #jane hayward rp #mchayward rp

NO NEED FOR DREAMING: OUR INTERVIEW WITH OUR COVER GIRL, THE OTHER SISTER’S JANE HAYWARD.

You know her. Everyone knows her! Everyone loves her! Jane Hayward may still be an up-and-comer in the biz, but we have nothing but high expectations for her and her Boston-based group of girl power and good energy, The Other Sister, whose newest single, “Our Own House,” has been steadily climbing the charts for weeks. Their tour with other rising stars, Ohio-based Go Wildcats! (led by two of the cutest twins we have EVER seen and/or fan-girled over) - while a small-venue based tour - has been one of the most buzzed about tours of 2015, with shows selling out nationwide. With just a week to go before the tour kicks off on April 1st (yes, April Fool’s Day, but this is no joke!) in Portland, Oregon, we sat down with Jane to discuss songwriting inspiration and get the latest gossip in everything going on between these two groups on the rise before their very first headlining tour. (And as for the backstory on what really happened between her and Go Wildcats!? Don’t worry. We’re going to get to the bottom of that one way or another.)

TV: SO! JANE! Just how excited are you and the girls for your very first tour?! JH: [laughs, brushing a stray hair away from her face and sitting up a little higher in her seat] Oh, gosh, you know, I think it hasn’t fully set in yet? Which is ridiculous, of course, because we’ve been having rehearsals like crazy, so obviously that’s not for nothing, but... it’s crazy, I don’t know. I don’t know when it’ll fully set in or anything, but so far? Hasn’t happened. I keep telling Kitty [Wilde, the group’s guitar goddess] to pinch me. She takes me up on the offer. Every time. TV: If I recall correctly, you actually have a history with Go Wildcats! that’s a little... different than most opening acts on most tours, right? JH: [hesitates for a moment] Yeah, actually. I went to school with them growing up and I was honestly one of the members of the group back when we first put them together in high school. But, when I graduated, I got accepted into Berklee [College of Music, Boston] and I didn’t really think I could pass up on the opportunity. So... I parted ways with them, and... I don’t know, I guess fate has an interesting way of working out sometimes, you know? TV: Let’s be honest, did anything happen with any members of the group? You know... the stuff that could inspire songs? JH: [four words: Poker Face Game STRONG] I think most things in life could lead to some sort of song inspiration, don’t you? TV: How are the two groups getting along so far? Much animosity? JH: We actually haven’t worked together very much thus far, but I think everyone is really way too excited right to let any sort of tension or animosity get in the way of that, you know? This is such a big experience for all of us, and the most important thing to all of us is that we get to go out there every night to these awesome crowds of people and do what we love the most. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s really too big of an issue, and I don’t think it will become one. Personally, I can’t wait to go across country with seven of the people in this world who I consider my family and my closest friends. I think it’s going to be the greatest road trip ever. And I’ve always wanted to go on a road trip. [For Jane’s tips on dating drama, the best ways to get the biggest bang for your buck at the thrift shops, and how to channel negative vibes into positive energy, our interview with Jane is continued on PAGE 110]

#that's the face #press