Grace: I know I've kept you waiting
I know I made you mad
But this time that we've spent creating
Was the best time I ever had
Now I love to sit with mem'ries
But they won't come until we're gone
So give me a kiss
And cut, print...moving on
Pola: Tell me a brand new story
Together, we'll turn the page
The grass is always greener
On some new technicolor stage
And if a duckling never swims
She'll never become a swan
Yes, I'm diving in
So cut, print...moving on
Schatze: Yes, there have been nights I'll long to relive
But sometimes you gotta roam
You can't fight when something's gotta give
But you'll always be my home away from home
Now, I like to play a love scene
But don't let it last too long
Play me the eight bar intro
Of some new lush romantic song
Frankie: I'm not afraid to take that leap
With you to depend upon
Now, tell me your name?
Cut, print...moving on
Nicky: We told the same jokes
We breathed the same air
We couldn't tell night from day
But just like the end of a love affair
We all know the time comes to break away
Lamar: Last year, we all were strangers
This year, we're lifelong friends
I know that this location
Is not where our story ends
Schatze: Get up cause the rat race never ends
This life is a marathon
And I plan to run so much more than a sprint
What's next? Well, I can't even give you a hint
But boys, that's a wrap
So, cut! Print!
Moving on!
And on!
All: Moving on!
Claire smiled at the woman at the front desk, Alice, if she remembered correctly. She waved at her, proudly walking out the doors of the hospital. Just as she crossed the threshold, her phone started vibrating. She answered it, a smile etched on her makeup less face. The fresh air from outside was such a great and welcome change. She stopped walking, closing her eyes to breathe in. She wouldn’t get to do this for a while once she came back from today.
“Zayn?” she questioned, recognizing the voice. He had called her yesterday to tell her that he found this idea of going out with Niall incredibly stupid. She had replied by saying that she couldn’t agree more.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he spoke out in a hushed voice. “So you’re really going through with this?” he asked her.
She opened her eyes, forcing herself to keep walking. The good thing about exiting a hospital was that no one really questioned a person acting weirdly when they left. “Yeah, I guess…” she mumbled.
Claire actually quite liked Zayn. She respected him for looking out for his friend, but at the same time she could sense that he wanted what was best for her, too. It was just sometimes hard to balance those two things.
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” he asked, his voice almost pleading.
Claire shook her head. “I doubt it. But honestly, what choice do I have, I already said yes.”
Zayn sighed. “Are you gonna tell him tonight?” he finally spoke, his tone soft.
She smiled, but it was really more like an upturning of the corners of her mouth. “No, I’m sorry. I just...I don’t really know how I should tell him.” It was the truth; there really was no easy way of going about it.
He approved, but didn’t elaborate. A few minutes later, Claire hung up, just as she saw Jay approaching in his car. Christopher had had to leave earlier in the day because he was supposed to meet up with Greg who was flying down from Seattle to, finally, meet his fiancé’s parents. Claire did hope she would have the time to see him, the last time she had managed to see him went back almost a year. Although Greg had only just moved to Seattle a month or so ago for his job, she hadn’t really gotten to see much of him even before that, so she didn’t know him all that well.
She climbed into the car next to her best friend. “So where do you want to go?” he asked her.
She looked at her hands as the car sped forward, putting very well-deserved distance between herself and the hospital. “I have an appointment at the hairdresser’s,” she mumbled.
Jay nodded. He asked Claire for directions, which she willingly gave him.
He pushed the power button and turned the radio on. Queen started playing, a fact that made Claire smile. This wasn’t Jay’s kind of music; he had put it on for her. She sang along softly to the lyrics.
Four songs went by before she decided to speak up again. “Hey, Jay?”
He hummed in response, not taking his eyes off of the road.
“I wanna get my permit.” Her voice was small, which she didn’t understand. She had never been shy around Jay, but all of a sudden she seemed to be. She didn’t dwell too much upon it, though. She looked up from her hands, feeling her cheeks warm up under her friend’s gaze. His green eyes scanned her face for something, neither of them knew what. Apparently he found it, because he turned his gaze to look back at where he was headed.
“I know I’ll probably die before I get it, but I mean...if I start soon enough, maybe I’ll manage to get behind a wheel once or twice,” she half smiled. It pained Jay how she regarded life nowadays. It was as if to her, death was no longer a fatality, but more like a casualty. Of course, she had been so close to it for so long, it was as if it was a second family to her. But no one should ever get to feel this way.
He nodded, biting hard on his tongue until he drew blood. “Then let’s make it happen,” he finally said. Claire looked at him worriedly when he pulled over, taking the keys out of the ignition. He looked at her and dropped the keys in her lap. Her eyes went wide, darting between her obviously insane friend and the keys he had just handed over to her.
“Are you crazy?” she finally whispered. Jay laughed, but Claire kept looking at him. “I’m dead serious, Jay. You’ve gone mad!”
He looked behind them at the road from which they had come. “We’re basically alone on the highway. There’s literally no one that you could hit.”
“Yes!” Claire practically shouted. “We’re alone on the highway! You know, that road where people usually drive rather fast? Do you have a death wish or something? I mean, I've absolutely never gotten remotely close to driving, ever,” she spoke, the words tumbling out of her mouth.
He laughed dryly. “Funny you should be the one asking me that, isn’t it.” The words had left his mouth before he had had time to process them. When he finally understood what he had just said, his mouth fell open, his gaze studying his friend to gauge a reaction. Her eyes were fixed ahead of her, her jaw clenched tight. He lifted a hand to trace her cheek with his index finger, but she flinched under his touch, smacking his hand away. She sent him a cold glare, but returned her gaze to the windshield immediately after. He tried to say something, but was cut off.
Claire shook her head almost imperceptibly. “Don’t.” Her tone was hard, cold. She had never spoken to him like this. “Just fucking take your goddamn keys and drive.” She let the keys fall into the palm of his open hand, not bothering to look at him. It was incredible how everything had turned so sour so quickly. A matter of seconds, really.
Jay obliged, swallowing hard. The atmosphere inside the small car was tense. After five and a half minutes of trying to figure out what to say, Claire surprised him by speaking up. “Hairdresser’s there.”
He parked the car in front of the building she pointed to. “I’ll wait for you here,” he told her, not daring to look into her eyes.
“Don’t bother; I’ll call Niall or even Chris.” She stepped out of the car, walking straight for the door.
***
While she was inside getting her hair done, her phone had rung thrice. Suspecting it to be Jay, she had quickly sent all calls to voicemail. When she heard her ringtone for a fourth time, she just decided to turn her phone off. She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with him. How could he have possibly accused her of having a death wish? It was one thing to know she was going to die, but it was a completely different thing for her best friend to say that she actually wanted to die. Sure, the pain was hell and there were mornings when she wished she could just sleep forever, but if she was going to have only a few more months on earth, she was sure as hell going to make the most of them. She couldn’t ignore her fate, she accepted it, but she surely didn’t enjoy it.
While a young woman, who couldn’t possibly be over a decade older than herself, attended to her hair, Claire let her thoughts drift, dragging her along.
Although she knew she was meeting up with Niall at one o’clock, she had no idea what they were to do. She suddenly strongly hoped that it would be something outside. In the hospital, she didn’t get to see natural sunlight much, and that was something she always ended up greatly missing.
Of course, she would have to change and do her makeup. At the moment, she was wearing baggy sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt, about three sizes too big for her that reached mid-thigh.
She was brought back by the feeling of a towel drying off her soaking hair. She opened her eyes and followed the woman to her station. Although she was rather terrified of ending up with something she wouldn’t like, she told the woman, whose name, according to the small bit of paper standing up on her table, was Rosa, to just do as she pleased.
***
As she stepped out of the building about an hour later, she easily spotted Jay, who was still there, waiting for her. She averted her gaze, taking her phone out of her sweatpants’ pocket and turned it on. As she brought it up to her ear, she could see her friend getting out of his car and walking up to her.
With pursed lips, she looked him over. She was about to open her mouth to say something when her call was finally put through. She raised her index finger towards him, warning him to stay quiet.
“Hey?” her brother answered.
Claire smiled. “Hey Chrissy! Would you mind picking me up, I’m at the hairdressers.”
There was a lot of very loud noise coming from his background. “I am so sorry Claire, but Greg’s plane’s been delayed, and I’m still waiting for him.” She frowned. “I’ll talk to you later.” With that he hung up.
She put her phone away, taking all her time, before looking up at Jay. His eyes were worried.
“Do you need a lift?” he asked her cautiously.
She looked towards his car. “Yeah, whatever.” She climbed in, and a few instants later, so did he. He started up the engine, his eyes darting almost imperceptibly towards the girl sitting next to him.
He sighed. “I like your new hair, Claire,” he nervously spoke.
She laughed, but there was no happiness behind the sound. It was a sorrowful echo that tore Jay’s heart to shreds. “No, you don’t.” She didn’t bother looking at him. He turned at a corner where there was a retro looking restaurant, with neon signs signaling that it was open.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like her hair, he actually did. But he wasn’t a fan of change.
He didn’t dare turn on the radio. His friend was hurt, although she did a rather good job at hiding it. The only giveaway was actually that she seemed too normal; she would usually have a finger or a foot keeping up with an unheard beat. Now, she was laid back in her seat, completely immobile. Almost stiff.
The car kept speeding forward in an uncomfortable silence, which Jay’s only wish was to break. He coughed aloud, searching for any way to start off a conversation.
An apology would probably be a good way to start off.
He took a deep, shaky breath before speaking out; expelling all the air he had accumulated in his lungs at once. “Look, Claire, I am so sorry, you can’t even-”
That was as far as he managed to get before the girl looked at him. “Jay, please, I don’t want to talk about it. Can we just sit in silence until we get there? Please?” Her voice broke at the end, and so did Jay’s heart.
However, he nodded.
As they stared ahead, Claire reached into her shirt and pulled out her necklace, the one that matched Jay’s. Looking over at her as she untied it, he had a sudden fear that she was about to throw it out the window, but calmed slightly down as he noticed that she made no motion to open the window.
She could remember how the last time he had slipped up just like he had today, which was quite a many years ago, Jay had asked for her forgiveness by giving her this piece of jewelry. He had told her that it represented how he would always be alongside her, seeing as he had the matching one.
As Jay pulled up in Claire’s driveway, she hid the necklace in the same pocket that held her phone. She didn’t look twice at her friend before opening her door and walking out of the car, towards her house.
An hour later, as she was putting the finishing touches on her makeup, she heard a faint knocking at the door upstairs. Rushing upstairs, she had had to wait a few seconds to catch her breath before opening the door. She was met with a blonde male whose smile radiated glee.
“Hey Claire, you look quite lovely!” he spoke out, gently hugging the small girl. As he stepped back from her, he looked her over, his hands firmly on her forearms. She was wearing a floral print sundress, one of her favorites, actually. Niall slowly lifted his hand up and pinched a strand of her hair between his index finger and his thumb, rolling it over. “I see you’ve gone back to being a brunette,” he stated, a smile edging its way onto his soft features.
Claire nodded, a soft blush creeping onto her cheeks. “Yeah, I missed not having people staring at me when I walked into a room.” Niall chuckled, his eyes not leaving Claire as she pulled on a pair of black Toms.
She pushed a strand of hair that had fallen astray behind her ear, looking back up at her companion. “So where are we going?” she questioned.
“It’s a surprise,” a smile flickered across his face. “Are you ready?”
Claire nodded. “Just let me go get my purse.”
She slowly made her way downstairs, not wanting to, once again, be out of breath when she returned upstairs. She picked her purse up from her bed, a lovely orange shaded bag, and before she could quite think about it, she reached for an old camera that was on her bedside table. God had she missed having a camera with her. She hadn’t really bothered asking Jay or Christopher for one when she was stuck in the hospital. This time, she wouldn’t make that mistake.
When she reappeared, Niall opened the front door for her, ushering her out towards the car that was parked out front. She smiled as she saw a small black convertible.
“The boys let me have it for today,” said Niall, speaking of the car. He opened the passenger door, allowing Claire to climb in, then went to the other side and got in behind the steering wheel. He backed the car out of the driveway, sparing a quick glance to Claire.
There was something about her that was definitely different. She smiled at him, a genuine beam, but when his eyes darted to hers, he was conflicted by what he saw, heart wrenching and seemingly endless pain. Her eyes were hollowed out, dark circles cancelling out their usual brightness. He could see how there were a number of bruises lining her ivory skin, which was in full display from her bright sundress.
As he turned onto a calm street, he felt her hand gently slipping into his; she gently squeezed his fingers between hers. He looked at her wonderingly, but concluded that the small gesture most likely didn’t have much meaning.
A few minutes later, they were driving down a country road, Claire giggling as the wind blew her hair around her face, blinding her vision momentarily each time. It was a beautiful sound, one that Claire herself hadn’t heard in so long. Her fingers drummed along the paint of the black Chevrolet, keeping a steady rhythm, the sweet lullaby of the car’s tires danced up the road. There was no other sound, but there didn’t need to be another sound. No music could make this scene any more beautiful, no words could make it feel any more perfect.
Niall’s thumb was rubbing slow and tender circles into the girl’s palm, a blush which he couldn’t ignore warming her cheeks.
With her free hand, she reached for her purse and pulled out the small camera. Before he could realize it, she had snapped a picture of Niall. She looked at it in the small screen, feeling quite pleased with the result. Niall was looking out of the corner of his eye at the lens, his blue eyes reaching Claire’s brown ones through the screen.
Niall tried to steal away the camera, sending Claire into another fit of giggles as she backed away, her body hitting the inside of the door. She kicked up her legs, playfully kicking Niall’s hand away as he had tried to tickle her with the hand that had once been holding onto hers. She felt the car swerve and yelped when she felt it briefly leave the cracked asphalt and engage itself onto the dirt lining both sides of the street. Niall made the steering wheel turn rather randomly, half a mind still concentrated on tickling Claire. The car zigzagged back onto the road, laughter booming out of Niall’s throat as Claire slowly regained the ability to breathe.
She gasped out, her heart rate frantic as she took a hold of the boy’s hand, intertwining their fingers. Of course, it was simply to stop him. “You idiot! How about you keep your eyes on the road!” she offered, laughter breaking the middle of her sentence. She plopped the camera down back into her bag, looking back up at him afterwards.
He stole his hand back from Claire’s, instead running it up from her ankle to her knee, her feet crossed over in Niall’s lap. “You worry too much,” he stated, looking briefly at the girl besides him, who was biting her lip. “There’s no one else on the road anyway!” he argued.
Claire kicked her toms off, letting them fall to Niall’s feet. “Exactly! No one’s gonna be able to find us if we get in an accident.”
The blonde laughed openly, and soon enough, Claire was giggling along with him. His free hand glided down to her ankle, and then over the outside of her foot. A few moments later, his blue eyes fell to her foot, his eyebrows knitting together as he noticed the ink decorating her skin. His finger traced over the words, easy to read because of the absence of bruising there.
He looked up at her, noticing the small smile that she sent him. He read the words over and over, not quite sure of their significance.
“Nothing lasts forever,” she read to him.
He looked at her briefly before returning his attention to driving, his finger still drawing over the words to urge her to go on.
“It means that eventually, everything, all the pain, will go away. Because it eventually has to get better.” Niall nodded at her hushed words, somewhat understanding them.
He kept driving, sparing the girl the odd glance every now and then. “What about love?” he asked after a long silence, speaking the words that had been glued to the inside of his skull.
She tilted her head towards him, confusion etched across her features. She bit her lip, shuffling her feet in his lap before speaking. “What do you mean?”
“Well what do you make of love then? If nothing can ever last forever, what about love?” He didn’t dare take his eyes off of the road.
Claire sighed. “Have you ever been to a hospital?” she asked, but didn’t give Niall the time to answer. “The nurses always ask: ‘How badly does it hurt? On a scale of one to ten, where are you?’ And it’s possible to answer. You can easily say one, or four, or nine. You can sort of quantify pain. You can put it on a scale. When I said ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ it has to be something that you can put into numbers. To me, when you say ‘something,’ it has to be measurable. Air is something, you can measure it. Water is something, and so is time. But love...love isn’t ‘something’. Not in the proper terms, anyways. You can’t quantify love. You can say that, on a scale of one to ten, you love someone a one, or a four, or a nine. If it isn’t a ten, it isn’t love. If you say one, you barely even like the person. If it’s four, it’s friendship.” She took a deep breath. “If it isn’t a ten, it isn’t love,” she repeated, softly. “If you say that the pain is one out of ten, it’s still pain. It’s not strong or acute, but it’s still there.”
She lifted her gaze, somewhat exhausted after saying this, and her eyes were met with blue. Niall lifted his hand, gently taking her chin between his fingers, making sure she couldn’t look away. She was no longer leaning her back against the car’s door, but now she was closer to the blonde next to her, her legs tangled in with his. Claire worried about whether it was safe for Niall to be driving when his attention was obviously on her, but she didn’t question it.
Niall wanted to speak up, but couldn’t find the words to voice his thoughts. The way Claire saw things...he found it actually rather brilliant. He let his hand caress her cheek, eyes darting to her lips as she once again took her bottom one between her teeth. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
Suddenly, there was loud honking and they both snapped out of their trance, Claire yelling out as they saw that their car was in the opposite lane, another car heading straight for them. Niall turned the wheel abruptly, pulling onto the side of the road. He looked at Claire, whose eyes were now as large as they could possibly get, and he started laughing from her expression and their near-accident. God that was close.
After a few long minutes, she started punching his shoulder friendly, making him laugh even louder. “This isn’t funny Niall!” she exclaimed. “We’ve almost had a car crash twice now!”
“Oh, come on now, love, we’re okay, isn’t that all that matters?” He let his hand trail up her leg, which was still in his lap, reaching the hem of her dress.
Claire pouted. She literally pouted. “I’m not okay, I’m forever traumatised!”
Niall winked at her. “Well, the good news is that nothing lasts forever, then.” And with that, he pulled Claire’s feet out of his lap and opened his door, stepping out into the middle of a country road where there was, once again, not another car for miles round.
Author’s note: Hey guys! I’m blowing off hw to do this, so I don’t have much time. Let me know what you think!
