last kiss * solo para
TAGGING: Sloane Holliday + Conrad Porter (Mentions) WHEN: January 6th, 2017 - night to early morning WHERE: Luna, Elise, and Sloane’s house NOTES: After the Better Off Wed episode airs, Sloane becomes inspired.
Blaire Vanderbilt was someone that Sloane had met long ago. They’d crossed paths at a party where Sloane had performed and it was an instant friendship. The blonde’s cheery idiocy coupled well with Blaire’s need for someone to like her for more than her money. So, when Blaire asked Sloane to perform at her and Conrad’s wedding, Sloane was ecstatic. In fact, she even sat down with them and talked all about the little things that they loved about one another just so that she could write them a song.
What she didn’t realize was how much she felt for Conrad. Sure, she’d been friends with Blaire long enough to see how incredibly manipulative and vile she was, but once she’d met Conrad, she hoped things would change. Conrad clearly loved Blaire with every piece of himself, his answers to Sloane’s very personal questions being just as personal. And Sloane loved every second of it. After Blaire left Conrad at the altar, Sloane wasn’t sure she could handle being friends with the brunette anymore and slid Begin Again, the song she’d written for the couple’s wedding, into a folder that she hardly touched.
Conrad deserved better.
She wasn’t sure what had compelled her to order Chinese food and sit on the couch on a Friday night. It wasn’t a favorite thing for her to do. In fact, she usually spent Fridays out at bars or writing new music and sometimes both. She had just been flipping through the channels, trying to find something to catch her eye, when Conrad Porter’s face drifted into view. She pressed pause on the DVR and, well, as creepy as she felt, stared at him. It had been a while since she’d seen him in person and somehow with his face on her television, she felt like it wasn’t so bad for her to have missed him. She’d only missed the first 7 minutes or so and decided that maybe this could be worth watching.
And it was. To see what Conrad and Blaire’s relationship was like, to see what he must have felt that day, to see just how torn apart he was by her decision - it was eye opening. However, she had to admit that she felt kind of like she was a peeping tom, like she was delving into a world far too personal for television. The last shot of the episode was an intimate close-up of Conrad, clearly distraught, speaking candidly. “I never imagined we’d end like this,” was all that left his lips, the screen rolling credits. Sloane hurriedly sat up and scrambled for the remote, her tears rolling down her cheek as she rewound time and time again.
It was but ten minutes later that the girl ended up in her bedroom, door shut with the typical scarf hanging over the handle - her signature ‘I’m writing’ notion to Luna and Elise. There were fruit snacks strewn across her desk, words flowing from the pencil she held. If there was something that this girl was talented with, it was words. They slipped from her mind without a second thought, though she knew editing them would come later.
Sloane switched back and forth from her keyboard and headphones to lightly strumming her Fender. There was a certain amount of her soul that went into this, exhaustion tugging at her eyelids. She refused to stop working, her emotions wrapped up in what she was writing, tears flowing as the lyrics rounded themselves out. She hoped her singing wasn’t waking up the other girls - if they were even home. The blonde didn’t stop for anything but water and the occasional bathroom break.
The night turned to morning and Sloane couldn’t stop the music. Everything she had ever heard from Blaire and Conrad was being pushed into a song. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure why she felt so inspired by their ending - probably moreso than she had been by their beginning, but she knew that her muse had been sparked and that she needed to share this with Conrad. She knew that he needed to hear this. Or, at least, she knew that it might help if he knew that someone saw it all. That someone understood the words he possibly felt and wanted him to know that. Maybe it would help. If she was all wrong, she wouldn’t care.
If she was all wrong, then she didn’t know Conrad at all.