I was absolutely miserable. I had let Amanda walk out of my life and except for a few lousy phone calls, I hadn’t done a single thing to get her back. I hadn’t left my room except to eat since the day she left. I had lost all sense of time. There was no longer day or night, just simply days without Manders in my life. I’d made good use of my keyboard and guitar though. I wrote several songs for her. I called a couple of times the day she left and the following two days after, but after being yelled at, or hung up on, or both, I gave up.

"Come In!" I yelled answering the knock at the door. I was lying on my bed, my head at the foot of the bed and my feet at the top, on my stomach. I lifted my head up as Jacob walked through the door.

"Dude, you have got to stop moping around." He said while sitting down on my bed. I sat up and moved so that I was leaning against my pillows, knees pulled up to my chest.

" I’m not moping around. I’m moping in my room. I’m not bothering anyone."

"No, but we’re all worried about you. Plus we’re already behind on our recording. We still have another song to record before the album is released and it’s 3 days till August first. Our album release is supposed to be 5 days after that. That’s 8 days from now. We already had to push it back two weeks, which means that the Album won’t be released until the middle of August. I know that our single hit number one and did great but I don’t want to push it back any further than that. If we wait too long to release the album then the fans will get restless. We have to release the album soon. You have got to find some way to pull yourself together Ashley. I don’t know how you plan to do it, but you have got to get your act together to finish this album. I understand that your upset over loosing Amanda, believe me I do, but you can’t just mope around. We’ll never get done without you." I sighed. I knew he was right, but I didn’t know what to do.

"I need help." I finally admitted.

"I want Amanda back. I really need your help Jacob. I have to get her back. I need her. Without her in my life, I just don’t see a reason to do anything. I wrote a song for her. I wrote a lot of songs for her, but there’s one in particular. If I promise to get my act together and commit to getting the song recorded, will you and the guys promise to learn it so that we can sing it for her at our first show in here after the album is released."

"Alright, you’ve got yourself a deal. One question though, how do plan on getting her to come to the concert?"

"That’s where Erik comes in."

It was two days after my twenty-first birthday. We’d had a huge party. I had fun, but it would have been more enjoyable had Amanda been here. Erik had kept me posted. He told me that she wasn’t doing so well. I felt terrible because I knew that it was my fault. He told me that she had been really sad and miserable, but that she was doing some better now. I was determined to make up for what had happened. I was just hoping that she would understand and forgive me. As promised, I’d been working very hard in the studio. We had the first set of vocals down, they sounded pretty good but still needed a little work. We still had to record the backing vocals, but that would wait a few days until we had the main vocals polished. We’d probably be done with the album within the next week. Once we finished that we had to rehearse for our promo tour for the album. The official tour didn’t kick off until after the New Year. During our promo tour we’d only be doing radio gigs and small concerts. We’d do about 6 songs and the concerts would be maybe an hour long. It was the real tour that we were all looking forward to.

In the following days after I had walked in on Ashley and that-that whore, I was completely miserable. I cried almost non-stop. I had gained a friend through all of it though. She was my next door neighbor. She was 20, same as me, and she’d be attending UCLA in the fall, like me. She came over the day I left the guys’ house. I was really broken up about Ashley and I was crying really hard. I suppose I was a little loud because she said that she heard someone crying and wondered what was wrong. I told her the entire story, beginning to end. By the end we were both in tears. We just sort of clicked and instantly became friends. She’d been over a lot in the past couple of days. So had Erik.

"Coming!" I yelled at whoever was knocking on my door.

"Erik. Hey! Come in." I said, opening the front door to my apartment. We went over and sat down on the couch after I closed the front door.

"So what brings you here?"

"Well, we’re releasing the album in two days and we’re flying to New York early tomorrow morning. We won’t get home until Friday."

"Oh. Well, I’ll miss you."

"I’m gonna miss you too. I just wanted to make sure that you’d be ok while I was gone." I sighed at his concern.

" I’m a big girl Erik. You don’t need to worry about me every single second of the day. I’ll be fine. All I want you to think about this week is the album release. Ok? Please." Erik nodded and pulled me into a hug.

"He still loves you, you know." He whispered into my ear while hugging me. I nodded.

" I know. It’s just hard to believe right now. Tell him I said that I still love him and to have fun. Tell him that when he gets back we’ll figure everything out, ok?" Erik nodded again.

"Well, I should probably get going. I still have to finish packing." I nodded and stood up. We walked over to the front door. I hugged him one more time and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Have fun in New York." I said, pulling away from his embrace.

"I will." I opened the door and he walked out with a wave. I closed the door and let out a huge sigh. Just as I was about to go to the kitchen, someone else knocked on my door. I turned around and opened the door.

"Steph. Hey!" I said to my newfound best friend and next door neighbor.

"Hi." She said walking through the door.

"So what’s up?" I asked.

"Boredom. Do you wanna go see a movie?"

" Sure, just let me grab my shoes. Do you want to go in your car or mine?" I asked on my way back to my bedroom.

"We can take mine."

"OK." I said coming out of my bedroom, shoes on my feet.

"Ready?" She asked as I walked towards the door.

"Yup." I replied. I grabbed my keys off the counter and locked the door on our way out.

"So what movie do you want to see?" I asked as we walked over to the elevator.

"I was thinking that we could go see ‘A Walk To Remember."

"Sure." I said as we stepped onto the elevator. We rode down in silence and then went out to her car.

"So, I saw Erik leaving your apartment. You two are certainly spending a lot of time together." Stephanie said breaking the silence that had engulfed as we stepped onto he elevator.

"He’s becoming a really good friend. They’re leaving for New York tomorrow and he wanted to make sure that I’d be ok while they were gone."

"What’d you tell him?"

" I told him to stop worrying, that I was a big girl and I that I could take care of myself. I also told him to tell Ashley that I still loved him and that we’d work out this mess once they got back."

"Why don’t you just talk to him yourself?"

"I’m not ready to yet and I figure that by the time they get back I will be." Stephanie nodded and continued to drive, silence enveloping us once again.

"That was so sad." I said wiping away my tears as the credits began rolling.

"Uh huh. Let’s wait until everyone leaves." I nodded in agreement.

"I can’t believe that I cried that much over a movie."

"Me either. I’ve never cried that much over a movie. Do I have mascara running down my cheeks?" I shook my head ‘no’.

"Do I?"

"No." We both wiped the tears away from our eyes, trying in vain to keep them from falling anymore. A few minutes later, after everyone else had left the theater, our tears dried. "Are you ready to go?" I asked.

"Yeah." She replied.

"I talked to Amanda." Erik said, coming into my room. I put a shirt into my bag and then sat down on my bed, waiting for Erik to come sit down.

"What'd she say?"

"She told me to tell you that she still loves you and to have fun. She also said that you two could figure things out when you got back." I nodded.

"Thanks for going and talking to her. I really hate all of this. I know that it's my fault and everything but still."

" I know Ash. Don't worry. You guys will be able to work out all of this. Trust me. You guys are meant to be together. Everything's going to be fine."

"I know. I just wish that things were fine right now, that's all. Have you figured out a way to get her to the concert on Saturday?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna tell her that I'm taking her to dinner to celebrate the release of the album. I'm blindfolding her and giving her earplugs and telling her that where we're going is a surprise and I don't want her to know anything about it. I'm gonna bring Stephanie and her boyfriend with us so that she'll be able to get into the arena."

"That sounds like a good idea. Have you talked to Stephanie about it yet?"

"Yeah, that's how I knew that she had a boyfriend."

"Where's Erik? We've got a concert in 20 minutes and he's not here." Mike M. yelled, as he stormed into our dressing room.

"Don't worry about it. He'll be here. He's doing a favor for me. He should be back right about-...now" I said as Erik came into the room.

"She's here. Front row center."

"Who's here?" a very confused Mike C. asked.

"Amanda." I answered.

"Jacob's ex-girlfriend Amanda?"

"The one and only." I said, getting a bit irritated.

"What's she doing here? I thought that she lived in Orlando and why do you care so much about here being here, I thought that she was still wrapped up in Jacob."

"She moved to LA to be with us and I care about here being here because I'm in love with her. I made a huge mistake, which I'm trying to make up for tonight. That song that we don't normally play, that isn't on the album, that's my way of making it up to her."

"Uh huh." Mike C. said still sounding slightly confused.

"Don't worry about it. We've got things under control." Trevor said from his spot on the other side of the room.

" That's what we're afraid of." Mike M. said, before he left the room.

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Chapter 14-I Thought She Knew

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