“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think that anyone else would be up.”

Dash looked up from her position on the floor in the middle of the basement to see Alex standing awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs. After she and Pierre had returned from lunch, Dash had locked herself in her room, scouring through her music journal for some sort of inspiration. She knew that Pierre had had a point when he told her to use something she had already written as a building block. When she realized that sitting her room wasn’t helping her any, Dash had slipped down to the basement after she knew all the boys had headed to bed.

“It’s fine, Alex. I couldn’t really sleep.” Dash gestured to the pile of crumpled paper next to her. “Clearly, I’m not making much progress anyway.”

“I can leave,” Alex offered, running a hand through his already messy hair. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Alex, it’s fine,” Dash replied, smiling at the man. “Seriously. Stay. Besides, I could use the company. What time is it anyway?”

“Nearly two,” he said, walking over to where Dash was sitting Indian style on the floor. He lowered himself to the carpet next to her. “Still no luck?”

Dash sighed, shaking her head. “This has never happened to me before. Usually it all comes so easily, but lately it’s like nothing I write is good enough or really seems to express what I’m trying to say. It’s damn frustrating!” she exclaimed, tossing her journal on the ground.

Alex chuckled, leaning over and picking up the discarded book. “I’ve been there, Dash. When I was writing for our third album, my ex-girlfriend and I broke up for the first time. I mean, we’ve broken up about ten more times since then, but that was the first serious break up. At first, the last thing I wanted was to write about it. But eventually, the guys convinced me that writing about what I felt was how I had to work through it.” Alex cleared his throat, looking across at Dash, who had remained silent as he spoke. “I’m telling you this because you’re a writer, Dash, and as a writer, sometimes you have to dig up some really shitty feelings that you’re trying to avoid.”

Dash bit her lip, finally raising her gaze to look Alex in the eye. She knew that he was right. She knew that this had been what Kane and Pierre and Baz had been trying to subtlety tell her: that in order to leave Sam behind, she couldn’t just sell their apartment and leave town, she had to write about it. She had to write a song for Sam. But who was Alex to tell her this? Dash’s train of thought immediately switched to unexplainable anger towards the man sitting across from her. She barely knew him. Who was he to tell her what she needed to do? Dash opened her mouth with the intent of telling Alex that the situation was none of his business, but she surprised herself when those were not the words spilling from her lips.

“He left me, Alex.”

Alex raised his eyes, obviously taken aback by the girl’s revelation. “Dash, what do-”

She shook her head, cutting him off. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything. You don’t know Sam and you don’t know what we were like when we together. You don’t know anything.”

“Hold on a second, Dash,” Alex replied, grinning. He stood up and started walking to the stairs. “I do know one thing. I know exactly what you need right now. Give me two seconds.”

The lanky boy left the room. Dash mentally kicked herself for being honest with Alex. Though she had to admit, she was surprised when he hadn’t looked at her like she was fragile or weak for being venerable. It was true he had seemed taken aback, but the look on his face seemed to one of pride over anything else.

She looked up when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Seconds later, Alex walked back into the room, this time clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Seriously,” Dash scoffed. “That’s what you think I need? Whiskey?”

“I’ve done some of my best writing while drunk,” he replied, a huge grin on his face. Alex twisted the top off the bottle, pressing the opening to his lips and taking a swig. His face screwed up in disgust as he offered the bottle to Dash. “Bottoms up, McCafferty.”

Dash raised her eyebrows, glancing down at the offered bottle. What was the worst that could happen? She either got drunk and produced some lyrical masterpiece that would solve all her writing problems, or she got drunk and remained a failure.

“What the hell,” she murmured, taking the bottle of Jack from Alex and lifting the bottle to her mouth.
×××
Dash winced as she took another swallow from the bottle of Jack Daniels that she and Alex had been sharing drinks from for the past hour. The liquid burned as it slipped down her throat. That in itself was the reason she avoided drinking hard liquor. Tonight, however, it seemed Alex had been right: it was exactly what she needed.

“Why don’t we try writing something?” Alex murmured, his words tripping over each other. He pulled Dash’s notebook onto his lap and flicked through its pages. “Some of this stuff is really nice, Dash.” He picked up a pen, letting it fall through his fingers. “Why don’t we write a song about our dear friend Jack and how wonderfully he helps us get through some hard times?” he joked.

But Dash wasn’t listening to Alex’s antics. Instead, she was deep inside her own mind, mentally picking through her entire relationship with Sam, wondering if it were possible for her to figure out where exactly he had changed his mind about them. No matter how many times Dash found herself going over the five years they spent together, she was unable to pick a moment when Sam faltered from playing the role of the doting and loving boyfriend. Maybe that was what made everything so hard. Up until the moment she had heard that voicemail left by her ex-boyfriend, Dash had thought their relationship was still working perfectly. Maybe things would have been so much easier to deal with if there had been some sort of indication that he had been having doubts about them.

Dash had even gone so far as to sell the apartment they shared to rid herself of his memory. It hadn’t worked, of course. Her nights were still haunted with nightmares of him and dreams of their life together - the weekends spent road tripping to her brother’s cabin, the nights spent next to each other, that day that he drove ten hours just to see her perform, and that night during the summer…

“You want to know what really sucks?” she said suddenly, her clear voice breaking through Alex’s drunken mumblings. He quickly stopped talking and turned to look at her, curious as to where she was taking this conversation. Dash mulled her words over carefully before murmuring, “Christmas was only four months away. And I had myself convinced - convinced - that he was going to give me a ring.” She shook her head, tipping it back against the couch and closing her eyes. “I was so sure that he wanted to spent the rest of his life with me.”

Alex remained silent, unsure of what to say to the girl sitting next to him. While he and Lisa had been serious about each other, he couldn’t honestly say that either of them had thought much about their distant future. For the most part, they had always been about living in the moment and not worrying about the future held for them.

“I think Pierre was right,” she said, saving Alex from responding to her revelation. “I do like that chorus.”

Alex pulled his eyebrows together in confusion. “What chorus?” Dash pointed at the page the journal was currently open to.

“This one. Can I just have that book for a minute?”

He handed her over the book, watching as she flipped to a new page. She pulled out the pen that her hair had been twisted around to keep it out of her face and raised it to the paper, pausing momentarily before scribbling some words down.

Alex knew the look that was on Dash’s face - it was one of focus and concentration; it was one that his friends so often teased him about while he was writing. So he remained silent, knowing that it was important for Dash to write out whatever words were in her mind and he let his thoughts travel to his own songs, the ones that he and Pierre had been working on for the past week.

“What do you think of this?” she finally said, handing him over the book. He scanned the short verse that she had written down.

“It’s good,” he said and Dash let out a deep sigh. “No, seriously, I like it. It’s perfect. There’s just… this last line. I don’t know that it sits right with the rest of the verse.”

Dash leaned over, reading the lines over. “No, no you’re right. It doesn’t fit the same.”

Alex slipped the pen out of Dash’s fingers and scratched out the last line, replacing it with his own words. “What about something like this?”

She nodded her head. “I like that. That’s perfect, actually.”

Dash grinned over at the boy before picking up the acoustic guitar sitting next to her. “I think I have a melody to go with it too.” She began picking at the strings, slowly at first, carefully replaying the words over in her mind as she worked through the chords.

The two sat on the basement floor, pouring over the little notebook, each of them taking turns writing lines down while the other played them out with the guitar. It was almost four o’clock in the morning when Dash finally laid the guitar on the floor, a huge smile across her face. Alex closed the journal and handed it to Dash before the two of them left their mess behind them, deciding to get some sleep.

“Thanks Alex,” Dash said as she came to a stop in front of her bedroom door. “I guess you were right. Some hard liquor was exactly what I needed.”

Alex laughed and ruffled his hair. “No problem. That tends to be my solution for all life’s little problems.”

“Night Alex.”

“Goodnight Dash. Oh, and Dash?” he added, turning back to look at the girl. “You should know that Tash is coming over tomorrow afternoon to take you shopping. But it’s completely a rouse to get you out of the house so Chuck can get everything ready for the surprise party he’s throwing you. He’s invited a lot of people. So be surprised.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” she chuckled before slipping into her bedroom and closing the door behind her.

Dash settled into her bed, pulling the blankets around her tightly, the smile never leaving her face. She would call Kane in the morning to tell him about the new song. Maybe she’d even try to video chat with the band to play it for them. Suddenly, she was looking forward to spending the day with her cousin’s girlfriend. It would be nice to get out of a house full of men and have some girl time.

She fell asleep easily, her mind at ease with the knowledge that she had managed to write the first song since her break up and knowing that she had the ability in her to write an amazing second album.

Notes

let's raise the stakes on the bet we made.
let's decide to be the architects,
the masters of our fate.

I know. Two chapters within two days of each other? You're shocked, I know. But I'm really proud of this chapter and I actually really like it. I'd also really appreciate it if you could tell me what you think of it.
I know that I only posted the last chapter a few days ago, but there's been a single comment so far. I really would like to know where your head is at with this, my dear readers.

Anyway, I decided to post this chapter instead of waiting a week or something crazy like that. I hope that you enjoyed it.