I pushed the door open slowly, knowing Alex would be sitting there, waiting to chastise me like usual. I let Miri down and she ran off into the house, the shout indicating where Alex was and where to avoid. The kitchen. I turned and closed the door, slipping off my shoes and walking towards the stairs without looking in Alex's direction, even though I knew he was staring right at me.
"Caroline." Fuck. I had made it tot he bottom of the staircase before the use of my name made me turn to smile sheepishly at him. "What did you do?" I pouted and turned on my best 'Alex baby, its not that bad' face.
"I helped." He shook his head and shoved his hands into his back pockets as he walked towards me.
"Now, I know you've not stopped at buying fans a shit load of CD's. What else have you done."
"I brought coffee. I wanted company and they seemed lovely."
"That's not all, is it?"
"Their mothers a religious nutcase and won't let them listen to music like ours, so I invited them to the party tonight." I flinched in anticipation of Alex's reaction. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He mumbled about getting stalkers and returned to his perch in the kitchen where he began typing something onto the counter.
"Okay, babe, just make sure they don't go all fan girl." He smiled. "And no more adopting fans." I broke into a massive smile and ran over to hug him, kissing every inch of his face I could reach.
The day went by slowly, a lot of time was spent watching movies with Alex and Tay dropped by for an hour. It had worried both of us why Jack hadn't crashed yet.
"Should we have the ceremony at a hotel? There's a really nice one in town." Alex said, flicking through a bridal magazine.
"No, I want to get married in a church. " That was one thing I refused to be flexible on. There would be an element of tradition to this wedding. "What about the one on Ware street?"
"The Immaculate Conception? Yeah okay, the place is pretty." Alex's eyes lit up with realization. "The place is big."
"We have a lot of friends, Lex." I shrugged. "We would never agree on a limited guest list. We might as well just go big." Alex laughed and nodded in agreement as we carried on pulling pages out of our magazines and throwing them on the table. Dresses, tuxes, meals, photo ideas. Everything was being added to Tay's scrapbook. "Who are we inviting? We need to send out invitations once we decide on a date." Alex pulled a pad out from under the coffee table and clicked his pen on. We smiled at each other and began. We wrote down our family members first, me adding Roland to my list of Fuentes', followed by the bands and crew members. Then we moved on to our friends in the music industry and people we still hung around with from high school. "Don't forget, Jake and Ella, they'll be married by then." I smiled. I loved weddings and our friends seemed to be matching up insanely lately. Jinxx and Sammi, Jake and Ella, we were all waiting for Ashley to settle down and Andy to pop the question to Juliet. We scribbled down Hayley and Jenna and then flopped back onto the couch.
"We've forgotten someone." Alex looked at me, smiling. "We always forget someone." We both laughed at the truth and I picked my buzzing phone up from the arm of the chair.
"Hello?"
"Carrie?" The voice was choking down the phone. "Carrie, is that you?"
"Ashley?" It was one of the girls from earlier, I looked at the clock on the wall, I wasn't due to try pick them up for another two hours. "Ashley, what's wrong?" Sobs echoed through the speaker and Alex looked worryingly at me as I pressed the speaker button and put the phone down.
"She's gone. She... She's just left."
"Calm down. Who's gone?" The phone crackled as it exchanged hand and a new voice echoed.
"It's our mom. She found the CD's and she's left. She said she didn't want to live with Satan worshipping children and she was moving in with family out of state." I stared at Alex who mouthed if these were the fans and I nodded.
"Holy fucking what? Okay, I'll be there soon. I'm coming." I hung up and jumped up off the couch.
"Carr! You can't just go running. You don't know who these people are, they could be lying."
"Well then come with me, Alex." I sighed desperately. "I can;t just leave them. I promised I'd help them." He nodded as he followed me to pull on his shoes, mumbling about how he couldn't believe I had given them my phone number.