It's Complicated

13 ~ It's always been football

Chapter 13 ~ It's always been football

Dinner was fun, Asher's family is all I could ask for and Mason is such a little character. In the middle of eating he just stood right up and started singing at the top of his lungs courtesy of a dare, making everyone at the table laugh. The only one who was missing, other than Christian and Brendon which was understandable, was Asher's father. Who was apparently in another country dealing with one of his companies. Once dinner was over I went over helped Victoria clean the kitchen while the others went off and we just talked while washing dishes.

"Halston I think I can handle the rest, you go have fun with everyone else," Victoria said as she took the towel from me and practically booted me out of the kitchen. I laughed and thanked her and made my way to the living room, peeking through the hallway to see
Asher hanging mason over his shoulder while everyone was laughing around them.

I smiled to myself and started to making my way towards them when something in another room caught my eye. There was the most breathtaking grand piano in the room right next to the living room, I immediately without thinking, started to wander towards it.

Before things started to get bad with my family, I would always play piano on our grand piano inside our upstairs living room, well before my mom sold it, saying that we needed the money and that it was a waste of space. I slid into the seat and lightly pressed my fingers on the keys, loving the familiarity of the feeling. I started pressing a few notes just to test the waters,
then proceeded to play one of my favorite songs that I knew by heart. Redemption.

The notes just seeped right out of me as did all the emotions that I had bottled up inside
and caused me to be completely out of breath when I hit the last note. I sat there for a minute, stunned in disbelief that I had just done that after two years of not playing.

"I didn't know you played piano!" A voice spoke from behind me and I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned to see Avery standing at the doorway with a surprised look on her face.

"I don't do it all that often anymore, but yeah I do play." Avery walked towards me and slid into the space next to me on the bench. "You should do it more often, you are really talented," I laugh lightly at her comment and roll my eyes.

"Says the drop dead gorgeous singer from an amazing academy of the arts school," I say and Avery blushes slightly. "I wasn't all that good you know, I was a horrible singer when I was younger, like cat screeching bad."

"I doubt it, but I do want to hear this voice of yours. Do you know the song lovely?" I ask and she nods and pulls up the sheet music on her phone and props it up. I start to play and she starts to sing when the first verse starts and I am completely blown away.

I mean yeah I was expecting her to be good, but not as good as she was. I understood why there was such a hype about her singing, you could tell it came from the heart and I just knew, one day soon she was going to be big. I turned to her, my mouth fully agape and She looked back at me and turned bright red. "Girl you can SING!" I exclaimed as she turned a deeper shade of red.

"And you can play piano, kitten." We turned to see Asher standing at the door, looking at us. "I'm going to leave you two alone," Avery said as she got up from the bench and proceeded to walk out the door towards the living room. Asher came towards me and sat down where Avery was previously sitting. My eyes drop down to the floor and Asher starts to speak.

"I didn't know you played piano."

"Yeah, I don't anymore. But I did." I say, my eyes still glued to the floor.

"Why did you stop?" He asks and I look up at him. "A lot of reasons, but I wish I didn't stop. I loved it so much, still do."

"I get how you feel, I feel that way about football," he says and I make a weird face at him. "Charming, don't you mean soccer?" I say in a joking tone.

"No, I mean football. It's always been football."

"Not here it isn't." I smile and he smiles back, "How did you even get into soccer anyways?"

"Surprisingly my dad, he's really into it and he tried shoving Christian into it but obviously it didn't work so he tried with me. It's one of the only things we actually had in common and bond over, well bonded over." He lets his eyes drop down to the wood flooring, letting me know not to ask anymore questions.

"I should probably head home." I say as I get up and he gets up too. We head to the kitchen and I say farewell to Victoria, then we head towards the door.

"Don't get into too much trouble Charming," I say as we approach the door.

"Whatever kitten. "

***

Another chapter for y'all, don't have much to say but I do appreciate all the wonderful people reading this book, thank you, thank you, thank you!
~em💛