Last Hope {a paramore fanfiction}

Chapter Thirty Four

15th March

My heart was beating too fast for it to be healthy. My nerves were taking an effect on the way I walked. I was in probably my most comfortable pair of shoes, my slips on vans, yet I felt as if they were so tight that I couldn't walk in a straight line. "Hey!" someone said as I walked straight into him. I mumbled a sorry and continued to walk towards the coffee shop were I was supposed to meet Michael. I took my phone out and checked the message one more time, looking at the address he sent to me to make sure that I was going to the correct place. I knew I had done; I'd already walked around the block 5 times. I came far too early and far too nervous. He wasn't in there. Or maybe he was? Maybe I couldn't even recognize the person that was once my best friend. Had it gotten to that point? Truth be told I never did enter the café, just peered through the window. I bit my lip and told myself to stop being a baby.

I pushed the door open and walked into the busy and noisy café. It wasn't that kind of hub of energy that got you going and excited; everyone was in their own conversations and everyone didn't care about anyone else. You couldn't help but to hear every single strangers conversation even though you really didn't want to. I looked around at the actual faces. There were businessmen and women, girls who were half my age but looked like models, young mothers who were deaf to their babies screams and then some miscellaneous characters by themselves on the stools at the bar bits. My heart was thumping hard in my chest. I couldn't breath properly in this situation, I couldn't imagine what I would be like when I actually saw Michael.

"Miss!" I snapped up my head to see an angry looking barista. "Are you going to order anything or not?" "Urm..urm, not right now, no thank you." I walked away from the till and to the quieter edges of the café where there was less people. I pulled myself up on to a stool and spread my hands out on the surface of the bar to try and stop the shaking. I took slow and deep breaths and started to hum gently to myself. "Bethan?" said a voice I remembered instantly.

I turned to the person next to me, the person being Michael. He hadn't changed a bit. He wore his brown hair the same, in a curly, over grown mop with shaved back and sides. He still had his tanned skin, and a small spray of brown freckles on his nose that you could only notice if looking close at him and the cutest dimples. Before I could even think of the awkward consequences, I flung my arms around him. The stool wobbled slightly and he laughed before gently putting his arms around me in return. It felt good to be back in a place where I felt safe. I remembered the way that he talked his dad into letting me sleep on the sofa in their apartment above the diner on my very first night in LA. Then in the middle of the night he would wake me up and make me swap with him, letting me sleep in his bed. But of course, this flood of happy memories brought along all the dark and sad ones, the ones where I ruined the band and trampled over our friendship.

When I began to feel my eyes moisten, I pulled away. "I heard the humming and I just knew it must have been you. I remember you used to lay your hands flat on any sound boxes backstage as well to calm down before a show." "I would get so nervous." "You had no need to be, you always ended up killing it." I blushed and smiled. "Thanks Mike." He took a deep breath and clasped his hands, resting them in his lap. "You look great," I said. And he truly did. "I like your shirt," I smiled and then remembered that I had bought him that Foo Fighters top when we went to a secret show of theirs when they came to LA in the first few months I was there. "Oh shit, I remember now," Michael said and laughed. "That was a great night." "Yeah, I left covered in a layer of some strangers sweat." "C'mon that was the same as the communal showers at Warped and we would be dying for those." "You guys were, I just about used up 5 cans of deodorant a day before we got to a ground with a proper shower." He chuckled and I smiled. But we weren't back to normal just like that. "You look great too, much better." I think I could only improve on the way that I was when I last saw Michael and walked out on the band.

My breathing was jumping around and I couldn't focus all of a sudden. I wasn't ready to tell Michael all that I wanted to in this unfamiliar, unsafe place. "Bethan? Are you okay?" "I...I...no," I said simply before a brilliant idea came to mind. "I cant do this here, but I know a place we can." "I knew this wouldn't be a good place, I hadn't ever been, it was just the closest to us." "Don't worry, you've been to this place before."