Everything changes in Paris

Laurie II

Happy Valentine's Day to all of my readers! Except to those of you who had dates because fuck you guys. As you can see, I didn't! I spent the entire day writing for you! So some of you might be happy and some of you might not be as Laurie is doing the angsty asshole routine that he has with everyone that isn't a March during this period in his life. Those of you who read the books know what I'm talking about!

As always, the characters don't belong to me but to the awesome late Louisa May Alcott.

Laurie looked down at the phone and studied the picture of him and Amy. She was caught mid laugh and he was leaning his chin on her shoulder as he grinned into the camera that he had in selfie mode. He was debating whether he should post it on Instagram but for some reason he was hesitant. He didn't know why. It was a great picture! She looked gorgeous as usual with her flowing blonde hair and perfect skin and he looked pretty great himself. But for some reason it felt like an announcement or a proclamation of something that it isn't. Really. He even felt a bit guilty when he thought of Jo! Which was so stupid, she's the one who rejected him.

He looked at his watch quickly. It was 5:30pm so he needed to pick up Amy in an hour for Fred Vaughn's party. He sipped his drink slowly. He was just pregaming a bit before the party. No offense to Grace and her party planning skills but he remembered Fred's attempts at parties in Uni and they were terrible.

Their friendship began when he came to Fred and Frank's first party to find everyone there bored out of their minds. Laurie livened up the place and Fred was so grateful that he begged him to come to every one of his parties to help him out with them.

The verdict on whether he'd be showing him and Amy together to the world waited for a bit longer as his phone blurred and started buzzing with a call from Ned Moffat, one of his old friends from King's College. They'd been in this composing club together and had bonded over preferring to write songs against their guardians wishes compared to going into law. When they'd finished school, Ned had completely left his law roots behind and went to West End to compose songs for original musicals.

Laurie had gone home to reunite with Jo and had offered his heart, his life, his everything to her. He'd offered to change himself in any way to fit into her life. When she didn't want what he offered, the future he had seen for them since he was fifteen, he'd left to lick his wounds and figure out what his future held now that it was a blank slate.

"Ned," he smiled with false enthusiasm as he spoke, "how are you? I feel like I haven't heard from you in months!"

"That's because we haven't spoken in months!" Ned laughed. "Anyways, drop whatever you are doing right now because whatever it is, it can't compare to what I'm offering!"

"Ned, what are you saying?" Laurie laughed.

"You know how I'm writing the music of the new musical version of Notting Hill at West End?"

"Yes," he struggled to keep his voice jovial and the bitterness almost leaked into his voice. He didn't want to seem mad that his friend is advancing in his career in something he was passionate about while he was in a bar in Paris at 2pm with no idea about what he wants in his life other than another drink. He's just felt this anger and bitterness at the world since the Jo-catastrophe. The only thing that's been getting him out of this rut was his personal piece of sunshine, Amy.

"Well I was supposed to be working with this other guy with a bit more experience than us, he's been a songwriter for over a decade. Anyways, the dick just left right before we were going to start! He decided to sign on to a live action musical leaving us in the dusk just as the song writing process began! We're looking for someone to take his place as my co-songwriter urgently, I immediately thought of you and I showed them some of the songs we wrote together which they obviously loved. Mate, you need to come back to London, we'll be the next Pasek and Paul!" Ned exclaimed loudly.