now or never - charlie gillespie

chapter twenty three

I couldn't help but let the tears fall down my face as I watched them. Seeing Charlie stand up there and sing was hard. It was even harder having him stare directly into my soul and sing every lyric to me.

Maybe he was just trying to make up for everything. I guess I could live with having Charlie in my life. Maybe we weren't meant to be together, but we could still be friends, right?

I stood up from my chair and started cheering for them.

I couldn't believe that two months ago I was watching the four of them perform on my television screen. Here they were now, right in front of me, performing a song that was about me. Well, at least I hoped it was about me. Did I hope it was about me?

Seeing Charlie look vulnerable while he performed the song made my heart melt. I could tell her really meant every word. I had to force my eyes away from him a couple of times while they were performing.

When Owen was singing his part, my stomach did a couple of flips. He was looking at me with hurt in his eyes. I didn't quite understand it, but something didn't feel right. It made me fidget around in my seat.

"Oh my god!" Sawyer whispered at me while the band took their bows. "That was incredible, right Lake?"

"It was alright. He's still not off the hook," Ava shrugged her shoulders.

"It was something," I whispered.

"Well?" Jeremy asked us, setting his instrument down. "What did you guys think?"

I watched as Charlie looked up from the ground, his eyes watery. His eyes scanned my face, trying to read it. I gave a small smile and said "That was really good."

Charlie looked back down but I could see a small smile appear on his face.

"Do you think Kenny will like it?" Madison asked.

"I just sent him the video Sawyer took so we'll see," Owen said, shoving his phone in his back pocket.

As Ava and Sawyer chatted with Jeremy, Madison and Owen about the performance, I looked at Charlie and nodded my head in the other direction. I wanted to talk to him.

His eyes grew wide, and he spit out his tooth pick, placing his guitar on the floor, following me. "Hey.. uh.. Is everything okay?" he asked me nervously.

"Yeah, I was just wondering if you wanted to talk?" I asked and he nodded his head, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Let's take a walk," he said, guiding me out of the room.

I took a quick look back at everyone and noticed Owen was starting. I gave him a quick smile to tell him everything was alright. He looked sad, but gave me a thumbs up.

"So whats up?" he asked.

"That was really nice. The song I mean," I said nervously. I hadn't really thought this through.

"Really? I'm glad you liked it," He said looking at the ground.

"Listen, I don't want things to be weird between us. So I just want to get a few things off of my chest, alright?" I asked and he nodded. We had stopped walking now and we were facing each other. "Okay so before all of this happened, we were really good. I don't know about you but I really enjoyed your company. Well, that was before you started acting like a completely different person and everything started to get complicated.." I started to say but shook my head. I didn't want to start something. It was water under the bridge. "What i'm trying to say is, we had something really special and it really doesn't have to end badly-"