After Hours

For Now

February 10, 1971

Since their outing under the stars, Brian and Jane had become almost inseparable again just like the old days. Jane's display of vulnerability shattered that last remaining wall between them and putting their full trust in the other again. They called each other almost every day and spent the weekends together, they both felt themselves falling more and more but were both too scared to take the leap. He asked her to attend their band practice, to which she gladly accepted.

She hadn't visited the Imperial campus much so she had a hard time finding where their practice location was. Eventually, after stopping a few students and reading countless confusing directions posted as signs around, she thought she had made it to the right building when she heard the faint noise of guitar and drums together. She approached the room and peeked her head through the door, once she saw familiar faces, she fully opened the door and her eyes met with Brian's. They smiled widely at each other, he took off his guitar, placing it on the stand before approaching her.

"Hi, I'm so glad you made it." They hugged as they usually did when greeting each other.

"Thank you for inviting me, I'm curious to see how this sort of things works during rehearsal." As she looked over Brian's shoulder, she noticed two other women in the room. Denise, of course, and another well dressed, blonde woman she had never met before. Denise and the other woman walked to the other side of the room to sit on the couch along the wall, the rest of the boys seemed like they were getting ready to play and she didn't want to keep Brian away from that.

"Well it seems like you're getting ready to start, we'll talk more after, yeah?" She smiled at him.

"Of course." He reciprocated her smile before walking back to his guitar.

Jane then followed the other women and sat next to Denise on the couch.

"Welcome to your first band practice." Denise nudged her.

"I'm excited to see them play more, I know they have another gig at the end of the month."

"We hope to see you there, I'm sure you'll be happily invited. Oh, Jane this is Mary, by the way. Mary is Freddie's girlfriend."

They both reached over Denise to shake the other's hand, "So you're the Jane that everybody's been talking about." Mary smiled at her.

"Hopefully all good things." Jane couldn't help but be a little nervous at that statement.

"Don't worry, all good things. So you're Brian's girlfriend?"

She chuckled a little, "No, we're just friends. Have been for a while."

Denise leaned over to Mary and barely whispered, "For now." Jane nudged Denise, "Oh shut up."

"Well I apologize for being presumptuous, I guess I misunderstood from the way Freddie talked about you."

"Oh.. well what did he say about me?" Jane wrung her hands together as they sat on her lap.

"About how cute the two of you are together, I guess I didn't realize you were that close of friends."

"Yeah, we've been friends for.. gosh, almost thirteen years now. Brian had a huge crush on me when we were kids but I think it's in the past now."

Judging by the way Denise was smirked, she didn't believe anything Jane was saying.
"What? What are you making that face for?"

"Oh no reason, just the fact that you keep denying you have the hots for Brian."

She couldn't help but blush a little and as Jane was sitting there, she realized the only reason that Mary and Denise were there was because they were dating members of the band. Made her wonder what Brian's motive was for inviting her, she certainly wasn't again the idea of being the guitarist's groupie, especially for this guitarist in particular.

Thankfully the conversation moved away from the nature of Jane and Brian's 'will they, won't they' relationship status and onto Mary and Jane getting to know each other, both were very much into fashion which took up most of the conversation. It turned out that Jane had regularly shopped in the boutique that Mary worked in.

When the music stopped playing, all three women looked towards the band. They all then scattered to go to their respective band members, "How do we sound?" Brian spoke first.

"Amazing, even better than the last time I heard you."

"Good, I think this line up really meshes together well, y'know? Your birthday is on the 21st, right?"

She smiled to herself, impressed that he remembered, "Yeah, it is, why?"

"Do you have any plans for that night?"

In the past, she usually went out with her "friends" for her birthday. It wasn't necessarily a celebration for her but just an excuse to drink too much and stay out too late. She partly expected to spend her birthday alone this year, she didn't like the idea of making a big deal out of her birthday. Maybe she'd go out to dinner with her mum and then enjoy a quiet evening at home, just like she did at New Year's.

"Umm.. not that I know of."

"Well, we have a gig the night before and we usually go to the pub afterwards if you'd like to come and then at midnight we can celebrate your birthday."

"Oh you don't have to do that, I'll be there to support you but you don't have to make a big deal of my birthday."

"I insist, you deserve to be the center of attention for once." He smiled at her.

"If you insist, how could I say no?"

They discussed more of the details of the upcoming gig before their practice continued on.

The three ladies resumed their positions on the couch, "What did you and Brian talk about?"

"Oh just their upcoming gig, it's the night before my birthday." Jane hated having attention brought to her, birthdays were the worst. She thought it was so awkward to sit there and have happy birthday sung to you.

Denise raised her eyebrows, "Your birthday is coming up? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't like to make a big deal out of it."

"C'mon, Jane. Now it's most definitely going to be a big deal if Brian's in charge of planning it."

Jane looked at Denise with a furrowed brow, pretending to not understand the connotations of her statement.

Denise and Mary laughed, "Don't play dumb, you don't do a very good job at playing it. You know exactly why."

"I don't understand why everyone thinks that Brian and I are madly in love with each other and we don't want to admit it."

Denise sighed, "Give it time, you'll figure it out soon enough."