Chapter 9

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Danielle's hands shook as she reached for her phone. Guitar pick in one hand and phone in the other, she dialed the number slowly. After entering all 10 digits, she did nothing. She just sat and stared at her phone. She hadn't thought this through. What was she supposed to do? Call him up and be like "hey! I'm that girl that fainted in your arms then kicked you out of my hospital room. Wanna hang later?" Uh no. She had to be subtle, and calm, and collected, and-

"Hello?"

Danielle looked down to see that she had accidentally pressed the call button and was now on the phone wtih Nash Overstreet.

"Hello?" he repeated. "Anybody there?"

Danielle squeaked and threw her phone across the room, causing the back cover to fall off and the battery to fly out.

She sat there staring at the disassembled phone parts, breathing heavily. After a few moments she finally got up, collected the pieces, and put the phone back together. Once she turned it on, she saw that she had 2 missed calls from Nash's number.

She contemplated calling him back and actually talking to him this time, but decided that squeaking like a chipmunk and chucking her phone like gorilla with a boulder was too much excitement for one day. So instead she gathered her phone, camera, and notebook and headed out the door.

***************

Since that night at the hopsital, Nash had been acting strange (even more so than normal). He would lock himself inside his room (aka pull the curtain closed on his bunk) for hours on end, and even when he wasn't in his solitude, he rarely spoke the others, often blankly staring at nothing.

When questioned by Ryan and Jamie, he just said that he had some new song ideas that he was contemplating and was trying a new technique. They saw past his lie, but didn't push the subject.

Funny thing was though, he wasn't really lying. These past couple weeks had been rough. Trying to get over her, but not being able to. Thinking about every detail over and over again, obsessing, not knowing if he'd ever hear from his dream girl again. The thought of even having a dream girl frightened him. So he turned to the only thing he knew for sure: his music.

He kept his ideas to himself because he knew the other guys wouldn't understand what he was going through. He loved them to death, but they were blissfully happy in their love lives and knew what they wanted out of life. He, on the other hand, was hopelessly confused. But in confusion comes the greatest revelations.

He spent hours in his bunk, writing down everything that came to mind, whether they made sense or not. At the end of each day, he would gather his thoughts and piece them together like a quilt, creating the perfect song. Among the many crappy songs created from this process came a few wonderful songs that he was quite proud of and would soon introduce to the guys.

One night he was working on the lyrics to a song he was tentatively calling "Recklessly" when his phone started to ring. By now, many disappointing calls later, he knew better than to get his hopes up about it being Danielle. But this ring sounded different; not technically it didn't, but for once in many weeks, he actually felt confident that he might hear that angel voice again.

After the second ring he answered, "hello?" but there was only static.

"Hello? Anybody there?" he repeated. He was about to hang up when he heard a high pitched squeak, not unlike that of a dying seal, he thought. A short second later the line went dead. He tried calling back a few times, desperately clinging to the hope that it might be her, but to his dispair, no one answered. Nash sighed and slouched into his bunk. Then suddenly he sat up straight, hitting his head on the wooden bunk but ignoring it. He grabbed his phone, guitar, and car keys and ran out the tour bus door, leaving Ryan and Jamie without a single explanation.

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