boy-at-a-bus-stop

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

does anyone ever read the shit i write up here? it would make sense to read it, at least sometimes. So this is the 8th chapter, and i guess it’s a bit shorter than most of the others but i love it, i really do. There are a few songs mentioned in this chapter and it would make sense to listen them… And i used different quotation signs this time, i hope tumblr likes these better… and i hope there aren’t too many typos in here… anyway, i hope you enjoy this chapter as much as i do, and thanks for reading

Eight

I didn’t call Josh that day. I didn’t call him even though I had said that I would. I felt like Josh just needed some time on his own, some time to sober up again and some time to think about everything that had happened. To really think about it, not just wish it hadn’t happened. I felt like this was the perfect time for him to do so. He knew that I would talk to Bob and that I did my best to help him. And that John did the same. He still needed the time. And I probably needed some time, too.

The things John had said were still stuck in my head and I had come to the conclusion that he was right and that I shouldn’t worry that much. Things shouldn’t be that hard, hard? Especially when it comes to these hinds of things. They should just work out, at least in the beginning they should. Because if they don’t and if things feel wrong in one way or another, there is no way for this to work out. And I don’t want to say that there was anything that felt wrong between Josh and I, no, it felt great to be honest, yes I was confused as fuck but it still felt great, I just felt that I wasn’t enjoying this feeling of having someone I could connect with enough. I felt like my worry was destroying this great feeling - and that it might even be destroying our friendship and whatever it might or might  not have been turning into. 

So I didn’t call Josh that day, I did other things instead, things like cleaning the apartment, reading, listening to music, the kind of stuff you do when you don’t have to work and you don’t really have plans. I talked to my dad on the phone, he and Michelle had arrived  in Illinois safely but they were tired so we didn’t talk for long. Then Susan called me a bit later and we talked for about 20 minutes  but.. she really started getting on my nerves after a bit so I came up with some kind of excuse so that I could hang up and wouldn’t have to talk to her any longer. I personally really feel like doing something like this is actually beneficial for friendships, even if it may not seem all too nice at first. You just need to look at it this way: If I hadn’t done this and just would have kept talking to Susan I would definitely have become more and more annoyed by the minute. And if i’m annoyed I get really pissy so Susan would definitely have noticed that there was something wrong. In the end we would probably have fought. So it is better if I end the call before we get that far, right?

I didn’t do much after that and I went to bed quite early and for the first time in what felt like forever I actually slept well. I don’t think that these every-day things are interesting to you so I won’t go into detail here.  I just know that I normally don’t really care about what a person exactly does before they go to bed and whether they braid their hair before they go to bed. I mean everyone knows how these things work, right? So I (for once) won’t spam you with unnecessary information. Let’s just say I went to bed early, okay? And I woke up late, around 12 pm actually, this time feeling fresh and ready to start another day. Yeah, I just said i’d start another day at 12 pm. Better latter than never, right? I stayed in bed for a bit after I woke up, I just didn’t feel like leaving the magical place that is my bed right away. 

I finally did crawl out of my bed nevertheless, being hungry and thirsty isn’t that nice after all so I came to the conclusion that it would be better to leave my warm and comfy bed to get something to eat and drink. I had just sat down at the table with a glass of milk and a bowl of cereal when my cellphone rang. I took a look at it, wondering who was calling me and saw that it was Sophia (my flatmate I told you about earlier). I answered the phone and before I could even say ‘hello’ Sophia started talking in a hysteric way (and she seemingly forgot that I didn’t speak a single word of Portuguese because the first few sentences she said were in Portuguese) and ended her (useless) speech with a equally hysteric, »Where the fuck are you?« All of sudden it all made perfect sense to me: I had totally forgotten that Sophia returned from her vacation in Brazil that day and that I was supposed to pick her up at the airport. »Fuck«, was all I said before hanging up and searching my keys. When I had found them I headed straight to the door, put on my shoes and left, still in my Pjs. Yeah, better don’t ask, I drove to the airport in my Pjs, my hair was a mess, I hadn’t even brushed my teeth but in this moment I didn’t care. I didn’t want to let Sophia wait any longer than she already had, I didn’t want to let her down. 

I drove to the airport as fast as I could (which wasn’t that fast even though it wasn’t rush hour) and called Sophia when I had reached it. It took us a few more minutes to find each other in the huge airport. When I finally spotted her in the crowd of people leaving the airport I ran towards her, I really didn’t care about my looks at all in that moment. »Sophia, i’m so sorry, I really forgot«, I then said as I hugged her.  »It’s fine, don’t worry, i’m sorry if I made you feel guilty or something earlier on, I was just really stressed and kind of pissed when you were nowhere to be seen, I just really want to go home…«, Sophia mumbled and then pulled away, looking at me with her dark brown eyes. She really looked exhausted. »By the way, why are you still wearing pajamas?!«, Sophia then asked, a tired smile forming on her face. »Oh, uh«, I looked down and smiled myself, »I had just gotten up when you called me and I left right after hanging up« Sophia’s smile grew a bit bigger, »Oh my god this is such a typical thing to do for you. I’m so glad to be back, I missed you« »I missed  you too. Come on, let’s go«

We got into the car and I drove home, Sophia sitting on the passenger seat with her eyes closed. We didn’t talk on our way home and because I hadn’t turned on the car radio the only noises one could hear were the noises the engine made. We soon reached the apartment building and I helped Sophia carrying her luggage up the stairs to our apartment. As we approached the front door I saw that there was something laying on the doormat. I bent down to have a closer look at it when I was standing right in front of the door and came to see that it was a small cardboard box and a piece of paper laying underneath it. I furrowed my eyebrows, wondering who could have put this on my doormat. »Oh, Ally, is there something you should tell me?«, Sophia said as the came closer and saw me standing in front of the door with the cardboard boy and the piece of paper in hand, a small smile on her face, »You never told me about your secret admirer« I rolled my eyes at her comments. »Don’t you want to just go back to Brazil?«, I asked in a sarcastic tone while I locked open the door and walked in, Sophia’s bag in one hand and the cardboard box plus piece of paper in the other one. Sophia ignored my questions and went straight into her bedroom where she just laid down on her bed. 

I saw that my glass of milk and my bowl of cereal were still standing on the living room table, of course they were, I mean I hadn’t even touched them before leaving. Since the milk and cereal were uneatable by now and I was sure that Sophia was just as hungry as me I decided to order pizza. While waiting for the pizza I took a closer look at the things that had been laying on the doormat. First I unfolded the piece of paper and started to decipher the quite small handwriting. To my great surprise the piece of paper turned out to be a short note from Josh, and it said the following:

Hi A…

I’m sorry if this is weird to you and I completely understand it if you find this too awkward but I hope you don’t. I just wanted to thank you for helping me… and apologize for making things complicated. So I made this for you, I hope you like it. These are some of my favorite songs…

btw Bob apologized to me. I’m in the band again, thank you.

And I hope you have a cassette player.

J…

I smiled to myself and laid the note on the table, my hands shaking and my heart pounding as I opened the cardboard box. Inside was an audio cassette, clearly a mixtape Josh had made for me. There was a piece of paper with the titles of the songs on the tape in the plastic box the cassette was in. According to this note the cassette had the following songs on it.

I’m waiting for the day - the Beach Boys

. All Along the Watchtower - Bob Dylan

Purple Haze - Jimi Hendrix Experience

the Twilight Zone - Rush

Us and Them - Pink Floyd

To the End - Blur

No Surprises - Radiohead

Ocean Size - Jane’s Addiction

Wishlist - Pearl Jam

Fell on Black Days - Soundgarden

Heroes - David Bowie

Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

I knew almost all the songs on the mixtape already but I still decided to take the time and listen to it start to finish so I put the tape and the note aside and waited for the pizza to be delivered. While waiting I read Josh’s note again and again. I couldn’t believe that Josh had made a mixtape for me, no one had ever done something as nice and sweet for me. I really appreciated this, and I couldn’t stop smiling to myself while Sophia and I were eating in the living room. 

»So, who’s that secret admirer of yours?«, my flatmate asked after a bit. »What? Who?« »Well, someone must have put this cardboard box in front of our door, and I suppose that it wasn’t Santa Claus«, Sophia said, rolling her eyes at me. »Don’t call him that«, I giggled, »that sounds as if he was a stalker or something!« Sophia  smiled, »But he is your secret admirer, right?« I felt myself blushing and just silently shook my head. »Oh, Ally«, my flatmate laughed, »Come on, tell me more« »There’s nothing to tell you, really« »Yeah, for sure…«, Sophia said in a sarcastic tone, then she reached for my the cardboard box that was still standing on the table but I was faster than her, grabbed it myself and put it out of her reach. »What’s in there?«, she asked. »Nothing of your interest«, I mumbled. »Come ooooon, who’s the mysterious guy and what did he get you?«, Sophia whined, desperate to learn more about my ‘secret admirer’. »Could you please calm down?!«, I muttered. »Only if you tell me more about your lover«, she whispered and winked at me. I sighed but giggled, »Okay… First of all, he’s NOT my lover, and he’s not my secret admirer« Sophia raised her eyebrows at me but didn’t say anything. »He’s a friend - a very good friend, I admit that, but he’s not my lover, he’s not my secret admirer and he’s not my boyfriend«, I continued and then silently added , »At least not yet«

»What’s his name?«, Sophia asked, it seemed like she really hadn’t heard what I had said to myself. »Josh«, I responded and as I said his name I felt a smile forming on my face, »Joshua Adam Klinghoffer…« »Wow, what a name «, Sophia laughed, »Tell me more about him « So I told her more about Josh and I won’t repeat all I told her since you already know all these things. After I had finished talking Sophia said, »Oh god Ally, you should see yourself, you look so happy when you’re talking about him« I felt myself blush and looked down at the table. »So, what did he get you? What’s in that cardboard box?«, she asked after a few minutes of silence. »Um, he didn’t really get me anything, but… He made me a mixtape with some of his favorite songs on it«, I responded, looking at the box. »OH. MY. GOD. That’s so cute!«, Sophia shrieked. I laughed at her reaction, she was so wonderfully emotional. Just in that moment I felt how much I had missed her. I mean yeah, she may be annoying from time to time, she may be a bit over the top with her emotions and her love for drama, but at the end of the day she is one of my best friends. And even though I didn’t mind spending a few days or even weeks without her and even though it took me a while to see it, I had really missed her while she hadn’t been there. The apartment had been awfully empty and lifeless without her. Sophia yawned, »I should probably go to bed now, though, I’m so freaking tired« I giggled, then sighed and looked at her. »I’m so glad you’re back« She smiled at me and responded, »Me too, it feels so good to be back, to be home«

Sophia hugged me before disappearing into her room, a small smile on her face. I threw away the empty pizza boxes before entering my own room and searching my walkman, I couldn’t wait for listening to Josh’s mixtape even though I already knew most of the songs (as I already said before). I just felt that this was special, this was something Josh had made for me, these were some of his favorite songs, and he had made this mixtape just for me. And even if this might not seem like a big deal to you, it definitely was a big deal to me, this was special to me. It took me some time to find my it, compact cassettes weren’t exactly the audio format I used the most so I didn’t use my walkman that often and I was so glad I hadn’t thrown it away by that time. When I finally found it I put the tape in it, put my headphones on and pressed play. 

I listened to the mixtape start to finish for a few times, enjoying it with every fiber of my heart and soul. Josh had again proved his great taste in music to me. And this tape was definitely one of the best things anyone had ever given to me. I loved every song on there and I enjoyed every second of listening to these songs Josh had chosen to give to me on this mixtape, the songs he wanted me to hear and maybe the songs he wanted to remind me of him. I was playing the tape over and over again, not even noticing that there was almost three minutes of silence ‘recorded’ on the tape after the last song. I just listened to the songs on it over and over again for literally days.

So it’s no wonder that it took me so long to notice. And I probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all myself. It was Sophia who brought it up. We were sitting on the couch in the living room two days later (and I had already thanked Josh for the tape by then but he didn’t react to my text messages which I found kinda awkward) and listened to the mixtape through her boombox and when Stairway to Heaven had finished I got up from the couch to rewind the cassette when Sophia said, »Wait a second, I feel like this wasn’t the last recording on the tape « I looked at her confused, »What do you mean? This was the twelfth  song, the last one on the list. I listened to this a thousand times, I would have noticed if there was one more track on there« Sophia looked me deep in the eyes, »Come on, it won’t hurt you, will it? I really feel like there’s a hidden track on there or something« »Yeah, for sure, a hidden track on a mixtape «, I laughed. I sat back down though, and waited for the minute long silence to prove Sophia wrong. Just when I took a breath to say something along the lines of, »See, no hidden track, there’s no 13th track on there« I heard something. 

It sounded like someone was cleaning his throat, I looked at Sophia and she was looking back at me with big eyes. It seemed like she hadn’t really expected this either. I quickly pressed the 'pause’-button on the boombox, as much as I appreciated Sophia’s friendship, I felt like this, whatever it would turn out to be, wasn’t supposed to be heard by anyone but me. I just as quickly put the cassette into my walkman, put on the headphones and pressed 'play’ while walking into my bedroom and closing the door behind me. I felt my heart race as I sat down on my bed.

»Um, hi, it’s me«, I heard Josh’s voice say, then there was a nervous giggling and some more silence, »What shall I say? Um, I really, really hoped  you’d find this… which might seem kinda weird, I mean after all I hid it, didn’t I? Hiding something and hoping for a certain person to find it is a bit paradoxical, i’m aware of that«, again there was a bit of nervous laughter to be heard on the recording, »but well, that’s just who I am. And… um… I just wanted to ask if… if you’d like to spend some more time with me. Like, actually spend time with me, not just sitting around in the studio while i’m there… I mean, i’m not asking for a date… I kind of am, though. Um, okay, so… please just let me know if you heard this and if you want to spend more time with me or… okay, I guess i’ll just stop wasting your time now, I don’t really know what to say anymore… okay, bye« 

With that the recording ended. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Had this really happened? Had Josh just asked me for a date? Had he just asked me for a date through a hidden track on a mixtape he had made for me? I really couldn’t believe it. I felt incredibly happy, shocked and overwhelmed at the same time. This clearly explained why he hadn’t responded to my text messages, he must have thought that I was just ignoring his message on the tape, that I didn’t want to go out with him or just spend more time with him and that he had embarrassed himself. But he really hadn’t. This was the best thing that could have happened, the cutest idea ever. I couldn’t believe it. I listened to the short hidden recording of his voice over and over again, trying to make myself understand that this was real.

I resisted the urge to immediately text Josh and forced myself to lay down on my bed for a bit and try to calm down. I didn’t really succeed. I was way too excited about this, I was way too excited about what had just happened. So I went back into the living room where Sophia was still sitting on the couch, seemingly waiting for me to come back and report to her on what I had just heard on the tape. I couldn’t really find the words to tell her what had happened, though, so I just stood in front of her, trying to figure out what had happened and how I was felling. And trust me, this wasn’t an easy thing to do at all. 

»Josh… he…«, I stuttered, »I… he… I need to talk to him right now, like, in person« Sophia laughed, »Oh Ally, seems like whatever he did, he did the right thing« I couldn’t stop smiling, »Yeah I guess he did« Just a few minutes later I was on my way to Josh’s place, driving down the roads of LA as the nautical dusk made the sky turn bright red and the many lights that illuminated the city at night were switched on one after the other. I was still listening to the mixtape, my car had a cassette player. And as I drove down the roads I remembered John’s words and thought, maybe Josh’s soul and mine really were meant to be together. Maybe.

#chapter 8 #josh klinghoffer fanfiction #fanfic #rhcp

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

hello, i’m sorry it took me literally ages to update this story but this chapter was kind of hard to write but now here it is, and i hope you like it. it seems like tumblr still dislikes my quotation marks, they were again turned into some weird sings on here and i agan corrected all of them but well, we’ll see if it worked out this time (and i’m sorry if it doesn’t). Anyway, i hope you like this chapter, and i’d love to get a bit more feedback on this because i have literally no idea if there’s anything you like or dislike about my writing... so yeah, i hope you like this and thanks for reading!!!

Seven

Needless to say Josh left me utterly confused that night. I just couldn't make sense out of what had just happened, I tried to find a logical explanation, and of course the first thing that came to mind was that he was so drunk that he couldn't think straight and didn't mean what he said. There was no way he meant it. Or maybe I misinterpreted what he had said. I mean, you can love someone as a friend, right? I sometimes tell my friends that I love them. As friends. There's nothing wrong with that, right? And after all I could just have misheard what he had said. 

I couldn't really sleep that night. I went to bed right after Josh had hung up but I just couldn't sleep. I think didn't sleep a single minute that night. Instead I wasted my time overthinking, trying to figure out what had happened, trying to figure out my feelings towards Josh and worrying about his well-being. After laying in bed for about two hours it started to get light outside and I decided to get out of bed even though I was still tired as fuck and I felt like a truck had run me over.

The only good thing about me being up this early was the beautiful lighting in the living room. Or better said the kitchen, the light came in through the kitchen window but it also made the living room look beautiful and fresh. 'Fresh' is the keyword. I went to the bathroom and did what normal people do there in the morning, I don't think I need to go into detail here, and then tried to find something to do to keep myself busy for a bit. It was around 7 am when I really had nothing left to do, so it was definitely too early to drive over to Josh's place. I again tried to read, but my brain just didn't want to understand the sense behind these black letters in front of me. I read the same few sentences over and over again but they just didn't make sense to me, not in the slightest. My brain just couldn't or wouldn't let go of the worry and confusion that was still in there. And I didn't know how to ignore it or get rid of it. So I stopped reading and took a look at the clock again. It was 7:30. Okay, if I left now i'd be at Josh's place around 8. Still quite early but I just couldn't wait another hour or thirty minutes or whatever, even the thought of waiting another 10 minutes seemed unbearable to me. 

So I left shortly after 7:30 am and reached the apartment building where Josh lived around 8:15. I took a few deep breaths before ringing the doorbell, not really knowing what to expect. I rang the doorbell once and waited a few minutes. Nothing happened. I rang the doorbell again. Still, no answer. That didn't really help my worry to be honest. I felt my fingers shake slightly as I rang the doorbell for a few solid seconds the next time, and this time I heard some weird sounds inside the apartment just a little bit later. “I'm on my way...”, I heard a raspy voice say, then something fell onto the floor and a swell of swearwords followed. I supposed that Josh was looking for his keys. A few minutes later he locked open the door and opened it. His hair was a curly mess, he looked tired as fuck, his t-shirt was stained and the only thing he was wearing apart from that stained t-shirt was a pair of boxer shorts. The smell of alcohol was evident and he didn't appear to be all too sober. How would he be sober when he only just stopped drinking about four hours ago? “Hey...”, was all he said when he saw me, seemingly trying to escape my gaze. 

“Hi. Won't you let me in?”, I responded a few seconds later of speechlessness. Even though I wasn't surprised to see Josh like this I was still kind of taken aback. “Oh, yeah of course, sorry”, he mumbled as he stepped aside to let me pass. I walked into the living room, Josh following close behind me. There were quite a few empty bottles of beer and whatever else and one more than half-empty bottle of wine standing on the living room floor. I sighed as I saw this. “Did you drink all of that?”, I asked an unnecessary question and turned around to face Josh who was standing behind me. Josh just nodded in response. I sighed once more. Sighing had become kind of a hobby of mine it seems.”Okay...  I suggest you go take a shower and change into some clean clothes and then we'll go have breakfast, alright?” “Yeah...”, he mumbled as he started walking towards the bathroom. “And I won't clean up the mess if you have to throw up...”, I mumbled to myself.

I started tidying up the living room, I got rid of the empty bottles, put the cushions that were laying on the floor back on the sofa and so on and so forth. You know what I mean, don't you? While I was doing this I started talking to myself in a low voice without noticing it. I sometimes do this when there are a lot of confusing thoughts in my head or if I have to make an important decision. I don't know why but somehow actually saying these things out loud, forming the words in my mouth and sending them out into the world instead of just thinking them made deciding easier, even if it was just myself I was talking to. So I more or less silently discussed with myself whether I should ask Josh about what he had said just before hanging up the phone the night before. I think you can guess what happened. 

I was in the living room tidying up and discussing this topic with myself as Josh came back. And I didn't notice him coming back. So the result was that he was standing in a relatively far away corner of the room (did I mention that his apartment was tiny? Yeah?) and heard what I was mumbling to myself. “What are you talking about?”, Josh then all of a sudden said what (obviously) made me jump because I hadn't noticed his presence until then. “Oh, uh, nothing, I was just thinking.. about a minor problem.. with my dad.. but it's no big deal, I just..”, I stuttered, trying to come up with a believable story. “Oh... okay... I'm sorry for making you jump by the way, I didn't mean to...” “It's fine, it's fine”, I said, glad that I had gotten away with my crappy explanation that wasn't even a real explanation in the first place. But something in the way he looked at me told me that he didn't buy this 100%. Josh had heard something in my soliloquy, he knew that there was something up. I knew that he knew that I had been talking about something different and I guessed that he guessed that it had to do with him but he wasn't sure and I wasn't sure either and since he didn't say anything I decided to not say anything either and just do the thing I always did and still do sometimes which is applying the totally immature and silly strategy of ignoring my problems and not talking about them to the person who could probably help solving them and just hoping for the problems to magically disappear without me ever having to deal with them. Sometimes it actually works, though. And sometimes this just makes things get more awkward by the minute, especially if the problem isn't a 'real', normal problem but an awkward, social one. Just like in this case...

So we found ourselves sitting at a table in a small diner down the street from where Josh lived and having breakfast just a few minutes later. Eating always helps when you drank too much, at least it does for me, and it seemed like it did help Josh quite a lot. I think he still had enough alcohol in his system by that time. He was moving slowly, probably trying to prevent the dizziness from intensifying and it made me smile a bit. As much as I liked him and as much as I hated seeing him trying to drink his worries away, it still somehow amused me a bit to see him deal with the affects of drinking a bit too much alcohol. And maybe it'd teach him something. “Are you okay?”, I asked looking at Josh as he slowly ate his scrabbled eggs. He just as slowly looked up from his plate, forcing a small smile on his face. “Yeah, i'm okay”, he mumbled,”Just.. a bit dizzy...” I couldn't help but smile to myself. Knowing that he would be perfectly fine in a few hours and there was nothing to worry about when it came to his health, this was a pretty amusing situation. We stayed silent for a few minutes, just eating our food. “So, what happened between Bob and you?”, I then asked after a few minutes. “Oh well...”, Josh sighed and looked up at me, scratching his neck uncomfortably,”Do you want to hear the long version or the short one?” “Whichever you prefer”, I responded. “Okay so... Bob and I had a fight about... whatever... and he threw a glass bottle at me and it was pure luck that he didn't hit me with it.. and well, it broke when it hit the wall right nex to my face. So yeah, in that moment I decided that was enough and I quit the band and stormed outside... But after a few minutes I regretted quitting and went back to talk to Bob but he had left already. So I checked if you were around but you weren't so I left you the note... And yeah, you know what happened afterwards...”, Josh explained. 

“Yeah, I know what happened afterwards... So what do you want to do now?”, I asked and took a sip of coffee. “I don't know... I mean I want to rejoin the band somehow... But I know I can't do this anymore if Bob doesn't change and I want him to apologize, he can't do something like this and think he'll just get away with it”, Josh sighed and went back to eating. I didn't really know what to do either. I could definitely understand that Josh didn't want to do this anymore if things didn't change but at the same time I felt like it would be a huge mistake if Josh just gave up and Bob made the the album with a different person. I felt like Josh would miss a huge chance and that he would regret it later. On the other hand I doubted that Bob would apologize or do anything like that. It wouldn't fit him. If there was one thing Bob was bad at it was admitting that he was wrong or that he had made a mistake. And I still wasn't sure if Bob really wanted to make this album with Josh or if he just wanted to make an album and Josh was just the first person he came across so he asked him but he didn't really care if it was Josh or someone else. I hoped he wanted to really do it with Josh in the first place but I really wasn't sure. If Bob cared there was a small chance that he would apologize, if he didn't care... well then the recording with Josh was probably over. I really didn't know how Bob saw Josh in this project and in general. But as I said before, Bob isn't a bad person. Yeah, it might seem like he is, but he really isn't, not in normal life. So I couldn't believe that Bob would just replace Josh and make someone else play on the album. And maybe he'd want to give it another try. I definitely had to talk to him and try to convince him to apologize to Josh. “

“Maybe I should ask if YOU are okay?”, Josh interrupted my train of thought and brought me back to reality. ”Sorry, I just thought about... this whole situation and what to do about it”, I said and took a sip from my coffee just to see that it was cold by now. “So did you come to a conclusion?”, he asked and I shook my head.”Not really... I got an idea, though, I just don't know if it'll work”, I then said in a low voice. Josh raised his eyebrows at my comment. “So what so you want to do?” “You'll see soon enough”, I said and grinned at him. “You won't tell me?” “Not yet...”, I responded. To be completely honest, i didn’t really have a plan in the first place. All i wanted to do was talk to Bob and persuade him to apologize. Josh had finished eating by then and we sat there for a few more minutes, just looking out of the window at the people passing by. Then I paid for both of our meals, we left and headed back to Josh's apartment. “You really won't tell me?!”, Josh then asked again as we were standing in front of his door. “No I won't. There isn't really anything to to say to be honest. I'm really not sure if it'll work but i'll do my best”, I said and then added just a few seconds later, “But there's one thing.. Could you give me John's phone number” Josh looked at me, obviously confused. “Why do you need John's phone number?” ”I think he could help me solve this... problem”, I mumbled. Josh still looked confused but he didn't ask any more questions because he probably knew that I wouldn't answer them anyway. I gave him my phone, he saved John's phone number on it and gave it back to me. 

“Don't text him, he never responds to text messages, just call him and pray for him to answer the phone”, Josh then said and turned away from me to lock open his front door and enter his apartment. “Uhm okay... In this case i'll try to contact him and... Can I leave you alone without having to be afraid that you drink some more?”, I mumbled, fearing an unfriendly reaction from Josh's side. “Yeah of course, i'll look after myself, I promise”, he chuckled and smiled for the very first time that day. “Okay, don't forget to drink a lot of water and eat enough, I swear that'll help”, I said, smiling back at him”Thank you, Ally”, Josh then said in a low voice, looking down at the floor. “Oh, there's nothing to thank for, Josh, really”, I mumbled, not really knowing what to say. “You're... you're an amazing friend, you know...”, he said after a minute of silence and to my great surprise I felt that he took my hand in his one and caressed the back of my hand with his thumb for a few seconds. I felt myself blush and couldn't help but stare at his hand holding mine. He let go too soon for my taste and opened the front door, then he faced me again and said, “You're a really, really, really good friend, Ally. Call me when you talked to Bob” Then he closed the door and, again, left me alone with my thoughts and my heart wanting to jump out of my chest, again. This seemed to become a habit of my heart and leaving me confused seemed to become Josh's habit. Why couldn't he just send clear signals for once? Why couldn't he just tell me how he felt about me? Maybe he didn't know how he felt about me, maybe he had the exact same problem as I had. But at the same time I felt like my heart had already decided, like I knew how I was feeling about him deep down. I was just too blind to see it - or too afraid to admit it.

I sighed as I walked down the stairs and left the apartment building. As I was sitting in my car I dialed John's number - of course John didn't answer the phone so I drove home and then called him again. This time he answered the phone. “Hello?”, was the very first thing he said. “Hey, it's me, Ally” “Oh hey Ally, what's the matter?”, John didn't seem all too surprised that I had his phone number. John has this kind of thing when he somehow just knows things, he somehow knows what's going to happen, not that I want to say that he can predict the future but... he kinda can. He's just got this special kind of intuition and it's really hard to surprise him. “I think I need your help...”, I started and told him what had happened. “So what do you think I should do? Do you want me to talk to Bob?”, John asked after I had finished. “Yeah, I thought maybe you could persuade him to apologize to Josh and give it another try”, I said. “Okay... but it think it'd be better if we both talked to him, you know?”, John responded. “Yeah, that's alright” “Okay, i'll call Bob right now and ask him if we can talk” “Perfect, see you soon, bye”, I responded. “Bye”, John said and hung up.

About half an hour later the doorbell rang and as I answered the door I saw John stand outside alone. “Hey, Bob will come over soon, I hope you're okay with this but if you're not..”, he started as soon as I had opened the door. “Yeah that's perfectly fine”, I interrupted him and invited him in. “How are you doing?”, I asked as I walked into the living room, John following me. “I'm alright, I have a lot to do, you know, but I'm alright”, he said and then asked how I was doing. I started talking about my dad and Susan and so on. I had just brought up the courage to tell John about my confusion and my feelings towards Josh when the doorbell was rung again. I answered the door and let in a tired-looking Bob who gave me a small smile when he saw me. Soon we all sat around the dinner table, John and me on one side, Bob on the other side. Bob really looked as if he hadn't slept a single second last night. Maybe he really hadn't. Maybe he had been worrying all night, just like me, about Josh, about what had happened, about the future. Maybe Bob actually cared about Josh. Maybe he cared more about him than I had initially thought. And maybe he cared more about him than he had shown all of us, more than he wanted to admit. 

“So uhm... you talked to Josh? How is he doing? He was pretty... angry and... hurt I think when he stormed out the studio yesterday”, Bob asked. I thought about my answer quite a bit before I responded, “He's okay, he just needed some.. support I suppose. But he's okay” “Then why isn't he here? Is he still pissed? Doesn't he want to just continue working?”, Bob then said. I looked at John, searching for his support and reassurance. “If you really want to know what happened: He drank too much last night and he really hasn't got the energy to discuss this bullshit with you right now so he asked me if I could help him”, I mumbled and felt myself getting angry at Bob. “What is there to be discussed anyway? I threw a bottle at  him, so what? It didn't hit him anyway. He's just some crybaby, said he wanted to quit the band.. I know he wouldn't do that anyway, he wouldn't have the courage to do that”, Bob exclaimed. I have to say that in this very moment I wasn't sure if Bob was a good person because he was damn good at acting like an asshole. “He already quit. And yeah, he'd like to come back and finish this album with you but... he won't unless you apologize, you know?”, John said in a calm voice. I was really impressed by his calm, one could feel that he knew Bob better than I did and better than Josh did. “You know what the problem is? You expect Josh to act like an adult but he don't take him seriously. You expect him to do act like an adult but you don't treat him like an adult. Instead you act like a child yourself. You can't even apologize”, I said, “Do you want to finish this album with someone else?” Bob didn't respond. He just stared at John and me, not saying a single word for a few minutes. “You know what? You're right. You're absolutely right. I was acting like a dick. And i'm really not good at apologizing because... I never do it, but well, I'll try”, He then mumbled, staring at the table.

I hadn't expected this. I was prepared for an hour-long discussion, but that didn't seem to be necessary. I looked over at John and he looked about as surprised as I was. “Are you serious?”, I asked after a few seconds. “Of course I'm serious, I'll talk to Josh tomorrow”, Bob answered. “Okaaaay... uhm... in this case...”, I stuttered. “In this case i'll go home and practice apologizing in front of the mirror, right?”, Bob said, gave John and me a small smile and got up. I walked him to the door. “You know, I know i'm not perfect, i'm far from perfect. And I'm very well aware of that. It's just... it's hard to admit that to others. It's hard to admit that I make mistakes...”, Bob mumbled on the way to the front door. “Yeah, I guess I know what you mean... Sometimes it's really hard. Sometimes it's even hard to admit your feelings to yourself...”, I muttered. Bob turned around to face me, we had reached the door by now. “You know... it's enough if I risk losing Josh as a friend. Please... don't risk it yourself...”, Bob said and hugged me. I hugged him back, a bit surprised, and said in a low voice, “Yeah, you're right... I just don't know what to do and... I don't know...” ”I know you don't know, but just consider talking to Josh. It'll be worth it. Goodbye”, Bob said, let go of me and smiled at me before he turned around and walked away. I closed the door, leaned against it and closed my eyes for a bit, this day was fucking confusing and kind of exhausting. Or maybe it wasn't really confusing, but I felt like I was getting closer to making an important decision and I was scared of that. I'm always scared of making important decisions, but this one was so personal. This was different. 

I had totally forgotten that John was still in my apartment so it made me jump quite a bit when all of a sudden his voice made the silence that had filled my apartment disappear. “Are you sure you're okay?”, he asked with a soft voice. Have you ever heard his voice? It's beautiful. If you haven't heard it you have to go and search for some interview or something on the internet RIGHT NOW. But well, I suppose you already heard it a few times, right? I mean, who hasn't. Then maybe I should ask if you paid enough attention to it? Okay, I'll stop talking about his voice, I just wanted to make my point clear. John's voice just gives me a sense of comfort, I don't know why but it just does and it did from the first time I heard it. Maybe you can relate to this, I don't know. But i've found that i'm not the only one who gets that kind of feeling when hearing John's voice. It's weird. He seems to have this special connection to some people even if they've never seen him in real life. Maybe it's really our souls and spirits connecting in another dimension, as he would put it. We'll probably never know. But anyways, that's not what I wanted to say in the first place.

My eyes shot open when I heard his voice and I saw him standing in front of me, a worried look on his face. “Yeah, i'm just... stressed and tired and maybe a bit... overwhelmed. But it's okay, nothing to worry about”, I answered and gave him a small smile to signal him that there really was no need to worry. John just stared at me for a few minutes and I couldn't quite tell what he was thinking. It wasn't awkward, though. It didn't make me nervous that he stared at me, it didn't scare me that I wasn't able to find out what he was thinking. Oh god, all of this must sound terribly weird to you, but I swear it isn't. John just has this kind of aura, it's really hard to explain. 

“Is it because of Josh? Come on, you can tell me, maybe I'll be able to help”, John then said after a few minutes of absolute silence between the two of us. I felt myself blush as John mentioned Josh's name (it's still weird how their names are that similar, isn't it?) and I automatically looked down at my feet. “Okay, so it definitely IS because of Josh... But it's not this whole situation, it's not him fighting with Bob and quitting the band and getting drunk and so on... well, maybe it is a little bit but there's something more, right?”, John asked as a (for my taste way too) excited smile made it's way on his face. I think I blushed even more, I just had this feeling that John knew (or at least he somehow sensed) that Josh... had a special place in my heart, I think that's the best way to put it. I sighed and looked up again. “Okay, you might me right... It's just... I 'm not sure what to do. I have no idea if I should tell Josh how I feel about him because I don't want to make things awkward between us if he doesn't feel the same way... and I don't want to embarrass myself... Plus I have no idea how to tell him, or show him or whatever...”, I told John and to be completely honest it felt so good to just tell him, to share my feelings with someone who cared. 

“May I give you some advice?”, John asked after a bit. I just nodded in response. “Just wait. Don't put yourself under too much pressure. If something's supposed to happen it will happen, you know? Don't worry about it. Josh's a wonderful person and if your spirits are meant to love each other then they will, just let them do their thing and  they'll tell you what to do, wait until it feels right in every way imaginable, you know?”, he said and gave me a smile that made me feel like he knew more than I knew and that he wasn't going to tell me. I sighed (for what felt like the 10000th time that day) and mumbled, “You're probably right... Thank you” John still smiled at me, trying to hide his excitement (I would never have thought that something like this would get him that excited but it obviously did) but failing. “Oh uhm, I think I should leave, I got some more things to do...”, John then mumbled. I moved away from the door and opened it for him. “Bye Ally, see you soon”, John mumbled as he hugged me goodbye. “Bye John, and again thank you”, I responded. John gave me another one of his heartwarming smiles and then left.

#chapter 7 #josh klinghoffer #josh klinghoffer fanfiction #fanfic #rhcp

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

okay, here is the sixth chapter, it’s a bit shorter than usual and tbh i’m really not sure if this is good but it just wanted to be written so here it is... i hope you like it and i hope there aren’t too many typos

p.s.: it seems like tumblr doesn’t lke me and there are some kind of weird signs and numbers in the text, please just ignore the, i can’t edit this bullshit because everyhting looks ompletely normal in edit mode, i’ll try to find the mistake tomorrow or so

Six

I didn't go to the studio in the next few days. It didn't really have a specific reason, I just didn't go. Maybe I subconsciously didn't want to annoy anyone who was working over there, maybe I subconsciously wanted to avoid meeting Bob again or seeing Josh again. I think I was scared that things between us would be awkward now because of what had happened last time we talked to each other. I mean, nothing dramatic happened, but you know, sometimes these small things can initiate a massive change in a relationship, especially if it's this young of a relationship.

So I didn't go over to the studio in the next few days, instead I did a few other things. Wow, you certainly wouldn't have thought of that, right? I mean 'normal' people just stare at the ceiling for days if they don't do what they'd usually be doing and don't have to work, don't they? Of course they don't, and I didn't either.

On Tuesday I decided to visit my dad so I called him to ask if he was around. It turned out to be a good idea that I called him since he wasn't at home that day. He told me that I should stop by the next day, so I stayed home on Tuesday and spent it reading and listening to music (and of course still thinking about Bob's comment the other day, it was still stuck in my head, of course) and then headed over to my dad's house on Wednesday. 

My dad for whatever reason never locks his front door. I guess it's just one of his weird habits, or maybe he just wants to let all the creative energies and spirits and stuff right into his living room. Yeah, he's that kind of a guy. And if you think i'm judging him for it, you're so fucking wrong. Because I am not,  I love his way of seeing things, and even if it might seem a little bit awkward at first, you get used to it and it really isn't that big of a thing with him - he doesn't speak about it the way John does. I mean, he doesn't even believe in it as strongly as John does, I think with my dad it's more of a post-hippy thing he doesn't even take all too seriously himself. 

So I just knocked on the door before entering the house he lived in with his girlfriend at the time. It was quite a big house, it had a small backyard and was arranged with the vintage furniture my dad had collected over the years. To my surprise I found both of them in their bedroom, packing.

“What's going on here?”, was the first thing I said, totally forgetting about my manners because I was so confused. “Hey Ally, nice to see you, too”, my dad said as he stopped packing for a second, turned around and looked at me. “Hi All!”, Michelle, my dad's girlfriend exclaimed excitedly as she walked over to me and pulled me into a hug. We always had a good relationship, Michelle and I, which wasn't always the case with me and my dad's girlfriends. 

Okay this may have sounded like he's a slut so I just want to clear that up: he didn't have that many girlfriends, I think he had four girlfriends in the 20 years between his and my mom's divorce and his re-marriage just a few years ago, but I could be mistaken. I mean I didn't live with him for a long time so he might have had another girlfriend before I moved in with him. I knew four of his girlfriends, two of them (Michelle and Angelina) were really nice, two of them were slightly... uh... I guess you know what I mean, I don't need to explain any further, right?

Sadly he didn't marry Michelle, they broke up because Michelle wanted to have kids and my dad didn't want a second child since he already had me. You need to know that he was quite young (22 I think) when my mom (she was around that age, too) got pregnant. So he definitely wasn't too old to “make” another child, he just didn't want to. Michelle did and so they broke up after about three years of relationship, but they remained good friends. Michelle married another man and got two children now. I didn't see her in a long long time, I hope she's alright... anyway, I hope I explained things good enough for them to make sense to you, otherwise just ignore this, it's not that important, you're not here to learn about my dad and his ex-girlfriends, right?

“Hey, so what's up? Why are you packing?”, I asked after I hugged her back. “We'll fly to Illinois to my aunt's funeral tomorrow, don't you remember? I'm sure I told you”, my dad now said, seemingly confused himself. “Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot”, I said, mentally facepalming myself. I had totally forgotten about this, all the things that had happened in the last week had really made me forget it. My dad's aunt had died a bit earlier, he had been very old and sick so it wasn't really surprising but you know, the death of a family member is never an easy thing to cope with. I hadn't really known her, so it didn't really affect me. My dad hadn't been close to her either, but it still made him sad, one could see it in his eyes. Of course it did. Death always makes people sad

So my dad and Michelle had to fly up to Illinois for the funeral the next day. I didn't come along with them because it wasn't really MY family, I hadn't spent a lot of time with my dad's relatives, I mean I had met all of them once but that was about it. I think it's just because I spent most of my childhood on a different continent, and I think that just makes relationships strange in general and even when I moved here I didn't spend a lot of time with them because, you know, Illinois and LA aren't really in the same corner of the US. So I'm really not close with any of them. But this doesn't bother me at all. Having good relationships with relatives is good but there are way more important things, right?

Michelle and my dad stopped packing to have coffee with me, and we just sat down in the living room and talked. My dad had these beautiful old leather couches in the middle of the living room, there was a small wooden table and a carpet with a beautiful pattern on it. The living room was quite big, there were bookshelves and  a corner with lots of records and a turntable. My dad didn't own a TV, he said he had no use for it He bought one a few years later, though, so something about it must have caught his attention.  

So we all had coffee, I asked my dad a few questions about his aunt and the rest of the people he was going to meet at the funeral. He said he was looking forward to seeing his cousin and her husband again, maybe even their two kids but he wasn't sure if they'll bring them. I didn't even know that his cousin had children by then, Yeah, I guess that proofs that I really was so not a part of this whole family-thing.

”How old are her children? Why didn't you tell me about this?”, I asked, surprised and confused when my dad started talking about them. “I definitely told you, All, I'm sure I did, you just forget things way too easily”, my dad laughed, “The older one's 4 and the younger one's 2 and a half years old” “Wow, okay, i'm still surprised...”, I giggled. Michelle laughed, then she finished her cup of coffee and left the living room to continue packing.

“So... uhm... Who's that...'friend' you were talking about the other day?”, my dad asked as soon as Michelle had left the room. It seemed like he didn't want to make me feel uncomfortable by asking me in front of her. “What friend? Who are you talking about?”, I asked, pretending not to know what or better said who he meant. “That friend of Bob's, the one who you spend so much time with..”, my dad said before he added, “Why am I even explaining this? You know who i'm talking about, right?” He smiled, I love it when my dad smiles. I love to see him happy, to know that I did something that made him happy. “I'm not spending that much time with him, dad! But yeah, I know who you're talking about...”, I said, giggling. “Uh, where do I start...”, I sighed.  

“Uhm... well, his name's Josh and... he's a musician and a friend of Bob's and they're making this record together...”, I started, trying to tell my dad all the important things but leave out the bits that would make me sound like an obsessed 13-year-old talking about her favorite actor or something like that. I didn't want to make my dad think that I had a crush on Josh, not after Bob already thought so, even if it might have been true. “Yeah, you told me that already...”, my dad said. “How old is he?”, he than asked. “He's 19, I think...”, I mumled. “Does he go to college, or does he plan to go some day?” Wow, my dad was quick at asking his questions. “No he, uhm, to be honest... he dropped out of high school when he was 15″, I answered in a low voice. Silence seemed to fill the room for a few minutes which felt like ages to me. To my great surprise my dad broke the silence with his loud laugh. “Why are you laughing?”, I asked, confused as fuck. “I'm sorry, it's just, this is so cliche, isn't it? The boy who quits school to conquer the world playing his guitar. It's just so cliche, but well, he's got to have some talent if Bob's making a record with him, right?”

I really didn't know what to say. I mean yeah, my dad was right, it definitely was cliche thing to do as a musician, but I did find it kind of weird that my dad laughed his ass of at this. I just felt like I could tell that my dad wasn't taking Josh seriously and thought he was stupid for dropping out of high school. And while it really does seem like a stupid thing to do for most people, I felt like it was the absolutely right thing to do for Josh. My dad just didn't have the right to judge him for it, I mean he didn't even know him. This definitely wasn't his place to judge.

I didn't tell my dad that I was thinking this way, though. I didn't tell him that he hurt my feelings by laughing at my friend's decision. I didn't say anything at all. But my dad knows me, he really does and the felt that there was something wrong and he felt that he had hurt my feelings. “I'm sorry...”, he said in a low voice after a few minutes of awkward silence. “It's okay...”, I answered and gave him a small smile. “Bob asked me to visit them in the studio soon, so I guess i'll get to meet your 'friend' Josh soon enough...”, he then stated, trying to get the conversation going again. “Dad, he really is a friend, not a 'friend', or whatever you think he is...” I sighed. “Well, who knows what will happen”, my dad said and winked at me just to tease me and if you know me just a tiny little bit you'll know that it's really easy to tease me and that I usually don't take it that well. I shot my dad a glance and right in that moment my cellphone vibrated loudly to tell me (and everyone else in the room, you need to know this was a very attention-seeking cellphone, not a normal one which just keeps quiet all the time, no, my cellphone thought it was badass, and it wanted attention and it did everything to make everybody look at it... no, I didn't go crazy and I am very well aware of the fact that cellphones don't have feelings but this just came to me, so yeah...) that I had a new text message. “Is this your 'friend'?”, my dad asked with an amused tone in his voice

I ignored his comment and instead took a look at my phone to see who it was, and no, it wasn't Josh if you thought so, too. It was a text from Susan, a childhood friend of mine. I'm sorry, I might have to some day post a list of the most important people in this story and my life in general, I'm sure it's quite confusing that there are so many people around, but that's how real life works, right? It's not like some sitcom with three main characters and a few sidekicks. These people are real people and they're all important to me and this story so I guess we'll have to find a way to manage all this.

Anyways, so there was a text from my childhood friend Susan on my phone. She asked me to come over to her place because she needed someone to talk to. I sighed. Susan's boyfriend had broken up with her almost two months ago and she still struggled to accept this. They had been a couple for almost three years before her boyfriend broke up with her, but in my opinion it was the right thing to do. They weren't really going anywhere with their relationship and one could just tell that they weren't really happy. I mean it's obvious that her boyfriend hadn't been happy since he broke up with her, but in my opinion she hadn't really been happy either but her memories painted a different picture in her mind, simply because that the relationship had ended.  I don't want to go too far into detail with what had happened between her ex and Susan, it's her personal thing after all. 

“I need to leave...”, I mumbled, looking up from my phone. If I am your friend and you need me I will be there to help you, no matter what, no matter at what time you call me, no matter where I am, if you're my friend and you need me I will be right by your side. That's just part of my personality I guess. And maybe the importance of friendships in my life in general is a reason for that behavior. I got up from the couch I had been sitting on and started walking towards the front door. “What's up? Is something wrong?”, my dad asked, walking behind me, worry in his voice. “No, it's just... Susan asked me to come over to her place...”, I answered while opening the front door. Before I left the house I turned around again and  hugged my dad goodbye. “I'll call you tomorrow when we arrive in Illinois”, he said as I walked away and got in my car.

Susan didn't look too healthy when she opened her front door, she had lost weight and looked as if she hadn't slept in days. I asked her about what was wrong and listened to her, trying to make her feel better by letting her talk about it all. I personally made the experience that talking itself sometimes helps a lot. I don't think that  this is too interesting to you so I won't talk about this for too long, it's really not that interesting and it's not that important for this story. Talking really did seem to help Susan, and over time we started talking about less serious topics, we told each other stories and made each other laugh. It seems to always be like this with Susan: She often worries and feels bad about herself and her life and so on, but it's quite easy to cheer her up again. She just needs good friends who don't judge her for the way she is and the way she feels and are there to help her because after a certain amount of time she tends to isolate herself if she feels that there's no one who wants to listen and be there for her. And I think everyone knows that isolation isn't the best thing for most people's mental health.

I left Susan's apartment late, around 2 am. I think, and headed home. I didn't feel like staying at her place because I was sure she'd want to talk all night long and I was tired as fuck. Talking to friends and relatives can be so exhausting, right? I drove home slowly, not taking the shortest way home even though I was tired. I really enjoy driving at night and I don't find it tiring at all, I just like it, I liked siting in the passenger seat as my mom drove at night when I was a kid and I still like it today, i'm not sure why. It just feels so good, it's hard to explain, but I guess some of you can relate. So by the time I reached the front door of my apartment it was almost 3 am. 

I didn't notice the small piece of paper that stuck in between the door and the door frame until if fell down onto the floor as I opened the front door. I sighed as I bent down to pick it up, wondering who had put it there. 

Before reading what had been written down on this piece of paper I put off my shoes and walked into the living room where I switched on the light. I got myself a glass of water and sat on the dinner table. That's something I always thought about when I was a kid because my mom didn't want me to sit on the table: I said to myself, “Once you're living alone, you can sit on the table whenever you want, no one will tell you not to do so” I don't know why but for me as a kid sitting on the table was a huge thing. It's not that exciting after all. I think some things aren't  as appealing to you once you get a bit older. I hardy ever sit on the table anymore today. It would feel weird to be a fully grown up woman sitting on a table. Sometimes I wish I hadn't grown up that fast. But well, life makes you grow up sooner or later and even though being a grown up isn't as exciting as you imagine it when you're a child, it still got it's perks. So I sat on the table and took a sip of water,  then I unfolded the the piece of paper and read what was written onto it in quite small, almost unreadable handwriting. One could tell without doubt that this had been written in a hurry.

Hey, please call me when you get home, I need to talk to you about something

J...

I furrowed my eyebrows, surprised and wondering what Josh wanted to talk about. He obviously wanted me to call him for whatever reason. But it was 3:30 am., should I still call him? I had no idea what he wanted, I had no idea if he just wanted to tell me a dumb joke or if he really needed to tell me something important. But something told me that this wasn't about telling dumb jokes, this was more serious. After thinking about what to do for a few more minutes I decided to text him to see if he was still awake. If he was he'd respond, if he wasn't I wouldn't wake him up. 

So I sent him a text message explaining that I had just come home and asking if he was awake and if he wanted to talk now or the next day. While I was waiting for his response I brushed my teeth and washed my face, getting ready for bed. When I came back into the living room to check if he had responded I found that I had a missed call from Josh. “Shit”, I mumbled to myself. I hadn't expected him to call that soon after I had texted him. I quickly dialed his number and called him back. “Hey”, I said as he answered the phone,”i'm sorry I was just brushing my teeth when you called.” “It's okay, really, i'm sorry i'm keeping you from sleeping by the way, but... I needed... to talk to someone”, Josh said in a low voice. I sensed that there was something wrong with him, he didn't sound all too good and I guessed that he was more than just a bit tipsy.  I felt like I could smell the alcohol in his breath through the telephone line even though that's clearly impossible. “It's fine, I just came home anyway. So what's the matter?”, I asked him, trying to find out what was up. “Uhm it's... Bob and I had a fight... and”, he sighed, “I'm out. It's over. I quit the band”, Josh muttered on the other end of the line. 

“YOU DID WHAT?!, I exclaimed, then continued speaking in a calmer voice, “What? Why? What happened?” I really hadn't expected anything like this. I never thought something like this would actually happen. Josh stayed silent for a few seconds and I could only hear the silent music that was playing in the background wherever Josh was at that moment, probably in his apartment. “I quit the band... Bob went... he went too far, he threw a glass bottle at me and... I just couldn't handle this, I can't do this, I just can't“, he almost whispered, “And I don't know if it was the right thing to do. I'm almost sure it wasn't the right thing...” I didn't really know what to say, and I was worried. Everyone would be worried when hearing something like that, right? “You know, maybe I shouldn't have done this in... in the first place, you know... I mean joining, agreeing on making this record... maybe it was... all... wrong, and... I, I don't know anymore... I don't know what I want and... I don't know what to do”, Josh continued rambling.

“Josh, calm down!”, I interrupted him, “Are you drunk?” Josh took a moment before answering my question. “...maybeee....”, he then slurred and this single word was proof enough to my thesis. He definitely was drunk. “Josh, please, just go to bed and i'll come over tomorrow and we can talk about it all and we can sort this out, okay? Just please stop drinking, you had enough for today”, I spoke slowly, trying to make clear that I was serious. “Uh, yeah,yeeaah,you're probably right...”, Josh mumbled. “Promise me that you won't drink any more tonight, okay?” “Okay, I promise I won't...”, he said in a low voice. “Alright, as I said i'll come over to your place tomorrow, Everything is going to be alright, Josh, don't worry. Goodnight”, I said, trying to make him understand that I was tired and we'd sort it all out the next day. “Okay, goodnight...” I just wanted to hang up when Josh spoke up again. 

“And... Ally... there’s one more thing...”, he almost whispered. “Yeah?” “I love you”, he then really whispered so lowly that I wasn't even sure if I heard it right and hung up immediately after his words had left his mouth, not leaving me the tiniest chance to respond. 

This didn't matter though, I wouldn't have know what to say anyway.

#chapter 6 #josh klinghoffer #josh klinghoffer fanfiction #fanfic #rhcp #okay i hope this wasn't awkward #and it didn't come too soon #but this is just a way of making things even more awkward between them #because josh was drunk af #so he probably son't remember that he said that #and she'll think he didn't mean it #but yeah #i'm spoiling the whole next chapter for you right now #anyways #thanks for reading

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

Hellooooo here is another chapter, i hope it makes sense to you and doesn’t seem confusing... :/ i hope you enjoy it, and as always THANKS FOR READING <3

Five

So after this happened I (of course) couldn't really forget what Bob had said.  I tried to shove it to the back of my mind, not to think about his words too much, but every now and then they'd come back and just wouldn't go away. I tried to distract myself from these thoughts, I mean, in the end it was obviously bullshit, right? I didn't have a crush on Josh, right? I mean, I had only just known him for like, about a week or so. You don't develop a crush that quickly, right? No, you don't. Or at least I didn't. Of course I didn't! How could I?

But what if? What would happen if Bob was right? What if I had developed a crush on Josh, on a guy I only knew for about a week? What if Bob was right? At the same time I thought I knew the answer to all of these questions: Nothing. Nothing would happen if Bob was right. This doesn't mean that I believed that he was right, though. I mean, he couldn't be right. He just couldn't, this wouldn't make sense and it wouldn't fit me. I didn't get crushes on guys I knew for such a short period of time. I didn't get crushes at all.

So I kept thinking about this, mostly late at night. I just couldn't come to a conclusion and in the end I had to say that maybe Bob was right and maybe he was wrong, I really couldn't tell. It was a fact that I indeed liked Josh, but there's a quite important difference between liking someone as a friend and having a crush on them. And I just couldn't seem to figure out if I liked him as just a friend or not. I guess we've all been in a situation like this where on the one hand we know what we feel but on the other hand we just don't know how to call it, how to describe it, it's just there. I always found it hard to find names for my feelings. Sometimes you literally just can't tell if you're feeling one thing or another or something in between. Sometimes there just doesn't seem to be a word for a certain feeling. I hope i'm not the only person who feels this way (what an incredible word game, i'm truly impressed, Ally... could you please ignore this? I'm not even sure if I did this on purpose)...

I really couldn't put my finger on it and one day just decided that it didn't matter at all. It didn't matter if I had a crush on him right in this moment, because if I wasn't sure about it it couldn't be a big crush. And I would definitely fell it if my feelings towards him changed. So I decided to just let it be. I mean, Bob probably didn't even think i'd take that seriously in the first place. He is the kind of person to say things like these to tease others. And me, well, i'm the kind of person to think about these things for days.

So yeah, congratulations to Robert O'Neil Forrest for keeping me awake when I wanted to sleep. Well done! Okay, instead of just being sarcastic here I should probably go on with this story. We aren't even that far yet, because on that same day Bob asked me if I had a crush on Josh something else happened. After all, day's don't just end like episodes of some series, right?  By the way, congratulations to you, because if you're reading this, you must have a very strong will in order to read through all this rambling of mine and not being annoyed to the point where you don't give a single fuck about this story because my writing is so annoying. (I just realized that this probably didn't really help to make this story more interesting, but anyway... You need to know that story-telling isn't really the first thing coming to mind when you ask me or anyone else about my strengths. But I promise, this story is worth reading! And i'll try to get better at story-telling, I swear.)

But now let's really get back to this story. I left quite soon after Bob and I talked for there wasn't a lot for me to do and I just felt like the fifth wheel (do you normally say 'the third wheel' or 'the fifth wheel'? I guess that depends on whether you prefer driving a car or riding your bike... okay this wasn't necessary, it's the same as this doorway-without-doors-thing, sometimes I just think about random things... i'm so sorry you had to read this) so I decided i'd rather go back over to my apartment and read for a bit. And eat something. Of course. I had only eaten my breakfast-banana in the morning so I was indeed hungry when I came back to my apartment around 3pm.

I decided to cook some spaghetti for myself (like, literally just spaghetti, just the noodles, no sauce), put them in a bowl, then put some butter onto the noodles and waited for it to melt. This is probably like 1000 calories but to be completely honest, I don't give a damn. If you never tried this you should definitely do so some day. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll think i'm weird. But I guess you already think that i'm weird and you're probably right so some extend.

Anyway, so I ate my bowl of spaghetti while walking through the apartment – I didn't feel like sitting down since that was basically what I had been doing all day long. So I just kept on walking, from the big windows to the wall on the opposite side, then to my bedroom and then back to the kitchen, to the big windows and so on and so forth. I got so lost in my own thoughts that it was only when I had finished eating that I noticed that I had stopped walking and just stood in front of the big windows instead. The sun was shining, I noticed this for the very first time that day. (No, i'm not blind) It was producing this beautiful post-winter-pre-spring atmosphere (I hope you get what I mean by saying this) and it just made me feel like I could start all over. It made me feel like whatever I wanted to do, now was the time to do it. I get this feeling almost every year around this time, around the end of february and the beginning of march. It's just such a refreshing time, like, it's still cold but you can see that spring is coming, you just feel it. Or at least I feel it.

I got myself a cup of coffee (and by coffee I mean good coffee, REAL coffee, coffee from a coffee machine, not some disgusting drip coffee... you see i'm passionate about my coffee), opened one of the windows and sat down on the wooden floor in front of it, then I looked up and and enjoyed the sunshine.  A slight breeze came in, let both the thin curtains that were pulled to the sides of the windows and the coffee steam dance like ghosts and carried the traffic noise inside the room. It felt as if the breeze brought the spirit of this city, the city I considered my home more and more with every day I spent here, a city that had a special place in my heart, right into the apartment. I started daydreaming, making plans about what to do in the next days, I thought about getting my hair cut, I decided to go for a walk in the next days. I really don't know for how long I was sitting there, but I guess I sat there for a while. Just so that you know, I'm better at making plans than at doing the things I planned on doing. I planned to do a lot of things and I don't know how many of them I actually did. But I don't believe that doing the things you planned is the one and only thing that gives sense to the process of making plans.

When I was a little kid I made a lot of plans. I made a lot of plans about doing things I now know I won't ever be able to do, just because I don't have the skills to actually do them. I might have dreamed about painting a portrait as beautiful and mysterious as the Mona Lisa for example. And though it's obvious that I won't ever be able to do this, I don't think that making the plan to do so was silly or useless. Even though it didn't affect the world around me by changing it in whatever way it would have been changed if I had painted another Mona Lisa, it still changed me. It changed me because it made me see that I wasn't able to do it. And it changed me because it made me see that that was perfectly fine. I could still plan to do it and I could try to actually do it every day or not at all. It didn't matter whether I could paint this portrait, because it didn't change anything about my plan to do so, it didn't change anything about my intentions. I could still get up in the morning and think “Today i'll paint a portrait as beautiful and mysterious as the Mona Lisa” and I could be serious about it. It didn't matter if I failed. My plan to paint this portrait existed and it was as real as Mona Lisa's beauty itself. In the end, both plans and beauty are things that only exist in our heads. And to be honest, what's so beautiful about a girl without eyebrows?

So I spent a lot of time daydreaming and making plans that day, some realistic, some absurd. It didn't matter. It just made me feel good. I must've been sunken quite deep into my thoughts because it made me jump a few metaphorical meters when someone rang the doorbell. But on the other hand I have to confess that the doorbell even makes me jump if I expect visitors, so it's normal with me. I expected Bob to stand in front of my door when I opened it and already wanted to congratulate him on finding the doorbell this time but I didn't even get this far since it wasn't Bob who was standing outside, waiting for me to answer the door. To my surprise it was Josh who was scratching his neck awkwardly as he stood there.  

“Hey, what's up?”, I said as I opened the door. “Hey, um, Bob asked me to tell you that we're done for today, you know, because he forgot his keys and you should lock the studio's door... because he 'had to leave', if you know that I mean...”, Josh responded, a shy smile on his face.

I don't even want to know how often I used the word “smile” and all it's variations in this story already, but I swear I don't do it to troll you! I even find it kinda embarrassing to be honest and by now it makes me cringe to write this word down, but the thing is: Have you ever seen Josh? Have you seen him? Yeah? Okay, then you'll know that his 'neutral' facial expression isn't neutral at all, he just looks as if he was pissed as fuck. And I don't know if that's the reason why he smiles so much (so that he won't always be asked if or why he's pissed), but it's a fact that he does smile a lot. And if you've ever seen his smile, please imagine the way it looks when he smiles whenever I write about it, maybe you won't be annoyed by having to read this word every goddamn five seconds if you do that.

Okay, so Josh was standing in front of me and as he said this (at this point you might have to re-read what he said, i'm rambling so much, i'm so sorry) I realized that Bob's story about forgetting the keys couldn't be true. Why? Because he came here by car. What do you need to drive a car? Exactly, you need car keys. And I had seen the day before that Bob had the studio keys and his car keys and the keys to his apartment and so on kind of attached to each other, you know with key rings and stuff. So to forget only the key he needed to get into the studio he would have had to detach it from the other keys. But why would he do that? He just wouldn't do that, there was no reason to do that. So there was only conclusion one could draw from that: Bob hadn't forgotten the keys, he had just made up this story so that he had a reason to make Josh come over to my apartment and talk to me. Bob had planned this out, he had tricked me, he had tricked both of us.

“I'm so stupid”, was all I was capable of saying as this struck me. It just kinda slipped out of my mouth and you know what words do once they leave our minds and our bodies, right? They just float in the air and stay there until they enter someone else's body and mind. Sometimes they even reach their heart – just sometimes, though. I said it more to myself than to anyone else but of course Josh heard it. I mean, he was standing right in front of me, so would have had to be deaf in order to not hear it. He definitely wasn't deaf. Why am I even writing this? You know that he's not deaf, right?

“What are you saying?”, he asked, surprised and confused by my sudden mood change. “Ugh, nothing, I just... I just realized that Bob tricked me... or I guess both of us. I'm pretty sure he didn't forget his keys”, I said, but I guess this didn't clear up the situation in any way at all. “What? Why he would do that?”, Josh asked, still just as confused as before.

For one second I actually thought about telling him what I thought why Bob did this, telling him that Bob believed that I had a crush on him. But since there weren't any benefits of telling him and since I wasn't eve sure whether Bob was right or not I decided to not tell Josh . “Well, Bob's intentions are always kind of a mystery, right? So what do I know?”, I mumbled, trying to drop the topic as I got the spare key to go lock the studio door. “Definitely more than me...”, Josh murmured behind me.

A few minutes later we stood in front of the door to my apartment, me fiddling with my keys as I locked it open and Josh just standing there awkwardly, not really knowing what to do. Before he could decide whether he should better leave I had already opened the door and invited him in. “Do you want some coffee?”, I asked as I went into the kitchen, leaving him alone in the living room for a bit. I somehow made this a habit of mine, leaving people alone for a bit when they first come 0ver to my place. I personally find it weird if the person who lives in the house or apartment you just entered just stands beside you all the time as if they were afraid that you'd steal their curtains or something like that. So I always try to give my guests some freedom, I  want them to feel welcome and trusted, not awkward and spied on.

“Yes please”, I heard Josh say as I entered the kitchen. A few minutes later I came back into the living room with both of our cups, black coffee for Josh and white coffee for me, just to find him sitting on the floor, in the exact same spot where I had been sitting earlier. The sun wasn't shining in through the windows anymore but had disappeared behind the other houses. It was still beautiful, though. The sky had changed it's color, it seemed darker now, the colors reached from bright blue to dark orange. I sat down next to Josh and handed his coffee over to him. “Thanks... You got a beautiful apartment, it's... big. Do you live here alone?”, he said. “Oh thank you, yeah it is quite big”, I giggled. “And no, I don't live here alone, but my flatmate Sophia is on vacation at the moment, so...” “Oh, where is she? Do you miss her?”, Josh asked after taking a sip from his coffee. “She's in Brazil, visiting some relatives... and no, to be completely honest I don't really miss her at the moment, I mean we are really good friends, but... I really don't miss her at the moment. There's just so much going on right now... Does that make me a bad friend?”, I responded. “No, why would that make you a bad friend?! I think it's just normal, sometimes you just need a break from people, even if you're really close to them – especially if you're really close to them. But that doesn't make you a bad friend, in my opinion...”, Josh mumbled. “I guess you're right”, I said after a few minutes of silence.

“By the way, how did recording go today?”, I asked then. “Oh, it all went well, we're making good progress, and it's good to talk to Josh again since he's one of the co-producers, it's good to have him here again...”, Josh stated and then added, “By the way, can I smoke in here?” “Yeah of course, and I guess I have to steal a cigarette from you again”, I giggled. Josh smiled as he gave me a cigarette and his lighter. “I wanted to quit smoking, so that's why I don't have any cigarettes at the moment, but i'll pay my debts as soon as I can”, I said in a serious voice. Now Josh was the one who giggled, “Nooo, you don't need to, I mean in some way I'm responsible for you starting to smoke again”, he laughed, “and I guess your coffee is worth more than my cigarettes anyway”

“Okay, maybe that's true”, I then responded, still chuckling. “So I heard you're almost done with recording, right?”, I then asked to kinda get back to the topic we had been talking about before. “Almost done? I wouldn't say i'm almost done but on the other hand I don't know how the recordings we already did turned out so I'm nor sure if I have to rerecord some things or if they're good enough. So I can't really tell how much more work there is to be done but we're making progress”, Josh answered. “And I don't know if Josh and Marc are content with what Bob and I did on the songs. I mean we talked about it and i'm sure Bob showed them a few things but well, you never know” “Okay... You know i'm not an expert on all of these things, so... And I have no clue how this really works to be honest”, I laughed, trying to disguise my insecurities.

“Well, me neither, I just do what Bob, Marc and Josh want me to do, that's all”, Josh chuckled. “So I think that Kevin will do his drum parts tomorrow and Josh will do his bass parts and then we'll see” “Okay... I find it so confusing that the other guy's called Josh as well, and kinda funny to be honest”, I said. “Yeah, two people with such an ugly name in the same spot at the same time...”, Josh mumbled. “No that's not what I meant!”, I giggled and pushed Josh lightly and playfully,”It's just, I never met a single person called Josh until I met you and now I met another person called Josh just one week later” “Really? In this case a lot of other parents were nicer to their children than mine were...”, he now laughed. “Man, why do you hate your name so much? I mean i'm not really a fan of mine either, but what's so bad about 'Josh'?”, I asked. “What is that question, even? Everything's awful about that name, the way it looks, the way it feels to say it, the way it sounds, there's nothing positive about it, absolutely nothing! I mean, Joshua Adam, what the hell were my parents thinking?!”, Josh complained, his voice sounding like he was somewhere in between crying and laughing out loud. It made me laugh quite a bit myself. “Come on, it's not that bad! It really isn't! I promise”, I chuckled, barely holding it together.

“I'm not even sure what's worse, 'Joshua' or 'Josh', but you can't tell what's worse when both names are that awful”, Josh exclaimed, clearly trying to make me laugh even harder than I already was. “You're an idiot, you know?”, I half whined, trying not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me laugh my ass off and again pushing him playfully, a bit harder though than last time. As a result he almost fell over and then pushed me himself. “Yeah, people say so”, Josh said, laughing loudly himself.

“Okay, okay, calm down Ally, calm down”, I said to myself, trying to catch my breath after all the laughing. “You really are an idiot, i'm being serious!”, I than exclaimed. “Yeah, I take you VERY seriously”, Josh said, grinning at me. Clearly he wasn't taking me seriously at all.

“Yeah, of course you are”, I said in a sarcastic tone. “But for real, it is kinda weird, isn't it?” Josh looked at me as if I had asked him about the middle name of the fourth son of the third pharaoh of the fourteenth dynasty of Egypt. And just to clear that up, I have no clue if the third pharaoh of the fourteenth dynasty of Egypt even had four sons. But yeah, Josh had no idea what I was talking about. “You have no idea what I mean, right?”, I giggled. “Uhm, no, not really...”, Josh blushed slightly. “It doesn't matter anyway”, I chuckled.

“So one thing I wanted to ask you... What was that talk you had with Bob today about?”, Josh asked after a few minutes of silence, just as I got up to get myself another cup o coffee. “Oh, that... nothing important, really... I'll get myself another cup of coffee, do you want one as well?”, I asked, not really knowing what to say and not sure about whether I should tell him the truth or not. “No , thanks...”, Josh mumbled. The mood had definitely changed, I could tell, and I didn't like it at all. I left the living room for a few minutes to get myself a cup of coffee and thought about what I should tell Josh. I really hoped that he would just drop the topic when I came back.

To my disappointment he didn't drop the topic. “So, what did you talk about?”, was the first thing he said when I sat down next to him again. I sighed. “As I said, we talked about nothing important, just about the next few days and that I won't be around tomorrow because I have a few things to do...”, I stuttered. “It didn't look like you wanted to talk to him about such banal things, though...”, Josh stated, he was clearly not buying it. As I looked up, Josh's facial expression was cold, just as his voice. “Josh, why do we have to talk about this? It wasn't important”, I said. “Why don't you just tell me the truth, then?”, Josh sighed, turning to face me. “I think I know what, or better said who you and Bob were talking about. And I think you were talking about me... aren't I right?”, he said, looking me deep in the eyes. I gulped.

I couldn't tell him he was wrong, I just couldn't lie to him, not when he looked at me like this. I mean i'm not a great liar in general, but he made it really fucking hard and at that point even impossible for me. I looked down, avoiding his gaze. “So I'm right?”, Josh asked. I looked up again and nodded. Josh sighed, shaking his head. “You know, I don't care if you were talking about me. I just don't understand why you wouldn't tell me...”, he said in a calm voice, trying to hide his disappointment but failing. I didn't know what to say, and neither did he, so we sat there in silence for a bit before Josh spoke again. “You know... Things tend to become awkward between people if they don't talk about things, and I really don't want things to become awkward between us. I don't want small stupid things to ruin this friendship...”, he said, searching for my gaze and with serious but warm and friendly tone in his voice.

I can't really describe how I felt in that moment, but i'll try for you: It was a weird mix (what a surprise..) I mean, here sat Josh in front of me, a guy who I liked but didn't know how much I liked, a guy I had known for about a week, and talked about friendship and honesty and looked at me dead-serious. Imagine being in this situation. How would you feel? Yeah, now you know what I mean when I say I can't describe it.

I didn't know what to say, he really made me speechless with what he said. I hadn't expected him to say things like this, to feel like this about me, about our friendship. And I mean normally you wouldn't say things like this to a friend, right? Or at least I don't. And none of my friends ever did. Do you do this? Probably not. But maybe this friendship wasn't just special to me but to Josh as well. This 'friendship' – or whatever you want to call it.

“Yeah, me neither...”, I said after a few minutes. “But it really wasn't important, I just tried to explain to Bob that he's an asshole. And as usual he didn't agree”, I then added, trying to make the situation a bit less tense. “I think he's aware of that, he just doesn't see it as a bad thing that needs to be changed”, Josh's smile returned to his face.

We talked a bit more that evening, joked around a bit. Everything went back to normal. Or at least it seemed like that. I didn't really feel that way to me, though. And I think it felt different to Josh in a way as well. Something had changed. We still were good friends. And we weren't acting dead-serious all the time - we still joked around. But something had changed. I wasn't able to point out what exactly had changed, I just felt it. And I wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Many it was none of the two. It was just different. As it got darker outside Josh left and headed home, leaving me alone and just as clueless about my feelings as before.

#chapter 5 #josh klinghoffer #josh klinghoffer fanfiction #fanfic #rhcp #love u all #i hope this makes sense #hahaha

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

chapter n°4! I just finished it today and i didn’t want to wait... So here it is. I’m not sure if i’ll be able to keep posting new chapters at this pace, but I’ll do my best. I want to make progress with this story, so... this chapter is quite different from the last one, but i guess you’ll come to see that rather fast... i hope you’ll enjoy it nevertheless and thank you for reading <3

Four

As I entered my car I took a closer look at my cellphone and saw that I had five missed calls and ten text messages, all from the same person: my dad. I sighed. Okay, yeah, maybe I should have taken a look at my phone a few times during the last two days. Now I had to face this. I decided to call him before driving home. The phone had barely even rung when my dad picked up.

"Where have you been for the last two days?", was the very first thing my dad said when he picked up his cellphone. No 'Hello', no 'How are you?', he was clearly pissed. I sighed. "At a friend's place, Dad,..." "At a friend's place?! What friend?! Do I know this friend?! So that's why you didn't look at your phone for one second?! And that's why you didn't sleep at home and didn't tell me what was up? You must've been busy then, with your friend, huh?", he almost screamed into the telephone though I could hear that he was trying to stay calm. He wasn't succeeding, though.

"Yes, dad. At a friend's place. And I don't think you know him, not yet. But he's a friend of Bob's. I am 18, almost 19 years old. I earn my own money, I pay my own rent. I don't have to ask you if i'm allowed to sleep at a friend's place, i'm old enough to decide things like this myself", I said, gritting my teeth. “And even if we weren't just friends this would be none of your business”, I added in a low voice, kind of hoping he didn't hear it. Sometimes I just feel like I have to say something but I don't want the other person to hear it, if that makes any sense at all.

"You may be 18, but this is a big city, Allison Dana (yes, he even used my middle name), I don't think you're aware of how dangerous it is here for a young woman like you!", my dad said, now he didn't really sound mad anymore, he sounded worried. He had always been very protective of me, I knew this side of him. "Dad, I know what you mean, but there's nothing to worry about. You really need to stop worrying that much. And I'm sure you wouldn't act like this if I wasn't a girl... I'm good, I spent some great time with a friend. Calm down! ", I said, trying to make him feel better but still make my point of view clear to him. "Yeah... yeah... okay... but, you really got me worried, you know? Could you at least send me a short message when you don't sleep at your apartment next time? I was knocking at your door like crazy yesterday because you didn't respond to any of my messages, I'm sure I woke up all your neighbors...",my dad now said, a lot calmer than before.

"Yes dad, I'm sorry I got you worried. I'll send you a text message next time, but please stop worrying that much, you're a bit overprotective and you're definitely overreacting", I said in a soft voice, again trying to make my point but make also make sure he felt better. "Yeah, okay... So you're going home now?" I smiled for myself, "Yes, dad, i'm on my way home", I said. "Okay... Then I wish you a good night, and... I love you", I heard him mumble at the other end of the line. "I love you too, dad, good night" I hung up and waited a few minutes, still shaking my head a bit. I didn't even want to know what he had been doing when he was my age, the few stories he had once told me (he had been a bit drunk when this happened) were more than enough. But maybe these things were  the reason for the overprotective behavior, for his tendency to overreact and worry way to much about my safety. I'm sure he had his reasons. And I don't want to sound like he was trying to control me, he really wasn't. He just couldn't help but try to protect me from anything and everything and yeah, sometimes it got on my nerves but it was bearable. And he learned to deal with the fact that I am living my own life now and that he couldn't and shouldn't always protect me but let me make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons. Still thinking about what had just happened I finally started the engine of my car and drove home.

I opened the door to my apartment and switched the lights on. “Home sweet home..”, I sight to myself. It wasn't exactly MY apartment, I lived here with my friend Sophia who I knew from high school, but at that time she was on vacation in Brazil to visit some relatives. But to be honest I didn't exactly mind her not being in LA. She's a sweet girl but she could get on my nerves sometimes. And I don't mind spending some time alone so I didn't complaint about having the apartment for myself for a bit.

So I walked in, put off my shoes as I always do and went over to the sofa. Our apartment didn't really have a hallway, you just came in and stood in the living room. It was a beautiful apartment, both Sophia and I really cared about keeping it clean and tidied. The living room was quite big, about twice the size of Josh's living room. I didn't feel like watching TV so I just grabbed the book nearest to me and began to read. It didn't really surprise me that it was one of my favorite books, “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, since Sophia didn't enjoy reading so I'm the only one who  owns books in this household and I only buy books if I really like them. Most times I just borrow them from the public library, if I really enjoyed them I sometimes buy them but most times I don't feel like reading them again. However it's completely different with “Pride and Prejudice”, I just love this book so much, I think I read it more than six times already, and I enjoy ever single word of it whenever I read it. So it didn't really surprise me when I found this copy of it on the small table in front of the sofa. Just as I reached chapter 19 (the chapter where Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth, she rejects him and he decides to ask her again later) – the chapters of this book are very short and read rather fast – I felt my phone vibrating on the sofa next to me. I sighed, assuming it was my Dad who had texted me – I mean who else would text me at 9:00 pm. on a Sunday – as I picked up my cellphone and opened the text message.

To my surprise it wasn't my dad who had texted me, it was Josh. Seeing that surprised me and made my heart jump a little bit with excitement. Okay, maybe more than just a little bit, but let's not focus on this right now, there's still plenty of time to discuss this topic. The (short) message read:

Hi, I just wanted to make sure you came home safely. J...

His text made me smile for two reasons: 1.) I found it very nice and also kind of cute that he felt the need to check on me (or he was at least slightly interested in my well-being) and 2.) he had “signed” his text message – yeah, only with one letter, I know, but still – as if he hadn't sent me a text message to my cellphone but a proper letter, as if he had to make sure I knew who had sent this message even though he obviously knew that I had his phone number. So I texted him back:

yeah, i'm good. p.s.: you don't need to “sign” your text messages, I got your phone number so I know it's you :)

I hit send and put my phone back on the sofa. Just about five minutes after I picked up my book again and continued reading my phone vibrated again.

Oh, okay... see you tomorrow, goodnight

For a few seconds I thought about how and if I should respond. Then I just typed the very first thing that came to mind:

goodnight J, see you

This is not really a genius reply, I know, but well, I never said I was genius, so... And yeah, I know how childish this must seem. It's just, I knew that Josh didn't like his name at all (he had told me when we talked about family that day) so I thought, 'why not use this kind of nickname he had already given himself in a way by “signing” his text message with just a J ?'. And it seemed like the perfect moment to try it without embarrassing myself.

I put my phone back onto the sofa and read a few more pages but I soon felt how I became more tired every minute.

I don't remember falling asleep (I mean, there's nothing really to remember about falling asleep, right? It just kinda happens, it's not an active process...), but I got woken up the next morning by someone knocking on the front door loudly. It really made me jump and it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. “Ally! Ally, are you awake?”someone shouted outside the door, probably the same person who knocked. “Yeah, yeah, i'm awake, i'm on my way...”, I mumbled though it was obvious the person outside couldn't hear it. I guessed it was Bob and I turned out to be right when I opened the door.

“Good morning...”, I murmured,  looking at him. “What do you want?”  Bob kept quiet for a few minutes, staring at me with big eyes. “What's up?”, I asked, confused by the way he looked at me. “You look a bit... uhm... well... ”, was all he said. Only just then I realized that I was still wearing yesterday's - or better said the day before yesterday's -  clothes and make up , or better said the rest of it. I hadn't cleaned my face or brushed my hair in two days and the majority of the make up I had put on two days ago was probably smeared into Josh's bed sheets and onto the sofa. I had totally forgotten about this until Bob 'told' me. “Yeah, whatever...”, I said, “We do have a doorbell, by the way. Why are you here? What's the matter?” “I'm sure you have a spare key for the studio, don't you? I forgot the one your father gave me at home and it would take me ages to drive there and get it and then drive back here and I really got work to do, so...”, Bob responded, looking a bit uneasy. “So you just woke me up because you're too stupid to bring the keys with you”, I concluded. I wasn't even that mad at him, I just wanted him to know that I was kinda upset.

“Yeah, kinda...”, he said, looking down at his feet. “You're lucky. I do indeed have a spare key and i'm nice enough to let you in, but please make sure this doesn't happen again”, I finally said after a few minutes of silence. I walked back in and got the spare key along with my normal keys – our front door locked as soon as it fell shut and I didn't want to lock myself out of my apartment, of course. Bob was standing in the hallway and only as we went over to the studio I realized Josh and John were both nowhere to be seen. I thought I shouldn't be surprised hat John wasn't there. “Where's Josh? Don't you need him to record some tracks today?”, I asked, a bit confused since Josh and I had talked about seeing each other at the studio that day. “He'll come later on, I just wanted to do some vocal demos and I don't need him for this, so I told him he could come in later today”, Bob explained to me as I locked open the door. “Oh, okay... I'll come over in about an hour, I guess it's obvious I need to do other things first...” I turned around to leave when I heard Bob speak up. “ Ally?”, he said hesitantly. “Yeah?”, I turned around again, wondering about what else he had to say. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be an asshole”, he said, and it was obvious to me that he really meant what he said. I gave him a small smile “It's okay, don't worry about it”

I went back to my apartment, locked the door open and went straight to the bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me even though Sophia (obviously) wasn't at home and the front door locked automatically when it closed so you couldn't get in without a key. Of course you could get out without one, though. I still don't know how this kind of a door lock is called, but I hope you understand what I mean by this weird description. I looked in the mirror to see that my make up was indeed smeared all over my face and I was pale as a ghost but all in all I didn't look as bad as I had expected after Bob's reaction. I brushed my long dark hair and and then decided to take a shower. After a few minutes and brushing my teeth under the shower I felt like a new person. I never had the goal of looking perfect, I mean, of course like dressing up sometimes, doing my make up and so on. But I never did it for anyone but myself. I still don't. I'm not the most confident girl (or better said woman) ever, but most of the time I just don't care what people think about me if they don't really know me. I mean, they'll think whatever they want, no matter if I do my make up and hair or if I don't. People think whatever they want to think, not what I want them to think. I can't really do anything about it, so why even care? I'd rather focus on my well-being and my physical and emotional health. But I guess that's enough of useless information about me so let's go on with this story. I mean, you're not here to read my everlasting inner monologue, right?

So after showering and so on I just put on some comfortable clothes, ate a banana for breakfast and headed over to the studio. The studio had a normal door lock – it would have been quite impractical if it didn't - so I didn't have to take the spare key with me again. To my surprise Bob wasn't alone in the studio – there were three men and two young women I didn't know as well as Josh and Bob. “Hi”, I said in a low voice as I came in, obviously confused. “Hi Ally!, Bob said and then introduced me to all the people didn't know already. I don't remember their names to be honest. I'm not that good with names in general and this was a long time ago. Plus I didn't meet any of them again after the recordings were finished. I just remember that that one of them was called Josh as well... They all played one or more instruments on the record (one of the women did some backing vocals, I believe), I think you can look up who i'm talking about, i'm just too lazy to do so right now. And there's no need to do since so we didn't talk much and as I already said, I didn't see the again after the recording. Plus they're not that important for this story.

They talked about what they would record in the next days, it seemed like there was a lot to coordinate. Josh had already recorded most of the guitar and drum parts but there was still an awful lot to do. I hadn't really realized how far from finished they were until that day. Because the other Josh and one of the guys I don't remember the name of (Kevin, maybe? I don't know) had the most to record (the other Josh did some bass tracks and a few more things, and Kevin or however his real name was did four of the drum tracks) they'd record all of it within the next few days. The other guy just played guitar on one track so he could do that real quick, the woman doing some backing vocals had to wait anyway and I don't remember what the other woman played but it was just on one song. Bob said he just wanted to focus on recording the most important parts so that he could start doing first vocal takes soon.

“So we'll just do it this way and after the instrumentals we can start doing the vocal and backing vocal tracks”, Bob said, looking at the backing-vocal-woman (I'll just call her that, that's shorter than describing who I mean) and Josh (Josh-Josh, not the other Josh). I felt myself becoming uncomfortable when Bob said this. I mean, Bob just acted as if it was crystal clear that Josh would sing backing vocals on the album even though he knew that he really didn't want to and as far as I knew Bob couldn't have guessed that I had persuaded Josh to at least give it a try. Josh wouldn't have told him. And I hadn't told him either. So Bob just assumed that he could force him to sing on the record, I looked over at Josh and saw that his level of discomfort was at least a hundred times higher than mine. I felt myself getting mad at Bob, this was not fair. He couldn't just do this. Bob knew that this situation would lead to Josh putting himself under a lot of pressure to do what Bob wanted just because he didn't want to come across like a fool in front of all the others. He knew it. And that's exactly what he wanted. Bob wanted Josh to sing, no matter how uncomfortable it would make him feel and no matter if Josh himself wanted to.

After the one-song-guitar-player and the two women had left Josh, the other Josh and the guy I'll just call Kevin went to work. Bob just acted as if he hadn't noticed Josh's discomfort though that was literally impossible. Josh himself still seemed to be absorbed in his thoughts, he didn't talk much. My anger towards Bob seemed to grow with every second and I just felt like I had to talk to him, tell him that I didn't agree with his way of handling things.

“Bob? Can I talk to you for a second? In private?”, I asked with a firm voice, making sure he knew that there was no way he could avoid this talk. I couldn't just let him act like this and pretend it was normal and right. I just couldn't. And I wasn't afraid of telling him that I felt this way.“Yeah, sure”, Bob said. We left the room and I closed the door behind us. “What's the problem?”, he asked me as soon as I had closed the door. I couldn't quite believe that he said that. He really was asking me what my problem was? Had he really not noticed? This was literally impossible. “What the problem is? Are you blind?”, I hissed. Bob looked at me, seemingly amused. “No, I just really don't see a problem here”, he said. “Do you find it right so force Josh to sing? To pressure him like this? This is not fair, it's not fair to act as if he had no say in this” “You know what? You're right. You're totally right. But I think you forgot something: Life isn't fair. And this is MY record, if I want him to sing then he will sing. I don't have the time or nerves for this unnecessary drama. Who cares if he feels comfortable singing? I don't ask him to sing lead on any songs, it's just backing vocals on a few songs. If that's too much for him, he can just leave and waste his talent”, Bob now responded, speaking a bit louder than before.

“I think you forgot something yourself: He's playing almost all the instruments on this record, it's HIS record, too” “I could have other people playing the instruments, you know? There are so many people who are waiting to get a chance in this business, he's not the only one. But I asked Josh because I believe in him, I think he's very talented and that's why he's here. And if I want to help I have to show him how things work. The music business is a hard business, I'm not sure if you're aware of this. I really can't treat him with kid gloves. He can't just cherry-pick his way through life, that's not how things work”, Bob said in a stern voice. “Yeah Robert, I'm perfectly aware of this. I actually talked to Josh about this yesterday. He said he'd try to sing. He's just afraid of embarrassing himself. But maybe it would be better to talk to him and encourage him, show him your support instead of just telling him what to do”, I argued.

“You know, I'm not here to be a nice person. I'm here to make a good record and i'll do whatever it takes to do exactly that. You can be nice to Josh if you want to, and you know I'm nice too, if i'm not working, but just let me be an asshole if I need to be one, okay? I'm not doing this for fun” Bob seemed upset but also a bit amused at the same time. I just shook my head, not really knowing what to say anymore. I think we had gotten to the point where he knew he had won this argument since he had good reasons for doing what he did and this was just his way of handling this situation and because he knew that, he didn't really take me seriously anymore. I decided to not try and discuss this with him any longer, I had said everything I had to say. We'd see how the situation would develop.

I turned around and walked to the other end of the room and stood as far from Bob as possible in this rather small room. I was trying to calm down a bit, my heartbeat always gets fast when i'm in a discussion. I don't like confrontation in general but I don't really avoid it. It doesn't make sense to avoid it because if you always avoid conflict you'll never actually get what you want and it will just leave you bitter and unhappy. It took me some time to learn this and to learn to stand up for myself and others and to just stand my ground but I must say that it's worth it. Fights and discussions and arguments aren't nearly as scary to me now as they used to be. It's something you really need to practice. I guess that's why it's so important to fight with your parents when you're young. You can have bad fights with your parents, but they won't ever stop loving you. That is if they're caring parents, if they're not, well, then you're fucked. But for real, I see family as kind of a place where you can prepare for social interaction and situations you'll have to face later in your life without really risking anything. I mean, friends can turn their back on you. And they will, sometimes they just do, even if you never fought. It's just normal. But family will always be family. And this fact can on the one hand really be scary somehow, but it can also free you from a lot of pressures and give you the opportunity to try things, to really argue and sometimes to even go too far. Or at least that's what it should be like from my point of view. I hope this made sense to you. But now let's go back to the story.

“You're only doing this because you have a crush on him, right?”, I heard Bob say behind me and it made me snap out of all my thoughts. I almost choked on the sip of water I had in my mouth when he said this. I coughed a few times and tried to catch my breath.

“What did you just say?”, I asked as I turned around. “You're only doing this because you have a crush on him, right?”, Bob repeated what he had said. “No, what? Why are you thinking..? How did you come to believe that..? What?”, I stuttered, perplexed by what he had asked me. “I'm just being a nicer person than you are and the only thing you think of is... You just assumed I had a crush on him because I care? I'm sorry to disappoint you, I just care about the people around me in general. That concept's called 'being a decent human being' by the way, maybe you should try it some day”, I then added. Bob was holding up is hands in defense,”Okay, sorry if I hurt your feelings, ma'am. In this case in misinterpreted something. But if you're sure you're not having a crush on him, then... then that's pretty sad” I was confused for a moment, not understanding what he meant.

“What? Why sad?”, I asked, still surprised and confused. A cocky smile formed on Bob's face as he put his hand on the door handle of the door to the recording rooms. “Because the two of you would definitely make a good couple”, he said and before I could respond in any way to what he had just said he opened the door and disappeared.

#chapter 4 #josh klinghoffer #fanfic #josh klinghoffer fanfiction #rhcp #i really need a fucking title... #the next chapter will be different

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

Here it is, the third chapter, my favorite chapter so far. I enjoyed writing it and i hope you’ll enjoy reading it. I also hope it’s not too boring for your taste and that there are not too many typos / grammar mistakes…

Three

The warm sun on my skin woke me up the next morning. When I opened my eyes I was confused at first but after a bit I remembered what had been going on the night before. I slowly got up, not really wanting to leave the warmth and comfort Josh’s bed was providing. I took a look at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It said 11:30 am. How the hell had I been sleeping that long?

I’m normally not the person to sleep that long. I wouldn’t say i’m an early bird, but sleeping till 11:30? That’s a waste of lifetime. This also made me wonder why Josh hadn’t woken me up. If it was him sleeping in my bed I would definitely have woken him up earlier. I finally got out of bed and left the bedroom. The bathroom was empty, and so was the kitchen. I walked into the living room but Josh wasn’t there either. I took a look around the room, wondering what was going on. Had he left for somewhere? I didn’t think he would just have left without leaving a note or something like that. But there was no Josh and no note to be seen in the living room.

The drinking glasses we had used the day before were still standing on the small table, the cushions on the sofa were lying there just the way I had left them. Then I saw something outside of one of the open windows, in the bottom right corner to be exact, and as I walked closer I realized that what I had seen was a bit of Josh’s hair. He was sitting outside on the stairs of the fire escape, enjoying the sunshine and smoking a cigarette. He must have heard me coming closer because he turned around and greeted me with a small but friendly smile.

“Good morning! So you’re finally awake?!“ I blinked a few times, my eyes had to get used to the bright sunlight. Even though it was February it was relatively warm and the sun shined just like it did in June. “Well, it’s not really morning anymore… but at least I’m out of bed”, I mumbled.“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Josh looked at me, confused, “Well, there was no need to waken you, so I thought i’d just let you…Should I have woken you up? I’m sorry if…” “No, no, it’s alright. I was just wondering if it doesn’t bother you having me around… sleeping in your bed all day… I just don’t want to bother you, you know?”, I said interrupting his speech.

His gorgeous smile returned to his face as I said that. “Oh, you’re not bothering me… Also, you look kinda cute when you’re sleeping…” His last comment made me blush and as he saw me blush, Josh blushed himself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said this… now I sound like some creepy stalker… oh god, it sounds as if I had been sitting next to the bed all night, i’m sorry…”, he mumbled, looking down. I laughed at his comment about sounding like a stalker. But yeah, the thought of him sitting next to the bed watching me sleep all night definitely was creepy. Like in this song by Sting, “Every breath you take”…

“No it’s okay, I swear…”, I said, trying to comfort him a bit. “…I actually find it… cute that you said that…” Josh now looked back up but blushed even more. “Where’s John?”, I quickly asked, trying to diffuse the awkwardness that filled the air by changing the topic. “He left… he called himself a taxi about two hours after you went to bed.” The silence between the two of us lasted a few minutes and to my surprise it was Josh who broke it. “So, you had a good night’s sleep? Do you find my bed comfortable?” His question made me laugh a bit, then I answered, “Yes, it’s very comfy and it smells like heaven, I guess that’s why I slept this long… How about you? How long did you sleep?” It seemed to be the wrong question to ask because Josh seemed to become bitter all of a sudden. “Not at all”, was all he responded. He looked away, staring at the other buildings and the street underneath us.

“Aren’t you tired then?”, I asked cautiously, trying to keep the conversation alive and guide it in a different direction without being too direct about it. “No, i’m used to this… it just happens from time to time, but it’s not that bad. I’m good ”, he responded, forcing the smile back on his face but it was just too obvious something bothered him. I wanted to know more about it, about what was going on here, about what bothered him and about why he couldn’t sleep, but I wasn’t brave enough to ask. It was obvious he’d rather not talk about it and I didn’t consider myself in a position to have the right to know what was going on. “Shouldn’t we be in the studio, by the way?”, I quickly changed topics, hoping to make both of us feel better in this situation. “I called Bob and told him that we wouldn’t come to record today” “What did he do? Shout at you? Or did he throw his cellphone at the wall?”, I giggled, trying to bring the good atmosphere back and having the picture clear in mind. To my relief Josh seemed to be a bit at ease again. “No, to my surprise he didn’t! He just told me it was okay and he’d see us tomorrow… crazy times” he laughed, then he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray he held in his hand. He stood up from the stairs he had been sitting on and signaled me to move away from the open window so that he could climb back in. “One could say so. But… if we, or better said you, won’t record anything today… what are we going to do all day, then?”, I asked, unsure. “Or would you prefer it if I went home and left you alone?”, I quickly added when I noticed that I had just assumed he wanted me around. Josh walked towards the kitchen as I was saying this and stopped at the non-existent door to answer my question. “Um.. well, if you don’t have any plans yourself… i’d suggest we just stay here, I don’t really feel like leaving the apartment to be honest… but i’d love to have your company.” He disappeared into the kitchen as if he was fleeing from my reaction. Even though he was out of sight I was sure he had blushed and this thought itself made me giggle. “And i’d love to keep you company!”, I half - yelled to make sure he heard me.

So Josh and I stayed in his apartment all day long. The fire escape was the farthest we went, climbing in and out through the window every now and then, but most times we just stayed in the living room. We ordered pizza and watched a few movies - Josh had a few video cassettes, mostly old gangster movies both of us had already seen but we watched them anyways - talked a bit about our favorite movies and books. “I guess you like to read, don’t you? I mean, you have a lot of books in your bedroom”, I said as we had talked the topic of movies to death already, “Yeah, I do, but I don’t read as much as it looks like… I think I haven’t finished about half the books in my bedroom yet. I’m good at starting books but most of the time, I loose interest after a bit and just put the books aside and if the book’s lucky I finish reading it a few weeks, sometimes months, later. And sometimes the books never get to tell me the end of their stories. But I do enjoy it, yeah”, he said as he searched for a CD to play next. We had already listened to Pink Floyd’s album “Wish you were here” after watching all the movies. “I know that problem! I usually start reading a book, then I put it aside for a few months, then I read the ending and if I like the ending I read the whole book in one go”, I explained. I wasn’t joking, this is really how I do it. Most people ask me why I’d read a books ending before I read the story itself - “doing this spoils the whole story!” or “books aren’t meant to be read this way, this destroys the authors hard work” are the things most people say if I tell them about my way of reading books. I think the reason why I read like this is that I can’t handle all the tension that’s slowly built up if you read a book from beginning to end. I get so emotionally involved in these stories that I can’t handle it if I don’t know the way it all turns out in the end. And I don’t even want a happy end in every book, I don’t mind if the book doesn’t end well, this really doesn’t matter to me at all. I just need to know it beforehand. “Uh, yeah, I do that too sometimes, reading the ending of a book before I read the rest…”, Josh now said, still looking for a CD. It wasn’t surprising that he didn’t find what he wanted right away: he had a shitload (I’m allowed to cuss here, right?) of CDs and all of them were just randomly piled up in one corner of the living room. “What are you looking for?”, I asked, getting up from the sofa and walking over to him to help him. Four eyes see more than two, right? “Wait! I found it! Here it is, one of my favorites. Don’t look, you’ll know what it is when you hear it!”, Josh responded, stopping me in my tracks. “Oh, okay…”, I just said, a bit confused, as I walked back to the sofa I had already been laying on yesterday and sat down. Just a few seconds later he had put the CD in the CD-player and the music started. Within the first few seconds I had a suspicion on what this was. “Radiohead?”, I asked, not a hundred percent sure. Josh turned around, an unsure expression on his face himself. “Yeah, Radiohead… But, uhm, if you don’t like it or you’d prefer to listen to something else..” I cut him off and explained,“No, it’s great, I like Radiohead a lot! I just wasn’t sure whether it really was Radiohead.” So for the next 53 minutes and 21 seconds we listened to Ok Computer, me still sitting on the sofa, Josh sitting on the floor in front of his shelf stereo with his legs crossed. He occasionally hummed along to songs and sometimes he would even quietly sing along to some of them. He’d just sing quietly to himself but it was still loud enough for me to hear it. And the more I heard the more I understood why Bob wanted Josh to sing backing vocals for their record.

“Bob told me he wants you to do backing vocals for your record, but he’s afraid you wouldn’t want to do it”, I stated shortly after “The Tourist” had finished. Josh sighed, “Yeah, he spoke to me about it. And if he thinks I don’t want to do it he’s damn right, I don’t want to and I won't” “Why not? Why don’t you just try and see what happens?”, I suggested. “No, no, you don’t understand, I can’t do this, this would be horrible, I just can’t sing, and my voice sounds awful,” he responded, a shocked expression on his face. “You can sing, and your voice is good! Do you really believe that Bob would want you to sing on an album, on his album, if it was awful? I mean, come on, he’s your friend, right? He wouldn’t lie to you. You know him. And I wouldn’t lie to you either. Why not just try it?”, I sat up on the sofa, looking at him with a soft smile on my face. I didn’t want him to feel pressured, but I felt like I just had to encourage him to at least try. Josh didn’t respond and didn’t look at me for a few minutes. I really thought I had just destroyed the good atmosphere with these few words I had said. Just when I wanted to speak again he looked up at me, “You know what? You’re probably right… I should give it a try. It’s just… I hate my voice, I always have and I can’t imagine this turning out well. I just don’t want to embarrass myself…” “You won’t, I’m sure. You can do this. I know you can”, I now said in a low voice, giving him a reassuring smile. He looked down at his hands again, blushing slightly. An awkward silence filled the room as both of us had no clue about what to say next. I finally decided to leave the room for a second and went to the kitchen. “I’ll just get myself some more water… Do you need anything?”, I said in an effort to bring the relaxed atmosphere back. “No I’m good, thank you”, Josh responded as I walked into the kitchen.

This time my plan worked out. By the time I returned to the living room Josh was sitting outside on the stairs of the fire escape again. I climbed outside through the window and sat down next to him. “Do you know what most smokers say when they want to go outside to smoke a cigarette?”, Josh asked me as he looked at the burning cigarette he held in this hand. “I guess you’ll tell me”, I responded. He looked at me with a grin on his face, laughing at his own joke. “'I need to get some fresh air!‘”, he said and added, “Isn’t this ironic? You say you need to get some fresh air but you really just want to inhale more or less toxic chemicals!” I had to laugh at his joke even though it wasn’t even that funny, it was quite lame to be honest, but he was so adorable as he told it, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, you’re right!”, I said, giggling. I looked over at Josh and for once he didn’t look away immediately but held eye contact with me for a few seconds, still an amused smile on his face. And for these few seconds it seemed to me like time was standing still, like my heart had stopped beating, but not in this scary “shit I don’t wanna die”- way but in a way that made me feel like I had all the time in the world and all the possibilities in the world, like there was nothing and no one to stop me or harm me, there was no one who intended to hurt me and there was no one who could do so even if they wanted to. I felt so safe and at peace with myself, I felt like the whole world was home to me. I felt like this for as long as his brown eyes stared into mine and our souls connected. He looked away eventually and we both started staring at our own feet again, but I just knew that things would never be the same between us, at least for me.

“I need some fresh air as well…”, I finally stated, holding my hand out at Josh. He looked confused at first but after a few minutes his face lit up as he got my hint and gave me a cigarette and his lighter. “Thanks”, I said, lit up the cigarette and took a drag. I hadn’t smoked in a few weeks because I had intended to stop smoking but I just felt like I needed some nicotine right in this moment. I gave the lighter back to him and looked inside through the open window. We were both silent for a few minutes before Josh started to speak again. He just started talking, he didn’t ask me anything. He talked about everything that came to his mind – about how he met Bob for the first time, about his friends and his parents. I liked listening. We sat on the stairs for a lot longer, Josh just kept on talking, I kept on listening, asking questions every now and then.

We talked about our early experiences with music, I told him about my Dad’s early musical endeavors and all the things that happened in his life before I had been born. Josh told me about his first drum set, his first concert and how he once stole his mom’s credit card so that he and his best friend could go to a Pearl Jam concert when they were 13 or 14. He talked about his feelings about finally recording something, he said that he was glad to finally be able to really do something, record songs and make new experiences, gain confidence and maybe even get a foot into the heavy door that led to a career in the music business. We talked some more about our childhood, he told me that it had always been clear to him that he wanted to spend his life playing music. He said he had never even thought about it, it had just been clear to him since his early childhood and it became even clearer the very first time he had held drum sticks in his hands when he was nine.

“I think the thing my parents don’t get is that I was aware of the risk I was taking when I quit school. I think they believe I just thought I’d become a ‘rock star’ - or whatever you want to call it -  over night, but that’s not true. I don’t even want to be famous, it’s just not what I’m aiming for in my life. But I knew that I wanted to play music, and playing music is the one thing I need in my life in order to be happy. So when I quit school I was a hundred percent sure that I was doing the right thing and I still am a hundred percent sure about that. And by the time I quit school I was aware that I probably wouldn’t be able to get a ‘normal’, well paying job but I also was sure that I don’t even want to get a 'normal’, well paying job. So I decided to close this door that lead to a 'normal’ life and instead open another door even though I could only guess what was waiting for me behind it. And I still have no clue to be honest… I don’t know what will happen in my life, but that’s the thing: no matter how many plans you make in your life and how safe your future seems to be at one point in your life, there will always be things you can’t control and can’t prepare for, so in the end no one will ever know what will happen in their life, no matter if they dropped out of high school or got a master’s degree or something. So when I have to choose between a seemingly 'safe’ path that I know won’t make me happy and another path that seems to be more risky but is also more likely to lead me to happiness eventually, i’ll always choose my personal happiness over financial stability… Even if that might seem stupid or foolish to some people”, he said when I asked him about why he took such a big risk at such a young age and quit school at 15. I loved the way he talked about these things, how he held these seemingly endless monologues. One could know from the way he spoke about things if he was passionate about them, if he wanted to have this conversation. He explained things in a very detailed way, in a very interesting way, it was fun to just sit there and listen. It made me feel good because I knew he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t feel comfortable around someone and it made me happy to know that he felt comfortable around me. I didn’t know why but I just wanted him to feel comfortable, I wanted him to know I cared about what he had to say. I deeply cared. I cared about him as a person, as a friend.

“I got one question that got stuck in my head yesterday…”, I started when we were having dinner. Having dinner in this case meant eating pizza with our hands while sitting on the stairs of the fire escape and enjoying the view. “Yeah?”, Josh looked up from his food, he seemed unsure but interested. “It’s nothing personal, it’s just… Don’t your neighbors get mad if you’re playing music all the time? I mean, when you play drums in your living room, don’t they get annoyed by all the noise?” Josh graced me with one of his gorgeous smiles and answered, “Sometimes they do complain, but most of the time they don’t mind. I usually play during the daytime, so it’s not really a problem, plus my landlord supports my musical efforts, he sometimes even comes over to talk about music with me…” I grinned, “Seems like he wants to be able to say 'See, I was right, I told you he’d make it, there you have it, I was right’ when you’re topping the charts one day” Josh blushed a bit but still smiled at me, “I doubt that will ever happen, though…”, he mumbled. “As you said before, you never know what will happen in your life”, I said in a tone that didn’t tell if I was being serious or not.

I enjoyed the day, I really did. I enjoyed talking with Josh, hearing his voice made me feel good, and he had interesting stories to tell. As I said before, I like the way he talks. You can feel that he thinks about every single word he says before he actually says it, that he’s always trying to find the right words, words that are capable of expressing exactly what he thought of. I like that. But I wasn’t sure if Josh enjoyed it to be completely honest. He did seem relaxed and was very talkative, he even made some jokes, but still, I wasn’t sure if he really liked spending time with me or if he just did it because he wanted to be polite and friendly. You’re probably all thinking “what’s her fucking problem? Why would he do that?” but the thing is, this is just something I picked up, a habit, a thinking pattern if you will, I always doubt if people actually like me. And I think everyone does that to a certain extend, I mean in the end you never know if a person actually likes you or if they’re just really good actors, but well, I tend to overdo it a little bit sometimes. I know that I overdo it, but I just can’t help it. I don’t know where this comes from.

The day went by quickly and soon I found myself standing outside Josh’s apartment door. “Um, so, I guess i’ll see you tomorrow then, right?”, he said in a low voice, still kind of shy. “Yeah, at the studio”, I stated the obvious. “Great, um… it’s been fun, having you around I mean…”, he mumbled, looking at his feet. He seemed to be back to his normal shy self. “Yeah, it’s been great, occupying your apartment for two days, bed and bathroom and all”, I responded, trying to lighten up the mood a bit. It worked, Josh’s smile was back and made my heart melt. Silence filled the space between us. “Okay then… goodnight!”, I said and turned around to leave but I didn’t get far. All of a sudden I felt Josh’s hand on my arm so I turned around again to face him, a bit surprised. “Um, Ally?” “Yeah?” “Could… could I maybe… would you be so nice to… would you mind if… Could you give me your phone number? Please?”, he stuttered, blushing and shifting from one foot to the other nervously. I gave him a warm smile, trying to tell him there was no need to be nervous without using words. “Yeah, but only if I get yours in return”, I laughed, got my cellphone out of my bag and gave it to him for him to save his phone number on it. He did the same and I saved my number on his cellphone. “Thanks”, was all he mumbled when I gave it back to him. “Thank you for asking”, I said, then I turned around and left. “Goodnight!”, I heard Josh say as I walked down the stairs and left the building.

#josh klinghoffer #josh klinghoffer fanfiction #rhcp #fanfic #chapter 3

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

So here is the second chapter of this fanfic, a bit more happening this time :) I hope my writing style isn’t too annoying, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Two

When I opened the door to the studio the next morning I immediately knew there was something different than all the other days and it became even clearer when I entered and was greeted with a surprising sight: John and Josh were sitting in the actual recording room, just playing guitar. To be honest I still find it kinda funny to say both their names after one another since they sound so similar. Josh John John Josh, even their middle names start with the same first letter, Adam Anthony Anthony Adam… okay enough of the wordplay.

I decided to keep in the background and not disturb them so I went in, closed the door silently, took off my shoes and sat down on one of the old couches close to the open door that led to the recording room. The couch was turned away from the door facing another couch and for that reason I couldn’t see them so all I did was listen closely and after a few minutes I closed my eyes and left the real world, just listening to the music. I didn’t fall asleep if you thought of that right now, I wasn’t even slightly tired, I just tried to really focus on what I heard. I heard some parts of songs I knew every now and then but they never played the whole songs which sometimes left me a bit disappointed if they played parts of songs I loved. But instead they changed little things which led into them playing something entirely new, then they went on to the next song. They never stopped playing, they didn’t talk at all but they seemed to know what would sound good in this very moment and didn’t shy away from playing what they felt was right. I’m still wondering how they did this. I mean, they had to communicate in some way, right? Had they found out how telepathy works? I’ll probably never know. Why didn’t I ask them back then?

Anyways, I didn’t even notice it right away when they stopped because I still felt the music I had just heard send shivers down my spine. “I didn’t notice you coming in. When did you come?”, I heard Josh say behind me and it made me jump. My eyes shot open and I turned around to see both of them standing in the doorway. I squinted my eyes because the bright light right above my head gave me a headache and said, “Wow, I didn’t notice you had stopped… I have no idea…” When I looked at my watch I saw it was 10 already. “About an hour ago… Where’s Bob?” Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he overslept” John walked towards the kitchen area which wasn’t a kitchen really, just a few cupboards, a sink and a small stove which had never been used as far as I know and asked if I wanted coffee. We only had the choice between drip coffee and instant coffe since there wasn’t a proper coffee machine in the studio, and both wasn’t really my cup of tea, or better said coffee, but as a caffeine addict I couldn’t help but drink it nevertheless. So a few minutes later John sat next to me and Josh sat on the other couch, each of us with a coffee mug in their hands. “How long have you been here? You were already playing when I came here”, I finally ask after a few minutes of silence. “I came here around 8 and Josh, you were here already…” “Yeah I came in just a few minutes earlier…” Award silence filled the room for a few minutes and nobody really knew what to say. “By the way, did we wake you up?”, Josh finally asked. “No no, I wasn’t sleeping, I was just listening to your music and kind of disconnected with my surroundings… You know what I mean, don’t you? I didn’t sleep though”, I said and laughed, I bit embarrassed. Josh blushed but gave me a small smile, obviously kind of embarrassed himself. “So you liked what you heard?”, he then asked. I smiled back at him, “Yeah, I loved it. Listening to you two playing music is really… calming and inspiring… you should do it again sometime” “Yeah, I thought so, too…”, John said, seemingly to Josh’s surprise. He blushed even more and his smile got even wider at John’s comment. I took a sip of my coffee, it tasted disgusting so I got up and put even more sugar in it. I normally don’t put sugar in my coffee but this one was so disgusting that I needed some. Or better said, a lot of sugar. I turned around and leaned against one of the cupboards. “Yeah, anytime…”, Josh now said and right in this moment the door swung open. “Hey guys…”, Bob mumbled as he entered, he didn’t seem to be in a good mood. “Hey, why that late?”, I asked, looking him up and down. “I had Anthony come over, showed him some of the recordings”, he answered, yawning. “Our recordings?”, Josh asked surprised. “Yeah, do you know any other recordings I could be talking about?!” Okay, things were clearly going down the wrong path. I raised my eyebrows while John and I were looking at each other. He was definitely thinking the same as I did. This wasn’t going to end well. “Why did you show them to Anthony?”, John now asked. “Why did I even tell you…”, Bob said to himself but loud enough for us to hear before answering, “Can’t I just show my work to a close friend?! What’s the matter anyway, you know Anthony, I just wanted him to give it a listen.” “Well, I don’t know him…”, Josh now said more to himself than to anyone else but it was clear that it really bothered him that Bob had shown his work to a person he didn’t know without even asking him beforehand. “You’ll get to know him soon enough.” “Great…”, was all Josh said in response to that. Okay, so now we had reached the passiv-aggressive phase of the argument which meant things would either escalate right now or they would escalate in the next fight. And if they escalated in the next fight it would probably be worse than if they escalated now. How did I know that? Personal experience.

But instead of speaking up again Josh excused himself to the bathroom and left the room without looking up from the floor one single time. Bob changed the topic as soon as the door had closed behind him. “So what did you do while I wasn’t here?” He said while pouring himself some coffee. I thought to myself that hopefully his coffee tasted as disgusting as mine did. After some more talking, a heated argument about John’s solo (this time between John and Bob), Josh’s return about ten minutes after he had left (one could still feel the tension between him and Bob), some more recording and another heated argument about John’s solo (again between Bob and John, Josh and I preferred not to get involved in their arguments), the day’s work was done and we all proceeded to pack our things when all of a sudden someone tapped on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Josh standing in front of me, looking nervous. “Hey, I, um, I just… I just wanted to ask… John’s coming over to my place for a bit to… to jam some more… and I asked myself… well… I just wanted to know if you’d like to join us?!”, he stumbled, fidgeting with his hands and looking everywhere but me in the eye.

I was really surprised by Josh’s question, so didn’t really know what to say. It was a pleasant surprise, though. “Um, are you sure I wouldn’t bother you? I mean i’d just be sitting around, doing nothing useful…”, I said, trying to make sure he didn’t just ask me in an effort to be nice. I had the feeling he’d do something like that: bringing himself in a situation he didn’t really like just to make the others felt good. “No no, it would be fine… you… you seemed to have enjoyed it so much in the morning that I thought… but if you don’t want to you don’t have to… I don’t want to force you… I just… sorry…”, Josh now said, turning red and acting even more nervous before turning around and starting to walk away from me. “Great, really well done, Ally”, i said to myself so no one apart from me would hear it. It made me feel really bad to see him like this and be the reason why he felt embarrassed and I didn’t know what to say in order to stop him from walking further away and try to escape this situation so without thinking any further I just grabbed his arm to stop him. Josh turned back around to face me and there was surprise on his face but I also saw some hints of anxiety in his facial expression. He seemed unsure of what to do and I started to believe that I had just made this whole situation even more awkward and uncomfortable for both of us. “Wait… I’d love to come. I just thought i’d better make sure that you didn’t just ask because you thought you had to… i’m sorry if I hurt your feelings…”, I then said, my voice trailing off at the end of the sentence. I’m not even sure if he heard the last sentence. Now Josh gave me a small smile. “It’s okay… i’m glad you want to come with us.”, he said in a low voice. Bob walked around the room while of this happened, whistling loudly as if to signal us that he wasn’t listening. Then he left the studio with a - considering all the fights and negative emotions of the day - way too cheerfull “goodbye guys, see ya!” and slammed the door closed. I couldn’t help but feel like Bob had planned this to a certain extent. And I still believe this, he wanted this to happen. He wanted John and Josh to become friends, to jam and work on music together, he wanted to make Josh familiar with what it meant to be a professional musician because he believed Josh had the potential to become a professional musician. But even though Bob’s plans seemed so obvious to me, Josh himself didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he did, I don’t know, we never talked about it. I wasn’t sure if John suspected anything or even knew anything. He probably did, he’s not that blind. I think he knew, even if Bob never told him. I’m quite sure he did. But it didn’t and it still doesn’t matter really because we all knew John wouldn’t waste his time doing something he didn’t enjoy or have faith in, not even for his closest friends. It’s just not part of his nature. “What are you waiting for?”, John spoke up and made me snap out of my thoughts, he was standing close to the door, Josh stood right next to him, seemingly waiting for me to leave with them. “Oh, um, nothing, I was just thinking…”, I said while slipping on my shoes. I always put them off when I enter a familiar building, a place where I can and should get comfortable. I just can’t stand wearing shoes inside. It’s just another weird habit of mine, just like brushing my teeth while I’m showering and not tying my shoe laces if it’s not absolutely necessary. I normally just put the shoe laces inside the shoes without tying them. That’s my lazy side I guess. “How do we get there?”, I asked after I was ready to leave. “Um, it’s not far from here, I usually take a bus…”, Josh stammered. “You take a bus?”, I said, giggling. “Yeah, that’s what people do if they can’t afford a car, you know?”, Josh mumbled. I looked over at John who didn’t look as amused as I had expected him to look. “Did you drive here by car?”, I asked him, he shook his head no. “I can’t drive”, he stated. “Okay… we’ll take my car”, I laughed, trying to make this situation less awkward. Let’s just say I didn’t succeed. A few minutes later we all sat in my car, me at the driver’s side, Josh next to me on the passenger seat and John in the back. Josh was giving me directions while John hummed along to the songs on the radio. “Turn right… now turn left… see that house right there? that’s it…”, we reached the building after about half an hour of driving which was literally nothing for LA. I pulled up into the driveway and parked the car. “Here we are…”, I mumbled as I got out of the car. John and Josh got out, too, and got their guitars out of the trunk. Luckily the car Sophia (my flatmate) and I shared had a big enough trunk for both of their guitars. I waited for them next to the front door of the apartment building. We all went in and up the stairs to the third floor. I don’t remember if the elevator didn’t work at that time but for whatever reason we climbed up the stairs and by the time we reached the third floor I was glad that my own apartment was in the first floor. Josh finally locked the door to his apartment open and let us enter. “It’s small, but it’s enough for me…”, he mumbled and switched on the light. I looked around, standing in the doorway. The only thing the doorway lacked were doors that led to other rooms. There really wasn’t a lot a space, and as I already said there were no doors in between the rooms and the doorway. What do you call a doorway without doors? Is it just a “way”? Or is it a hallway? Okay i’ll end this discussion with myself right now. To my left there was a small kitchen, to my right there was the bedroom and the bathroom, and then at the end of the hallway there was the living room. “Just make yourself comfortable,… ”, Josh said and led us into the living room, put down his guitar case and left the room. I put off my shoes, John did the same, then I looked out the window for a second. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining as it always did in California. “I’m still not used to this weather…”, I said more to myself than to anyone else. John just walked around the room, looking through the piles of Josh’s records, picking up an acoustic guitar which was standing in one corners of the room, then going through all his CDs, checking out the turntable and the small fucked up old drum set that stood in one corner of the room, then again going back to the acoustic guitar. I just watched him doing this, not knowing if I should ask him to stop. After all, he wasn’t at home and Josh wasn’t in the room. I didn’t say anything, though, and just a few minutes later Josh entered the room again, three drinking glasses and a bottle of water in his hands. John didn’t seem to notice. Josh put down the things and walked over to John, who was still holding the acoustic guitar in his hands, looking if up and down. Then John looked up, a confused look on his face,“Wait a second… you can’t afford a car… and you live in this…” “shithole, yeah?”, Josh completed John’s sentence before John continued to speak, “…but you got this guitar and about two hundred records?!” Josh blushed a little bit, “Well, I do have a job if you don’t remember” “You can’t be that bad with money if you could save up enough to buy this, huh?”, John smiled. Then he saw my confusion and added for me, “This guitar is from the 1940s, it’s worth an awful lot of money, 6,000$ at least, probably a lot more though” I felt my eyes grow in awe. This thing should be worth more than 6,000$? How the hell could Josh even afford to buy this? Josh now blushed even more, played with his hands and stared at the floor. He was clearly embarrassed even though there was a small smile on his face. “This guitar is part of the reason why I said i’m NOT good with money… Bob and I… we… we went to New York to sign the contracts for… for the Bicycle Thief album… and… we each got… a 10,000$ advance… what was I supposed to do? I was in New York, with 10,000$, how the hell could I not go and see if there was anything special that I could buy now?! So… I came back with this guitar… and a hundred CDs…” John let a light laugh escape his lips. He put the guitar back to where he had found it. “Oh you’re damn right, Klinghoffer!” “Don’t call me that, it’s bad enough if you use my first name…”, Josh mumbled. I shot John a glance saying he should stop the teasing. John seemed to understand and gave me an apologetic look. A few minutes later I was sitting on the sofa, John had left for the toilet and Josh was sitting on the floor, tuning his 1940s acoustic guitar. “Thanks, Ally…”, he quietly said, breaking the silence that lay in the room. I leaned forward, confused about what he was thanking me for. “What for?”, I asked. “For accepting my… awkwardness… and respecting it, and for, for your support in this… this situation with John, a few minutes ago”, Josh answered, not looking at me. “Oh, uh, there’s nothing to thank for, really… ”, I stuttered, not knowing how to respond and blushing. “no, I… I really appreciate it… i’m glad you noticed… you know, sometimes it’s hard for me stand up for myself, especially if there’s not really anything I could complain about… or at least most people think so… so i’m glad if there’s someone who understands…” Again, I didn’t know how to respond and the room filled with awkward silence for a few minutes until I heard the toilet flush and the door (yeah, there actually WAS a door for the bathroom, the only door in this apparent, except the front door of course) open. I was relieved when John came back in so Josh and I wouldn’t have to sit in awkward silence or talk about this any longer. John got his guitar out and sat down next to Josh. He plugged his guitar in but kept the volume of the amplifier low so that it wouldn’t be much louder than Josh’s acoustic. He let his fingers glide up and down the strings and before I realized it, the room started to fill with their magic again. I remember this moment vividly, as if it happened just a few minutes ago. It’s a beautiful memory, one of my favorites actually. It felt as if the room was breathing, it filled with peace and warmth and passion as the music floated through it. I closed my eyes for a minute, trying to fully enjoy every aspect of this magic I couldn’t understand, and I didn’t want to open them again because I was afraid it wouldn’t feel the same if I saw the world around me. But when I finally opened them, it didn’t stop, it didn’t change for the worse. Josh’s small living room seemed to contain the entire world in this very moment. It was the only thing that mattered, this music in this room in this very moment. I came to see that Josh had closed his eyes himself and John was now half lying on his back on the carpet half leaning age the sofa I wasdon’t sitting on, still playing. It made me smile. It made me smile that they felt the magic, too. And it stil makes me smile to think about it.

I don’t know how long they played their instruments, it felt both like centuries and seconds. But eventually the sun had disappeared and it got darker outside. John was now sitting on the floor again (instead of laying on the floor), strumming some chords, a small smile on his face. I could tell he was feeling good. I guess all of us were feeling good, not just physically but mentally andand spiritually, at least I felt great in every single way possible. “It’s getting dark, I should probably leave…”, I finally whispered in a quiet moment. I didn’t want to fill the room with my voice after all this magic happened in here. And I didn’t want to leave, but I felt like I had to. Josh stopped playing, opened his eyes and stared at me. “No, I don’t want you to leave…”, he said with a soft voice. I was surprised by how straightforward he formulated his feelings. “I mean, of course you could leave if you wanted to… but i’d rather you’d stay here… You could sleep in my bed if you’re tired… if you want to…”, he added, still staring at me. I opened my mouth to tell him that I had to leave, I was tired and hungry, but said nothing. Instead I leaned back again and closed my eyes for a second. Josh went back to playing and I tried to relax again. Suddenly my stomach started growling which made me blush a deep red. John looked at me and grinned. “Do you have anything to eat? I didn’t eat anything all day…”, I mumbled. Josh looked at me wide-eyed, a shocked expression on his face. “Are you crazy?”, he put his guitar down and got up, walked into the kitchen and waited for me to follow him. “We have… toast… some eggs, orange juice… some cookies… butter, milk, jam…”, he mumbled while going through the fridge and all the drawers in his kitchen. In comparison to the living room the kitchen was tiny, but it was also neat and tidy which you couldn’t really say about the living room. “Do you have flour?”, I asked. “Yeah, of course, what do you wanna make?” “Just a few omelettes, do you want some, too?”, I asked. “Yeah, please… i’ll go ask John if he wants some, too”, Josh left the room and I started cooking. John was also hungry so I made omelettes for all of us, it didn’t take me long. When I was finished I went back to the living room, a plate with three omelettes per person in my hand. “Thank you so much!”, John said, smiling at me when I entered. We all started eating, now I sat on the carpet, too. We ate in silence, sharing glances and smiles. When we were finished Josh put the plate back to the kitchen and brought some paper towels because we had dirty hands from eating without forks and knives. I yawned, feeling tired. When Josh came back I asked him if he really was okay with me sleeping in his bed. “I could sleep on the sofa, you know, it’s no problem…”, I suggested. “No, no I… it’s perfectly fine, you’ll sleep in my bed, it’s a lot more comfortable. Come, i’ll show you the bedroom”, Josh smiled, got up and gave me his hand to help me up. I told John goodnight and he gave me a heartwarming smile, and then told me goodnight. I followed Josh out of the living room and to his bedroom. Again, the room didn’t have a door but there was a curtain where the door would normally be. He switched on the light and the small but nice and cozy looking bedroom was illuminated with warm light. There were quite a few books in his bedroom, five alone on the nightstand. It was only when I wanted to brush my hair out of my face that I realized Josh was still holding my hand. It made me smile a little bit, the fact that I hadn’t noticed even though he had a tight grip on it. Hell, I sounds like a creep when I talk about all the smiling! But I can’t lie about it, we all felt so good and smiling felt so natural. I just couldn’t help it. And even if it sounds as if I was a either kinda retarded or a creep, I can’t leave it out. My hand seemingly disappeared in his big, warm one. “Oh, sorry…”, he said as he felt me moving slightly and let go of my hand. “Uhm…”, I said as I was now brushing my hair out of my face. “Do you have a toothbrush I could use?” Josh smiled (yeah, again, please don’t count how often I used this word already) slightly, “Yes, of course…”, he led me out of the bedroom and into the bathroom across next door. If you paid attention you’ll know that this time it was indeed next “door”. He got out a new toothbrush for me, gave it to me and left the room. I brushed my teeth looking in the slightly cracked mirror and examining my face. I looked about as tired as I felt and that made me wonder why I was even this tired. I hadn’t really done anything that day, so what made me even feel this exhausted? After a few minutes I left the bathroom and headed back to the living room to thank Josh again for letting me sleep in his bed. Yeah, this might not have been necessary but i’m the kind of person to do these things - thanking people a thousand times for things even after they said there was nothing to thank for. It’s just something I do. On my way to the living room I saw that the light in the kitchen was switched on and as I came nearer it became clear that Josh was in there and instead of in the living room. I leaned against the door frame and lightly knocked on it so I wouldn’t make him jump. He turned around, surprised to see me again this evening, but with his cute smile (uh…) on his face. “Do you need anything?”, he asked. “No, no, I just… I just wanted to thank you again for… literally letting me invade your apartment and even your bed… thanks for letting me sleep in your bed”, I said. Josh came a bit closer. “I told you it was fine, there’s nothing to hide from you and… I guess I won’t sleep much anyway…”, he blushed slightly. In a moment of bravery which took me myself by surprise I now grabbed his hand and slightly squeezed it, “Thank you anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow” I let go of his hand, he was just standing there, seemingly startled, looking at me as I turned around and left the kitchen. As I passed the curtain in the door frame to his bedroom I heard him say “Yeah, um… goodnight… sweet dreams…” I bit my lower lip as I heard this, still feeling a bit nervous and got comfortable in Josh’s bed, inhaling his smell which now surrounded me and listening to the soft sounds of the guitar playing in the living room.

#chapter 2 #josh klinghoffer #fanfic #josh klinghoffer fanfiction #rhcp

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

so this is the very first chapter of this fanfiction, please keep in mind that it’s my very first fanfiction and that english isn’t my first language, so please don’t hate me ._. this is more of an introduction to the characters and the setting, so there’s not a lot happening in this chapter and it's rather short, I hope you enjoy it anyway ♥

One

It was the third day of the recording of the Bicycle Thief album which didn’t have a name yet. Or better said the third day I was there, they had started recording a few days earlier. We, well, they were making good progress, and the time in the studio was overall enjoyable. I was sitting on a couch talking to Bob as we were waiting for a friend of his who was supposed to play a guitar solo on the record. And though he was 15 minutes late already, no one was worried. Bob and I were having a good talk and Josh, the guy who played guitar and a few other things for the Bicycle Thief, was playing guitar on his own in the other room. Bob was by far no stranger to me, my Dad had been good friends with him for a long time, then they lost contact as Bob went down the road of drug addiction, but when he got better, they started talking again and my Dad introduced us. Even though I have to admit that Bob was kind of a strange fellow, I still liked him. And I still do like him, it’s just we don’t talk that often nowadays. I haven’t seen him in a few months, actually. But now let’s get back to 1999.

So Josh was playing guitar in the recording room as we talked. From the first day I met this guy on I kept thinking to myself that he really seemed like a nice guy and he was definitely talented as fuck, but he was way too shy to work in the music industry. Looking back this thought alone is proof to the fact that I didn’t really know him back then. And I definitely wasn’t an expert, i’m still not, but I think almost everyone would have thought something like this in this situation. In a way he just seemed too “arty” to really have mainstream success and not outgoing enough to grab everyone’s attention. At least at that point. I was surprised when Bob, who was and still is well known for his work with Thelonious Monster, brought him in. Or better said I was surprised that Josh had the confidence to work with Bob who was known for being eccentric, not really an easy person to work with, a crazy guy. But Bob had sobered up and maybe he had even grown up a little bit. “Josh is really talented…”, I said to Bob, trying to guide the conversation in the direction I wanted it to go and get to know more about this guy.

“Yeah, he is… And you need to know he’s not even a guitar player in the first place.” “I thought so, I saw him playing drums the other day…”, I said. “Yeah, he started playing drums when he was 9 and started playing guitar when he was about 15, learned it all by himself… But he can do it all, i’ll have him play other things, too… and I guess he’ll do some vocals… I know he doesn’t want to but his voice is really good so i’ll just force him to do them…”, Bob was obviously excited about his “new discovery” but I have to admit that he knew what he was talking about. He may have fucked up his life and his health with drugs but he was good at recognizing true musical talent. It made me smile. “How old is he now?”, I asked, interested in what Bob was telling me. “He’s 19”, Bob noted, looking at me with a small smile on his face. I couldn’t quite believe what I heard. I mean yeah, he looked really young but still, he couldn’t have taught himself to play guitar like this in four years. “He’s started playing guitar only just four years ago? Wow. Okay I guess I should correct myself and say he’s fucking genius.” My comment made Bob laugh for a bit before he said, “No, he’s just in love with music, he’s living and breathing it, he’s very creative and hardworking. But I wouldn’t call him genius, certainly not” “I’d definitely call this genius. I mean, i’m trying to learn playing guitar since almost ten years now and i’ll never be that good…”, I laughed at my own incompetence and lack of talented when it came to this kind of things “Anyway, how did you meet him?”, I asked, still curious. “Well… That’s kinda funny. He’s best friends with my ex-girlfriend’s brother. We met at a Thelonious Monster gig two years ago, then I found out he lived just down the street from my girlfriend’s house and we started jaming.”

Just as he said this, there was a knock at the door and it was opened. A guy with dark hair and eyes of an indefinable color somewhere between brown and green stepped in. I think this was the very first time I saw him, but i’m not sure. It probably was, though. “Hey…”, he said in a low and soft voice. “John! Come in!”, Bob said delighted. “Sorry for being late…”, the other guy scratched his neck and entered the small room, a guitar case in his hand. So this was obviously the friend we had been waiting for. “No problem, glad to see you”, Bob stood up and gave John a man hug, I got up too and waited to be introduced. “This is Allison, her father owns the studio and she wanted to help so… She’s kind of the gofer”, Bob looked at me and chuckled. In retrospect I have to say that I wasn’t really the gofer, most times I just sat in the studio and listened and watched. I smiled back at Bob and then at John, holding my hand out for him to shake. “Hey!”, i said. “Hi, I’m John…”, he said grabbing my hand and shaking it. Josh had stopped playing guitar and stood in the doorway, a curious look on his face. “You ready?”, Bob asked him. “Yeah, if John’s ready, i’m ready”, Josh said, looking at John. “Wait a second… I know I met you before but I don’t… Josh? Is that your name?”, John said unsure. Josh smiled shyly. “Yeah, Josh! We met only once, and that was two years ago, so I’m surprised you even remember my name to be honest!”, he laughed nervously. John stepped closer towards where Josh was standing and shook his hand. “Yeah… I remember you. So you’re now making an album together? I shouldn’t be surprised…” “Yeah I guess… But I’m sure Bob already told you everything… I mean you wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t”, Josh concluded. John nodded, still a small smile on his lips. “Yeah… Now, let’s get to work, huh?”

Josh and John went into the recording room and Bob and I waited for them to get ready before entering it ourselves. I can only speak for myself but I would have felt out of place if I had just stood there and watched them all the time. “What’s the rest of the song like? Bob didn’t want to show me the recordings you already did on this song, don’t ask me why” “Uhm, it goes like this…”, Josh played one verse and the chorus of the song and hummed the melody. “Okay, do you have any ideas for the solo or shall I just do whatever I want? ‘cause there’s something… an idea in my… you know, something like this…”, John said as he began to play a small guitar part. “Well, i’m no good at doing solos so i’ll just leave it up to you… but I like that!”, Josh said in a low voice, still somewhat shy. John proceeded to play and after about 15 minutes he was content with the outcome of his efforts. I had entered the room about 10 minutes ago and watched the two of them play, well, most times John played something and Josh commented on it, suggested a few things and so on, while Bob disappeared to I don’t know where. He always had this habit of just suddenly disappearing without saying a single word and then reappearing a few minutes later. He does it till this day.

Josh and John really seemed to have some kind of a connection, they didn’t talk much but they played together and it sounded perfect - at least in my ears. Or maybe i’m just thinking this now, memories change over the years and new things are added to them so we don’t actually remember things just the way they used to be. So I don’t know. But let’s ignore this for now.

By the time Bob returned they had already come up with various solos and continued jamming. “You got something?”, asked Bob as he entered the room. “Yeah, we got a few things, you know, something like this…”, John said and proceeded to play him all the things they had come up with. “Could you play the second thing again? Really liked that one…”, Bob said and leaned against a wall next to where I was standing.

After about an hour, and a small argument between John and Bob, they were finally done and decided to go on with recording the next day. Bob left immediately, stating he had an important appointment which none of us believed but we still let him leave. Neither of us seemed to be interested in fighting even more. When Bob had shut the door behind himself Josh let out a loud sigh which made John and me giggle. “Recording with Bob is always a challenge, believe me”, John said, sympathy in his voice. “Yeah, I already came to see that…”, Josh replied in a low voice. There was a certain kind of sparkle in John’s eyes and he seemed to understand. “What did he throw at you?”, he then asked.

Josh giggled, “Once, he threw an apple at me, another time he threw his cellphone at me and then wanted me to replace it when it was broken but I refused since I’m not responsible for his actions and he’s a grown man… At least when it comes to age he is. But this most certainly wasn’t the last time he threw something at me, I mean we still have a lot to record”, he explained while getting his guitar and a few other things he wanted to take with him. John nodded knowingly, “Yeah, he should probably work on that… I was supposed to play guitar for Thelonious Monster before I joined the Chilli Peppers the first time, you know. And I don’t know if he would’ve been an easier person to handle then Anthony was at that time…” I was surprised of hearing of Bob’s tantrums, he had never lost his temper like that in my presence. It shocked me quite a bit to be honest, even though, looking back on it, it shouldn’t really have shocked or surprised me.

“What time is it?”, John then asked. “Well, then I’ve got another hour to kill before rehearsal…”, he sighed after I told him the time. “Uhm, I don’t have plans, how about going for coffee?”, Josh asked looking at the floor, then up at me and John. I didn’t have plans either and hanging out with them didn’t seem like too bad of an option. Both of them seemed to be really nice people, so why not get to know them better? “Yeah, sure, why not?”, I answered. “You can put your things in my apartment, I live right next door…”, I suggested as I saw John picking up his guitar case. Josh and John both followed me outside and over to my apartment. I invited them in and after we put their things in the living room we left for the café.

“Where do you want to go?”, Josh asked the two of us as we stood on the sidewalk in front of my front door. “I don’t know, I don’t go to cafés that often”, John said. “I know a small one just a few blocks from here, they even have real porcelain cups”, I smiled to myself. “What about the porcelain cups?”, Josh asked, amusement in his voice. “It reminds me of Europe, the cups you have here are one of the few things I hate about the US”, I giggled. As we reached the café, I opened the swing door for the others and went in last. We sat down at a table in the back, Josh and I on one side of the table, John on the other side. “Where are you from, then?”, John asked as soon as we had sat down. “Well, my dad’s American but my mum’s from Vienna. I lived with her after they got divorced and my dad moved back here but when our relationship has never been the best and so my mum, dad and I decided that I should probably move and live with my dad when I was twelve or so. And so I lived here for the last few years but I still love Vienna and Europe in general and whenever I come back here from vacation in Europe I want to move back but I never do…”, I explained. I was glad that we already had a good topic to talk about. Just as I was finished a waitress came and asked for our orders. When she left John said, “Oh I can understand this… i’ve been to Europe quite a few times, you know… and I must say it’s a interesting place, so diverse and inspiring… but that was a long time ago” John looked down, suddenly he seemed to be a bit pensive. I smiled at him and then looked over at Josh who hadn’t said a word since we had entered the cafe, well with the exception of his order. “Have you ever been to Europe?”, I asked him, trying to get him involved in the conversation. He looked up from his hands but continued playing with the hem of his shirt. “Me? No, never. I neither have the money nor the time needed to go there but i’d really like to go. But well, I would… I would probably have to learn how to save up money… Or… wait, yes i’ve been to Belgium once, when I was six or something like that, just visiting some relatives… does that count?”, he then says. “I don’t think that counts…”, I said to answer his question and shook my head what caused some strands of my dark brown hair to fall into my face. I quickly tugged them behind my ear again. After the waitress came back with our orders I decided to try and keep the conversation going. “So where are you two from?”, I asked. “Well, I was born in New York City but we moved around quite a lot when I was little… first to Arizona, then to Florida and finally to Santa Monica… then to Mar Vista…”, John spoke first because Josh didn’t immediately answer my question. “But i’d still say i’m from LA, all the important things in my life happened here, you know… ” He took a sip of his coffee and raised his eyebrows at Josh. “Well, me, I was born in Santa Monica, grew up in the valley, in Northridge… then, after I dropped out of high school I just tried to find my place in this city, moved around a bit, did this and that…”, He said, his voice becoming lower and lower with almost every word. “So i’m very much a LA-native” “When did you drop out of high school?”, John asked, suddenly more interested. “At the age of 15, about four years ago… against a lot of protest of my parents…” “Wow. I mean, that’s a huge decision, no surprise your parents were against it”, I commented and took a sip of my coffee. “Yeah, I mean I can understand them and I know they only wanted to help me but… we fought a lot. It was basically war for years. It probably, or better said definitely, wasn’t the best thing for our relationship, but I think they’re okay with it now. I even broke my very first electric guitar fighting with my parents…”, Josh stated and gave us one of his shy smiles. John laughed at that last comment, “That’s a thing, the kid broke his very first guitar fighting with his parents, that’s a story to tell… You know, I dropped out of high school, too, when I was 16, but my parents were okay with it and they were very supportive of my plans of becoming a musician, or an artist in general…” “Yeah, well, I just kept doing what I thought was right and that was getting smart on my own terms. And then I moved out as soon as possible.” We all fell silent for a few minutes, each one sipping on their beverages. John was the only one who didn’t drink coffee, he had some kind of tea I don’t remember the name of but even if I remembered, I couldn’t pronounce it anyway. “Wow, in comparison to these stories my life is awfully boring…”, I ended up saying in an effort of getting the conversation going again. “I doubt that. I mean, it can’t be that boring to hang out in your dad’s recording studio, aren’t I right?”, John said. “Well, I don’t normally do that. I have to work, too”, I laughed. “But at the moment there’s the annual plant shutdown at my workplace - don’t ask me why but it’s every year in February - so I have two weeks off and my dad told me there were going to be recording sessions so I decided to give it a try. Plus my dad’s good friends with Bob so we kinda knew each other already” “So you’re not involved in your dad’s business”, Josh stated. “No, I normally work at a book shop. But i’d love to get more involved in the future. This is my first time watching the whole recording process to be honest…”, I confessed. “Oh, i’m sure you’ll get a chance to get involved again. You know, there are a lot creative people out there and therefore it’s important to keep these rather small studios alive… Bob told me this was your first time recording?”, John said, first talking to me, then to Josh. “Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah… I… I never recorded anything in a somewhat professional way, so… it’s a first time for me, too… yeah” “But you did other things before?” “Yeah, well… after I quit school I started playing in a band but… I soon got kicked out ‘cause I didn’t get along with the other guys. So i kept on playing music on my own… still do, obviously” I couldn’t believe what I heard. How could you not get along with Josh? He was such a kind and shy guy. I just couldn’t imagine getting in a fight with him. But well, I didn’t know him that good at that time. And yeah, I definitely came to see how he acts if he’s pissed a few times, but we’ll get to that soon enough. “And after that I started working at some record store and i’m still working there… since I have to pay the rent somehow… But I guess it’s my own fault, i’m not that good with money” Josh smiled shyly. “But well, you gotta have some flaws, don’t you?”, he then said, obviously joking. I giggled, then i had a look at my watch, “We should get going, showing up late at rehearsal isn’t the best thing to do, or so I heard…”

John insisted on paying and argued he was the one with the best income. Even though I doubted that, I still let him pay for me. Josh didn’t want John to pay for him, but John still paid. As a result, Josh didn’t talk to him while we walked back to my apartment to get their things. He just quietly smoked his cigarette, not saying a single word. Seemingly this was his way of expressing that he wasn’t okay with what had just happened.

We soon reached my apartment, I let them in, they got their things and soon we were all standing at the front door of my apartment to say our goodbyes. “So… I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”, I asked looking at Josh. “Yeah, I guess…”, he said, looking at his shoes, then giving me a small smile. “Did Bob say if he wanted you to come play guitar again?”, I then said, looking at John. “I don’t know, i’m not sure… But I probably will, i’m not quite content with the solo, you know… So I’ll see if I have time tomorrow or sometime…”, he answered. After a few more minutes I gave both of them short hugs, then told them goodbye and finally closed the door as they walked away.

#chapter 1 #josh klinghoffer #fanfic #rhcp #josh klinghoffer fanfiction