story time.

[autumn hali brooks.]

okie doke. so i've had this idea for a story in mind for a while now, and i figure i can always use some help on things like this. if you guys would read through it, it would be much appreciated. mucho gracias.

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Max Baker's Top 10 Reasons Not to Date a Musician

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Chapter One

number 10: they’re all idiots.[/font]

Actually, I think that’s more of a guy thing than a musician thing. If you ever find a guy who’s not an idiot, be sure to tell me first.[/font][/center]

To this day, I cannot remember why we started talking. My first impression of him was that he was an asshole with an ego the size of China. It was a pretty accurate first impression of him, too, if I do say so myself. He’d probably agree with me, too. There was nothing wrong about my first impression of him. That is him in a nutshell. I remember the day we met, though.

It didn’t seem like there was anything special about the day. It was December, and I had just turned seventeen a couple of weeks before. My friends had called up asking if I wanted to go do something, and I agreed. It was winter break by that time, so my days were full of blasting music from the speakers of my computer and watching movies to pass time. There was nothing exciting about my life at that point, so hearing of something to do outside of my house seemed like the most exciting thing possible. I got dressed, changing from my pajama bottoms to some jeans and a clean t-shirt before heading out.

I had no idea where they were taking me. I pulled up to Derek’s house, locking the car behind me and trudging up to his front door, trying to shield my body from the cold winter wind that was cutting through my jacket without so much as an effort. He met me at the door, grinning from ear to ear and pulling his jacket tighter around himself. Derek wasn’t a small guy, and I felt like he couldn’t possibly get cold with all of that muscle on his body.

“Ready?” he asked, the devious smile still on his face. I looked at him for a few moments, wondering why he was blocking me from the warmth of the house just feet away.

“Yeah?” I replied uncertainly. My eyes drifted to his hand as it appeared from his pocket, car keys clutched in them. I looked back at him, raising an eyebrow in question as to what exactly today’s events were going to be. He just continued to smile and took my arm, leading me toward his car.

One thing you’ve got to know is that, at this time, I really liked Derek. A lot. And he was aware that I liked him. It was a mutual feeling. We had crushes on each other, and I was just waiting for the day that it turned serious. There was something about Derek that a person like me couldn’t resist. He was one of the few people that I didn’t push away. It was a habit of mine, pushing people away. But Derek had never done anything to deserve to be pushed away. He was the sweetest guy I’d ever met by far, and it had lead me to these feelings for him that I never would have suspected just a few months ago.

I climbed into the passengers seat, wondering what exactly he had in store for me. I sat there, twisting my hands together, trying to keep them warm in the December cold that was still penetrating the car. Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to wear such a light jacket when it was only twenty some degrees outside.

I was only in the car for about three minutes, and it had just begun heating up when Derek stopped in front of a house that could only have been two blocks from his. I looked out of the window at it, wondering why we were here. I turned back to Derek, still hoping for an explanation, but he just pulled his keys out of the ignition and prompted me to unbuckle my seatbelt.

“What are we doing here?” I demanded, following him as he headed to the back of his house, getting kind of nervous. Derek had been known to be associated with drugs, and even though he was, that was definitely something that I was not into. “Where are we?”

“Band practice,” Derek replied simply, spotting the door that he had been looking for down a short flight of steps. He took my hand and brought me down the stairs, knocking on the door and waiting for someone to get it for us. As I stood there with him, I let what he had said process in my mind. I looked over at him and scrunched my face up.

“You’re in a band?” I asked him, confused. I’d never heard anything about this band before, and I don’t know why he would have kept something like that from me for so long. He gave me a sideways look that clearly told me he wasn’t in a band, but I couldn’t help but wonder what he meant by that. Whose band practice were we going to?

“No,” he said, but didn’t get a chance to explain further. The door opened, and we both turned our attention to the person who had answered it. He was someone who I didn’t know, and that was the first thing that bothered me. He stood only about six inches taller than me. He was shorter than Derek by far, but still tall enough to make me feel like the midget of the bunch. Still, he wasn’t the tallest person in the world. He wasn’t the best looking, either. He had slightly tanned skin, and features that suggested he wasn’t just your average white guy. His hair wasn’t long or short, and it was between black and brown. There wasn’t really anything about him that was average, and at the same time everything about him was.

“Hey, man,” he said, grinning. They did that thing that guys do when they haven’t seen each other in a while. A combination between hugging and bumping fists. I still don’t get why guys do that. Why can’t they just say hi, or hug, or bump fists? Why do they have to do all three? Anyway, it didn’t matter, because while they did this I stood there in the cold being completely ignored.

“This is Max,” Derek introduced me. The guy stepped back to get a look at me, and I saw a smirk come over his face. That was the next bad sign.

“Max?” he asked, in a voice that told me that he had a line coming to make fun of the nickname I’d chosen for myself. Maxine had never seemed to fit my personality quite right, so I’m not sure why exactly my mother and father picked it for me. No one called me Maxine, except for my grandmother, but that’s because I’m actually afraid to tell her not to call me Maxine. That woman is crazy.

“Yeah, Max,” I interrupted before he got a chance to say anything else.

“What’s that short for? Maxwell? Maximilian?”

I glared at him, wishing I could forget the cold that was still piercing through my jacket. Couldn’t he have let us inside before he started this little argument? One thing that you never started doing was picking on my name. For some reason, I am really sensitive about that kind of thing. I don’t see anyone making fun of the name Anna or Jenny. What’s so different about my name?

“Do I look like a boy to you?” I demanded in almost a growl. He opened his mouth to answer, and I was secretly edging him on inside, waiting for him to say it so I could ask him to show me his balls, when Derek broke into the conversation.

“It’s kind of cold out here,” Derek told the guy. He looked at him and shrugged, opening the door wider for us to enter the house. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, at this point, but Derek took my arm and guided me inside. I glared at the guy as I passed him. What a jerk.

“Where is everyone?” Derek asked as I pulled my arm away from him, looking around the room. As the other guy answered him, I took in the room around me. The walls were painted a boring shade of beige, and the carpet was right on point as well. The furniture in the room had been rearranged to fit the instruments and amps that had been added into the room. There was also a microphone on it’s stand, sitting forgotten in the corner of the room. It was obvious that this room hadn’t been touched in a while before it had been recreated into a practice room for the band. A band that I could not see. The only people here were Derek, the guy, and I. Since I knew that Derek wasn’t in a band, and I was pretty sure I didn’t play any instruments and wasn’t that good of a singer, then I wasn’t sure where the band was.

Someone had said something funny while I wasn’t paying attention, because Derek and the guy were laughing. I couldn’t help but become a little annoyed at the fact that I didn’t know the guys name when he had a chance to make fun of mine. I didn’t really want to say anything else to him, though, so I decided to wait it out.

Turns out I didn’t need to wait very long. After the guy was done laughing he turned to me, looking me over once again. I didn’t look very ‘at home’, standing awkwardly in the middle of an basement I had never been in before. He smirked at me once again, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that was the only thing he was capable of doing.

“I’m Jay,” he announced, obviously for my benefit. “Short for Jason.” He hadn’t forgotten our little argument, then.

I just nodded at him, not wanting to sink down to his level and make a comment about his name. As long as he didn’t push me, I wasn’t going to have to. But that was too much to ask for, as I expected it would be.

“Almost as bad as Max,” he mumbled.

“You know,” I said, not able to restrain myself any longer. I had this sickeningly sweet smile on my face that would make me want to puke if I saw it in the mirror. But, you know, I was pissed. Really, no one talks about my name. It’s not something you mess with around me. “When I came here, I was straight, but I think I just became a lesbian.”

He let out a dry laugh and them the war of the insults was on. Derek stood there, helplessly watching us as we threw insults at each other back and forth until Jay’s cell phone rang and he had to answer it. He narrowed his eyes at me, telling me that this wasn’t over, as he grabbed his phone and hurried up the stairs to have some privacy.

“Well, this turned out well,” Derek mumbled, sitting down on the couch, which had been pushed up against the wall for maximum space.

I glanced at him, feeling bad for a minute. I didn’t really have a problem with what was going on. To be perfectly honest, I found it kind of fun. But I wasn’t going to let Jay know that. It took all of the sting of the insults out of it if you knew that they were just playing around. “Don’t worry about it,” I told Derek. “You didn’t know this was coming. It’s not your fault.”

Jay wondered back down the stairs a few minutes later, cell phone in hand. He looked more relaxed than he had before. I looked at him, waiting to see if he was going to throw out another insult and start the war all over again. He didn’t, to my surprise. He tossed his cell phone on the table and took a seat behind the drum set, taking the sticks and starting a beat.

“That was Ben,” Jay told us. I had no idea who Ben was, but Derek did.

“When are they gonna be back?”

“I don’t know. Heard they were having some trouble with the guy at the store.”

“Oh. Well, maybe we should come back another day.”

“Just hang out here for a bit. If they’re not back in a half an hour, you probably should go,” Jay said.

I sat there, feeling left out of the conversation. It continued on for a few minutes, and I distracted myself by counting the number of cigarette butts in the ash tray. There were a lot, and I could never remember if I had counted the one under all of the other ones or not. When I heard my name, I looked up, thinking that it might be Derek telling me that it was time for us to go and I had sat through enough of this torture.

“So, Max. How old are you?” It wasn’t Derek asking this. Derek knew how old I was. My eyes drifted over to the drum set that Jay was still sitting behind, waiting for my answer.

“Seventeen,” I told him. “You?”

“Nineteen,” he replied, his attention having moved on from me to the drum stick he was trying to twirl in his hand. This started our nicer conversation. Our nicer conversation wasn’t nearly as eventful, but I did find out a few things about him.

He was in a band called Silent Theory, on vocals. There were three other guys in the band, and when he played one of their songs for me I couldn’t help but notice that they were pretty good. He lived a few streets away from where we were now. Him and Derek had been friends for almost all of their life. Jay was also very confident about his vocal abilities, and he was cocky about just about everything. He didn’t tell me that, but there are some things that you just get after a while.

A half an hour went by before I knew it, and while I didn’t notice Derek did. By this time Jay and I had done a pretty decent job of getting along, and although I wasn’t going to tell him, I wouldn’t mind talking to him again. As I stood to leave, Jay came over to me with the first genuine smile I’d seen on his face so far.

“Max,” he began, testing the waters. I looked up at him and waited for him to continue. We just looked at each other for a few moments, taking each other in and summing each other up. “You should hit me up sometime,” he finally said.

I looked at him, not quite comprehending what he was saying. He wanted to talk to me? After that insult battle we had just had with each other? He waited for my response, but I was wondering if he was joking. When he didn’t start laughing about a minute later, I decided he was serious. “Okay,” I said, simply.

How he planned on me contacting him was beyond me. He had to give me something. I waited patiently for him to give me a business card or something. He tore a piece of paper out of a notebook instead and scribbled down a few things. He folded it once and handed it to me, clicking the pen and grinning once again. I decided not to look at it until we got back out to the car. Derek and Jay said good-bye, and then we were off, heading back.

How was I supposed to know that something that turned out so strangely would lead to one of the biggest events in my life?

***
Now that you know a little bit about him, I guess it’s time you learned the facts about me. My name is Max Baker and if you ever call me Maxine you will probably get a fist to your face. Because although ‘Maxine’ is technically the name on my birth certificate, there is only one person that ever calls me that, and the only reason she gets to is because she’s a crazy woman and I would fear for my life if I was ever to correct her.

Seeing as my birthday just recently passed, that would make me nineteen years old. Being nineteen is no treat. I have college full time, and while I’m currently very happy with my arrangements, I tend to worry about the future more than I should. I’m the kind of girl that you don’t want to mess with. Some people might think I’m sweet and innocent, and they’d be right. For the most part, I am a really sweet and innocent girl. However, get on my bad side and you have almost no hope of getting back on my good side. There is part of me that is queen bitch, and once you meet the queen you either bow down to her or you get executed.

Another thing that you should probably know is that I am the person who came up with this list. There was no outside help, and all of this is based on first hand experience. I would advise anyone who has decided to read this list to go through all of the points that I have made so you, too, can understand why dating a musician is probably one of the stupidest things that you can do.

Other than that, I’m a pretty normal girls. Okay, so normal wouldn’t be the right word for it. I’m not your typical girl by any means. I’m smart, and I know it. I don’t shove it in people’s faces and start laughing at their idiocy, because like I said before, I’m a relatively nice person. Not to mention that I know there are smarter people than me out there. I don’t like to shop, and I have this insane passion for photography. I doodle in everything, and I have my iPod and cell phone on me at all times. Anyway, what I really meant was that at first glance, I’m your average girl. There’s nothing amazing about me. I’m just me.

I’ve lived in Grey Valley for as long as I can remember. It’s this small town in New York that no one has ever heard of, but that doesn’t really bother me. If someone goes “Where do you live?” And I go “Grey Springs.” Then they just nod like they know what I’m talking about, when I know they’ve got no idea. That’s fine with me. I like being able to feel like I know something that they don’t. I actually lived in Buffalo for the first year or so of my life, but I can’t remember that.

I think I’ve only ever been in one serious relationship in my life, and that didn’t last very long. Maybe four months. Still, I really did have a lot of feelings for the guy. Things didn’t work out between us, though. It wasn’t in my control, and it hurt a lot when we broke up. After that I just dated around for a little bit. I don’t like dating around a lot, because it makes you realize just how many creeps there are out there. However, one of the guys is one of my best friends in the world now. His name is Alex Leslie, and to be perfectly honest, if he didn’t exist than I don’t know if I would have made it this far in life.

Now that we’re all cleared up on the things that you should know about me, let’s fast forward a little into the story.

***
Within the first week of knowing Jay, I had gotten most of my questions answered. The thing was, I was more curious about Derek than Jay. I don’t know how everything went down. I was so distracted by Derek. I was still crushing hard on the guy, despite the fact that Jay and I had gotten really close over the past week. I talked to him everyday, and it was starting to get to be more of something I looked forward to every night.

Still, that didn’t mean that Jay wasn’t an idiot. He made stupid comments all of the time, things that just made you want to roll your eyes and hit him. He called me a babe, and I told him that I wasn’t a babe. “Barbie...” I said, pausing for effect. “Is a babe. And I am not Barbie. You...break Barbies.”

“I could break you in the same fashion, hon.” Now, what do you say to something like that? I knew that it was true. I found out in this time that he had taken martial arts for most of his life, which was something I had never done. Was that supposed to be a threat? I didn’t think that, if it was, he would go through with it.

However, it’s the little things like that. They’re the things that remind you that boys are, in fact, idiots. Still, when you deal with them as much as I do, you learn to get used to it. Well, getting used to it isn’t exactly the right way to phrase it. I guess you just...accept it. No matter what boy you run into, chances are more likely than not that they’re going to be a complete idiot. The same is true with most girls. People in general tend to be idiots.

That Friday, just after Christmas, he invited me to go to one of his gigs. It was at a bar that I wasn’t legally allowed into, but they were making exceptions that night for friends of the band. As long as your name was on the list, you could get in. He assured me that my name was on the list. The next night I got dressed in the usual jeans and t-shirt and headed out, ready to go into the bar and watch the band do their thing.

Derek was there as well. The bar was surprisingly crowded, so I made sure to stay by him at all times. It was the kind of bar that you see in the movies where the college kids hung out. It wasn’t anything special. The walls were painted green and it looked kind of warn, but it was a decent place to hang out, as far as I could tell.

“Hey! I didn’t expect to see you here,” Derek greeted me, coming over and giving me a quick hug in greeting. I hugged him back and looked through the crowd in front of me.

“What time are they supposed to start playing?” I asked over the voices of the people. This seemed like it was a pretty big thing, even though it was just some garage band playing in a local bar. I looked around the walls for a clock to get a hint as to what time it was, because I didn’t have a watch. I couldn’t spot one, however, so I was stuck with whatever Derek’s guess was.

“About twenty minutes. Do you want anything to drink?”

“No, I’m good,” I lied. I was dying of thirst.

“I’m gonna go get something. Are you going to be alright on your own for a few minutes?” he asked, looking generally concerned. I nodded, waving a hand dismissively toward the direction I thought the bar was. “You should go see Jay. I’m sure he’d be excited to see you again,” Derek suggested right before he disappeared into the sea of bodies.

I might as well. He had been the one who had asked me to come here, after all. I shoved my way through the crowd to the front until I could see the band practicing.

After breaking through, I looked around for a sign of Jay, but I didn’t see any. All of that pushing and shoving for nothing? Thanks a lot. I sighed and turned back around, braving myself for the aggressive pulse of the bodies when I spotted that brown black hair.

“Jay?” I asked without even realizing it. He was standing just a few feet away, talking to a pretty blonde girl. He heard me, somehow, and turned to look at me. He grinned from ear to ear.

“Hey, Max. Glad you could make it.”

That was it. That was all I got. A huge grin and seven words. Then his attention was back on the pretty blonde girl. I stared at him for a few seconds, then mumbled to myself about how rude he was being and shoved my way to the back of the crowd again. Just because Jay was being a jerk didn’t mean I didn’t want to hear the band play.