Page 17 of One Night

"What's it about?" Austin asks.

"A girl." I shoot them both a look. "And before you say anything, I'm telling you now, I don't want to hear shit from either one of you. You've both written songs about girls. And our fans love those songs."

Austin and Van both stare at me. My fast talking and defensive tone has them even more curious.

Austin speaks first. "So is this about a specific girl or just a girl in general?"

This is why I didn't want to tell them about the song. I knew they'd ask who the girl is.

The song is about a one-night stand and how the girl ran off before the guy could find out who she was. It's a sad, soulful song that expresses how I felt when I woke up and found that Amber was gone.

"It has to be a girl he was with," Van says to Austin. "Dylan never finishes a song, so the fact that he did means he was inspired." He chuckles. "Let me guess. The redhead from that team project you had to do last year?"

"No. It wasn't her." Although I did date her for a week. We went out a few times and that was it. There wasn't anything wrong with her. We just didn't click.

"You spent a lot of late nights with her," Van says. "And you always said you wanted to do a redhead."

I look at him funny. "I never said that. YOU did."

He laughs. "That's right, I did. But I meant a true redhead. That chick from your class dyed her hair. That doesn't count."

"It wasn't her. Now can we just play the song?" I take the music out and hand them each a copy.

My stomach twists as I see them reading the lyrics. Damn, this is hard. Harder than I thought it would be. If it's this hard to share the song with my two closest friends, there's no way I could actually perform it in public.

"This is really good," Austin says. "I like the lyrics." He smiles at me. "But a ballad? That's the last thing I ever thought you'd write."

His comment proves how much I try to hide my romantic side. I don't want them knowing it's there, or knowing anything about my dating life. I don't like sharing that stuff. Pick any other topic and I'll talk to them about it, but girls? I like to keep that private.

"Yeah, I know," I say. "It's not really my style but it seemed to fit the lyrics."

"Is this Lyndsay?" Van asks, holding up the music.

Last March, I told Van I slept with this girl, Lyndsay, that I met at a party. I told him it was a one-night stand, but the truth is, I just made out with her. We didn't have sex.

When I told Amber I'd never done that before, I wasn't lying. Amber was my one and only one-night stand. But I was hoping it would be more than that. So much more.

It's been two months and I can't stop thinking about her. I think about her all day when I'm bored out of my mind at the record store. I think about her when I wake up in the middle of the night. I think about her when I'm performing, wishing she was out there in the crowd.

She's all I think about it and yet I can't find her. I've spent hours, weeks, months, searching online for every Amber in New York City, but so far I've come up with nothing. I considered going there, in the hopes that maybe I'd run into her in some kind of fateful encounter. If it was fate that brought us together the first time, maybe it would intervene once again.

"Was it Lyndsay or not?" Van asks, since I never answered.

"No. It wasn't Lyndsay."

"Then who is it?" He taps his drumstick on his leg, then stops suddenly and points it at me. "That girl!"

"What girl?" I ask, although I'm sure he's figured it out. I didn't tell him much about Amber but he knows I slept with her and he knows I searched for her after that night. And since he lives with me, he saw how depressed I was when I couldn't find her. That lasted about a week and then I went back to being myself so Van wouldn't give me shit about being that upset over a girl. But the truth is, I'm still upset that she's gone. How could she just leave like that? After the night we spent together, she should've at least left me her phone number.

"What girl?" Austin asks.

"That one he met at the frat party after finals week," Van says. "Anna."

"Amber," I say, correcting him.

"The girl who took off without leaving her number?" Austin asks.

"Yeah," I mumble, not wanting to talk about it.

---