Page 47 of Gabriel's Album

I feel the exhilaration of performing rush over me, and I smile at the crowd as we move into the chorus and the guys’ voices join mine. I pull my microphone out of its stand and begin walking down the catwalk at the front of the stage as I sing the second verse.

I’m standing at the end of the catwalk when the second chorus hits and I yell, “Sing!”

I hold my microphone out over the crowd as they sing the chorus in unison. I turn to grin at my friends because this is so fucking epic. I remember sitting in a room and writing this with them, and now there’s thousands of people singing our song and loving it.

I put my microphone back to my mouth and sing again as the chorus repeats, walking back up the catwalk to the main stage. I join the rest of the band to finish out the song, and then there’s a break for the commercials. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I’m on a total high.

“I can’t believe this,” Hayden says quietly while Sebastian’s having his electric guitar switched out for an acoustic.

I throw my arm around his shoulders and grin at him. “Dude, we’re kind of a big deal now.”

“I know, but it’s still pretty weird.” He grins at me.

I wave at the fans nearby and they all beam back at me, with a few of them screaming my name. “You’re telling me.”

“Are you guys ready for the next song?” Harrison asks us.

“Yup,” Sebastian says, walking over to join us with his acoustic guitar.

“I guess we all have to make up for you saying Heather doesn’t count earlier,” I tease him.

Harrison laughs but gets that smile on his face that he always gets when he talks about Heather. “True. I’ll be in trouble when she finds out I’ve been talking shit about her.”

I laugh as well because I know that if Heather got angry about it, she’d most likely be doing it just to tease Harrison.

The commercial break ends, and we launch into “If I Were You.” I remember writing this with Harrison. He did most of it on his own while we were working on another song, “Just So You Know,” but he brought it to us, and we all finished it off together. Heather loves it, of course, and it’s ‘their’ song.

I’m distracted from the performance for an instant when I’m struck by the desire to write a song for Ariana, and it causes me to pause, missing a line in the song. Sebastian doesn’t skip a beat; he leans over to sing the line into my microphone for me. I pick back up while he raises an eyebrow at me, and I smile at him as I sing the song.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Sebastian asks during the next break.

“Sorry, I got distracted. Thanks for covering for me.”

Sebastian frowns at me. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, all good.”

I don’t really want to tell anyone about my plan to write a song for Ariana yet. I want to do the first bit on my own, a bit like Harrison did with Heather’s song. We come back from the break, and the performance of “Living in Your Pain” goes off without a hitch.

We do an interview withThe Today Showhosts before we sign some autographs for the lucky fans that managed to get to the front of the barrier and are within reach of us to sign their items. Then we’re escorted back into the building.

A cameraman who’s been filming behind the scenes footage for the show approaches me and says, “Can you just give an introduction and tell us your thoughts about how it went?”

“Hi, I’m Gabriel from Cruise Control, and we just performed live onThe Today Show. I had so much fun; our fans were amazing, and I think it went well. I’ll have to watch it back later.”

I smile at him, and he says, “Thanks, that was perfect.”

He moves on to have Hayden say something, and I’m taken to the hosts, where Harrison is waiting with them. After the other two join us, we have photos taken and then do a group promo intro before we head back outside.

Sebastian takes off with his biker chick, and we drive back to the hotel in the minivan. We enter the hotel through the back, and I can’t help but notice Sebastian’s friend is with him as we go inside.

“I’ll meet you guys up there,” he says with a smirk as he diverts to the hotel’s lobby with her, and I roll my eyes.

“You’ve got less than five minutes, Seb,” Harrison calls out as a warning.

“I’m glad I wasn’t the one that had to tell him,” Kendall says under her breath.

“It’s always a safe bet to divert all time-based deadlines to Harrison’s control,” I say, and wink at her.

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