Chapter Twenty-Six

a1’s CD:UK performance went down well, despite Chloe being banned from watching it by Ben for her “own safety”, and a few hours later and the gang were re-united and hanging out in the dressing room, about to go their separate ways again until the next day’s concert.

“We’re gonna make a move now I think.” Ben informed everyone.

“Oh are you going?” Rose asked.

“Yeah.” Chloe said.

“Oh okay, I’ll see you tomorrow then.” Rose said, giving Chloe a hug.

“Do we get hugs?” Paul asked hopefully.

Chloe smiled. “If you want one.”

“I always want a hug.”

Chloe went over to Paul and hugged him.

“It was really cool meeting you.” she said. “You two Chris.” She added, hugging him as Rose gave Paul a hug.

“It was lovely meeting you too.” Chris said.

“You have very huggable girlfriends.” Paul told Mark and Ben. “I think I might take them home with me actually. Come on girls!”

“Everyone’s trying to take Rose off me today!” Mark complained. “Colin wanted to take her to work with him this morning and now you want to take her home! How do you cope with being so popular Rose?”

“Well it’s a chore but I manage.”

“Yeah and you can’t have Chloe either.” Ben said. “Because she’s mine.”

“Well aren’t you the lucky one?”

“I am actually.” Ben said, putting his arm round Chloe’s waist as she came back over to him. He smiled at Chloe. “Very lucky.”

Paul made throwing up noises. “I don’t know how you’ve got so soppy all of a sudden. He never used to be like this.” He told Chloe.

A brief look of worry flashed over Ben’s face but it was so quick that for once even Paul didn’t notice.

“Are we going then?” Ben asked. “We need to go shopping.” He said with a grin.

“I thought you’d forgotten about that.” Chloe said.

“Nope.”

“But you don’t want to go shopping, you want to go straight home.” Chloe tried to convince him.

“No, I want to go shopping. More than anything else in the world right now.” Ben said determinedly.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “You really are so annoying, you know that?”

“Don’t try and change the subject. Come on!” Ben said, dragging Chloe out towards the door.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then guys!” she called as Ben pulled her out of the dressing room.

“What was that about?” Chris asked.

“No idea. They’re very weird people.”

“Well at least Ben’s found someone who vaguely understands him.”

“Yeah.” Mark laughed.

“I hate to admit it but they are sweet together. Very wrapped up in each other.” Paul said.

“Oh totally.” Mark agreed. “You should have seen them on Tuesday when we went to Legoland. It was a nightmare!”

“Think they’ll be together for a long time?”

“Forever.” Rose said.

“Shall we start planning the stag night then?” Paul joked.

“May as well. They’re going to be together forever and get married and have lots of babies and live happily ever after, the end.” Rose informed him.

“And on that note, we should be thinking about going too.” Mark said. “We’re going out tonight.”

“Oh yeah!” Rose said excitedly.

“Where?” Paul asked.

“He won’t tell me.”

“It’s a secret.” Mark said.

“So annoying.”

“Do you really want to know?” Mark asked Rose.

“No.” she admitted.

“Well there you go then! We should go anyway.”

“Okay, see you two tomorrow.” Rose said.

“Yeah.”

“See ya.”

Mark and Rose left the room leaving just Paul and Chris to talk amongst themselves.

“What do you think then?” Chris asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think they’re both lovely girls. Very sweet.”

“They are. They’re both really nice, really cool. Easy to talk to and hang around with.”

“Yeah, they fit right in.”

“Are you relieved?” Chris asked.

“A little bit, to be perfectly honest. When Ben and Mark said how old they were I thought they might be a bit annoying, a bit immature.”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.”

“But they’re not at all. I think they’re great!”

“And very pretty.”

“You can’t say that!”

“Why not? They are. Especially Rose.” Chris said.

“Really? You liked Rose better?” Paul asked surprised.

“Yeah. I mean, Chloe’s attractive, but there’s just something else about Rose.”

“I don’t agree with you there man, I think Chloe’s better looking.”

“No way! She’s nowhere near as cute as Rose.”

“Well that’s the thing though isn’t it? I’m not into the whole cute thing. Makes me feel old.”

Chris laughed. “Didn’t you think Chloe was a little bit superficial?”

“No! Why, did you?”

“Yeah, just a little bit. More so than Rose anyway. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a really nice girl, I just got that kinda vibe off her.”

“I didn’t notice it, but then you are the master with girls.” Paul said, grinning.

“Oh yes, that’s definitely me. That’ll be why I don’t have a girlfriend then.”

“Well I did offer…” Paul said.

They both laughed.

“Shut up Paul.” Chris said.

“What time are we going out tonight?” Rose asked Mark as they sat on the sofa. Everyone was out and they were watching Toy Story in the living room.

“Um… we’ll probably leave at about half 7.”

“Okay, cool. Plenty of time then.”

“Yeah, plenty of time with the whole house to ourselves…” Mark said, kissing Rose.

“Oooh, I can see that being fun.” Rose said grinning.

“Me too. Finally there’s no-one trying to take you away from me!”

Rose was so engrossed in the film that she totally missed Mark’s comment.

“Rose?”

She looked up. “What?”

Mark sighed. “Never mind.”

Rose looked up at Mark and smiled. He really was gorgeous. And better still, he was all hers. Well, partly hers. There was still the whole Sam issue, but she believed Mark when he said that he wasn’t going to go back to her when the baby was born. Which was a relief to say the least. Rose didn’t think she could even bear to imagine what her life would be like without Mark. They’d only been going out for literally days, but she already felt like this was where she had been heading all her life. Where she belonged, where she was always meant to be.

And last night had been fantastic. They’d just stayed up and sat and talked for hours in Mark’s room. They’d discussed a lot of things to do with the baby situation. Mark had said that he didn’t want to ruin Rose’s weekend by bringing it up again, but Rose had managed to convince him that she didn’t mind. She wanted to be there for him when he needed her, and so much as she didn’t really want to talk about it, she knew that it was better if they did. She didn’t want Mark to be worrying about things all on his own anyway.

“Aw I love them! They’re so funny!” Rose exclaimed, pointing at the little green alien toys on the screen.

“They are. I’ve got one of them upstairs.” Mark said.

“Aw cool.”

It was fair to say that Mark wasn’t really paying much attention to the film. He was just relishing the fact that he was sitting here with Rose happy and together, when less than a day ago he came so close to losing her. To reassure himself even further, Mark put his arm around Rose and smiled contentedly as she leant towards him and put her head on his shoulder. It had never been like this with Sam. It had never seemed enough to just cuddle up on the sofa and watch a film. Mark had always felt like he had to try hard to keep her happy, and so being with Rose was such a relief. She was so easy going, made Mark feel so relaxed around her. She made him so happy too, happier than Sam had ever made him.

Mark felt like he could really talk to Rose and last night had proved that because they had stayed up for ages just talking about things. He really appreciated the fact that Rose was willing to talk about this whole baby mess as it helped him so much. She was being so mature about it and it kind of put him to shame a bit. The way he’d reacted when he’d found out was the way she should still be reacting now. But instead she was so reassuring, always telling him that it’d be okay and that they could do it together. Everyone had told him that, the first bit anyway, but Mark believed Rose when she said it because he knew that she really did care and wasn’t saying it just because it was the done thing to say.

Mark still couldn’t quite get his head around what she’d said to him yesterday afternoon about caring more about him than she cared about herself. He didn’t understand how that could be possible after knowing him for such a short amount of time, but however it had happened, it was amazing. He could see himself being with Rose for a long time; he hoped she could too.

Marrying Mark… wow, that’d be so cool… no! Stop it! Don’t think like that! It won’t happen so don’t kid yourself. But what if it did? And it could do, what do you know?! We could be together forever, just like he said yesterday, and get married and have load of kids and live happily ever after and awww…that’d be so great. And it so will happen. Okay so he’s not in love with me yet but there’s plenty of time for that. Plenty of time when you’ve got forever. Aw. And then he’ll propose and we can have a huuuuuge wedding in a big church with all my family and all his family and all our friends, coz when you’re a couple you have joint friends, and…

“What are you thinking about?” Mark asked Rose.

“What? Um… nothing, really.” Rose said hastily. “Why?”

“You just suddenly started smiling for no reason. I thought you must have been thinking something nice.”

“Nah, I’m just a smiley person.”

“Well as long as you’re happy.”

“Oh I am! Really really happy. I’m having a great time.”

“Tell me if you get bored though.”

“Not likely to get bored with you around.” Rose said. “I could honestly sit here all day and be perfectly happy. Except I’d probably need food at some point or I’d die. Which wouldn’t be quite so much fun.”

“No, I can imagine it wouldn’t be. Are you hungry now?”

“No. Well, a little bit.” Rose admitted.

“You should have said.”

“I didn’t want to sound rude though. Like I was demanding food.”

Mark smiled. “You’re so stupid. You can have whatever you want. Within reason of course. I don’t think mum and dad would be too happy if you claimed ownership of the house for example.”

“Well I’ll know not to do that then.” Rose said. “Lucky you mentioned it actually, coz I was just about to do that.”

“What do you want to eat?” Mark said, smiling.

“Anything! Biscuits?”

“I’m sure we have biscuits, I’ll just go and look.”

“Do want me to pause the film until you get back?” Rose asked.

“Nah, I’ve seen it a million times. I won’t be a minute.”

“Okay.”

Mark went into the kitchen to look for biscuits, leaving Rose happily watching the film. Except she wasn’t really watching the film, she was thinking about getting married. Again. By the time Mark got back, Rose had more or less planned the whole wedding, from the colour of flowers to where they’d go on honeymoon. Not that she was getting carried away or anything. Of course not.

“Any preference on biscuits?” Mark asked.

“Nope, I’ll eat anything. As long as they’re not those ginger ones.”

“Well they’re not, but how can you not like ginger biscuits? They’re really nice!”

“They are so not. Yuk. And ones with raisins in.”

“Raisins?! Okay.” Mark said sitting down. “What don’t you like about them? Let’s hear your argument against ginger biscuits and biscuits with raisins in.”

“Okay, firstly,” Rose said, taking one of the biscuits Mark had bought in. “the ginger ones are just disgusting…”

“They’re not!” Mark protested.

“Are you going to let me finish?” Rose asked.

“No.” Mark said with a grin.

“Well I’ll ignore you and keep talking then.” Rose said.

Mark leant forward and kissed her.

“Mmmm, maybe I won’t keep talking.” Rose said, smiling.

“No, carry on.”

“Okay. Where was I? Yeah, raisins. Well why do you even need a reason for disliking them? They’re just evil.”

“God you sound like Paul with sultanas! I have nothing personal against raisins, and having never actually taken the time to talk to one I can’t really state with any conviction that they have a particular characteristic, evil or otherwise.” Mark said, trying to keep a straight face.

“You’re making me sound like I’m insane! I haven’t ever talked to a raisin either! They’re not alive!”

“What do you mean they’re not alive?!” Mark exclaimed with mock shock.

“Shut up. Stop making fun of me.” Rose said sulkily.

“Aw I’m sorry sweetheart, I’m only joking. Come here.” Mark said, putting his arms around Rose. “What are your favourite type of biscuits then? Let’s see if you can redeem some of the good taste I misguidedly thought you had.” He said with a grin.

Rose hit him.

“Ow!”

“That so didn’t hurt. I doubt you even felt it. In fact I probably hurt my hand more hitting you than I hurt you!”

“It did hurt.”

“You’re such a wimp.” Rose teased.

“Anyway, biscuits!” Mark said, changing the subject.

“Well my favourite type of biscuits is the same as yours.” Rose said.

“How do you know what my favourite biscuits are?”

“You said in a magazine.”

“Did I? What are they then?”

“Chocolate bourbons.”

“You’re right y’know.” Mark said in surprise.

“I know.” Rose said.

I can’t even remember ever talking about biscuits in an interview.”

“Well it’s generally not the kind of thing that sticks out in your mind. Y’know, biscuits.”

“Unless you’re Ben.” Mark said.

“Aw, leave him alone!” Rose said. “Chloe’d kill you if she heard you saying something like that. In fact, I should text her right now and tell her what you said.” She threatened.

“Okay, I take it back.”

“Good.”

“Why are you sticking up for him anyway?”

“Someone has to.”

“Well that’s true.”

“Still think you’re a wimp by the way.” Rose said cheekily.

“Oh really?!”

“Yes.”

“How about now?” Mark asked, throwing a biscuit at her.

Rose gasped. “You just threw a biscuit at me! How rude.”

“Sorry about that. Slip of the wrist.”

“I’ll give you slip of the wrist!” Rose said, grabbing handful of biscuits and standing up. She threw half of one at Mark and it hit him on the arm.

“Such a poor shot. You throw like a girl.”

“So do you. And I am a girl!” Rose retorted, laughing as Mark completely missed her with the biscuit he threw. “Nowhere near.” She said, shaking her head.

“You moved out of the way! That’s cheating!”

“What are you? The referee?”

“It’s funny you should say that because I am actually.” Mark informed her.

“Oh how handy for you.”

“And as the referee, I order you to stay in this exact spot.” Mark said, going over to Rose and taking hold of both her arms.

Rose just laughed.

“It’s not a laughing matter.” Mark reprimanded her.

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to stick to the rules.” Rose said.

“Yes, you do that. Or I might just have to do this…” Mark said, pulling her closer and kissing her.