This is just a story I've been working on, it's not really in chapters, more like parts. Hayley's POV is normal text, Max's POV is in italics. I'm sorry the paragraphs aren't indented when it's a new day, or later in the day or whatever. I guess it'll become obvious as you read...or I hope at least...please review!

I followed Grace into the dimly lit basement. It was a room I'd been in a hundred times. The floor was barely visible through the musical mess. Drumsticks littered the floor, some whole while some were broken, along with lone guitar picks, an old microphone, a broken drum and a beautiful bass guitar. I picked up one of the drumsticks, spinning it in my hand as I threw myself into one of the three bean bag chairs.

"Hayley, I wouldn't play with that if I were you," Grace warned, though I always messed with the sticks. I loved to pretend like I knew how to play the drums, ever since I had "discovered" Lars Ulrich, one of the greatest drummers of all time, at least in my opinion.

"Why not Grace?" though I had heard the warning a thousand times.

"Max is going to freak if he catches you with it, and you know it." Max was Grace's seventeen-year-old brother. The mess on the floor was all his. He was in the local band, Automatic Reaction, which was hard rock, something I rarely listened to, though something I listened to all the same.

"Grace, you've told me that a thousand times, and never once has he caught me. And I highly doubt he'd freak out," I added.

"Hayley, if the president of the United States came over and played with one of his drumsticks, he would freak out." She sighed, but dropped the subject, instead turning on their large flat screen TV, and beginning to flip through the channels.

I shrugged, beating the stick against my leg and gazing around the room. What I wouldn't give to be this musical. The only thing I had at home was my acoustic guitar that I liked to fiddle with. And then there was the keyboard that my father had left behind for me when he had died from cancer six years earlier. I had taught myself how to play, even writing my own songs, all of which had been dedicated to my dad. He was the only inspiration I had.

The basement door slammed open suddenly, bringing me back to reality. I glanced up quickly and saw Max racing into the room. I looked over at Grace and saw her glancing at me before back at her brother.

"Could you please not slam the door, Max," Grace asked him, exasperated. They weren't exactly the best of friends. He didn't answer, instead picking through the drumsticks on the floor until he found the one he wanted. He noticed me for the first time then, and his eyes went to the stick in my hand. I started breathing harder, worried about what he would do.

"Is that the other 5B Hickory, Hayley?" he asked me, strangely calm, at least from what Grace had said about how he would react. However, he did seem a little hurried and from what I had heard, I definitely did not want to be the one to slow him down.

"Yea, it is," I said, checking the label on the end of the stick. He held out his hand and I tossed it to him. He caught it, shoving the pair into the back pocket of his jeans.

"Thanks," he said, a smirk tugging on the corner of his lips before he turned to Grace. "Where's Mom?"

"Pilates," she replied absentmindedly, glancing between Max and me.

"Alright, well I got a show in Marlette, I won't be back until ten or so." He turned and left the room, leaving the door wide open, allowing me to look after him as he loped easily away, drumsticks in his pocket.

I heard Grace let out a long breath but still watched through the doorway though he was long gone.

"Wonder why he didn't freak…" she said quietly and I could feel her eyes on me, not accusingly just curious. I finally turned and look at her, shrugging.

"Maybe he was having a good day," I said, shrugging again.

"Nah, even if he had a good day, he would freak." She continued to watch me but I at last turned my attention to the TV, wondering why Grace was so shocked, and if that really was different behavior for Max about his drumsticks. I'd been with him before, seen how he acted with other stuff but never with his music, so I had no idea what to expect. I sighed but kept watching the softball game, though my mind was now off in a different place, never to return, though I did not know that yet.

My phone rang again, the one-hundredth time it had done so in the past ten minutes. I grabbed it quickly out of my pocket, whipping it open as I pulled into the driveway.

"I'M COMING!" I shouted, shutting the phone and shoving it back in my pocket. Hurriedly, I jumped out of my van, barely taking time to press the brake and leaving the door hanging open. I raced into the house and down the steps to the basement, pushing the door open as fast as I could. I vaguely heard Grace, my younger sister, telling me to please not slam the door. But I barely registered her voice as I looked through the mess of drumsticks on the floor, looking for the right ones. I really should organize these, I thought before quickly extinguishing the thought. Too much work.

Yes! I screamed inside my head as I found one of the sticks I needed. But where was the other? Then I say Hayley, Hayley holding the other one. She looked slightly freaked out and I wondered what Grace had told her.

When I asked her for the stick she tossed it to me a little nervously and I had to work hard not to smile but could still feel a smirk tugging at my lips. I told Grace where I was going and then I was racing up the steps again, flinging myself into the van and speeding out of the driveway, narrowly missing the mailbox.

As I hit the main road, my phone rang again and this time it pissed me off.

"What?!" I shouted into the mouthpiece.

"Bad time?" I heard the sweet yet sarcastic voice of my girlfriend, Riley. I immediately relaxed, but only slightly.

"Riley, sorry, I'm late for a gig. What's going on?" I glanced at the clock. Five o'clock on the dot. A forty-minute drive that I now had to make in twenty-five. I sighed, frustrated, before tuning back into Riley's voice.

"...and I was hoping you'd maybe want to go?" She was saying as I sped past a soccer mom minivan, ignoring the horns that blared. I shook my head, sighed again.

"Oh, Riley I'm so sorry, go where?" I crossed my fingers hoping she wouldn't be mad. She didn't answer at first. "Riley? Riley, really, I'm so sorry, I'd love to go anywhere with you." I spoke as softly as I could, though my anxiety was getting the better of me.

I could hear her sigh. "I wanted to know if you would go with me to a barbecue in Bartly at my sister's boyfriend's house." I could hear the hope in her voice. "It's tomorrow night at seven thirty," she added before I could ask. My heart broke.

"Riley...uh...I can't. We have a gig in Lamont at eight. How about next weekend?" I kept my fingers crossed again.

"Nevermind Max, I'll talk to you later." She hung up before I could say anything. Great! I thought, slamming my hand against the steering wheel. Just as I turned my radio up full blast, my phone vibrated in my hand. It flew to my ear.

"Riley?" I asked anxiously, hoping she had called back to tell me everything was all right.

"Oh, problems with the girlfriend?" the deep voice of my bandmate, Charlie, met my ears and I clenched my fist around the phone.

"Shut your mouth, Baker. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Hey is the gig tomorrow really that important?" I was desperate, I wanted to make this better, even though I knew this gig was way more than just important.

"Maxwell Garriner, please tell me that I did not just hear you say that..." I could hear anger and disbelief in Charlie's voice and I immediately knew I had said the wrong thing, especially now when I was late.

"I did not just say that, see you soon." I slammed my phone shut and threw it into the back of the van, cranking the radio like never before and arriving to the gig ten minutes late, right on schedule.

"Max?" It was Tom, calling to yell at me for being late to the second gig in twenty-four hours. Except this was the important one. Here we go, I thought.

"Max, it's Tom, obviously. Anyway, they cancelled the gig; it's rescheduled for next weekend, so you're off the hook for whatever was so much more important today than our gig. See you tomorrow." He hung up before I could even breathe. And then it all clicked together. YES! I thought, now I can go tell Riley I can come before she leaves. Hurriedly, I turned the van around and sped towards her house.

When I pulled into her driveway it was empty, which meant her parents were gone. Perfect. I got out, slamming the door behind me and jogging to the side door, carefully letting myself in. I heard a noise up in her bedroom and decided to sneak up there, give her a surprise. She loved surprises.

As silent as was physically possible, I climbed her stairs. I could see her bedroom door open just a crack at the end of the hall, her computer monitor blank. As I reached the end of the hall, her doorway, I heard an odd noise, one I knew I should recognize but somehow it didn't click.

And then I looked through the crack. And my jaw dropped, surely hitting the thick carpet of the hallway. I felt my face heat up, the anger and betrayal growing inside of me until I thought I would burst.

Riley was there in her room all right. But so was her ex-boyfriend, Patrick something. The Patrick something that she was now laying on top of, shirtless. How could she do this to me!? I thought angrily. And then a thought occurred to me. What if this wasn't the first time?

Suddenly the anger and betrayal overtook me and I slammed her door open, scaring them both. Riley quickly slid off of Patrick something, and then she saw that it was me. Her eyes got real big and she shook her head again and again as if saying I wasn't seeing anything. That she wasn't cheating on me. I shook my head back at her and spoke quietly, tensely, the words carrying across the shocked-silent room, reaching both her and Patrick's ears loud and clear.

"You little whore." And with that I turned and sped down the stairs, out her front door, letting it slam. I jumped into the van, speeding so fast out of the driveway I was sure I left skid marks. As I raced in the opposite direction of home, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Riley standing at the end of her driveway, arms crossed over her chest, her mouth open as if she was shouting to me.

I kept driving, not knowing where I was going, yet somehow my conscience must have as I recognized the route to the old hangout. It was a beach on a remote lake where we always went to have bonfires during the summer, somewhere none of us ever went anymore unless we just needed to get away. I never had, until now. As soon as I reached the familiar dirt road, I swerved to the side, hiding the van in some brush before jumping out and running towards the dock, my anger the only thing pushing me forward..

How could she do this to me? She had said she loved me. First love. First love, and I get cheated on. What was love anyway? Except an excuse to put your heart out there only to let it get ripped out of your chest and thrown across the room. Love was nothing, nothing at all. It didn't matter. And neither did Riley. I don't think she liked surprises any more.

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