Epilogue: Let It Roll

Let it roll...
Our time is fleeting, so we take control,
From California to our home sweet home,
Our days repeating like it's all we know,
It's all we know.

Take, take a breath,
We've got all the time in the world
To get a grip on the fact that we don't last
But right now, I wanna watch the tide roll in with my best friends.

Carlos and James watched with a mixture of mild fascination and disgust as Logan studied from a large book. If they didn't know any better, they would have thought that he was attempting to memorize the dictionary. Although, James thought wryly, even if Logan was trying to memorize the dictionary, it wouldn't have been all that surprising.

But no, it wasn't the dictionary Logan was reading. He ignored their stares, accustomed to their disbelief at his study habits, and continued to commit the list of vocabulary words to memory. The school year was coming to a close (finally) and he was studying for his SAT's, which he would be taking in one week. He was, of course, the only one of the four boys who had bothered to sign up for the test—he might have been the only one in their whole class at the Palm Woods School—but that didn't bother him one bit. His education was important to him, and that was all that really mattered. Even if he didn't get a chance to have a normal university experience, he still wanted to make sure all his bases were covered. Just in case.

As he tried to commit the subtle differences between 'melancholy,' 'despondent,' and 'dejected,' to memory, Kendall burst through the door of apartment 2J with a huge grin on his face. His hair was wet and he wasn't wearing shoes; he'd been down at the pool.

"Guys!"

"What is it, Kendall?" Logan finally looked up from his book. His eyes needed a break anyway.

"Gustavo just called me! He wants us at the studio, now!"

"Then why do you have such a happy look on your face?" Carlos wanted to know. Gustavo demanding their presence was rarely cause for celebration.

"You guys, it's finished! The album is done! He finished production on it!"

"What, already?" James exclaimed, jumping up from his seat at the counter.

"Yeah! It's totally done! He wants us to come in and listen to final product!"

"What are we waiting for? Let's go!" Carlos was bouncing excitedly and even Logan had thrown down his book.

The boys all rushed to the door, though Kendall stopped briefly to retrieve some shoes. They ran past a confused-looking Camille through the lobby, who wondered where they were sprinting off to. Logan paused just long enough to peck her on the lips before promising to call her later.

When they arrived at Rocque Records, Gustavo and Kelly were waiting in his office. Gustavo presented them with a burned copy of their album on a blank CD. There was no cover art or fancy casing yet, but the boys didn't mind.

"Boys," Gustavo announced proudly, "Your second album is officially complete!"

"Let's listen to it!" Carlos yelled. "Come on, put it in the player!"

Kendall looked to Gustavo for the go ahead. When Gustavo nodded his head, Kendall went over to the sound system and popped the CD in. Carlos and James bobbed up and down and danced along with the music as it blared through the speakers, and even Logan couldn't resist tapping his feet along to the beats. Kendall listened intently, checking for any flaws in the production or their vocals, and found none. It was perfect. Every song sounded exactly the way he'd envisioned it in his head.

"All that's left to do is pick a title track and some album art," Kelly told them once they had listened to the whole thing. "You can take this copy of the album with you to decide, and the binder of art concepts and photoshoots you guys have done in last few months. We want your answer in three days."

"Sweet, we can take this with us?" James asked.

"You have to promise not to let it out of your sight," Kelly confirmed. "If it gets into the wrong hands and leaked onto the internet, I will kill each and every one of you myself."

"Aye aye, Captain," Carlos saluted her.

Kelly took the disc out of the stereo and handed it to Logan, trusting him to take care of the precious object. The boys played the album again in the car on the way home, and then again at the Palm Woods for Mrs. Knight and Katie. They discussed relentlessly what they should call the album—arguing for and against different title tracks for nearly two hours before Logan checked his phone for the time and jumped up to go change clothes for his date with Camille.

They'd decided to go mini-golfing on a whim, so he kept his appearance kind of casual, though he checked to make sure his hair was carefully styled. James must have been rubbing off on him. When he knocked on her apartment door, she answered it with a smile, kissing him lightly before letting him inside. He greeted her father somewhat awkwardly while he waited for Camille to hunt around for her cell phone, and finally the pair left for their date.

"Where did you guys rush off to earlier?" She asked, taking his hand as they approached the elevator.

"We had to book it to the studio," he replied. "The album is done."

"That's awesome! Congratulations!"

"Thanks. Now we just have three days to pick a title and the CD cover. I can't believe we really did it."

"But you did," she squeezed his hand. "And I know it's going to be amazing."

Logan had been planning to let Camille win on their mini-golf date, but it turned out that he didn't need to. She was actually really good. She beat him pretty effortlessly, even once he started actually competing, and then teased him mercilessly about it. As they exited the golf course, there were photographers waiting for them, and the two had to fight their way through the crowd of guys that were aiming their lenses at them. Both teens had become very recognizable in the recent months due to the success of Camille's TV show and her appearances on several other popular programs, as well as Logan and the other boys playing more shows in LA and giving interviews about their forthcoming album.

They were slightly annoyed at the flashes going off in their faces, and the occasional insulting or rude question being thrown at them, but they kept their cool and even posed for a moment in front of the car, allowing the paparazzi to get their shots so that hopefully, they'd be left alone. Their plan worked fairly well, and after they stopped for a late dinner, Logan and Camille went back to her apartment to watch a movie. Camille's father had already gone to bed, so the couple curled up on the couch together, absentmindedly letting the movie play in the background of their make-out session.

A particularly loud snore from Mr. Roberts' room jolted the pair out of their haze before they could get too carried away. The couch pillows had been knocked to the ground, and the remote control was nowhere to be found. Camille sat up and smoothed out her disheveled hair, readjusting her shirt, and Logan sheepishly re-buckled his pants, thankful he hadn't gotten too excited and wondering when they'd even come undone in the first place.

He made his way back to 2J with a smile on his face, thinking about how easy it was being in a relationship with Camille. They were almost as sickly sweet as Carlos and Anya. Almost. Camille made him realize it was okay to be a dreamer sometimes; that he didn't always have to be logical. And he was always there to balance her out when her emotions got the best of her. If he had known six months ago how happy he'd be, they could have saved themselves a ton of drama and heartache. She was still the cool girl he'd been friends with first, only now they got to make out.

In the end, he decided everything they'd been through had been worth it.

"You can't leave now! We still haven't narrowed down our choices for the album title yet!" Kendall exclaimed frustratedly. "We have to give our answer tomorrow!"

"But Kendall," Carlos whined, "Anya just had her last final! It's the first day of summer! I have to go see her." He pouted at the blonde boy across from him. "Please?"

Kendall opened his mouth to argue some more but James cut him off. "Aw, go ahead, Carlos. Kendall's just mad 'cause we all had dates this week and he's still the last virgin standing."

"Not for long," Logan snickered from his spot on the corner of the couch. Kendall's face flushed red.

"Shut up," Kendall said automatically. "All of you. Besides, James, I don't think you can call what you and Blonde Jennifer did in the supply closet a date, exactly."

"Tomato, to-mah-to," James shrugged, ignoring Carlos' giggling. "When are you gonna grow some balls and make a move with Alison?"

"Seriously, Kendall," Logan agreed. "She already told Camille she's just waiting on you. I don't see what the big deal is."

"You're one to talk," Kendall retorted. "I seem to recall you practically hyperventilating at the thought of sleeping with Camille before you two actually did it."

"What? I did not!"

"You did freak out a little, Loges," Carlos pointed out.

"Yeah, well at least I didn't have a goofy grin on my face for a whole three days afterwards, unlike some people."

"Hey, hey, hey! When did this become about me?"

"You're the one who's trying to leave," Kendall reminded him.

"Oh. Right. So can I go or what?"

"Fine. But don't be mad if we end up picking the title without you!"

Carlos was already out the door.

Alison Friedman had moved into the Palm Woods in early December. Kendall met her in mid-January.

He had been on his way to the studio, looking down at his phone and not noticing where he was walking. He'd tripped over something and landed ungracefully on the ground, blinking around, trying to figure out what had caused his fall.

"Oh my gosh, I'm SO sorry!" Came a girl's voice to his right. "Are you okay?"

She ripped her headphones out of her ears as Kendall righted himself. Alison had been sitting on the floor against a wall, studying some music sheets, with her legs laying straight out in front of her. Kendall had tripped over her. His face flushed with embarrassment at his clumsiness.

"My fault," he replied. "Wasn't watching where I was going."

She had strawberry blonde hair that was pulled into a ponytail and bright blue eyes. She was wearing leggings and Chicago Blackhawks hoodie. She was sucking on a Ring Pop. Her nail polish was dark blue, though it was chipping at the edges. Kendall noticed all these things in the span of about two seconds.

If he believed in love at first sight, he might have called it that.

Okay, so maybe "love" was too strong a word, but for the first time in nearly a year, Kendall looked at a girl and felt something other than bland indifference. For the first time since Jo Taylor had been whisked away to New Zealand, he made eye contact with a girl and felt his heart skip a beat.

Two days after he had tripped over her in the lobby, all four boys were outside in the park. Kendall was trying to show them how to use lacrosse sticks for fun. Logan clumsily tried to toss the ball back to him, but he overshot and it flew over Kendall's head. He ran after it, squinting into the bright sunlight before once again coming face to face with the ground. This time he'd stepped in a pothole and lost his footing, landing a few yards from where she sat, once again with headphones in her ears, still studying music sheets. He groaned both from pain and embarrassment as the girl, eyes wide at what she'd witnessed, went over to check that he was okay.

Four days after that, he'd just bought himself a pink smoothie when Tyler, undoubtedly attempting to escape his crazily enthused stage mother, flew past him in a blur, knocking the drink from his hand. He watched in horror and shock as it splattered over Alison, who'd been in a chair a few feet away.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," she joked as he stuttered out an apology and handed her some napkins.

He asked her on a date that day.

James woke up to the sunlight streaming in through the window. He glanced around momentarily, getting his bearings, before looking down at the sleeping girl next to him. Her black and red hair was fanned out over her pillow, her chest rising and falling evenly as she breathed. She still had on makeup from the night before, and the black strap of her bra was falling over her shoulder.

He felt like an ass as he carefully got out of bed and put on his pants, which had been left in a crumpled heap on the floor, but the feeling didn't stop him from searching for the rest of his clothes and silently making his way out of her apartment.

The thing he liked most about Lucy was that she seemed to understand what he needed.

He wasn't looking for a relationship, and thankfully, neither was she. He didn't have it in him to give his heart away again, and she was focused on becoming the next big rocker chick. It didn't leave them a whole lot of room or desire for talking about feelings.

What it did leave room for was good enough for him.

Sometimes people were just lonely.

He learned quickly after moving back to the Palm Woods that he didn't have to become emotionally involved with someone to sleep with them. He bounced back and forth between Blonde Jennifer and Lucy, earning himself a reputation among the female tenants of the home of the future famous, but it didn't faze him. It didn't seem to faze the girls, either. They were both too preoccupied with their own careers to worry about who James happened to be sleeping with at any given time. Lucy simply didn't care, and Jennifer enjoyed the status that came along with being someone James associated with. Because, yes, with the hype surrounding Big Time Rush and their comeback album, the boys' popularity was at an all-time high, and James had stepped into the role of the boyband heart throb perfectly.

Logan had tried to shrink him, telling him that he was just using the two girls as a coping mechanism to forget about Michelle. As if he didn't know that. He wasn't an idiot. And he was more self-aware than people gave him credit for. Logan wanted James to commit to one girl, so he could see that not all relationships would end up like his and Michelle's. But if Logan thought that pointing out why James was doing what he was doing would make him have some grand epiphany and change his ways, he was sorely mistaken.

The truth was, James knew exactly what he was doing. And maybe Logan was judging him for it, but for now he didn't care. He wasn't constantly thinking about Michelle anymore, wondering if she missed him, or if she wanted to talk to him. He wasn't replaying their entire relationship in his head, trying to figure out what he'd done to make her think she couldn't tell him about not wanting to have the baby. Slowly but surely, he was moving on, keeping his promise to focus on work and forget about the disastrous semester at West Beverly Hills. He'd meant it when he said he was going to forget about her, so who was Logan to tell him the way he went about it was wrong?

Maybe it was wrong. But it wasn't like he was stringing the girls along, promising them a future. He just wasn't ready to put his heart out there again. Phrases like emotional trauma and sudden onset fear of commitment floated through his head in Logan's voice as he remembered what the resident genius had offered in him in explanation of his newfound lack of emotional range. He shoved them to the back of his mind.

He was looking for a distraction, and he'd found one. Two, actually.

"What are you going to tell your parents?"

"I don't know! I'm not sure if I can tell them."

"What? You have to! This is a big deal!"

"Carlos, they'll kill me."

"No they won't," he rolled his eyes at Anya. "They're nice people."

"Sure, they're nice," Anya replied. "But I've never done anything like this before. They'll think I'm throwing my life away."

"Well, I guess you have a while before you have to decide."

"I don't know… I feel like the sooner I get it taken care of, the better. Otherwise I'm just going to be a nervous wreck all the time, trying to figure out how to tell them."

"Well," Carlos said thoughtfully, "I think the best way to do it is to just spit it out. I'll go with you, if you want."

"No," Anya said quickly. "I don't want any of their excess rage spilling over on you."

"You're being dramatic."

"Alright, maybe I am."

"You are," Carlos poked her side, making her giggle.

Anya was visiting Carlos at the Palm Woods, and the two were laying out in lounge chairs by the pool.

"What's up, guys?" Camille approached them and sat down on Anya's other side, looking at them curiously, having heard part of their conversation.

"Can I tell her?" Carlos asked.

When Anya nodded, Carlos launched into the story. Anya had received her SAT scores a few days prior, and had scored in the 99th percentile (incidentally, so had Logan), which meant that with her stellar academic record and long list of extracurricular activities, she was basically a shoo-in for any university she'd want to attend after graduation next year. However, what her parents didn't know was that she had also sent in audition tapes of her dancing to several ballet companies across the country, and three of them had gotten back to her, asking her to audition in person. Being asked to meet in person was a big step for most of these companies, so if her auditions went well, it was highly likely that she could be offered a position in the corps in at least one of them.

"The thing is," Anya explained, "My parents think ballet is a hobby. Like it's just another thing I have on my resume. And at first, it was, but the longer I did it, the more I realized how much I love it. I don't think they'll be too happy if I tell them I'm thinking about forgoing university to dance. They've always thought I'd grow up to be lawyer or politician or something."

"Wow," Camille said. "That's a big decision."

"I know," Anya sighed. "And it's not like I don't want to go to college. It'd be totally awesome to get that whole university experience—live in the dorms, join a sorority and all that. But dancing for a real ballet company… that's not an opportunity that comes along every day. I have no idea what I'm going to do."

"My mom had a cow when I told her I wanted to move out here," Camille told her. "I was fourteen. She told me I'd just be chasing a dream that might never come true."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. But when she realized that this was my passion, she eventually decided to let me give it a shot. I bet your parents will be the same way. You just have to make them understand that it's your life, not theirs."

"And no matter what you decide, you know I'll be there for you," Carlos said sweetly.

"I can't believe this is really happening."

"Me either."

"Seriously, someone needs to pinch me."

Carlos reached over and pinched James' arm.

"Um, ow."

"It's real, James," Carlos confirmed. "We are actually attending the release party for our second album! We made it."

The boys were dressed nicely, waiting in the lobby of the Palm Woods for the limo that was being sent to bring them to Rocque Records, where Griffin was hosting a fancy party to celebrate Big Time Rush's comeback. The album would be on sale starting at midnight, and everyone was ridiculously excited, nervous, and most of all, ready for it to come out. The boys had writing credits on over half the songs on the album, and they had worked super hard over the past four or five months to make sure everything was perfect.

A lot of stuffy looking record executives were at the party, and the boys were forcibly reminded of their infamous Palm Woods 'social gathering' that had ended up being crashed by these very same people. This time, however, there were no plans to relocate.

A life-size poster of the boys hung on one wall—it was the photo they'd chosen to be the cover for the CD—along with a banner congratulating them and Gustavo on their achievement.

They had to meet and shake hands with a ton of people that night, most of whose names they forgot instantly. It might be their record release party, but they weren't stupid—this was as much a party for Griffin to show them off as it was to celebrate their hard work. Normally they'd have come up with some scheme or mischief to make the party more interesting, but they'd promised to be on their best behavior. So they pasted on smiles and shook hands with everyone they were introduced to, and thanked everyone for coming.

They dutifully took photos and did some interviews, and finally, after hours, the countdown to midnight began, led by Griffin.

"….Three…two…one! Congratulations, Big Time Rush!" Griffin held up his glass of champagne to toast the boys, and everyone in the room followed suit. Griffin announced that he would be sending the boys out on their second nationwide tour later that summer, something the boys hadn't been expecting. They all grinned at each other proudly, already excited at the prospect of hitting the road.

All four the boys' phones started vibrating and beeping with text messages from friends at the Palm Woods, from West Beverly Hills, and even from back in Minnesota to tell them that they were standing in line to buy the album or downloading from iTunes that very instant.

The end of the party was rather anticlimactic, if you asked Big Time Rush. People had, for the most part, stopped paying attention to them, opting to network with the many big-name producers, writers, and executives that were in attendance. Kendall, Logan, Carlos, and James were pretty much left to their own devices. Not even Kelly was around to tell them to be sociable.

Each of the boys held a copy of their album in their hands, staring down at the cover. All Over Again. It was the title they'd finally chosen that they felt best represented them while they were in the process of recording and producing. It was their second chance at making an album, and after their semester away from the musician's life, they basically had to relearn everything, from getting their voices back in shape to the difficult dance choreography, to how to interact properly with paparazzi and journalists. Everything felt familiar, and yet, because of their experiences while they were away from the Palm Woods, they had new perspective. Everything felt brand new.

Suddenly, they were all itching to get out of this party. They'd played their parts, smiling for the cameras and schmoozing with executives. Now all they wanted was to celebrate their own way.

"What are the odds anyone will notice if we bail?" Kendall wondered out loud.

"Slim to none," came Logan's reply, mentally calculating the probability. Kelly was busy. Gustavo was on what was surely his eighth or ninth glass of champagne. Griffin didn't care about them anyway.

"So… let's bail," Carlos suggested, already loosening his tie.

"I'm in," James added. "We've done our jobs for the night."

The boys snuck out of the party, down the hall to the elevator, and out of Rocque Records. Kendall tossed the car keys to Logan.

"Where to?"

No one seemed to have an answer, so Logan just drove.

They ended up at the beach.

Shrugging off their jackets and kicking off their socks and shoes, the boys all walked barefoot onto the sand, watching the waves roll in towards the shore. A warm breeze blew around them, ruffling their hair. James didn't even bother to break out his lucky comb. They sat in companionable silence for who knows how long, each of them thinking about the past year and the journey they'd taken to get where they were now. Relationships, breakups, mistakes, new friends—they'd all had their individual issues to work through, but at the end of the day, they were a unit. They needed each other.

So they'd continue pushing forward. Together.

So, now that the final installment is up, I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who has read this story. This was the first piece of fiction that I've ever started and seen through to the end, so your reviews and comments have meant the world to me.

You all have been amazingly supportive over the last six months (has it really been that long?) and I appreciate every single one of you, whether you left one review or reviewed every single chapter.

As a last note, I mentioned on Tumblr earlier this week that I'm planning out what my next story is going to be! It will not be a sequel to Let It Roll. It is definitely still in development, so nothing will be up until after the new year probably. Just giving a heads up in case you guys are still interested in seeing what I write.

So once again, thanks so much to all of you. This is the last time I'm gonna ask it for Let It Roll…review please? I want to know anything and everything you thought about this chapter or the story as a whole.