IMAGINES: Celebrity Encounters Starring You (34 page)

You knew you wanted to help people, and nursing seemed
like the safe route to go, but music was just as important. It’s funny how you let some things drift away from your heart over time. It was hard to keep in touch with music without Ed’s constant presence. As soon as he left to pursue his dreams, you went off to university and packed away your guitars.

Ed picks up Nelly, your most recent purchase, and sits down. He starts to strum away, his fingers working their magic as they always do. You’re good at playing the guitar and singing, but Ed’s simply amazing. He’s a true performer, and when he plays, it’s like the music pours straight from his soul. You know you’ll never be at the same level as Ed, but playing along with him makes you feel like a better musician.

“When was the last time you played?” He watches you as you slowly pick up a guitar and sit down beside him.

“Maybe a few months,” you tell him truthfully, feeling a bit shameful. For Ed, music was life. He couldn’t go a day without it. You were like that once, but your free time slowly started to slip away from you.

Ed starts to pluck out a familiar song, one the two of you wrote when you were only thirteen. The music instantly relaxes your body, the song bringing back memory after memory. You suddenly remember the talent show you entered in eighth grade, and how you totally forgot the lyrics but Ed was there to cover for you. If it hadn’t been for him, you wouldn’t have won. He was always so natural onstage. It was like he was born to perform. For you there were always clammy hands and pre-performance jitters. Ed was always nervous, but it was the excited kind of nervous, something that made him an even better performer.

Taking a deep breath, you let your fingers start to dance over the strings. The feeling is familiar but odd at the same time, since it’s been so long since you’ve played. You fall into the rhythm of the song, your eyes closing as the music flows through
you. Ed’s voice brings you back to all the times you locked yourselves in the music room at school during lunchtime. When the two of you weren’t goofing off or writing silly songs, you were creating real music that will forever be close to your heart.

“Play me one of your new songs,” you tell Ed.

Ed strums awhile before finally singing, his voice capturing you the instant he opens his mouth. Lyrics you’ve never heard before pour out of him like he’s possessed. His whole body is filled with the music; it gives him life. You watch as he falls deeper and deeper into the song, and you wish that you could be back in that place, that place where nothing but music mattered. After he finishes, you both play around, your instruments complementing each other.
It’s just like old times,
you tell yourself. And without even knowing it, hours have passed before Ed finally looks down at his phone.

“I think we may have lost track of time.” He laughs, stands up, and sets your guitar on its stand.

You look at the clock in the corner. “Bloody hell, your show is in two hours!”

You both go into panic mode, grabbing whatever you can and gathering your stuff up. Within a minute you’re out the front door and hailing a cab. Ed speaks with his manager on the phone as you tell the driver where to go. You can see the smile on Ed’s face as he closes his phone and sits back.

“What’s so funny?”

He smiles. “I have a cheeky joke.”

“Okay?”

“What do you call an elephant that doesn’t mean anything?”

From the smile on his face you know it’s something completely stupid, but you can’t come up with a good answer.

“Irrelephant,” he chokes out between laughter.

You feel your lips stretch into a smile at the sight of him
laughing at his own silly joke. “How many people have you told that one to?”

“I was saving it for you. You know, I did have a lot more planned today. We were supposed to go to your favorite pastry shop and then—”

“Don’t worry about it,” you tell him. “I needed to get back into that room, anyway. Playing with you was a pretty good birthday present.”

“You don’t need me to play, you know.”

“I know,” you say.

But playing without him isn’t the same.

IT’S NOT LONG
before you and Ed are backstage among the craziness that goes on prior to a show. You’ve been to a few of his gigs, but not the recent ones. Ed’s not the unknown artist he was a few years ago, and it makes you happy seeing how many people have filed into the stadium to see him. It’s amazing how much he’s blown up in the past two years, and you’re incredibly proud of your talented best friend.

“There’s a lot of people here for you,” you tell him as he stuffs his face with a specially made dish of bangers and mash. “You do know you’ve spilt sauce on your shirt, right?”

Ed looks down at his shirt and shakes his head with a little laugh. “Stuart told me to eat before I got dressed. I guess he was right.”

“I’ll grab you another one,” you tell him.

He has a few extra shirts in the suitcase he brought. You choose one you know will go with what he’s wearing. Ed likes to keep it simple on and off the stage, so you grab a black-and-white flannel.

“Thank you.” He pulls off his dirty shirt and replaces it with the new one. “What would I do without you?”

“Who knows?” you say with a teasing smile.

“Have you warmed up?” one of the backstage workers with a headset asks.

Ed looks at you with a cheeky grin. He’s maybe warmed up a little too much. The two of you played for hours on end before either of you realized the time. He might well have missed his own show entirely.

“Hey, what’s this?”

You look down at what’s in his hand, spotting your phone. The screen saver is an old pic of Ed shoving as many things in his mouth as possible. Besides music, that was one of his great talents. “Don’t you remember that?”

“I do, I just don’t know why it’s your screen saver. You’re gonna scare people with that picture.”

“Ed—you’re on in fifteen,” someone calls from the back, capturing our attention.

Ed hands the phone back. “All right, mate!”

The fifteen minutes go by in a blur, and before you know it, the crowd is screaming so loud it’s hard to hear people talking backstage.

Seconds before Ed goes on, he walks over with his favorite guitar in hand. “You remember that song we wrote when I came back for holiday, right? The one we wrote in my basement?”

You nod. How could you forget? “Of course. Why?”

He smiles. “Just making sure.”

Ed turns around to walk onstage, but before he goes, you pull him into a tight hug. “Good luck.”

As soon as he steps out onto the stage, the crowd goes absolutely wild. You watch with a smile as Ed plays with his pedal machine, looping his live music right in front of everyone’s eyes. It’s amazing how he doesn’t use a backing track when he performs. It makes his music even more incredible. After every song he replaces
his guitar with another, the backstage crew working fast to remove strings and install new ones. He jams so hard that it’s impossible to make it through a song without breaking one. In all the crazy commotion, someone hands you a guitar. You look down at the strings, which are perfectly intact.

“Does he need this?” you ask over the roar of the crowd.

Before you know what’s happening, Ed stands before you, his face glistening with sweat. He looks down at the guitar in your hand and nods for you to join him onstage. You feel your whole body freeze at the thought of standing in front of thousands of people and give him a panicked look, your hands instantly starting to sweat.

Ed places a reassuring hand on your back and whispers a few words into you ears. You can’t hear what he says, but you know it must be reassuring, right? What else would he say if he was trying to get you onstage? Finally, with a deep breath, you take his hand and let him lead you out. You try to calm your breathing as he does, but the fans go absolutely crazy as soon as he comes back into sight.

“Me and my best mate are going to sing you something we wrote a while ago,” says a voice.

You know it’s Ed, but in front of the thousands of screaming people you can barely focus. His hand is on your back, almost as if to make sure you don’t fall over. You look at him, his blue eyes familiar and reassuring.

You can do this,
you think.
This is what you’ve always wanted to do, right?

Ed leads you over to his pedal station and looks at you, waiting for a sign that you’re ready. You look back out at the crowd once more, the bright lights of the stage making it impossible to see anything but a massive blur. Slowly, you turn back to Ed and give him a nod. He smiles a smile you’ve seen a million times
and starts to strum the beginning of an old song, one you thought you’d never play again. As soon as the music echoes through the stadium, you know you’re okay.

Playing with Ed was what you were always best at. And here, as you play in front of thousands of screaming fans, the only thing you notice is how nothing has changed between you and your best friend.

T
he set director’s shouting “Everyone, it’s time to take your places!” made you realize the moment had finally come.

You were about to appear on
May the Best Team Win.

A few weeks prior, you had received an email from the production company you’d sent your application to—along with thousands of other hopefuls who wanted to win a spot on the prime-time hit
May the Best Team Win
. You loved watching the game show, in which fans were pitted against celebrities, and you had requested Chris and Liam Hemsworth for whatever competition the production would throw at you. The email had confirmed your participation in a cooking showdown with the brothers.

Along with your best friend, Emma, you had screamed, danced, and laughed while reading and rereading the message. What the Australian actors didn’t know is that you had studied to be a chef before changing your mind in college to major in communications. Adding to your experience, Emma had years of waitressing and cooking in a small diner. Cooking in such a short allotted time would be no problem, you were sure of it. You could totally win this.

The set director shouted all around once again, making you nervous. Wringing your hands, you looked at Emma; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide. She didn’t seem nervous at all, only
excited. “Oh my God, I can’t believe we’re doing this!” she said, almost squealing.

“Me neither,” you murmured. You took a deep breath to compose yourself while Emma tugged your hand. “I didn’t think it would be so . . . big!” you added so only she could hear.

“Well,
YEAH!
We’re meeting Chris and Liam Hemsworth!”

Emma’s response made you smile and shake your head. “Come on, Em, you know better! Yes, we’re
meeting
them, but the ultimate goal . . . well . . . it’s what we can win!” you told her.

And the prize if you won the competition? A full day with Chris and Liam Hemsworth to hang out and do an activity of your choice. Emma started talking about how Liam tickled her fancy, and you reminded her that not only was Chris happily married with children, but that you were sure the show rules meant you had to keep things classy. Emma had jokingly whined but knew you were right. You both had decided that if you won the competition, you wanted to explore the Wildlife Safari Park with the actors. You knew they would enjoy themselves, having grown up with many animals in Australia. If the actors won the challenge, a sum of money would be donated to the charity of their choice, the Australian Childhood Foundation.

The show didn’t appeal to you just because you could meet the celebrities, but because whatever happened, being chosen for the show meant your charity was getting a monetary prize regardless, albeit a slightly smaller one if you lost. From the get-go, Emma and you clearly knew your money would be donated to a children’s cancer research foundation. In your teenage years, you both had lost Marcie, the third member of your trio, to leukemia. She was still missed, and to keep her memory alive, the two of you did whatever you could to raise money for research.

An assistant came over to direct you to your places once you were invited to the set by Patrick, the host. You smoothed the pink apron you’d been handed, then gave Emma a hug. “We’ve
got this—they do
not
know who they’re messing with,” you whispered in her ear as she hugged you back.

The theme song to the show blared in the enormous speakers; lights roamed around the set while Patrick began his presentation. Your name was called, then Emma’s, and you both ran onto the stage and waved at the crowd before settling behind your cooking benches. Your heart was racing, but you were ready for this.

When Patrick asked, you introduced yourself to the crowd: “I’m thirty. I work as a marketing coordinator in a small firm, and I love my job! I love to read and take long walks with my dog, Sparky!”

Emma followed your lead, doing her little introduction.

Then a smiling Patrick continued his presentation: “It’s now time to meet your opponents! You know the oldest as Thor and the Huntsman, but also the family man with three young children. The second half of the celebrity duo is best known as Gale from
The Hunger Games
. So, you see, people, we have a strong team, but can they bring that strength into a kitchen? Let’s see about that! Ladies and gentlemen, the Hemsworth brothers!”

The crowd went wild as Chris and Liam took the stage, both wearing black aprons over their clothes. They waved to the audience, smiling along, and came over to shake your hand and Emma’s. You felt like a robot when extending your arm, suddenly starstruck. Chris’s smile was wide and his hand warm. He shook yours firmly. “Nice to meet you and good luck!”

His smile made you melt, and you glanced at Emma. She was evidently in the same boat as you, swooning hard. You grinned at Liam when he ducked under his brother’s arm to come over and introduce himself. “Hi! Wish you the best today, but know I’m really good in a kitchen!” he said smugly.