All is Found - Chapter 42: Chapter 42

As the fire died down Thea and I made the move to my bed upstairs. Both of us didn't want to wake up with sore backs. We got to sleep in and it was something I've missed. My alarm went off at 11am and I knew I needed to get up. Slowly I got out of bed and took a shower. Thea was just waking up by the time I returned to my room. I walked over to her side of the bed and she smiled at me. I leaned down and gave her a good morning kiss before getting dressed.
Thea got out of bed just as I finished getting dressed. I let her get ready as I went down stairs and gave Pat a call. I let him know that tonight would be a taco Tuesday family dinner. I asked if he could bring the margarita mix and everything else he used to make them. He agreed and said that Nicholas and Sydney would bring over some dessert. With that settled, I started to look through the fridge to see what we had I could make for breakfast.
I added a few things that we needed to the list I had already going and decided to make some eggs for breakfast. I got the coffee going as I started to make breakfast. Thea walked into the kitchen just as I put the plates down on the table. She got her coffee ready as I sat down and started going over the list I made.
"Lindsey asked if she could bring anything later." Thea said as she took her seat at the table.
"Tequila, probably going to need more than what Pat is going to bring for all of us and anything else she wants to go with tacos." I answered and took a sip of my coffee.
Thea nodded and pulled out her phone to text her friend the answer. I attacked my breakfast and started to catch up with all the emails I've gotten since I was away. I need to call Alyssa sometime today and see what has been going on with my career. I know I left her with a shit storm to clean up with that instagram post and I want to see how that went. Then there was also the new contract I wanted to look in a bit more.
I started to make a to-do list of things I wanted to do by the end of this week and taped it to the fridge. When Thea was done with her breakfast she did the dishes for me. After she was done we grabbed our things and I drove us to the grocery store. Food shopping took a while as I didn't want to rush. Being out in the world again made me feel normal. I wanted to start getting back to this now that I'm home.
It took us a little over an hour to get everything I had on my list. We goofed around a little bit and it made me smile. One thing I was concerned about when I came home was if anybody was going to walk on egg shells around me. I'm happy to see that so far nobody has. After we finished up at the store I drove us home and we put everything away.
Once everything was away I walked over to my piano and sat down on the bench. I lifted the lid and started to run my hands over the keys. Thea came over a few minutes later and sat down next to me. I just continued to play just random runs on the keys for another few minutes and then slowed down and stopped.
"What are thinking in the pretty mind of yours?" Thea asked quietly and moved a piece of hair off my face.
"While I was away a major part of my therapy was writing songs. I'm thinking of releasing an ep or album with most of the songs. It's important for me for others to hear these songs because it might help them the same way it helped me to write them. Starting with the song Stay I sent you while I was still on tour. I'm going to call Alyssa tomorrow to talk about what's going on at the label and have her put out some feelers to see if they would want to support something like this." I said.
"I think they would be dumb not to support it. Even if they pass on the release, I think you should still find a way to put it out. Do you have any done that I can hear?" Thea asked.
"Not really, I only had a really out dated keyboard to work with while writing these so I'm going to have to go through them again with my piano now that I'm home, you'll be one of the first to hear them though so don't worry." I said and gave Thea a kiss.
Thea rested her head on my shoulder when we pulled away from the kiss. Even though I had a lot of songs already written I didn't want to play them for her yet. They are all really dark. I went back to playing the piano for a few minutes before I started playing the melody my mother always played. I always wanted to learn how to play it and once I got more lessons under my belt she taught me and made me play it for her almost every day. When I finished the melody I rested my fingers over the keys unsure what to play next.
"Was that something new because it's beautiful." Thea asked.
"It's something old. A melody my mom always played before I learned. The more I learned how to play, she finally showed me." I said.
"Can you tell me about your mom?" Thea asked.
"What do you want to know?" I asked as I started to play the piano again.
"Anything you want to tell me." Thea asked.
"Well, we were raised by her basically. My dad just left one day for work and never came home. We don't know what happened to him and I don't care to know. So my mom just took over taking care of us full time. She worked from home as a software engineer and she was pretty good at it from what Asher told me. With her being good at her job she made a good amount of money and was able to support us three with whatever we wanted to do.
"Asher was on the lacrosse team and was pretty good at it then he was in the band also. Even though I was considered the music prodigy, Asher enjoyed playing the drums and learning how to put songs together. Mom was big on having us involved with music in some way. Ashley could care less about music though, she loved fashion. She loved it so much I was paying for her to go to FIT in New York City. In returned she designed most of my clothes for tours and some red carpet events as well. It was one of the few things I was able to wiggle into my old contracts with Bobby. That and Asher was my tour manager.
"I'm getting side tracked, my mom was beautiful. All three of us got her blue eyes and hair color. We were all kind of like clones; at school everyone knew we were related before they even saw our last name. Mom was our biggest supporters, whatever we wanted to do, she was always right there cheering us on." I said and stopped playing the piano for a minute.
I stood from the bench and walked over to the mantle to pick up the frame photo. I brought it back to the piano and gave it to Thea to look at.
"What happened to her?" She asked.
"She had a major heart attack in her sleep. Normally she would wake up with us and help get us ready for school before Asher drove us. Some nights she worked late and we would be on our own the next morning, we just thought it was another one of those nights. When I got home I found Asher trying to wake her up. The doctors couldn't figure out what caused the heart attack because she was healthy for her age.
"It just left us with a lot of questions we will never got answers too. That was the hardest part about losing her. All the questions." I said and stopped playing again.
"Do you ever see her like Asher and Ashley?" Thea asked.
"No, I've tried a lot of things and seen other mediums but wherever she is, she is beyond this spirit plane." I answered.
Thea didn't say anything else but kissed my temple. I sighed and closed the lid on the keys not wanting to play anymore. Thea put her arms around me and held me close to her for a moment before we heard the front door open. I picked my shoulder up off her shoulder in time to see Nikki and Malia walk through.
"You guys better be decent!" Nikki yelled as she closed the door behind Malia.
I pulled away from Thea and looked in her eyes. She brought her hands up to my face and wiped away tears I didn't even know were falling. Nikki stumbled over to us a few seconds later and I rubbed my eyes after Thea dropped her hands.
"We interrupted something didn't we?" Nikki asked.
"Just a little." I said and pulled myself together enough to look at the girls.
"We can come back later if you want?" Nikki asked concerned.
"It's okay Nik really. Did you guys want to do something for lunch?" I asked changing the subject when my stomach started to rumble.
The idea of lunch seamed to get everyone on the same page, quickly. We decided on Wendy's and Thea drove us to the closest location. We went through the drive through and brought our lunch home. After we finished our food, I started to prepare the things we would need for dinner later. I made Nikki and Malia bring in extra chairs from the shed outside while I got to work on chopping all the vegetables.
Thea gave me a hand with the chopping as just as I finished a tomato there was a knock on the front door. I looked up at the time as saw we still had an hour until people were supposed to arrive. I wiped my hands on the dish cloth I had over my shoulder and went to see who was at the door. I pulled the door open and found Alyssa, Eli, Britt and Diego standing on my stoop.
"We heard you were having family dinner; hope you don't mind we are crashing." Eli said as I tried to wrap my head around the fact that they were standing in front of me.
"What are you guys doing here?" I asked almost jumped into Eli's arms.
"We heard you were having family dinner and since we didn't make the guest list we thought we would crash." Alyssa said and pulled me into a hug.
"Thea wanted to throw you a surprise welcome home party but she didn't know if you would want that but she mentioned you were having family dinner tonight so we all decided to come out for a few days to see you." Diego said and pulled me into a hug.
"The last time we saw you, you were a mess. From what Thea and Nikki said you seem to be doing better and I wanted to come see you for myself." Britt said and pulled me into a quick hug.
"This is the first time you said you care about me; I feel so touched Britt." I said and wiped away a few tears that fell.
All four of them walked inside and were welcomed by everyone. My heart felt so full that they all flew out here to see me. I shut the door behind everyone and took a second to wipe away the tears that fell.
"Okay so now that you're here you are all going to help me cook." I said and walked back towards the kitchen.
Britt and Eli groaned while Diego and Alyssa joined in right away. With two extra sets of hands it didn't take too long before everything was prepared. Just has we finished up I heard my front door open and I looked towards it to find Pat walking in with my VMA awards in his hands.
"Thank you for bringing Chad and Brad home!" I said and walked over to him to take my awards back. I placed them back on the mantle and sighed. Finally back where they belong.
"Thought that you can give them a good home now that you're back." Pat said and gave me a side hug.
We didn't get much time alone together because Nicholas and Sydney walked in carrying everything else I asked Pat to bring over. My band came over and helped them out by taking everything to the kitchen and then I introduced everyone. Just as Pat started up the blender to start making the margaritas, Thea ran past me to the front door. I followed behind her to see what she was doing to find her hugging Lindsey.
"I guess it's a good thing I bought two bottles." Lindsey said and held up tequila. Pat came right over and grabbed the bottles from her and went back to mixing the margaritas. I pulled Lindsey into a hug as Pat called Thea back into the kitchen to help him with the drinks.
"I never got the chance to thank you for being here for Thea while I've been away. Inviting you over tonight is part of my thank you. Thea also let it slip that you are a huge Taylor Swift fan and tried to get tickets to her Lover Fest stadium show and missed out. I pulled a few strings and got you two tickets to the show." I said and pulled the tickets out of my back pocket.
Lindsey's eyes went wide as she looked at the tickets. After a few well worded texts to Taylor herself, I managed to get these two tickets. Lindsey took the tickets from me and pulled me into a hug.
"You really shouldn't have Ashlyn; this is too much." Lindsey said.
"Then think of it as payment from my case which I totally owe you more money for then." I said and pulled away.
"I don't know what to say." Lindsey said and looked at the tickets.
"Just say thank you." I said.
"Thank you Ashlyn." Lindsey said and gave me another quick hug.
"You're welcome, now hid those because Pat will steal them from you if he knows." I said and pulled her towards the kitchen.
Lindsey joined in with the crew and Thea handed her off a margarita. Alyssa pulled her into conversation right away as Thea kissed my forehead.
"She liked the tickets?" Thea asked in my ear.
"Yea, it looked like she was going to cry." I said and watched as Lindsey hugged Alyssa.
"Drink up Ash, you're behind!" Pat said and pushed a drink in my hand.
I couldn't help but laugh and take a sip of the drink. Pat is making the drinks really strong and I won't be surprised if everyone ends up passed out on my living room floor by the end of the night. Now that everyone is here we started to eat. The tacos were a good choice because everyone got to make their own and nobody was unhappy.
When everyone had their fill of food we moved to the living room and I pulled out the giant Jenga from the hallway closet as Thea started up the fire place. Just as we were about to start I heard a knock on the door.
"Did you guys invite anybody else?" I asked and stood from the floor.
"It's for me, I hope you don't mind but I invited my girlfriend. I'm drunk and not going to be able to drive home tonight so I asked her to come over after she got off work." Lindsey said and stumbled to the door.
"It's all good." I said and watched Lindsey pull the door open. Lindsey pulled a tall blonde inside and gave her a hug.
"Guys this is my girlfriend Scarlett Mitchell." Lindsey said and pulled the tall blonde towards the couch.
Both Thea and Malia choked on their drinks and tried to hid their cups. Scarlett took Lindsey's empty seat on the couch and then Lindsey fell into her lap.
"Captain Mitchell" Both Thea and Malia said and looked on edge.
"You guys can relax we aren't on duty." Scarlett said.
"Are we playing Jenga or what?" Pat asked and stood from the arm chair.
He ended up starting the game off and it didn't take long before the tower toppled over. Most of us were drunk and that made it hard for us to get a steady hand on the blocks. The party started to wind down after a few more rounds of Jenga. People were starting to get tired and I was ready for bed. Nicholas and Sydney walked Pat home while Alyssa called and uber for the group that are staying in the hotel in Boston. Scarlett was quiet for most of the time she was here and carefully picked Lindsey up and brought her to her car when she fell asleep on her lap.
Alyssa's uber came and took the four drunken friends back to their hotel shortly after Lindsey left. Then that just left Nikki, Malia, Thea and myself. While Nikki and Malia stumbled up the stairs to bed while I started to clean up the kitchen and put all the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. Thea came up behind me and circled her arms around my waist.
"Leave it for tomorrow, come to bed." Thea said in my ear and kissed my neck.
"It's going to be gross down here tomorrow if I leave it overnight." I said and tried to ignore the rush of heat growing in between my thighs.
"Come to bed." Thea said again and bite down on my neck, hard.
My head rolled to the side to give Thea more access and the dishes were forgotten about for the rest of the night.