“In that case… my car’s right over here.”
“This is not your house,” I said as Jude drove us up later that night. To even get onto the property, we had to make it through a large iron-wrought gate, fit with security cameras and an intercom. It was three stories high and bigger than any house I'd ever seen--it looked like it was taking up two lots instead of one.
“Funny,” Jude said as he turned off the car engine. “Hudson said that’s exactly what Megan said when she saw the house for the first time, too.”
“Best friends think alike,” I murmured. I leaned forward in my seat, trying to see as much of the house as possible through the windshield.
Jude laughed and opened his door. “Come on,” he said.
I hesitated for a moment before I followed him out of the car. He had parked on the circular driveway--lit up in the dark night by warm lantern lights--leaving the car right by the front door even though there were three garages we could have parked in.
“Do you want to take a look inside?” he asked.
“Aren't the rest of the boys waiting for us?”
Jude had invited me back to his place for the weekly bonfire the boys had. Apparently, it was a tradition that had started back when they were still on The Next Great Boyband, and they’d continued it on. When I glanced around the side of the house, I could see the flickering light in the distance, and I could smell the wood burning.
“I guess the tour can wait, then,” Jude said. He held his hand out to me and I slipped mine into it. “Let's go.”
When we got to the backyard, we found all four of the boys and Megan sitting around the bonfire. Neil and Zach were both roasting marshmallows on sticks, and Hudson was strumming absentmindedly on a guitar, humming under his breath.
“Hey guys,” Jude said as we walked up. “You all remember Sloane, right?”
“You mean the girl who’s eaten lunch with us almost every day since we started at school?” Neil asked flatly. “Nah, doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Shut up, Neil,” Jude said with a smirk before he pulled me down onto the blanket next to him.
“Want to roast a marshmallow, Sloane?” Neil asked. He held out a roasting stick and a bag of marshmallows toward me.
“Thanks,” I said, taking them from him.
“We have the rest of the stuff for s’mores, too,” Jude said. “Graham crackers, chocolate, and all that.”
“You guys really go all out for these bonfires, huh?” I asked.
“It was actually Jude’s idea to keep this going on after we have moved in here,” Neil said. “He wanted to make sure wecould still spend time together like we did when we were on the show.”
“It was a good idea, too,” Hudson added. He strummed a few more chords before he set the guitar down and turned to look at me. “We may not be on the show anymore, but it's nice to have something that reminds us of it. And it keeps us close as a band.”
I knocked my shoulder against Jude. “And here you called me a softie.”
Jude sighed. “Okay, I admit it, I’m a softie too. But I just loved our time on the show so much and I wanted to make sure we didn't lose it.”
“You didn’t move here right after the show ended, though, right?” Megan asked. “It’s been a while.”
“Awww, look at you actually having an idea of when we were on the show,” Hudson said. He wrapped an arm around her, and she leaned into him. “Are we turning you into a fan?”
“No,” Megan said immediately, but she smiled up at him with a loving look in her eyes. “I just happened to know that you went on an American tour since then, so you had to be living elsewhere for a while.”
“We were,” Jude said. “But obviously, since we were on the road, we couldn't do stuff like this. When we moved into the house here, it felt like we were going back on the show again.”
“But with more space,” Neil added.
“Hear, hear!” Hudson said, holding his thermos up in a cheers. “I no longer have to share a bunk bed with Jude while he has nightmares every night from eating chocolate.”
“What?” I laughed. I looked at him. “Is that true?”
Even with only the firelight to see, the blush on Jude’s face was clear.
