So, in honor of the finale of Austin & Ally, here is the final chapter of The Songbook. It's been well over a year and a half since I updated this, and I know that many of you who followed it back when I started (or back when I last updated) might never read the conclusion, but I'm hoping that those of you who do find it satisfying and worth the wait (okay, let's be honest, I'm not quite that good of an author, but still).
Also, I need to mention how FREAKING EXCITED I AM THAT THIS FANFICTION IS BASICALLY COMING TRUE? I have no idea what to think but when I found out I was a complete mess the entire time.
So, without further ado, the thrilling conclusion to The Songbook.
"And Owen, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
"I do," Owen says, smiling at Ally dressed in fantastic white, her veil draped lightly over her shoulders. She smiles back.
"And Ally, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"I-"
Two Days Earlier
"So, Ally, where do you want to go now? We can go track down Owen and give him a piece of our minds or… or… Ally?" Ally was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, her hand rubbing her eyes furiously. She was crying, or at least her she was trying to stop herself from crying.
I pulled over immediately. I reached over and took both of Ally's hands in mine and made her look into my eyes. Both of hers were bloodshot and raw.
"Ally, what's wrong?"
"I, uh, I was just thinking about fucking stupid I am. I'm thinking about telling my parents, about telling my friends and family that this wedding is off, especially since I know they're all going to want to know why and my dad can't keep a secret for his life so my whole family is going to know me as the one who got cheated on and then cheated and then dumped her husband two days before the wedding."
"Ally," I said, putting my hand under her chin and pulling her head towards me. "I promise you, I will never let anyone call you that. And I'll especially not let you sit here feeling dumb because your fiancé was an asshole. You fell in love with someone, just because he didn't deserve you says nothing about you. You deserve the sun and the stars and-"
"The moon?" She asked, smiling a little.
"Yeah," I smile back. "The moon."
Ally looked up at the street sign and realized where we were, then pushed my hands back to the steering wheel. "Austin, I know where we're going."
"Where?" I asked, shifting the car back into drive.
"Trish."
Trish opened the door after a few knocks, and as soon as she saw the two of us she pulled us both into a huge hug then motioned for us to come into her hotel room.
"Austin and Ally. If my eyes don't deceive me - I don't know if I ever thought I would see you two in a room together again."
Ally and I glanced at each other, slightly uncomfortable, then looked back at Trish and smiled.
"And Ally, how are the wedding plans going?" Trish asked somewhat excitedly. That was Ally's cue.
"Actually, Trish. I was hoping to get your opinion on that. Remember that time you planned that whole big firing parade for Dallas? How you basically said you were a master of revenge?"
"Yeah," Trish said, treading carefully.
"Well, I need your help with some last minute wedding planning."
Ally and I climb back into the truck after talking with Trish for over an hour. The three of us even called Dez who was now flying out on his jet as we drove. The plan was in motion. Unfortunately, that meant the next step was going to be the worst.
I drove for another few miles, turning when Ally directed me, until we pulled up in front of an apartment complex.
"Welcome to my apartment," Ally said, opening the door and climbing out as soon as she saw Owen's car in the parking lot. I did the same but she told me to get back in the car and wait until she gave the signal. She pointed to one of the windows in the complex and told me to watch it, then she went to the front door.
I wasn't there for what happened next, but from what Ally told me it went something like this:
Ally walked up the stairs to her shared apartment with Owen, holding onto the railing and willing herself forward with each step, trying desperately not to cry or throw up. She took out her keys but as she tried to fit them into the lock they dropped onto the floor making an awful clattering sound and before she managed to pick them up and put them back to the doorknob, Owen opened the door and was standing above her. She thrust herself forward and into his arms, then took his face with her hands and kissed him, hard, again and again, then he pulled her into the apartment and toward the bedroom.
Before he took her shirt off, though, she stopped him and pushed him back.
"No, Owen. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I want this to be special. I want to marry you and I don't care about anything else I just want to marry you on Saturday and live the rest of my life with you. I don't care what you did or anything that happened I just want you, okay, just you and I want to do this right. No more sex. No more kissing. Not until we say I do, okay?"
"You expect me to say 'yes' to that plan after I just caught you in bed with another man?" Owen said, his fury faltering as he watched her take off her shirt.
"Yes."
"Fuck," he said, then moved closer to her. "Fine. Yes. I'll take you back."
"Oh, thank you!" She said, jumping up into his arms, but she stops herself right before she kisses him again. "Not until the wedding, okay?"
"Okay," he said, smiling back. "I'm glad this is all over with. It was all so dumb anyway. I could never feel that way about anyone but you, Als."
Ally pretended to smile at the pet name. She hated it when he called her "Als" but she smiled again and placed a kiss on his cheek and then pulled a sweatshirt out of the closet and pulled it over her head, then the two of them settled down into their bed for a while in preparation for the big day.
—-
I didn't see Ally at all after she got out of the car. About twenty minutes after I'd dropped her off she walked over to the window I was watching and she had on a new sweatshirt. She nodded to me and I started the car and pulled out of the driveway, heading home.
I was woken up at six o'clock in the morning when my phone went off. I immediately got dressed, then took my phone and called the number Ally and texted me. The voice on the other end agreed to meet up and I got in the car and headed toward the Mall of Miami. Fifteen minutes later I was sitting in the center of the mall waiting, then a girl walked toward me.
"Austin Moon?"
"Yeah. Jenna Clare?"
"Uh huh."
"You're dating Owen Hunter, yes?"
"Yeah, why?"
"And you know he's engaged to be married, no? To Ally Dawson - the famous songwriter and performer."
"No he's not. He broke up with her two nights ago. We're officially a couple now. Fuck you." She turned and started walking away from me. I had to run to catch up with her but I did and grabbed her arm.
"Yeah, well, that's not quite true." I took out my phone and showed her a text from Ally from earlier that morning. It was a picture of her and Owen, a selfie. She was kissing his neck while he was taking the picture.
"That lying, fucking, weas-" She took my phone out of my hand and scrolled to the next picture, one of Owen kissing Ally on the nose. "That's the shirt he was wearing when we were together yesterday. Oh fu-"
"Do you want to get back at him?" I asked, taking my phone back.
"What would you have in mind," she asked, looking me up and down.
"A little something spectacular," I answered.
—-
The Wedding Day
Dez and I were in my house fixing our tuxedos and making sure we looked good. I was checking my phone every few minutes for updates from Trish about what was happening with Ally's bridal party getting ready for the wedding. Trish kept sending pictures of Ally in her dress, absolutely gorgeous, and captioning them with snarky things like "Look what you're missing out on". I couldn't help but imagine Ally in a dress like that for our wedding one day.
Dez took my phone and put it in on the nightstand in my bedroom, then made sure my jacket looked right. As soon as we were ready we both headed out the door toward the church, armed with the knowledge that we were about to make Owen's life miserable, and the fact that Ally was going to be mine again in a matter of hours.
—-
The band played the wedding march as Ally began to march up the aisle, Owen already standing at the front of the church with the minister behind him. He smiled as Ally made her way toward him. I glanced over at Dez, then Trish already up in the front of the church, then to Jenna sitting in the middle of the groom's side, directly behind Owen's parents. Perfect.
Ally got to the front and Lester let go of her arm, tearing up a little. I couldn't help knowing how much this was going to hurt him. Owen took Ally's veil and lifted it over her head as she stood in front of him. I looked over and saw Ally's mom, Penny, too, and her stepmom and her mother's boyfriend as well. Both of them had been incredibly kind to Ally, I know, she told me, and I hated the idea that I was going to make there days awful, but I shook my head and remembered the reason why. Owen was going down, and not gracefully.
"And Owen, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
"I do," Owen says, smiling at Ally dressed in fantastic white, her veil draped lightly over her shoulders. She smiles back.
"And Ally, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"I-"
"I DO!" Dez and I whip our heads around, Dez holding his hand held camera and pointing it at Jenna. She'd come through for us. That was the weakest link in our plan and now that she'd done her part I knew we were going to go the whole way.
"Jenna?" Owen said from the front. Then he looked frantically from Ally to the minister then back to Jenna, only to make eye contact with his mother first. "I mean… what are you doing here?"
"I came to say I love you, Owen Hunter! I love you and I can't let you marry this bitch!" She rushed out of the pew, pushing off one of Owen's cousins who tried to hold her down. She ran up the aisle and pushed Ally out of the way then smashed her lips onto Owen's, all the while the minister was trying desperately to separate her from him and to calm the rest of the crowd down. Ally backed up into Trish's arms and was crying. I could tell the were real tears, but I knew they weren't for the reason that most of the audience to this spectacled believed - exactly what we needed.
"GET OFF MY SON!" A voice came from where Jenna had been a moment ago, and I watched as Mrs. Hunter ran out from the pew toward the girl. Jenna grabbed one of the bridal party's flower bouquets and threw it at her, then grabbed Owen's hand.
"Owen! Please come run away with me just like you promised me last night while we were lying in bed together. Like you promised you would do while we were having sex!" Owen's face was red, he was stuttering and helpless, and Ally just cried harder.
"I swear to GOD I was not with you last night - I was not with her last night!" He turned to address the entire church. "I wasn't with her last night!"
"But you have been with her?" Dez asked from the side, aiming his camera and zooming in on Owen's flustered face.
"I… no… I," Owen was breathing heavily, sweating hard, and all of a sudden he broke into a sprint toward the back of the church. Jenna let him go and turned toward Dez and nodded at the camera, then made her way toward one of the exits in the front of the church as quickly as possible to avoid anyone noticing and attacking her as most of the wedding party crowded around Ally.
Ally was putting on the most spectacular of shows as even Mrs. Hunter came around her and held out her hand to her.
"Oh, Ally, darling. I don't know what that was. I'm sure you know that my son cares so deeply about you and-"
"Get away from her," Trish said, pulling Ally over again. Kira Starr was right next to her in the bridal party and helped guide Ally toward the front pew. The two of them sat down next to her and the rest of the bridal party circled around, making sure no one, especially from the groom's side, could get near her right now. I slowly got out from my pew and walked toward the group. Trish motioned to the rest of the girls to let me through. The two of us helped Ally out of the church completely, but Trish went back and announced that the reception would still happen at Sonic Boom, just as planned. Of course, the large majority of the groom's side, including his parents, left almost immediately after that and needless to say, did not attend the reception.
—-
Trish and Ally walked into the Sonic Boom and about forty people were there, not a single one from Owen's group of family and friends. Most of them had come just to show moral support to Ally though, but the best part was that they were mostly friends of both of ours. This was my chance. There was the makeshift stage on the side of the store that we'd used for small concerts a few time and I got up on it as soon as Ally was there, it took a minute, but everyone in the room turned to me as I held the microphone, waiting, staring at Ally.
"I want to make a confession," I began, smiling at Ally as she looked back at me, still partly playing the abandoned bride, but mostly recovered. Most of the people there were old high school and college friends, people who knew us when we were friends, when were were a couple, or just when we were together at all.
"I am in love with Ally Dawson. Hopefully, irrevocably, and happily in love with her. It took me seven years, an awful, awful marriage, and one little brown book to figure out that there is only one person in the entire world, no, the entire universe that I belong with. Ally, you and I, we belong together. We're two in a million. When I first met you, I never knew that you would be the absolute best thing that ever happened to me, but now, looking back, I can't imaging how I ever thought you weren't. I love you so much."
Ally was looking back at me, teary-eyed again. The crowd turned to face her as Trish nudged her up toward me. She walked closer to me and slowly wrapped her arms around my neck. She stood on her toes and I pulled her into a huge hug, both of us crying into each other's shoulder. I took her hand and pulled her toward the stairs as the crowd looked on. We ascended quickly, then turned immediately into the practice room and I could hear Trish yelling for everyone to get back to the party and Dez yelling "WOO" as he turned the music up louder. Ally closed the door, however, and the practice room got definitively quieter. She locked the door then turned to me.
"I figured this would be a good time to-" Ally cut me off with a kiss, pushing her full weight onto me and backing me up toward the piano bench. I pulled my hand out of my jacket where it was, and wrapped it around Ally for a moment. When she pulled away, I grabbed one of her hands with mine and the other one pulled her songbook out of my jacket.
"I figured this would be the right time to give it back to you."
"Thanks, Austin," she says, taking the book and holding it tightly for a second, then she stands up. She sits down on the piano bench and I sit next to her. She takes a pen from the mug on top of the piano and turns her old songbook to the last page, the only page she had never written on.
"Austin," she said, turning to me.
"Yeah?"
"You know why I left he last page blank that night before you left? Why I gave you my songbook like this?"
"No, why?" I asked, curious but heartbroken remembering how I'd came to be the owner of the songbook. Or rather, the holder of the songbook, there was only one true owner.
"Because when I wrote this, I figured that if there was ever a chance the two of us would ever meet again, that we could ever give our… thing… another try, it would be because we were unfinished. So I gave you my book unfinished because I figured one day, we would finish it together. This songbook was my diary, my everything before you met me. It was the only thing I trusted to keep all of my secrets and feelings, but then I met you and all of a sudden I didn't need my songbook so much anymore for anything besides my songs. Suddenly almost every entry I made involved you, or was about you, or was inspired by you. Even before we realized our feelings I was writing about you constantly. You became my world in high school - you and Dez and Trish and my dad and my mom were everything to me back then, you were my life. You especially."
"So you want to finally finish your songbook?"
"I want us to finally finish my songbook." She leaned over and kissed me lightly, then picked up the pen again. She dated the page then began to write.
Tonight, Austin proved to me that everything in the world works out right. Everything that's meant to be does happen in the end. I love you, Austin Moon.
She handed the pen over to me, then slid the book toward me over the piano cover. I placed my pen on the paper, thinking of something eloquent or expressive to write, but I decided that the most meaningful thing to write was the one phrase that had more or less come to define our entire relationship.
Ally Dawson,
There's no way I could ever make it without you. I love you, too.
Austin Moon
"Ally," I asked and she turned to face me. "I don't mean to be rash or anything, but I want to get this out there now. Ally Dawson, I love you so much, and one day, I don't care how long, I hope you will make me the happiest man in the world and marry me."
She leaned in and kissed me, holding my hand tight.
"Yes."
She picked up the pen from on top of the piano and pressed it into her songbook one last time, writing only two lines, one of which I recognized from earlier, from my confession to her, the other clearly coming from Ally herself, writing just like she used to - in the moment.
We're like two in a million,
can't even begin to find where I found you.
Oh my. How long it has been for the finale to this fanfic, I figured it was only fitting that if I was going to come back and finish it that it had to be in a huge way, so what's better than the day of the series finale of Austin & Ally. I want to thank you all for reading this fan fiction and sticking with it, if you have, since 2013. I love this fandom so much and I know that I've grown so much because of it - as a writer and as a person, so thank you.
I don't think I've ever been more proud of a chapter in any of my fanfictions, so I hope you enjoy it too. Comment if you like, let me know if seventeen months was too long to wait for an update. I love you all. I'm out. 3