We start walking down the road with our hands intertwined. "Where are we going?" I ask
"Somewhere special."
"Mhmm okay."
"Just wait. You'll love it I promise." He opens the car door for me and makes a rather formal gesture "M'lady" he bows down and waves his hand infront of the door.
"Why thank you sir." I say in probably the worst British accent and giggle as I step into the car. He runs around the car and gets in the drivers seat after he closes my car door. "I didn't know you could drive in LA." I comment as he adjusts his mirrors and catch him fixing his hair.
"Yeah well, we pulled some strings."
Before he starts the car he leans over and kisses me lightly on the lips. "One more thing. If this is going to be a surprise, you can't see where we're going." He pulls a bandana out of his pocket and smirks. Part of me found it cute that Ashton carried around an extra bandana but another part of me was hoping he washed it since he last drummed with it on. "I hope you like the dark." I roll my eyes playfully and turn my head around so he can tie the bandana around my head to cover my eyes. Once he's done I sit back properly in my seat. "Can you see anything?"
I giggle. "No."
"You sure?"
I laugh. "Yes! I'm sure." He starts the car. I can hear the engine purr but it doesn't move. Right before I was going to ask him about it I feel warm lips pressed to mine. I smile into the kiss and feel slightly disappointed as he pulls away. No need to rush Ash.
"Ok, here we go." The car starts moving and we're on our way. We drive for about 20 minutes or 6 songs from the radio. The car stops and I hear him get out. He opens my door and I can feel a slight breeze coming from outside the car. I smell salt. He gives me a hand, helping me out of the car and leads me a couple of steps away from the car.
"Can I take this off now?" I smile, placing my hands on the tie in the back of my head.
"Yeah, just one sec." He goes behind me, removes my hands from the tie, pulls the bandana off my eyes, his fingers tickle me as I feel them brush my hair, and wraps his arms around my waist. My eyes adjust to the dim lighting and see the most beautiful setting infront of me. We're at the beach. There's a single table set up with matching chairs. Around it are candles and rose pedals scattered all over the sand, with a couple of rose petals on the table. There's a path of candles leading to the table where two dishes sit with a single rose in the middle.
"Do you like it?" He asks snuggling into my neck and kissing it from behind. I turn around to look at him and jump into his arms. I kiss him and he wraps his arms around my waist.
"YES! It's beautiful!" I say, shocked at the immense effort put into this one date. "I only wish I would've known we were going to be outside. I forgot to bring a sweater." I shiver, folding my arms over my chest, hoping that they would keep me warm from the ocean breeze.
"I thought you might say that." He says as he runs to the car and grabs a basket.
"What's that?"
"It's everything we're going to need for tonight." He grabs my hand and walks me to the table.
He pulls out my chair and I sit. He places the basket in between the both of us and opens it up. I start to smile as he pulls each item out of the basket explaining them to me.
"Pasta, pasta sauce, and bread for dinner." he says placing the foods aside.
"A variety of drinks for my special girl. Champagne, lemonade, water." I smile at him and he smiles back giving me a wink. What was he going on about?
"Cards to play with for after dinner, a portable CD player for musical entertainment, and a blanket to lay down on the sand." He really thought this through. "But wait. My fair lady is still cold is she not?" I giggle at him for calling me his fair lady and nod.
At the very bottom of the basket he pulls out a sweater. At first it didn't phase me, it was just a sweater. Until I somehow remebered that it was not just a sweater. Well, it was, but it meant something more. It's the sweater he wore the day I met him. I wonder how I could possibly remember such a thing, but somehow I did.
"Is that the sweater you were wearing when we first met?" I ask him.
He gets up and hands it to me, helping me pull it over the top of my dress. It always looked as if it fit him just right, but on me it looked giant and the sleeves hung down over my hands.
"Yup." He says.
And then I realize that it's not just the sweater. It was everything. The pasta was what we ate on our first date. Cards was the first thing that we ever played together. I take a look at the CD options but there's only one. It's his album. The album they sung at the show. I look up at him and I smile brihgtly, earing a smile back.
"Do you get it?" he asks reaching over and grabbing my hands.
"I love you." Is all I can manage to tell him. He leans over the table and gives me a kiss.
"Well then, you must've worked up an appetite shopping. Especially since you went with Luke, I know he can be a handful. So let's eat!" He says jokingly.
I hesitate to answer. I knew I shouldn't be worried about Luke because I was having the most amazing night with my one and only, but I knew there was something up with him and I was worried.
"That's true, I'm starving. This all looks so delicious Ash!" He serves me some pasta onto my plate and then onto his own. "Did you make the food?" I ask him. Ashton was definitely the best cook out of the 4 boys, but that didn't mean he was great at it.
"With a little bit of help, yes I did."
"You needed help cooking pasta?" I laugh. How hard could it be? All you have to do is put noodles in boiling water.
"Hey, I wanted to give you a nice meal not poison you!" We both laugh and smile.
It was a quiet night and his laughter sounded so perfect against the sounds of the ocean. Almost as if they were harmonizing together. His hazel eyes lit up under the moonlight as if they were a couple of stars and his curls swayed lightly from the breeze. He looked so perfect.
"Do you want to listen to music?" he asks, already in the middle of putting the CD into the player.
"Of course." I tell him, I'm not one to turn down good music.
"I love this album! How did you know!?" I say sarcastically, as the familiar "hey" begins to radiate through the speakers.
"I knew because I remember this one time you went to their concert and you were jamming out to it. Not to mention it seemed like you had the hots for one of the band members." He winks at me.
I feel myself blush and he notices and smiles.
"You noticed?" I ask. He just looks up at me.
"It's hard not to notice such a perfect girl. It's a good thing I noticed too before he did." I give a strange look but I manage a smile. I forgot about that. "Now I'm sitting here. Eating pasta that I may or may not have cooked. Listening to music that I may or may not have written. With a girl I absolutely love."
He gets up, comes behind me, and wraps his arms around me giving me a kiss on the cheek and whispers in my ear. "A girl I will absolutely love forever."
I turn around to get in a more comfortable position and kiss him. He pulls the chair out from the table and I make an 'oh' sound while his lips are still on mine. He pulls me closer and I lean into him, causing the both of us to lose balance. I fall off the chair and on top of him in the soft sand. We both start laughing uncontrolably. I hit his chest lightly while staying on top of him.
"Well, who needs a blanket when you've got a boyfriend who's much softer." I say after we've both calmed down a bit. He puts one hand to his chest and scoffs.
"Are you calling me fat?" He says taking fake offense to my comment.
"No! Well..." He flips me over so that he's on top of me now. His body is heavy but light at the same time.
"Ugh! No! It's so sandy! Ashton!" I whine.
"See. It's not fun is it? Being rolled around in the sand!" I pout and he just smiles down at me. "Payback." He kisses me on the nose and I scrunch up my face. He gets up and gives me a hand to help me get out of the the sand. His hands were soft but I could feel they were corse from his drumming. He lays out the blanket and we both lie down on it. His arm wrapped around me and my head and hand resting on his chest, listening to his steady breathing. It's silent for a couple of minutes. We were both just enjoying each other's company, looking at the stars and listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. Then the conversation I had with Luke earlier, about Ashton and the boundaries, pops into my head.
"You know I'd never leave you for one of the other guys, right?" His breath hitches.
"Yeah, of course." He says half-heartedly and I see his lips flick downwards as he begins to play with his long fingers. I sit up and look at him.
"Ash, look at me," he gets up on his elbows. "I would NEVER leave you. You are mine and I am yours and I love you so freaking much. I don't want you doubting my feelings toward you." He's silent for a moment, contemplating my words. "Look, Luke told me today that you're worried that the other guys are going to take me away from you but-"
"You shouldn't listen to him, he doesn't know what he's saying." He says stubbornly.
"He's your best friend! If any one knows better than me it's him!"
"Oh so you're on his side now?" He gets up into a full sitting position. I scoff. Why was he getting so angry all of a sudden?
Then I realize that Ashton has been acting extra mushy since I told him I was out with Luke. "What's wrong with you? Ever since I went shopping with him you've been acting all weird! In fact, you've both been acting weird! What's going on between you two?!"
He grabs my face and kisses me roughly. I don't kiss back, I knew he was doing it to get me to stop talking. I'm mad now. What the hell was he hiding? They were up to something and it was clearly bothering him.
I push away from him. "No! This isn't something you can just kiss and make it go away! What are you not telling me?!"
He gets up, clearly frustrated. He brushes his hands through his hair and paces back and forth on the beach. "ASHTON! What is it? Tell me! I want to help!"
He stops dead in his path and looks me straight in the eye. "LUKE LIKES YOU, OK?!" He turns around and walks to the water kicking at the wet sand.
Luke likes me. Shit. That explains why he was so weird today. But I don't understand why Ashton was making such a fuss about this. I loved him, not Luke. I mean I lost my fucking virginity to that boy! Does that mean nothing to him? I've never trusted anyone as much as I trust him. He knows more about me than me own parents!
Then it hits me, I understand. This couldn't have just come up. This had to be brewing for some time. Finding out Luke liked me must have pushed him over the edge.
With a new understanding I walk to the shore where he's standing, his feet sinking a little into the wet sand. "Why didn't you tell me?" He flinches a little and glances in my direction and returns his stare to the horizon.
"Isn't it kind of obvious?"
"No, not about Luke," he scrunches his face at his name.
"I meant about you. Why didn't you tell me you were feeling insecure?" His face softens and he turns to me.
I pull him into a hug. He wraps his arms around my back and squeezes me tighter. I hear a little sniff and grab his face between my hands.
"You can tell me." I say as he puts his hands in mine and pulls them down in between the two of us.
"It's been going on for ages and it never really bothered me, but now that I have you I guess it's getting to me." He looks down at my hands and strokes his thumb over them. "People keep saying that Luke's better and that the band would be better without me." I kiss his hands and he smiles a little. "The one thing that got to me the other day was that someone wrote to me that you'd be better off with Luke than with me. They said that I didn't deserve you and when Luke told me that he liked you it just pushed me over the edge."
He looks back at me. "I can't lose you." He breaths in. "People can call me stupid, useless, ugly, untalented, but the one thing they can't do is take you away from me." The tears I had been holding back start to flow down my face and he pulls me in for another hug and he kisses me. It's stupid. I came he to comfort him and he ends up comforting me. It just breaks my heart when people say those things about him. He's such a sweet, beautiful and talented human being. Fucking haters.
He kisses me gently but firmly and keeps his hands on my cheeks as he wipes away my tears with his thumbs.
"I love you," I sniff, "more than you know."
He lifts my chin to look into his eyes and he smiles. "Trust me, I know." He kisses me once more, shortly, and grabs my hand. We both walk down the shore, hand in hand, quietly. I rest my head against his shoulder and he kisses my head. "I know."
We both walk silently, listening to the ocean and the sound of each others heart beats, across the wet sand for a while. Usually I felt uncomfortable with silence but this silence was calming and soothing. I still had tons of thoughts and feelings swirling around in my mind about everything I just learned, but this silence was nice. Ashton turns around to look at where we were walking from and notices that our table is out of site. "We should turn around." He says quietly.
I nod as we both turn around, his arms still wrapped around me, walking in the direction we came. The calming silence continues until it starts to freak me out so I decide to speak up. "Why are you being so quiet?" I ask.
"I'm just thinking." He says. That wasn't a reassuring answer but it was something.
"This night was perfect Ash." I say reassuringly as I look up at him. Well, excluding the whole Luke issue. He smiles.
"Good. That was the plan." He says giggling. We both finally make it back to the table and decide to pack up. It was getting late and Ashton has a long day tomorrow.
"We never got to play cards." I say pouting. I remember the night when we played cards for the first time. It was a simple game but Ashton made it unforgettable.
"We'll play when we get home. I promise." He says grabbing my hand and kissing my cheek.
I was starting to burn up since I completely forgot about his sweater, so I take it off and hand it back to him. "What are you doing?" he asks confused.
"This is your sweater. I don't need it anymore. I'm all warm." I say grinning at him.
"Keep it."
"What?"
"Keep it. I want you to have it. So I can be close to you whenever you need me." He says walking towards the car. Wow, that was cheesy. I smile and stand there for a while taking in the last moments of the night and then jog to the car where he's already waiting. He starts the engine and we are off.
I look out the window and watch the ocean become smaller and smaller. I suddenly hear my phone buzz in my purse. It buzzes again. And again. And again. This is odd. No one calls me but Ashton and he's right beside me so I know it's not him. I look down to see what was going on when I see I have three missed calls from Luke. "Shit." I whisper to myself. What does he want?