Chapter 34

Night Out

"Meet Me on the Equinox"- Death Cab for Cutie

Kyle (POV)

Amanda and I had put Brice to bed and we decided to watch a movie. I couldn't even begin to explain the movie's plot because I hadn't been watching, and neither had Amanda. It started with me playing with a piece of her hair which led to her straddling my lap. Her hands were knotting through my hair, and my hands lingered on her hips as my lips explored hers. I could feel her lips form a smile, and I couldn't help but smile as well.

"I've been thinking," she said as my lips trailed along her jaw line.

"Hmmm?" I mumbled through kisses.

"We should have an outdoor wedding," she suggested, sitting back a little on my lap.

I pulled back for a moment; we hadn't talked much about the wedding. We still have yet to pick a date.

"We could do that, but come late November it will be too cold. We would have to wait till spring." It was already mid September, and I really didn't want to have to wait till spring.

"I've always wanted a fall wedding," she shrugged biting her lower lip.

I chuckled. "Would that be enough time to plan everything?"

"Well, you and I both want somewhat of a small wedding. It shouldn't be too hard to plan," she pointed out, re-lacing her hands behind my neck.

"So when are we looking at? Late October? Or early November?" I questioned.

"We should probably go with early November, that will give us some time to plan and hopefully our mom's won't kill us," she giggled.

"Do you think we can wait that long?" I chuckled; we both knew how badly we wanted to be married.

"I don't know…" she teased resting her forehead on mine. "It's such a long time not to be Mrs. Trager."

I laughed a little re-locking my lips to hers. "Well Mrs. Soon- to- be –Trager," I mumbled through kisses. "How does November tenth sound?"

"Perfect!" she grinned.

I could tell the movie was over by the credit music playing. "We should probably get to bed," I suggested "We both have to work tomorrow."

"Uhhhh…I don't want to go to work…" she groaned

"Well its Friday," I reminded her, "And I'm not on call tomorrow night."

"I forgot about that!" she smirked, "oh by the way, Lori wants us to go out with her and Declan for drinks."

"Who's going to watch Brice?" I asked.

"I asked my mom and she said it wouldn't be a problem."

"Well than I guess we're going out tomorrow night!" I smiled. "Where are we going anyway?"

"It some new club Lori wanted to go to," she shrugged.

"Are Josh and Andy going?"

"Yep, you only have to be 18 to get in so they won't have a problem. They just won't be able to drink," she added.

"Like that's going to stop Josh," I laughed. "He'll be bugging me to buy him a beer all night."

She just laughed. "Well I'm ready for bed!"

I stopped her from scooting off my lap and kissed her a few time before standing up with her in my arms and our lips still locked as I carried her to our room.

It felt so good to get a full night's sleep, the past couple of nights I had been working all night at the hospital. The night mares were becoming less frequent, for a while I was worrying Amanda.

Amanda had to leave for work before I did, so it was my morning to get Brice ready for pre-school.

"Brice you have to eat two more bites of your cereal, come on," I told him. Usually he wasn't picky about eating but this morning he was.

He shook his head.

"Just two bites buddy; you've already eaten most of it," I tried to persuade him.

He looked at me, then at the bowl and sighed eating the last two bites of his fruit loops.

"See that wasn't so bad!" I ruffled his hair. "Now go brush your teeth and put your shoes on, we're running late."

He hopped off the chair and ran off into the bathroom. I cleaned up his dishes and grabbed things that I needed for work. I lingered in the doorway of the bedroom for a moment; from the doorway I had a direct view of the bathroom. I could see Brice perched on the wooden step stool, using water to try and style his hair like mine. The water wasn't strong enough to hold his sandy blond hair.

"Need some help Brice?" I asked leaning in the doorway of the bathroom.

"I wanted my hair like yours Daddy," he explained, looking up at me.

I snatched the jar of styling cream off of the shelf above the sink.

"Here," I dabbed some of the cream on my fingers. "Water isn't strong enough to hold your hair up Buddy, it's too thick."

I worked the cream into his hair and styled it the same way I did mine.

"There, now shake your head." I shook my head as I said it and he imitated me.

"Alright Buddy you are all set." I chuckled; his hair really did look like mine. The only difference was the color.

"Thank you Daddy!" He hopped off the step stool and hugged my leg before running off into the hallway.

I drove him to pre-school and walked him into school. His teacher, Mrs. Flint, couldn't hide her smile when she saw Brice's hair.

"Alright Buddy, Mommy will pick you up after pre-school okay?" I reminded him, kneeling down to his level.

"Okay, bye Daddy!" He hugged me and ran off to play with his friends.

I went to work and spent most of my time in the pit. There was a fight that had broken out at some school and a couple of kids ended up needing stitches and x-rays to make sure nothing was broken. I was helping a fellow intern, Dr. Walker, with one of the high school kids that were involved in the fight. The kids had been fighting in the stair well and our patient, Avery, had actually fallen down them. We had been asking him questions to make sure he didn't have any signs of a head trauma, but also to get a patient history.

"How old are you, Avery?" I asked, hooking him up to a few monitors.

"16, just like I told the paramedic." He sounded a bit annoyed.

"We're going to have to call your parents, so we'll need a phone number to contact them," Dr. Walker explained.

He gave her his Mom and Dad's cell phone numbers and she left to call them.

"I'm going to have to stitch the cut on your forehead, so I'll use a local anesthetic for the pain," I explained, getting the things I needed ready.

He nodded.

"Can I ask what happened?" As doctors we were told to pry a little, so we could get the full story.

He sighed; he seemed a little reluctant to say anything. "There were a few guys…being…well guys, to my little sister."

His story made me think of Lori. I was lucky she was married to my best friend; I never really had to deal with things like that. But I probably would have reacted in a similar way.

"How old is your sister?" I asked to keep him talking.

"She's 14 and she's a freshman." He paused. "I'm her big brother; it's my job to protect her."

He reminded me of Josh, when he found out that Jessi had been the one to attack Lori.

"I have a sister myself, I know you feel like you have to protect her, but that doesn't mean beating up every guy that so much as glances at her." I had finished his stitches and put a bandage over the cut.

"She's my baby sister," he looked down at his feet that were dangling off the edge of the bed.

"I know, and you can still look out for her. You just have to back off a little…" I paused looking at his nose, there were some pretty nice bruises forming. "Has the bleeding from your nose stopped?"

"Yeah, how bad does it look?" he asked

"Let's just say you'll have a few stories to tell," I chuckled.

"Do you think I'll get more girls?" he joked.

"You never know," I chuckled. "When your parents get here I'll explain what we're going to do with your nose."

With perfect timing Dr. Walker came back with, who I assumed was Avery's Dad.

"Avery, what the hell happened?" the man with dark brown hair and grey flecks asked once he saw Avery's face.

"Dad, it was just a fight."

Dr. Walker had our resident, Dr. O'Shea, join us and we explained that Avery's nose would need surgery. Dr. O'Shea also had the orthopedics doctor, Dr. Robinson, do a consult since she would be the one to perform the surgery.

Dr. O'Shea, Dr. Walker and I were able to scrub in with Dr. Robinson. We watched as she repaired Avery's nose with perfect precision. The surgery took most up most of my shift; once it was over and we scrubbed out I spent the rest of my shift charting.

Once 4:30 rolled around it was time for me to go home. I changed out of my light blue scrubs and into my light grey sweater and jeans that I had come here in. The drive home was quiet. I ran into Declan on my way through the lobby to the elevator.

"Hey man," he said, matching his pace to mine.

"Hey, are you just getting back from class?" I asked as we stepped onto the elevator.

"Yep, just getting back from work?" he questioned, pushing the button of our floor.

"Yeah, so you know Lori wants us all to go out for drinks right?"

"Crap, I almost forgot about that," he sighed. "Thanks for reminding me."

"You're welcome." We walked off the elevator and down the hall to our apartments.

We departed to our own apartments. I found Amanda sitting at the kitchen table with wedding magazines scattered across it. I took the seat next to her, causing her to look up at me.

"I didn't even hear you come in." She smiled before giving me a kiss.

"I can see that, what is all this?" I asked, eying the magazines.

"Oh! Lori just brought over these after I told her that we had picked a date." She paused, sifting through the magazines. "What do you think of these for our invitations?"

I looked at the example she had given me it was a thick white card stock with an ocean blue and silver border. The lettering was a black generic cursive type. It was simple, but I did like it.

"I like this one," I said kissing her on the forehead and getting up to get myself a glass of water.

"Okay, that was easy," she beamed. "Now, who are we inviting to the ceremony? I've come up with my list. There's my Mom, David, my grandparents, and my uncle."

"Well there are my parents, Lori and Declan, Josh and Andy, Foss and his sister, and Hillary, Paul of course" As I listed them off she wrote them down. "Oh and people from work, Dr. Walker, Dr. Laflour, Dr. Barns, Dr. Foster the inters. Dr. O'Shea my resident and Dr. Ford."

"I forgot about people from work," she mumbled, adding a few more people from her work.

"Now…What about…Jessi?" she asked.

"You want Jessi at our wedding? You guys never really got along," I reminded her.

"Kyle, she was a big part of your life, just because we didn't get along doesn't mean she shouldn't come to our wedding." This was one of the things that always amazed me about Amanda: she was able to over look the past.

"I wouldn't even know where to send the invite."

"Now you're making excuses, Kyle, you were able to track down Sarah. Tracking down Jessi shouldn't be a problem for you."

Maybe she was right, maybe I was making excuses. The last time I had actually spoken to Jessi we weren't on the best of terms.

"Alright I'll see if I can find and address," I finally said. "I guess it won't hurt to send an invitation to her."

"I'm going to go check on Brice, he's in his room right?" I knew he was but I wanted to change the subject.

"Yeah, my mom and David are going to pick him up at six," she said. "By the way, what did you do to his hair?"

"He was trying to style it like mine this morning, I just helped," I chuckled.

She just smiled and shook her head going back to her wedding stuff. I went to find Brice; he was happily playing in his room. I lingered in the doorway of his room for a minute. I couldn't believe how fast he was growing up already. We had just celebrated his fourth birthday a week ago. I still remember when he was a baby and he would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. I would rock him till he fell back asleep.

"Daddy!" his voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

"Hey Buddy," I smiled, walking over to him and plopping down next to him on the floor.

He showed me his city that he was building out of Legos. He had it all planned out, everyone that lived in the city was smart, they all had jobs, he had thought of everything. We both became very invested in the city he had created because we didn't even notice that Carol and David had arrived.

"Brice, Grandma and Grandpa and here," Amanda called.

"But Mommy, Daddy and I are still playing!" he called back and I couldn't help but smile.

"Come on Buddy we've got to go," I said, standing up and plucking him up from the floor. "We can play more tomorrow."

After we said goodbye to Brice we got ready for the night. I just put on a new white button up shirt, sprayed on some colon, and brushed my teeth and I was ready to go. Amanda took a little longer. I didn't mind though, I turned on a basketball game to occupy myself.

I was able to watch until the third quarter before Amanda was ready to go. When she came out of our bedroom I really didn't mind that I had to wait because she looked stunning. She was wearing a purple strapless cocktail dress that was tight to her skin and had on silver heals and her hair was in loose curls.

"Amanda you look…" I trailed off. "Beautiful."

If I were to use words from Josh's vocabulary, she looked down right hot. I didn't mind if we skipped going for drinks and just had fun here.

"Thank you," she blushed.

We met Lori and Declan in the lobby and decided to walk to the club. It wasn't that far and it was unusually warm for a September night. The whole walk there the girls talked about the wedding, Declan and I stayed quite letting them talk. When we got there Declan and I got drinks for ourselves and the girls. While they ran off to find Josh and Andy. Once we got our drinks we found everyone, they had taken over a booth near the dance floor.

"Here you go," I smiled, setting down and apple tiny in front of Amanda.

"Thank you!" She kissed me on the cheek as I sat down next to her.

"Hey Kyle, Buddy, you want to buy me a drink?" Josh asked.

"You're not 21 Josh; I'm not buying you a drink," I stated and he pouted.

"Hey Declan do you want to buy-"

"Not a chance little Trager," Declan cut him off, taking a sip of his beer.

"Oh my god, I love this song!" Lori squealed.

"Me too!" Amanda and Andy almost screamed back.

The three of them got up and ran onto the dance floor. I chuckled a little watching them dance.

"So I hear you've finally picked a date to join the married man's club." Declan voice was a little louder than usual. I guessed so he would be able to hear himself speak over the music.

"Yeah, November 10th," I said matching my tone to his.

"That's like what two months from now?" Josh questioned.

I nodded drinking my beer.

Andy came over and dragged Josh onto the dance floor. Not long after did Amanda do the same to me. Then finally with a great amount of persuasion Lori was able to get Delcan to join her on the dance floor. Amanda and I danced together; our movements were in synch with each other and the beat of the music.

We were all able to let go of everything and just have fun. There weren't any worries of work or wedding planning or anything. For this night Amanda and I were able to be 21, we were able to let go of it all and just have fun. I bent my neck down and planted my lips to hers, savoring the moment.

AN: Hope everyone enjoyed this chapter! Comments are always appreciated!