FRIENDS

4

When we had fallen asleep, we'd had at least a foot of room between us on the bed, but when I woke up the following morning, my head was resting on Michael's chest and our legs were intertwined.

My heart started pounding in my chest. I enjoyed it, trust me, I enjoyed being this close to him, but it wasn't good for me.

Slowly I pulled away, hoping I'd be able to unlink myself from him without him waking up and questioning the situation. Unfortunately, I had no such luck.

"What's going on?" Michael asked sleepily, rubbing his eyes. I sighed and stopped trying to move away from him.

"Nothing, I was just trying to get out of bed." I said quickly. Michael opened his eyes finally and realized how we had been sleeping. He laughed quietly.

"Do you feel awkward about this, Ivy?" He asked, a teasing tone in his voice. "Cuddling isn't illegal, you dork. It's not like we're secretly fucking." He pulled away from me and got out of the bed, making his way into the little bathroom attached to my bedroom.

I groaned as I got out of bed. Of course he saw this as no big deal. For him it wasn't a big deal. He hadn't been in love with me for most of his life.

I began pulling things out of my suitcase to get ready for a shower so that when Michael got out of my bathroom, I could get ready for the day.

When Michael walked out of the bathroom, he ran his hand through his hair. He smiled widely at me.

"I was thinking that maybe today we could go sightseeing. You've never been to LA before and I think it would be cool for you to see some of the awesome things in the city, and since I have today off, I figured you and me could finally have some time for just us, you know? I mean, other than when we're sleeping in the same bed." He chuckled and I nodded my head at him, grinning like an idiot.

"I'd love to. I just need to shower and we could go. Maybe we could grab breakfast?" I suggested. Michael nodded his head happily.

"For sure. So let's meet downstairs in like, an hour? Will that be enough time?" He asked. I rolled my eyes.

"An hour will be plenty of time. Since when do I take more than an hour to get ready?" I joked. Michael laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"I was just checking! Things change when you don't see someone for a long period of time!" He defended. I rolled my eyes again as he walked out of the room, closing my door behind him.

 

When I met him downstairs, he was wearing a black baseball cap backwards and a pair of dark sunglasses with his usual band shirt and black jeans. I almost felt overdressed, standing next to him in a light yellow sundress, and part of me wanted to go change into a similar outfit but when he saw me, he smiled widely.

"You look great, Ivy. I mean it, you look so pretty today." I blushed and looked down at my feet, focusing on the blue polish on my toes rather than on Michael's compliments. He had always been the type to slip little comments like that in, but it wasn't often. I think that made them matter more, though.

"Where did you want to go?" I finally asked, once I was confident my cheeks weren't as red. He was playing on his phone and he took so long to reply that I thought he hadn't heard me.

"Sorry, Ivy. I was getting an Uber." He slid his phone into his pocket and turned to face me. "Well, we're going to go for breakfast so I thought we'd go to this place called 101 Coffee Shop and then maybe hit up Amoeba. It's this huge ass record store and you'll lose your mind when you see it." I nodded along, smiling at how much thought he'd put into our day. "I also thought it would be kinda cool to go to the TCL Chinese theatre, where all those handprints are. There's like, the Harry Potter cast's, and Marilyn Monroe, it's fucking rad. And then I guess the Hollywood Walk of Fame, because you're not a real tourist until you've walked down that for at least a couple of blocks..."