FRIENDS

23

A few days had passed since Ashton and I had made it official, and he and Calum only had one more week left at home before they went to tour North America. Thinking about them leaving made anxiety flow through my body. All I wanted was to ask to come with them, so that I didn't have to be away from Ashton so soon after we had finally become something.

But I had responsibilities at home. I had a job and I needed to finally do something with my life. I needed to go back to school. I needed to do more than serve coffee and miss my friends.

When we decided to start dating, Ashton decided that there was no point in trying to hide our relationship from the fans. We went public automatically and that first day, I was worried sick that people would freak out, call me names and send me hate, but everyone seemed to be okay about it. We got told on the street on the way back from the bar that we were an adorable couple and fans had posted pictures of us kissing and holding hands on Twitter, saying that they 'shipped' us. They'd even come up with a ship name for us, calling us Ashvy. Although it was weird, it was rather cute and it was nice to be accepted by the fans as Ash's girlfriend.

The past few nights I had either stayed at his house or we had stayed at mine. I felt bad that I was pulling him away from his family, that he spent almost all of his time with me, but he was here for such a short amount of time that the idea of not spending a day with him sucked. Besides, when I'd worked the past two days, he'd gone home and hung out with his family and I'd just joined him after and watched movies with them. It wasn't tons of time for them to spend together, but I knew even having that small amount of time made him happy. I made a mental note to spend more time there, even if we dragged Zoe, Maddy, and Calum along.

Today, Ashton and I were going on a double date with Calum and Zoe. Calum had called me the day he'd left my house and confessed that he had a bit of a crush on my friend and thought that he wanted to ask her to go on a date with him, but he said he was extremely nervous. Calum never got nervous when it came to girls, which made this a big deal. I'd told Ashton about it and he'd ripped the phone out of my hand and ran out of the room, locking himself in the bathroom so I couldn't hear what he was saying. He'd walked out five minutes later with a shit eating grin spread across his face.

"Calum is going to ask Zoe out, and then the four of us are going to go on a double date." He confirmed, plopping down on the couch beside me. We were at my house, waiting for the pizza to arrive. Zoe and Maddy were supposed to come over soon and we were going to have a movie night. Calum had decided to stay home with his mum and dad.

"Okay, where are we going?" I asked, fighting off the urge to roll my eyes at him. He just grinned even more.

"You see, I can't tell you. Calum and I decided it would be better as a surprise." Now, I really did roll my eyes. A surprise date? I'd gone on one of those before, with Alex. That hadn't ended well, in the long run. But I knew better than to try and argue with Ashton about it; he could be extremely stubborn.

"Can you at least tell me how to dress?" I asked, sighing. Ash shrugged.

"You can dress how you'd normally dress. Casual. Comfortably." He just continued grinning at me.

My front door opened and my friends came running in, Zoe screeching incomprehensibly.

"Why is she screaming like this?" I asked Maddy, who stood beside our friend with a grin on her face.

"Calum just called on our way here and asked her to go on a date with him." She confirmed. Zoe nodded excitedly.

"He called and asked if I wanted to go on a double date with you guys and at first I was kind of like, I don't know. Who would I go on the date with? But I had him on speaker and Maddy literally smacked my arm so hard and then I realized he meant him. And so I said yes. Ivy, he's so cute and I thought that maybe he was flirting with me last night but I wasn't sure. But now I'm sure!" She screamed again. Ashton and I laughed from our spot on the couch.