Meet You There

Chapter 9:

Duke Attack

As soon as we go in, I check out the prizes with Ashton. Only one caught my eyes. There was a big fluffy German Shepard stuffed animal.

"C'mon! Let's go!" I whine dragging Ashton to the first station which was exchanging the money for tokens. Once we git the tokens we went to some sort of coin dropper. Last time me and my sister did one of these, we won about 1000 tickets with 15 dollars, imagine two hundred!

"Are we doing this the rest of the time?" Ashton asks.

"No, we'll do some other things, but this is only for tickets," I respond.

"Do you wanna do that virtual reality thing over there?" Ashton asks pointing over to a large machine going upside down.

"Yeah, I'm up for that. But do you have the stomach for it?" I ask laughing.

"Yes! I do!" He scoffs.

"Whatever you say,"

"Just shut up and win tickets," Ashton pushes me to the side. I look over at him.

"You didn't,"

"But I did," he chuckles. I was gonna murder him and dump his body in a trash can, but I came up with a less harmful idea.

"ASHTON! OH MY FUDGING GOSH IT'S PEWDIPIE!" I shout pointing in the direction opposite from me.

"Where!" He turns, and I snag his tickets. Might I add, there were many. I run around until I spotted Calum.

"Cal-Pal!" I whisper. "Psssssst!"

"What are you doing Alexis?" He laughs.

"Quick get down!" I pull Calum behind another machine. We watch as Ashton passes by calling out my name. He looked worried, which made me feel guilty. I gave up and came out of hiding.

"For fucks sake! You scared the shit outta me, Alexis!" He breathes out and brings me in for a hug. "I want my tickets back," he whispers in my ear.

"Never!" I yell, trying to get out of his arms, but fail miserably.

"Give 'em here and no one gets hurt." He started counting down from five as I tried wiggling around to get away from him.

"Calum! Save me!"

"An eye for an eye, you traitor, you left me for Ashton, so I'm leaving you with Ashton, good day," he waves and walks away.

"Did I mention how good of a drummer you Are? I mean, you're better than Josh Dunn!" I say trying to persuade him to let me go.

"Oh really! Thank you!" He replies, but keeps a firm grip on me.

"Alright, I give!" I go limp.

"Where are they?" He asks. I reach into my pocket and hand them to him.

"Hey Ash?" I look up at him with curiosity.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think you can teach me to play drums one day?" I ask

"Heck yeah! I'd love too!"

"Thanks!" I exlaim.

"Now. Shall we continue?" Ashton says, rubbing his hands together.

"Of course." We head back over to the coin dropper and before we knew it, we were out of tokens.

I go to count my tickets and I had over 5000, almost enough for the dog, but it cost 5250. I look around at all the other options, but none really caught my eye like the German Shepard. I see Michael walk up beside me.

"What are you getting?" He asks.

"I don't know," I look up at the stuffed animal "You want my tickets? I offer, holding them out.

"Sure,"

"ASHTON!" I yell out.

"WHAT!"

"GETCHO ASS OVER HERE! WE ARE GOING ON THE VR THINGAMABOBBER!"

"ALRIGHT HOLD ON!" Ashton hobbles over to where I was and we both go up to the counter to pay for a ride. Once buckled in, I look over at Ashton.

"Please don't puke on me," at first it was a joke until he answered.

"No promises." He squirms around. Everything was turned upside down, literally. I have to deal with 5 minutes of Ashton screaming like a girl

Once it was done, I swear Ashton was green. He stumbled away to the men's bathroom. I watched his retreating figure while laughing my ass off.

"Alexis! Where is Ashton going?" Luke asks, as him and Calum walk over to me.

"The bathroom, we just go off the VR machine," I answer

"Oh, well he never was good with that stuff."

"Alexis!" I hear Michael call out. He was running up to me with a bag in his hand.

"I got you something," he says, out of breath. He reaches into the bag and pulls out the stuffed animal I've been looking at this whole time.

"MIKEY! I LOVE YOU EVEN MORE!" I snag the stuffed animal out of his hand and squeezes it as tight as possible.

"You'll still give me hugs too, right?" Calum asks, his bottom lip poked out as he gives my puppy eyes.

"Of course." Just then, Ashton walks out of the bathroom.

"I think I'm ready to go." He says.

"All of us are," I reply. When we walk out, Shawn was there waiting for us with the car.

"Duke," I whisper to the toy. " That's what I'll call you."

"Are you okay Lexus?" Calum asks, putting the back of his hand up to my forehead. He quickly pulls it away as if I had burned him.

"Just as I thought," he shakes his head. "You have a severe case of incurable insanity disorder."

"Duke! Attack!" I yell throwing Duke at him. They all laugh as I pick the stuffed animal back up. My smile starts to fall as I wonder how much longer they'll be here.