There was a little bounce in my step as I walked up the hill to my apartment, pulling Michael's jacket tighter around me. I was on my way home from Reese's apartment. It was the first time I'd been alone with her since Santa Cruz. We facetimed Kayla too. It felt good to be with my best friend again. Life felt good. For me, this was a life worth living. Sure, I was a person in a thousand pieces, but I was okay for now. I had Michael, the boys, Reese and Kayla, my art, and a little bit of music.
I entered the building, absentmindedly moving my left hand up and down an imaginary fretboard and letting my fingers make the chords. I was trying to decide when to play for Michael. I was somewhat anxious to play, but I wanted to find the right time. Any time would have worked, we were just that time of couple where we didn't have to make plans to have a great night. But still, I wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be.
"Hey, Lana!" I immediately dropped my hands to my side, a blush creeping across my cheeks. I looked up to see Ashton leaning over the railing on my floor, his black glasses dangerously close to sliding off his nose and plummeting four floors.
"Oh, hey Ash! What's up?"
"Ah," he ran his hands through his hair as he checked his phone briefly and leaned further over the rail to see the floor above. "Nothing I guess. I was gonna go hang out with Michael if he was home by now, but he's not so I was gonna see if you wanted to hang since he hasn't texted me back or anything."
Michael recently got a job at some computer design thing. Well, apparently, he's had it all along. He just worked part time from home. That was how he payed his rent. I did the same thing with my animation company. Michael decided to take on more hours at the actual site so he could "get money to get us to Vegas."
"Oh! Yeah, sure! I don't really have any plans. What do you want to do?" It'd be nice to hang out with Ashton for once. Even Calum and I went out briefly the other day to look at puppies. Well more like I was walking home from the Institute and passed a pet store Calum just so happened to be in.
Our little encounter went a little like this:
"Lana!" Calum had suddenly appeared in the pet shop window I was passing by. He voice is a little muffled by the glass but there was no denying the excitement in his voice.
"Calum!" I said, imitating his tone.
"Puppy!" Calum held up the furry little dog he had and hugged it to his chest. He hid his face in the dog and I rushed inside in seconds, getting my own puppy to hold.
I wasn't really just a dog person or a cat person. I was both. Michael and I had come to this store plenty of times before to play with the kittens they had. If Calum was as much of a dog person as Michael was a cat (notice how I say Michael is a cat, not cat person) then I would never get Calum out of here.
We played with the puppies for almost an hour. We went from playing Tug Of War with them from holding them in our laps and moving their front paws around and ging them little falsetto voices.
Calum and I finally decided to leave, even though we could have stayed forever. Calum's puppy peed on him and he needed a shirt change.
Luke and I had probably hung out the most out of the band when Michael was out for his job. (I know, Michael with a job? He's good with computers and digital stuff I guess.) Mainly we'd just walk around or hang out the apartment. Sometimes he would just come over randomly and we'd just eat, listen to music, and watch Netflix. We'd also work with the guitar and for any upcoming gigs we were going to do together. Luke had actually taken to crashing on the couch after showing up late at night. It made me question Luke's social life.
So all in all, it was time to hang out with Ashton.
"Great!" Ashton clapped his hands excitedly an ran down the stairs to meet me. His breath was hardly uneven and I winced as I imagined how I could hardly even run down steps at all now.
