“Come on babe,” said Aston as he grabbed my hand and led me up the stairs of his house and to his old room. “Let’s see if we can find something dry and then I’ll throw what you’ve got on in the wash.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. “What on earth made you do that in the first place?”
“I’m not actually sure,” he grinned at me as he let me go and went off to the wardrobe to dig around for something to wear. He pulled out some gym shorts and a t-shirt that seemed a bit smaller, passing them to me. “This will work right?” he asked. “Or do you want some trackies?”
“This is fine,” I replied as I took them off his hands, quickly slipping off my wet clothes and putting the dry stuff on. My underwear was still soaked through, but I left it on. I ran my fingers through my wet hair and then tied it up in a high ponytail.
As soon as I was done I dropped my wet clothes in a heap on the floor, and then started to wander around the room. The last time I’d been at Aston’s house I hadn’t had much of a chance to explore his room as we’d been rushing about trying to get ready for a wedding, so I took a good chance to see what he had posted up on his walls. I was mostly disappointed as the majority of the walls were empty or covered in football posters, but there were a few good pictures of Aston when he was younger stuck around.
“What you doing?” he asked me, wrapping his arms around my waist and placing a sweet kiss on my neck.
“Exploring,” I replied simply, grabbing hold of his fingers and linking them with mine.
“There’s really nothing to see here!” he laughed, giving me a tight squeeze.
“Maybe not to you, but I want to see how the younger Aston lived!”
“Seriously babe, it’s just some football posters…” he started, until he noticed that I’d found a particularly bad picture of him.
“And what’s this?” I asked with a smirk.
“Nothing!” he laughed.
“Why are your eyebrows like that?” I asked. In the picture Aston had slits cut out of his eyebrows, he looked well funny.
“Shush you,” he giggled, pulling me away from the picture. I wandered around the room a bit longer, taking in the pictures on the walls and everything about Aston’s childhood. It was nice to see that it was just a normal boys room, nothing fancy about it, really showed his humble beginnings and how hard he’d worked to get where he was now.
“Come on, we best get downstairs to face the firing squad,” I sighed after awhile, extracting myself from Aston’s tight grip and opting to leave our fingers linked together. Slowly we wandered back downstairs, quickly putting our things with Conor’s in the wash. And then we headed out to the garden, where we were met with a ton of stares. I gave a faint smile as I pulled myself from Aston’s grip and approached my parents.
“How are you?” I asked, smiling and giving my mother and father a hug.
“We’re alright, the question is, how are you?” my Dad asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m fine,” I smiled. “Sorry about before, didn’t realize we had everyone watching…”
“No worries darling, you seem really happy, and that’s what matters,” he said as he gave me another hug. I just nodded my head and then dragged the pair of them over to Aston’s family who were stood a few meters away greeting Aston.
I let Aston do the introductions formally and then we stood and chatted for a while as a large group. Eventually our mum’s wandered off to finish getting the food together and the boys went off to the barbecue to get the food going.
I took this opportunity to wander around the rest of the group with Conor while he introduced me to some of Aston’s childhood friends. It was a fun time, they were all incredibly nice and genuinely good people. Aston had told me that he’d lost a lot of friends when he’d started off on the boy band adventure, but that the few people stood around the garden were his true friends, the ones who stuck up for him and didn’t get involved in the Trish situation from several years prior.
As the night wore on I found myself sat alone on the back steps of Aston’s house, a beer between my feet. I looked out at the garden to see my dad and Aston chatting away while Aston’s dad went to grab them more beers. Our mothers had wandered off to the house after awhile, I could only imagine they were sharing stories of our childhoods or something embarrassing like that.
I smiled to myself, I had never imagined my life would end up like this, somehow all of the pieces were slowly falling into place. I took a sip of my beer and sat back on my hands, staring up at the stars that were starting to peek in the sky on this warm late summer’s evening.
“You ok?” asked a voice next to me. I looked over to see Aston sitting down beside me on the steps, his hand instinctively reaching around my back. I let myself fall into his embrace as he placed a kiss on my head.
“I’m more than ok,” I smiled.
“Good,” he whispered.
We took a few minutes to sit like that, enjoying the perfect night and our families all spread out amongst each other. I liked knowing that this was my future, that I knew there would be many more nights like this down the road.
“So tell me,” said Aston. “Which summer was better, this one or the one three years ago?”
I turned and looked at him, to see a cheeky smile playing on his face. “Well,” I started, “The first summer started out better, but I think this one is ending much, much better.”
“Good answer,” said Aston as he slowly pressed his lips against mine. I heard a hoot from the garden as one of Aston’s friends egged us on. We both blushed slightly red at this and pulled apart. “So you’re happy?” he asked.
“I’m very happy,” I replied with a grin, and then I sat up and pressed my lips against his again. This was it, I’d found my happy place, and I was going to do everything in my power to stay here forever…..
THE END
