Even More Reasons - m.c

Chapter 1

"That will be us someday, right?"

Michael's P.O.V

One-and-a-Half Years Later

"This is weird." I told Shay as we were walking back to our hotel room for the night. "Ashton just got married. He seriously got married."

"Strange, isn't it?"

"So strange. My best friend is married. Our drummer is married."

"He's the first married member."

"Wow." I shook my head as I squeezed her hand. "Just wow."

Just under two years ago, we had a long period off & Ashton wanted to spend it at home with his family. He ended up reconnecting with a girl, Carter, who we all had went to school with, someone we all considered a friend & they hit it off.

Ashton went from as single as could be to completely in love within a few months.

Carter was a really good friend of Calum's back in the day too so he supported the relationship & I think that helped the two of them move forward quickly.

She was super chill plus she & Shay got along great so it was nice for Shay to have someone that was going through the same thing as her - dating one of us.

Anyways, the two of them were only dating a year when Ashton asked her to marry him. He had told us before he proposed & he simply explained that the feeling he had with Carter, he never wanted to lose. Ashton always wanted stability & marriage is stability. So they married three months after the engagement.

The more I saw Ashton with Carter, it made sense how they were meant to be so weirdly enough, none of us thought they were moving too fast.

However here I was with Shay, in a relationship almost three years, yet no marriage, no proposal.

I had my reasons.

We were still so young, Shay was going to be 21 soon, I was almost 22. We were still young. Sure, Ashton isn't much older, but he has always had an aged heart & soul so he's an exception.

Also, Shay & I were happy with how we were. I think we both knew the security of our relationship too. She knew I loved her, I knew she loved me. We were okay with that for the time being. We liked the dating stage, we were content.

I told her I'd ask her to marry me someday & it's true, I still will.

But there's no rush.

"Michael, we're room 215, not 217." She pulled my arm back as I was about to put in the keycard into the wrong door.

"Whoops, thanks babe."

I opened the door for us before Shay fell onto the bed in the middle of the room, trying to kick her heels off.

"Get these shoes off of me!"

"Here, I'll help." I laughed at her as I knelt before the bed before undoing the strap on the shoe. "There you go."

"Ugh, thank you."

"Of course." I stood up as I kissed the top of her head. "Better?"

"Insanely better already. You know, that was one positive I felt from being drunk a lot. You don't really feel the pain from shoes. Those times I'd be out all night, my heels likely hurt my feet but I didn't feel it."

"Shay. You know I hate when you do that."

"Sorry, sorry. I'm kidding."

She does that a lot - make jokes about drinking or her "alcoholic days". It was apparently a coping mechanism for her to be able to make it a joke about it now, so it was hard to get mad at her. But I had a hard time hearing her make jokes about something that was such a huge, negative part of her life.