Just Play Along

Seventy-Nine & Eighty

“Cheers,” I said with an eye roll.

“Oh I know you’re going to freak out if something gets messed up. I can just sense it.”

I gave Aston an annoyed look, taking a big bite of my food. I didn’t always freak out over things! Did I?

“I’m just saying,” he said, “That if you leave me in charge I’m going to mess something up and you’ll get mad at me, and if we both take equal charge you’ll just take over anyways. Might as well just let you have it. Laying all my cards on the table here babe.”

“You’re just being lazy!”

“No,” Aston said, “I’m being practical.”

“Fine, as my first order of business,” I said with a laugh, “You have to give me the last slice of pepperoni.”

“Shut up!” Aston laughed, passing the plate over to me.

We bantered about for the rest of our meal, before agreeing to split a huge dessert.

“You know I’m glad you’re so chilled out about this,” he said, “I was expecting it to be more of a struggle.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, a year or two ago you would have been so high strung about something like this… buying a house together. I mean you agreeing to move in with me just a few weeks ago wasn’t this easy.”

“I guess,” I said with a shrug.

“I’m glad that you’re less uptight than you were before.”

I sat and stared at him, contemplating his words for a minute. He was probably right. The old me probably would have had a total meltdown at the thought of buying a house together. I would have micromanaged it to the tiniest detail. We would have probably looked at two thousand places before I was sure that we’d found something suitable. But not with this place. We saw it, we liked it, and we got it. In a single day.

“Well I’m actually excited,” I said, surprising myself.

“Yeah?” Aston grinned.

“I’ve got all sorts of ideas for things we can do with the place.”

“Hit me with one.”

“Well, do we really need so many spare bedrooms? There are like four down there. What if we use the big one in the back corner as like a study or TV room? Like the one at my parent’s estate.”

“That could be cool,” Aston said with a smile, “We can get a really awesome comfy sofa in there and I've got one of those projector TVs in my basement now.”

“And I do like the idea of the Jacuzzi on the roof,” I grinned, twirling my straw in my glass.

“Oh yeah?” Aston smirked.

“What dirty ideas are you getting?” I questioned, flicking some of my drink in his face.

He blinked the liquid away, biting his lip gently, “Well…”

“Please don’t answer that in public,” I said, shaking my head at Aston.

“I’ll tell you later then.”

“I’m sure you will,” I replied with a laugh.

We walked out of the restaurant after we finished our drinks, wandering around Chelsea a bit to digest our food and then heading back towards Aston’s house. I was actually pretty tired from the eventful day we had, and I found myself falling asleep in his car on the way home.