Izzy's POV
I spent the weekend starting to study for finals. We only hand one week left of classes, so Luke and I cooped ourselves up in his room and cranked out notes. Every time we took a break he would go right on his phone, and when I finally asked him what the hell was so important, he showed me pictures of some apartments he flagged. He wasn't just looking at minimal one-bedroom places, he was looking at two bedrooms with updated everything.
I tried to convince him that we didn't need that much, but he said he wanted a guest room in case we wanted people to stay over. And he was dead set on stainless steel appliances and two bathrooms. He was like every wife on House Hunters, super picky and expecting more than he could get with his budget. He was willing to spend up to two thousand a month just on rent alone, but I was planning on finding a place cheaper than that with most of what he wanted so he could see how much we could actually save.
When Tuesday came around, we had exhausted a good portion of what we needed to study. I went to my 9:30 lecture and met everyone in the dining hall for lunch after. Luke and Mike didn't get out of class until noon, so I sat with Sophie, Ash, and Calum until they joined. Luke brought up having them all over at Brett's the weekend after finals, and he made it sound like this whole grand thing.
"We're ordering a fuck ton of pizza and playing board games, and I don't want to hear a thing about it." Luke said sternly, looking around at all of us to make sure we didn't object. He was acting like a child, but it was cute. We were going to have a middle school slumber party again, like the night we played truth or dare. Only good things came out of that night, so I had high hopes for this plan of his.
"What board games you got?" Ashton asked seriously.
"Monopoly, Game of Thrones themed." Luke pointed at Ash to put emphasis on the fact that it was Game of Thrones. "Risk, Scattergories, Cards Against Humanity... and Candy Land."
"Brett has Candy Land?" I asked, laughing at the idea of a 25-year old man having such a game.
"I bought it for him for his birthday as a joke a couple years ago." Luke chuckled. I rolled my eyes at him and continued to eat my sushi.
"Scattergories goes hard." Mike said through a mouthful of food. I couldn't disagree, though. Calum just pointed at Mike as he chewed on his own food, agreeing with him silently.
Once that monstrosity of a conversation was over, the whole night was planned out. Everyone went back to their classes and I went back to my room to study more. That's just how the rest of the week went. I met up for lunch, and dinner on Thursday, but stayed confined to either my room or the library. On Friday night Sophie and I booked a study room in the library so we could prepare for physics. Luke and Ashton tagged along since they had taken that final already, and they pretty much summed up all the things we actually needed to know.
I was happy that we could take school so seriously, even if we still maintained a very active social life. Since the study room worked out pretty well on Friday, I booked another one for Sunday and sent a text to the group chat telling everyone to come. We couldn't all study together since we didn't all have the same classes, but if someone had a question there was always someone who could answer it.
Luke and I both had Mondays off, so he took the opportunity to set up a showing for an apartment close to campus. He didn't even show me pictures, he just told me when to be ready to go and knocked on my door at that exact time. He seemed pretty sure about this one, even though it was the first one we were looking at. Odds were that we wouldn't take it without seeing any others, but I let him have his day of excitement.
When we pulled up to a large house with two doors, he checked his phone to make sure it was the right address. It was actually a really well kept up house, with fresh yellow paint and a big drive way. I wasn't expecting us to be able to find a single family for rent in our budget, but this was honestly as nice as it got for a multi-family.
"Come on." Luke said, getting out of his car and walking around to meet the woman who had parked in front of us. I hadn't even noticed her while I was checking out the house.
We introduced ourselves to the woman, and she brought us inside and let us walk around. The house was split right in half, so we had two floors to work with. There were dark hardwood floors throughout the whole first level, and the kitchen had all the stainless-steel appliances he wanted so badly. I was just satisfied to see how open the floor plan was, with the kitchen having a bar that connected it to the living room.
There was a half bathroom on the first floor, and when we got to the second there was a full bathroom and two bedrooms. It was the same dark hardwood up the stairs and down the hall, but both bedrooms had nice fluffy carpet. The place looked like it hadn't even been lived in yet, and Luke was in love with it. I really couldn't find a single thing I didn't like. We even had our own side deck off the kitchen. It wasn't until she started getting into the price that I got cold feet.
"So, it's $1900 a month, but that includes heat, hot water, and electricity. You'd need internet and cable, if you still even use cable anymore." She chuckled at the end, trying to connect to us millennials I guess.
"How soon could we move in?" Luke asked, taking one last look at the kitchen while we made our way out.
"June first. It's a month to month lease, and it's first, last, and a security deposit of the same amount to get in." She smiled, now realizing how serious we were.
"Okay, can we call you tomorrow after we talk?" He sounded so adult-like. It was just weird, us looking for an apartment.
"Of course! Just let me know what you decide, I can have the lease drawn up by next week." She told us. I guess we could have it if we wanted it.
"How many parking spots are there, again?" I asked, remembering that we never found that out when I looked at the driveway.
"Two off street, but there's always parking on the street if you need it." She smiled.
We thanked her and agreed to reach out tomorrow, and Luke and I were off on our way back to campus. It was only a five-minute drive, so it honestly worked out perfectly. I knew I said the odds of us getting the first one were slim, but by the looks on both of our faces when we got back into the car, we both really wanted it.
"$1900 with everything included isn't that bad." Luke spoke up, making me nod my head.
"We're getting it, aren't we?" I asked, cutting right through the bullshit. I wasn't too proud to admit that he found a hidden gem for a killer deal, and he always got what he wanted.
"As long as you like it." He smiled, waiting for me to give him the go ahead.
"It was disgustingly perfect." I told him, getting a chuckle in response.
"I'll call her tonight and tell her. I don't want to risk losing it." He said, making me smile at the thought of us actually doing this together.
We went back to my room when we got back to school, and I started packing up all of the nonessential stuff. I had to be moved out by the end of the week anyway, so I guess we were going to have to take all our stuff to Brett's for the two weeks before we could move in there. That was if it all worked out. I wanted it to, I really did, but I always thought of the worst-case scenarios.
It wasn't until Luke called the woman back that night that I actually let myself get excited. She said she was going to write the lease for us to sign sometime this week, so we planned to meet her on Thursday when the both of us didn't have finals. The second Luke hung up the phone, he was crawling on top of me.
"Are you happy?" He smirked, leaving a few kisses on my cheek.
"Yeah." I said, letting myself be spoiled for once. He smiled at me, and it ended in us making out on my bed for a while before we realized we really needed to keep packing.
I had my whole life in this room, and I was finally going to have a place to move it that was permanent. Luke left me to go start packing himself, so I finished what I could before it was getting too late to stay up. I had an 8 am final the next morning, so Luke let me sleep in my own room while he kept taking apart his for another couple hours.
When we met on Thursday to sign the lease, Luke handed her a check for the $5,700 it was going to take to move in. We hadn't told anyone that we were doing this, so when we all finished with finals and the whole group came over to Brett's, we planned on sharing the news. Luke ordered way too many pizzas, as in six boxes of pizza. That was a whole pie a person, but I didn't argue since we'd have left overs for days.
Sophie drove them all over here once they were finished packing up their rooms, getting here right before the deliver guy knocked. Brett went over to Vanessa's place an hour before. He wanted to leave us to do what we wanted, even though Luke tried to invite him to join the festivities. We spent the first hour scarfing down slice after slice while playing Cards Against Humanity, but once that got boring we started switching over to Scattergories.
"Me and Izzy have something to tell you guys." Luke said, walking back into the living room after getting a bottle of water from the kitchen.
"If you're pregnant I'm killing you and your unborn child." Sophie said, making me raise my eyebrows at her. That was so hostile and out of nowhere, but I just laughed at how that was the first thing she thought of.
"You know I got the arm implant, right?" I asked, still chuckling.
"I'm just making sure. I am not ready to be an aunt." She sounded so serious about it, like her role as an aunt would ruin her whole life plan.
"What if I was pregnant? You could have just shattered our hopes and dreams." I laughed, watching as she sat there unbothered. Ashton hadn't been paying attention to the conversation at all, so when all he heard were the words 'I' and 'pregnant' coming from me in the same sentence his head shot up.
"Wait, did you just say you're pregnant?!" He asked, disbelief written all over his face. I covered my face with hands, not having the mental capacity to deal with how far off topic this got.
"She's not pregnant, oh my god!" Luke cried out, making everyone giggle. "At least, I think you're not." He gave me a weird look, but I just fell back onto the floor and held my arm up, pointing to the inside of my upper arm where I got the birth control implant two years ago.
"I have the implant, babe! I already told you this!" I shouted, everyone now laughing at where this conversation ended up.
"What were you going to tell us?" Mike asked, finally getting us back on topic.
"We signed a lease for an apartment yesterday." Luke smirked, looking around the room to see a bunch of raised eyebrows.
"We move in June first." I added. Sophie was the first to crack, and she was living for how adorable we were.
"Do you have pictures? I need to sleep over, we can bake cookies!" And she was off. It did make me remember all the times we really wanted to bake but couldn't in a dorm, though, so that got me pretty excited. Luke pulled out his phone and passed it around so everyone could look through the pictures he took.
"It's a mini house! You guys are so cute." She frowned at me, passing the phone to Ash so he could see. I wanted so badly to freak out with her, but I kept my cool in front of everyone so I wouldn't scare Luke.
"Why'd you get two bedrooms?" Mike asked, the phone finally circulating to him.
"Apparently, we're going to have guests over frequently...?" I said, sounding like a question but it was more sarcasm than anything. I gave Luke a look, and he just rolled his eyes at me.
"Are you sure you're not pregnant?" Calum asked from his quiet place on the couch. "Cuz we'd be fine with it if you were, right Sophie?"
"I. Am not. Having a child." I said sternly, looking at each and every one of them to make sure they understood it.
"Yet!" Luke called out from the kitchen after disappearing again. We'd never talked about kids, and I wasn't even sure I would want any. To hear him say that honestly surprised me, and I sat there thinking about how that conversation would go.
Ashton finished setting up Scattergories, so we paired up into teams and went at it. I couldn't stop thinking about the whole having children thing, though. I never wanted kids before, but now that I was actually in a serious relationship maybe that would change? I wasn't even sure if I could get pregnant at this point, after years of starving myself so frequently. The reason I went on birth control in the first place was to see if it helped regulate my period.
I didn't know how to even have that conversationwith Luke. If he wanted kids and I couldn't give him any, would he not want tobe with me? I got so lost in thought that they all had to break me out of it totake my turns. Luke was paired up with Mike for the game, and he kept glancingat me from the other side of the coffee table. I didn't want him to thinksomething was wrong, so I tried to stop thinking about it and pay attention tothe game. Hopefully, that conversation was still years away.
A/N
I'm well aware that usually you have to do a credit check to get an apartment but I didn't have to do one to get into my first apartment so for the sake of simplicity I made it easy for them lol