I Saw Your Heart as It Overtook Me

I let out a long sigh and slowly made my way over to the girls to say goodbye before we had to head back out on tour. I gave Lissa and Shawna (who had 'officially' started dating Johnny a couple days ago) a hug before I turned to Amber and gave her a hug.
"Alright take care of yourself kiddo." I said quietly.

I pulled away from her and sort of poked her belly.

"And take care of this little dude." I said, poking her belly again. "Or chick." I added with a little smile.

"Alright, will do." She laughed, swatting my hand away. "Now get out of here, you're making everybody late."

"I am?" I asked, looking around cluelessly.

I caught sight of the rest of the gang waiting for me by the escalators and laughed a little myself.

"Oh, I guess I am." I grinned. "So ... you guys stay cool I guess. You three gotta be on good behavior so you can join us the last week of the tour."

"Yes ma'am." Lissa laughed, pushing me a little towards the gate. "Now go before you miss your flight."

"Alright, I heart you guys." I said, waving back at them before I turned around and joined the guys and Alyssa.

"It's about time." Zacky mumbled.

You guessed it ... he's pouting because he'll be without Amber for another two weeks. What a sissy.

I shot Zacky a dirty look and went over to where Matt was standing by our bags, wrapping my arms around his middle.

"Are you all ready babe?" He asked, kissing my forehead and wrapping his arms around my shoulders.

"Yeah, I'm all set."

"Alright." He replied, removing one of his arms from my shoulders and reached behind him to grab our bags, slinging them over his shoulder. "Let's go."

I pulled away from Matt a little and reached over, lacing my fingers with his as our group set off up the escalators and towards the general direction in which our gate was. I turned and waved one last time to the girls before they disappeared from sight altogether.

The whole way to our gate Zacky and Johnny had decided to drag their ass for no apparent reason, just to make us run even more late for our flight than we probably already were I guess. However, we seemed to have been able to time our arrival at our gate perfectly because as soon as we got there, they announced they were boarding our flight. Guess Johnny and Zacky being a couple of slow pokes actually has it's advantage, eh?

I get in line right behind Matt, looping my fingers in his belt loops to pull him back up against me. Because he's so damn tall, I had to stand on my tip toes to whisper into his ear.

"Mathew Charles."

"Lauren Amber." He whispered back.

I laughed a little and kissed his neck gently before our line moved forward. Matt turned around and gave me a soft smile, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me beside him. I wrapped my arms tightly around his waist, hugging him tightly.

"I love you baby." I said sweetly.

I felt Matt's fingers running smoothly across my necklace that held my promise ring.

"I love you too, Lauren." He replied, kissing my forehead as his fingers continued to run along my necklace.

Suddenly his fingers ran across the actual ring itself and he held it up for the both of us to see. I looked form the ring, who's diamonds were sparkling up at me, to matt to find he had a little smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Do you like your ring babe?" He whispered, locking his amazing eyes with mine.

I nodded my head rather feverishly.

"I love it." I grinned.

Matt laughed a little at my enthusiasm and released his hold on my ring to reach over and press his lips flush with mine. However, we were so rudely interrupted by someone giving us a little (ha, more like huge) push from behind, causing us to stumble a bit and break the kiss.

I pulled away from Matt and whipped around to narrow my eyes at my brother who had a somewhat sour look on his face; he's still pissy about the fact that his impregnated wife had to stay behind. Yes, I said it, impregnated bitches. Boo-yah.

"What's your problem, fuck face?" I hissed, trying my best to taunt him a little before we got on the plane.

"You sucking Matt's fucking tonsils out in the middle of the damn airport." He hissed back. "Honestly, you two have been together for what? A month? And already you're ... "

I didn't hear the rest of what Zacky had to say because I had simply turned back around and blocked his voice out. I sighed to myself as I leaned my head against Matt's chest and reached up, letting my own fingers fumbled around with my promise ring.

I hadn't told anybody about the ring Matt had given me. Well, I had planned to tell the girls about it but I definitely didn't want to tell the guys. Reasons as to why I'm excluding the guys? Because I know they'll blab or accidentally let it slip to my brother ... Reasons as to why I don't want him to find out about it?

Come on, you know him. He'd flip his lid, saying that it's too early for us to settle down like that, and then get into his big brother protective mode, beat 'someone' up, and would most likely get his own ass into a bind before he was done being a douche.

Nope, I'd rather wait for him to find out about the ring for his own sake ... and maybe even for my own sake as well because ...

What if it was too soon in our relationship to be thinking like this?

Like it says in that one song by Outkast, 'you can plan a pretty picnic but you can't predict the weather.'

**********************

Well, here we are back at our home on eighteen wheels [is that how many wheels a bus has? Oh, I'm thinking of a semi-truck, lol ::shrugs shoulders:: oh well :)] being bored out of our fucking minds while watching old X-Men cartoons (or in Jimmy and Alyssa's case, watching the back of their eyelids) and listening to the storm as it raged on around us.

It was early in the morning, actually a lot earlier than anybody should have been up and functioning at, but still, here we were. We had already arrived at the next venue the guys were playing at because they had the day before off and decided to just head straight through to the next town so, yeah.

I groaned a little and cuddled more into Matt's chest, closing my eyes.

"Baby, I'm hungry." I mumbled, sliding my hand underneath the bottom of his shirt and up onto his stomach.

"Alright." He said softly. "Where do you want to eat at?"

"Hmm ... I don't know. Is there anything close by?"

"Um, um, um ... I think there's a Denny's down the street." He said, planting random kisses on my forehead.

"Baby?" I asked sweetly.

"Yes?"

"Since you love me so much, can you walk down there and get me a grand slam breakfast?"

"What? In this pouring rain? Just for you?" He joked, trying to sound shocked by the mere thought. "I don't know." He said slowly.

"Please?" I whined.

"Why don't you come with me?" He asked.

"Uh, because it's raining like a motherfucker out there."

"No it's not; it's hardly even raining out there." He protested.

"Ha, right. And I'm a virgin."

That little statement was enough to make everybody laugh.

"Fine, fine, alright, I'll go get you a damn breakfast." Matt said, pretending to pout as he stood up.

He somehow talked Johnny into going with him and somewhere in the middle of everything Zacky invited himself along, leaving Syn and I with the sleeping couple. Syn and I sat around, talking about nonsense, before we finally got into a game of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. I kicked his ass four ways from Sunday probably about a zillion times in a row before the three stooges got back.

Syn threw his controller down and shot off towards the table, taking a seat and waiting anxiously for his food. I shook my head and laughed to myself a little, wondering if perhaps the poor man had a slight case of ADD.

I set my controller down as well and turned the television off, standing up only to be taken into Matt's strong arms. In one swift motion he wrapped his arms around my waist and picked me up, adjusted me a little so that he was holding me on his hip, much like one would hold a little child.

He reached over and placed a kiss on the tip of my nose, making me giggle a little as the rain water that had collected in his hair dripped down onto my forehead. Matt grabbed the bags filled with the take-out boxes containing our breakfast and packed me over to the table. He set me down on the little bench type seats and I scooted down the line so that he could take a seat as well.

"Alright, babe, I believe this is yours." He said, handing me the top box. "And this is yours." He said, handing another box over to Syn. "And this is mine." He said, taking the last box for himself.

"Thank you good sir." I joked, stealing a quick kiss from him before I opened my box.

Matt handed me a plastic fork that he had gotten from the restaurant and I started to chow down. A couple minutes later Zacky and Johnny decided to crowd onto the table with us as well so Matt pulled me onto his lap to make some room. As you probably already knew, my brother just gave us a dirty look seeing this and totally ignored us the whole time.

After we were finished eating Jimmy and Alyssa finally woke up and we sat around the couches while they ate their breakfast the guys had brought back for them. I sat on Matt's lap, running my fingers through his soft hair sort of off in my own little world, thinking about the most random things.

"So." Johnny said, bringing me out of my thoughts. "Did you guys see that bowling alley down the block?" He asked with a little smirk.

"Maybe." Matt grinned, turning to look at me. "What do you say, babe?"

"Bowling?" I asked, wrinkling my nose a little. "I hate bowling."

There were a few sharp intakes of breath here and there and I immediately felt everyone's eyes on me.

"What?" I asked looking around at everyone. "I do."

I looked at Matt who was giving me a funny look.

"Baby ... how can you hate bowling?" He asked. "It's just ... not natural for someone to hate bowling."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I guess I don't hate it ... But I'd prefer not to do it."

"But ... why?"

"I don't know." I sighed, getting slightly annoyed. "I guess because I'm not good at it. I don't know."

"You're not good at it?" Matt asked slowly.

He sighed heavily before he wrapped his arms around me and stood up, tossing me over his shoulder. I frowned slightly, knowing that he was now going to make me go [blast, I was trying to put a 'w' on the end of 'go' hahaha, I'm such a pathetic speller] bowling no matter how much I protested so I decided I'd just go along with the whole thing.

About ten minutes later Matt had me fully dressed and was packing me back down the hallway to the front room.

"Alright guys, let's go." He said, walking past Zacky and Syn, who were fucking around with their guitars, to grab an umbrella.

"Go?" My brother asked, raising an eyebrow. "Go where?"

"Go bowling you damn douche bag."

The best bet would have been to tell the guys we were going bowling ahead of time so that we didn't have to wait ten years for them to finish getting ready, but Matt and I had chose to neglect this little fact so here we were. Matt and I had gotten into an intense game of Ultimate Paper, Rock, Scissors while we were waiting and by the time the guys were done, Matt was nursing a fat lip (and not to mention a bruised ego) while I was eyeing the bruise already starting to form on my left arm.

"Are you ready then?" I asked, watching Zacky put on his coat.

"Yup, I'd say we're good to go."

"Alright." I sighed as I stood up and turned to Matt, holding my hands out for his. "Let's do this then."

Matt let me help him to his feet and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, hugging me against his body as we headed out into the morning rain. The harsh air bit at my cheeks, making me turn even more into Matt and hide my face. He let out a slight laugh and stopped for a brief moment, reaching down to pick me up, and continued on once more. I smiled to myself and buried my face in his neck.

Why was I smiling?

Although we were walking around in the pouring down rain to a bowling alley a couple blocks away, because of those whom were with us, it seemed to make everything worthwhile. Truth be told, I'd rather be out here in the pouring rain freezing my ass off with any one of them, than be somewhere nice and warm all alone. Because they guys were my family. I remember I had once said that I was a long way from earning my place amongst this group of tight knit friends, but now looking back on all that I've been through with them ... all the good times, the great memories, and even the bad memories once I think about it ... I can now honestly say that I have earned my place beside them.

Sounds cheesy? Maybe it does to some, but to someone like me who's never really had the privilege of knowing such great people, let alone having their love and respect, it means the world to have them here beside me.

I prayed I'd never have to leave them ... at least not any time soon because its inevitable that sooner or later I'd have to say goodbye.

But who would have guessed that at the rate I was going ... it was probable that this goodbye could come sooner rather than later.