Dirt

I woke up early the next day, well, earlier than everyone else at least, and decided to make breakfast. I found some bare essentials in the fridge, but we needed to make a grocery run later. I knew the guys would be able to eat us out of house and home, so I basically made two breakfasts. For the guys I made a bunch of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. For the girls I made some oatmeal, and found some fruit to throw in, and some toast. Everyone could have milk or water to drink, since that's pretty much all we had.

"Hey, sis," Zacky said with a grin once he stumbled into the kitchen. "Thanks for making breakfast. You're so cool sometimes."

I raised an eyebrow. "Only sometimes?" He chuckled and admitted that I was cool all the time. "I need to ask you something. What should I get Matt for his birthday?" He just shrugged his shoulders and told me whatever. "No. You don't understand. I feel a lot of pressure about this. We're at the point in our relationship where we say 'I love you', but I'm not sure how serious or romantic I should make his gift. Or maybe I just blow that off and get him something light and funny. You would know. What do you think?"

"I think you're thinking about this way too hard. There's no pressure." Zacky stopped eating long enough to smile up at me with a knowing smirk. "Do you have any idea how much he likes you? Or loves you, I guess, it's weird for me to talk about Matt like this. He's so obsessed with you, that you could get him a block of cheese and he'd think it was the best gift ever. Don't worry. Did you have any ideas so far?"

I started to tell him, but speak of the devil and he shall appear. Matt came out of the room in just a pair of sleep pants. His face was still all sleepy, and I knew if I pressed myself against him, he would be warm and inviting. I wanted to do just that and forget breakfast all together. He got himself a huge plate and came and kissed me thanks before finding a seat at the table. Soon enough, the kitchen and dining room was filled with everyone milling about, trying to properly wake up.

"So what's the plan for today?" Erin asked the group. "Hopefully it doesn't involve drinking games. I get way too drunk when Ash gets creative."

I gave her my best puppy dog face. "I thought you guys liked it when I was creative. That's one of the things you said you loved about me. Were you guys just saying that to get in my pants?"

There was a clatter of a fork hitting a plate as all the guys fell silent. "There's too much pretend girl on girl action in this house. If someone doesn't put their money where their mouth is soon, I'm going to explode," Brian said softly. "And I think we should go to the amusement park today."

The group immediately erupted in a heated debate. Half of us thought we should go, and the other half thought we should just stay around the house. I made the argument that we had the whole summer to hang around the house, and Lacey would only be with us this week before she had to go back to work for a while. That seemed to convince everyone to go, so we quickly finished up breakfast and parted ways to get dressed.

Once we parked and got inside the gate, everyone wanted to go do their own thing. We decided we'd all meet back at the gate right before dinner so we could all eat together, then parted ways. Jimmy went with Lacey and Johnny, talking excitedly about how he wanted to see every show there was in the park. I was glad I was going to have some fun with just Matt and I, and I told him so.

"Me too, babe. I love our friends, but it's nice to just hang out by ourselves. So, which ride first? The carousel or the ferris wheel?"

I was shocked that he would even ask that. "Neither. I don't do kiddie rides. Which roller coaster are we going on first? Never mind," I waved away his answer before he could get it out of his mouth. "We'll just go to the closest one first. We're going to ride them all today anyway. Let's get started."

And we did ride almost every coaster there. After a couple hours, we sat down and had a very expensive lunch. Why the hell were amusement parks charging so much for their food? They made so much money just on the parking alone. What the actual fuck? Once we finished lunch we bumped into Johnny and Lacey at a cluster of games. Matt and Johnny decided to compete at a basketball one to see who could get their girl a prize first. While they were displaying their testosterone, Lacey and I took this opportunity to sit down and chat for a while. She told me that Jimmy had ditched them earlier when they came across Brian and Erin and he found out they were going to ride the log ride.

"Can't you just not go back to work and stay with us forever?" I asked her.

"Hmm, never going back to work again does sound tempting, but I do have bills and things like that, that have to be paid."

"Not really," I told her quickly. "You could just live off the grid, you know? No cell phone, no car, no electricity...you could become one of those 'The Hills Have Eyes' people. It sounds great! And if you need a shower, you could just come stay with me for a while."

We laughed but she declined my offer. It wasn't long before the guys came back, each with a giant stuffed animal in their arms, but Matt had a dejected look on his face. I had to hide my smile and giggle behind my hand. He told me moodily that Johnny had won his animal first. I took the massive green unicorn out of his hands and gave him a big kiss. I told him I didn't care who got their animal first, I was just glad he won one for me. That seemed to cheer him up, but he quickly escorted us away from the other couple. I waved goodbye to them as they laughed at Matt's tantrum.

A couple hours, and several more rides later, we all met up at the gate and went to one of the 50's style diners to get dinner. We sat around in a huge corner booth and probably ruined everyone else's time there due to how loud we were. We were cracking jokes, and laughing hysterically at each other's stories of the day. We all had a really good time, but you could tell we were glad to be back in each other's company. We talked it out, and came to the conclusion that we should all ride one more ride together before we went home. So we trouped out to the biggest coaster in the park and waited in line. We had to let some couples and small groups go ahead of us at different points so we could literally all ride together. We took up almost every car on the ride.

The guys joked around loudly as the cars went up the hill. All twelve stories of the hill, actually. But once we started to slow down at the top, every conversation ceased. I had enough time to scream, take a breath, and scream again on the first downhill slope. After that, though, it was all laughs and whoops. There were really tight twists and turns, and I must have come out of my seat at least three times. I had a blast. By the way Matt was cackling beside me, I knew he was having a good time as well.

Once we were back at the house, and after I showered, Matt and I decided to settle down in the room and watch a movie. I put in a scary movie before sliding in bed beside Matt. He let me rest my head on one well muscled arm, and I quickly succumbed to sleep. I don't know how long I was asleep, all I knew was it was completely dark while Matt was slipping out of bed. I heard him fumbling around the room for a couple minutes, then eventually come back to bed.

"What are you doing, baby?" I asked him quietly once he was settled.

He kissed me on top of my head. "Nothing, babe. Go back to sleep. I'll tell you later. I love you."

"I love you, too."

I was woken up again by the sunlight streaming through the curtains the next morning. I turned to see Matt resting on one elbow, looking down at me. "Do you even know how innocent and cute you look while you sleep?" he asked me.

"Uh, I guess not. Tell me all about it. I love to hear flattery first thing in the morning."

He smiled. "Okay, smartass. I was gonna give you a present, but now I'm not so sure I want to." I immediately apologized. "That's better. Here." He handed me a small, rectangular box. I opened it up to find a beautiful silver charm bracelet. It had three charms on it, a dragonfly, a staff of music notes, and a heart. It was beautiful and I told him so. I wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss. He smiled into the kiss and wrapped his arms around my waist. We stayed like that for a while before I broke away to put the bracelet on. "I'm glad you like it," he told me quietly.

My head snapped up to meet his gaze. There was something about the way he said it. There was something there behind his voice. He was...nervous? Or was it something else? I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew something was wrong. What was it this time? He kissed me softly again and smiled down at me. Aw, hell. When he looked at me that way I just couldn't care about anything else, so I smiled back and gave him a small kiss of my own. I figured I'd find out what was up sooner or later, and if Matt kept kissing me like he was, then I would be just fine with 'later'.