Moving In || l.r.h

"What? You're joking..."Ashton stood in front of me with a beaming smile on his face.

"Nope, You heard me Patterson," he replied. I felt the corners of my mouth tug into a genuinely happy smile, something that hadn't happened for the past week and a half. My grin now stretched from ear to ear as I looked at my best friend in front of me.

"So-"

"So, you won't have to deal with the heartache of your best friend leaving you, and you can escape that evil house of yours," he finished. I couldn't believe what he was telling me.

"Wait, what?" I asked, the end of his sentence catching my attention. "Why wouldn't I live there?"

"Well you don't think i'm getting a two bedroom apartment just because I want a spare room do you?" He responded. I screamed and jumped immediately onto him. For a moment he tried to rebalance but he failed and we both fell crashing onto the floor, my arms wrapped around his neck and my head buried into his arm.

"I can't believe this!" I squealed. It was like all the upset and misery had been lifted off my shoulders. I didn't care if it would last 5 minutes, I was happy. I was happy because Ashton wasn't leaving me, he was staying here and continuing his job, staying with me and Kaela and living by himself. But he wasn't going to be by himself because he had just offered me to move in with him.

He didn't try to get up until I had finished hugging him.

"How did you even find somewhere so quickly?" I asked him. It had been a week and 4 days since Luke's dad had broken the news to them and everyone had packed up for leaving. Their house was inhabited in boxes and some essentials like beds and some clothes spread across the floor for wearing.

Walking into the house - the house that had almost become my home - when it was in a state like that was gut-wrenching. Everything about it screamed wrong. Luke's room was the worst. The warmth and happy memories had gone, the only thing left behind was a pile of brown, miserable cardboard in the corner and his usual bed. I still stayed at his because it meant that I could enjoy my last few days with him but I tried to avoid it at all costs apart from that.

No-one had given any hint or a glimmer of hope that someone was staying behind, so to hear Ashton saying this made my body feel like I had swelled up to double my normal size. Now I knew at least his boxes were staying here.

"I had been looking for a while beforehand because I felt bad just staying with Liz still, I mean I am 19. So when I got my job and got promoted I decided why not have a look now I can afford it. Everyone else moving just kind of boosted it along." I looked up at him and his smile and I saw how proud and ecstatic he was about this, like a little kid on Christmas.

I thought back to the last time he had smiled at me like that. We were laying under a gazebo we found on a road trip. It was during one of my episodes, I drove to pick him up from work and didn't turn back. I didn't want to. Luke and I had had a fight and although we would sort it out and it would be over the next day, I hadn't been ready to go home yet.

We had found a small little town with storefronts and homes that looked like they belonged in a movie about the 50s. We went to an ice cream parlour and walked into all the individual shops - mostly antiques and small cafes - until we got to the centre of town where there was a small field with the gazebo in the middle. It was painted white with small carved details just under the roof in blue. Everything about the place was beautiful.

I had been the first to sit down and Ashton followed. Both of us completely amazed at the sheer beauty surrounding us. I remember falling to the floor with laughter, because of the slanted seats and how we had watched the sunset over the multicoloured buildings.