Page 1 of More To Us

Chapter One

Austin

"I have to leave soon," I say, checking the time on my phone.

"Didn't you guys just practice yesterday?" Jake asks. He's sitting across from me in the booth. Nash is next to him. We all met at a sports bar for lunch. I'd normally stay and hang out with them but I have to meet my band across town in a half hour.

"We're trying out a new song tomorrow night and Dylan's freaking out. He wants to play it a few more times."

"Dylan needs to chill," Jake says. "Shouldn't guys in a band be all laid-back and shit?"

"He usually is, but he wrote the song so he's freaking out, thinking people won't like it. It's the first song he's written that we've actually played."

"Is it a good song?" Nash asks.

I shrug. "If you like ballads, then yeah. The lyrics are good, but it's too slow for me. But I'm sure the girls will eat it up."

"Is that why he wrote it?" Jake asks. "To get girls?"

"He doesn't need a song for that. He gets plenty of girls. He wrote it to help him get over some girl he was with a couple months ago."

"So it's a heartbreak song," Nash says. "She broke up with him?"

"They never dated. It was just a one-time thing."

"You better not be doing that," Nash says, his lecture face on.

"Why?" I ask, egging him on. Sometimes I rile Nash up just for fun. He needs to lighten up. He worries too much. As the oldest brother, Nash thinks he has to look out for Jake, Bryce, and me, but especially me, because I'm the youngest. "Jake had one-night stands for years."

"Doesn't make it right," Jake mutters under his breath.

"And yet you still did it," I say.

Nash leans across the table and points his finger at me. "Listen to me. You are NOT doing that shit. You like a girl, you take her out. On a date, an actual date. And you don't have sex with her on the first night."

"What if she wants it?" I ask, trying not to laugh. I'm just messing with Nash. I don't do one-night stands, and he should know that by now. Yeah, I've had them in the past but I didn't like it. Even though the girls wanted it, I felt like I was using them and I didn't like that feeling. I like to get to know a girl before we get to that point.

"If that's the only thing she wants," Nash says, "then she's the wrong type of girl."

"That's not always true," Jake says, then takes a drink of his beer.

Nash glares at him.

"What?" Jake sets his beer down. "I'm not telling him to do it. I'm just saying, just because a girl wants one night of no-strings sex doesn't mean she's the wrong type of girl. If she does it all the time, then yeah, maybe she's got issues, but the occasional one-night stand? I wouldn't judge her for that."

Nash sighs and looks at me across the table. "The point is, a girl deserves to be taken out and treated with respect. Do you hear me?"

I lean back in the booth. "I already know all this. I'm not looking for a hook-up."

"Yeah, but you've done it before, and you're in a band and have girls hanging on you all the time. I don't want you getting in trouble."

"I know better than that. I'm not Jake." I smile at him.

He huffs. "What the fuck?"

Nash laughs and pats him on the back. "Don't worry about it. It's all in the past. You've got Ivy now."

"Shit, yeah, I do." He smiles and gets out his phone. "Wonder what she's up to?" He texts her, probably sending her some sappy love note.

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