"Might as well. I doubt I'll get any work done today."
"It's still the weekend. No work allowed."
"He banned me from working," I tell Kira. "I went four whole days without doing anything."
"Oh, no, how did you survive?" she asks, being overly dramatic.
"Stop teasing me. You know how I get when I'm not busy."
"Sounds to me like you two were pretty busy," Austin jokes.
"I'd have to agree with that," Dylan says, smiling as he sits up in bed, his bare chest exposed. I notice Kira checking him out, but then she glances away. I do the same thing to Austin. He's a little too muscular for me but he's still really hot. And when he's shirtless, no girl could look away.
"Check out this shirt Austin gave me," Kira says, pointing to her gray t-shirt that has a drawing of a guitar on it. "Isn't it cool?"
"Yeah, I like it," Amber says. "Was it for an anniversary or something?"
"No, he just gave it to me." She kisses him. "He's sweet that way." She turns back to us. "We'll let you guys get ready. We're ready to go whenever you are."
"Hurry up. We're starving," Austin says.
Kira drags him out of the room. "You're always starving."
When the door is closed, Dylan hauls me into him and kisses me. "You sure you want to go to dinner with them? We could just stay here and do this."
"We've done a lot of this the past few days. I think it's time we get up."
He sighs. "If we must."
I sit up. "Come on. This will be our first double date. It'll be fun."
"Staying here is also fun."
"True, but I want to go out with our friends so let's get dressed." I get out of bed before he pulls me back down and tempts me again.
A half hour later, we're having burgers at a pub down the street, Kira and Austin on one side of the booth, Dylan and me on the other.
"So what'd you guys do all weekend?" Austin asks with a grin.
"Austin." Kira nudges his side.
"What?" He laughs. "I just wanted to know if they did anything fun?"
Dylan puts his arm around me. "We went to a couple movies," he says, not playing along with Austin's reference to our sex life. "Went out to eat."
"And tomorrow it's back to work," I say.
The conversation turns to work and school and then our food arrives. This is strange, being on a double date with Dylan as my date. Strange but good. For months, Kira and Austin went out with Matt and me and it never felt right. No matter how much I fought it, my mind kept thinking about Dylan, and it didn't help that Austin was his friend and talked about him all the time. Austin didn't know about Dylan and me back then so it's not like he knew that his comments about Dylan were affecting me, but they were. They only made me miss him more and wonder if I'd made the wrong decision that night.
Now Dylan and I are together and I couldn't be happier. I wish I'd done this sooner. All those months, I was so afraid to be with Dylan, thinking my feelings for him would never live up to that night. Afraid to be disappointed and wanting to just keep that night a memory. Thinking that if we ever dated, it'd only be about sex. But now, even after doing it, my concerns about our relationship only being physical are gone. I feel like we're about so much more than that. We have a lot in common. We have a similar sense of humor. And we complement each other well. He's laid back. I'm a workaholic. He has a wild side and I tend to be overly cautious. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is, I feel like that night was meant to be because it led us to each other.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Amber
The next day, I go to Emily's school for our weekly reading session.
"You have a boyfriend," she sings, moving side to side in her seat.