A few days had passed since the steamy night where Staton had suggested we get married. My heart couldn't have been happier. We've been together for four years and there was nothing that could go wrong with it. I smiled to myself, soaking in the sunshine allowing my thoughts to drift with the ocean breeze.

I could hear seagulls in the background, their wings flap as they try to stay afloat in the air. Music tugs along at the sky, as kids laugh in the distance. It was late in the season, so not too many people were hanging out on the beach. The girls and I had decided we needed a day just the three of us.

Staton and Breygan had offered to go get groceries. None of us wanted to go to the store but we needed food. Now that we were in our new place it was time to get a little more settled. We had rented an Airbnb for the next couple of weeks so that we could decide if we wanted to stay here or move on to another town. Staton and I opted to keep moving, while the others were dreaming of some normalcy.

"Look at him!" Aria shouts, pointing towards a topless man in a speedo walking his dog on the beach. I roll my eyes, looking over my left shoulder towards her.

"You think that's actually his dog or just a way for him to pick up chicks on the beach?" I question, pulling my attention away from the man and back to the waves. They were large and smooth, crashing against the sand in a rhythmic motion. Pulling all the worries out of the earth.

"He got the dog, just so he could pick up chicks for sure," Julie laughs, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail, the straps of her bikini tucked under her arms so she wouldn't have any tan lines.

"He'd be a total creep if he was renting a dog daily just to come out here." Aria laughs, flipping the page in her magazine.

"Maybe it's his mom's and he steals the dogs to get out of the basement for a change?" Julia places her hand over her mouth as if she had said something super dirty. I roll my eyes, laughing at the two idiots.

A small dark haired girl walks up to him wrapping her arms around him. He leans down, kissing her on the lips, before they interlock hands and continue walking down the beach.

"Nope, both wrong, he is actually a normal guy and that's his wife." I couldn't have but laugh, as the girls sigh. They weren't very good at people watching.

"Whatever," Aria looks back at her magazine for just a moment before flipping it around to show us an article. "You see this here, the royal wedding dress. Ugh I can't wait until I can go wedding dress shopping." Aria was the most interested in fashion out of all of us, her head was always dreaming up some new outfit or way to do her hair.

"Let me see that!" Julia reaches across me trying to grab the magazine. "Oh that's cute!" She squeals, turning her attention to me.

"When are you and Staton going to get married?" She questions, pushing the magazine back towards Aria. My jaw drops. My heart started to pound. Staton and I had talked a little bit more about getting married after we had taken care of some of our other needs, but we hadn't quite yet picked out a date. It seemed like we were going to go with the courthouse wedding and just get it taken care of.

"Whenever we feel like it?" I shrugged trying my best to get them off my back. I wasn't sure if we were going to tell people that we were going to get married or if it was just supposed to be the two of us. I'd rather it just be the two of us. Things have been weird between everyone since the fight when Julia was drugged.

She recovered fine from it and the next morning woke up asking questions about how much fun she had the night before. She couldn't remember a single thing. She had no memory of standing in the alley while the men preyed on her, waiting for her drink to kick in. She couldn't even recall taking a drink of it.

Breygan on the other hand has been distant. If he wasn't sleeping on the couch Aria was. They were taking turns fighting, and trying to figure out why they even were trying to make things work between them at all.

"So what, you are telling me you guys have been together for four years and haven't even thought about getting married?" Julia asks, a lump starts to form in my throat. No, we've talked about it quite a few times. But the answer I needed to tell her was not the truth.

"Nope, we haven't." I tried my best to not smile. I was a horrible liar, the one thing I never learned how to do with my mother. It didn't matter if I told her the truth or a lie, because she would yell at me either way.

"What the hell is wrong with the two of you?" Aria teases, her voice light hearted but it didn't make her comment hurt any less.

"What is wrong with you and Breygan? You've been sleeping on the couch the last few nights?" I turned to look at her, the lip gloss that was smeared on her lips made her pout look even bigger. She rolled her eyes.

"We are not a thing, we just agreed to share a room so that we didn't have to get as big of a house. Turns out he is just an asshole though." She crossed her arms. It seemed like some kind of self defense thing.

"Have you talked to him about it though? You guys have known each other just as long as Staton and I, if not longer, and yet you've always been in this weird are we going to date, are we not, how about we just do whatever a couple would do and just never put a label on it."

"I don't know what his problem is, one second we are so good and the next we just can't seem to get along. You know how much I love him, whether that is romantic or not I just can't seem to figure it out. I think it is on my end, but then he doesn't seem to reciprocate it and I don't want to put myself out there for nothing." I knew where she was coming from and honestly, the more time I spent with them together the more I thought they were right for eachother. I just wished Breygan would realize that he was sometimes not the most mature person there was.

"Do you think we should start heading back to the house? The boys should be done getting food for us soon?" Julia stands up, packing away the things she had brought with her to the beach. I nod my head in agreement.

~*~

"All this food looks amazing!" Aria shouts as she digs through the bags the boys had placed on the kitchen island. They were working on putting things away when we had returned home. Aria grabs an apple from one of the bags and takes a large bite out of it. "It tastes so good to eat something other than junk food for the first time in like a month." She beams, taking her apple and heading towards the living room to plop down on the couch.

"Thank you so much for going so that us girls didn't have to," I smiled, running my hand over Staton's hair. He leans down and kisses me before throwing a few bags on the floor, grabbing the next item that needs to go into the cupboards.

"It was expensive, I don't think we are going to be able to live here much longer if we don't get a job soon." He shakes his head, leaning against the counter to look at me. "We spent like four hundred dollars just to get enough for one week. I know our parents are rich but damn I don't think they will let us get away with this." His brown furrows, his face tightening as he talks.

"No, they won't. We need to get jobs, but who gets jobs? Do we all, are we staying here? Maybe we need to have a meeting with the rest of the group? Potentially we could just sneak off and get married then you and I could just run away ourselves." I wink in his direction before smacking his butt. He jumps slightly, turning like he is going to get me. I lunge out of the way before he turns back to the fridge.

"I was thinking we could grill steaks tonight and talk about it with everyone. I was going to start putting in some applications for jobs tonight, at least start looking to see if there is anything interesting. Maybe you and I can go apartment shopping sometime." My heart jumps for joy at the thought of Staton and I starting our own future, away from everyone else just the two of us.

It's not like I wanted to leave them behind, I loved my friends, I just wanted to have my boyfriend all to myself. Or I guess I should say Fiance, as I've told him yes, but we haven't told any of our friends that we were planning on sneaking away.

"We will get something figured out babe," I smiled, leaving him to put the rest of the groceries away. I head to the living room to check on the rest of our friends. They were all laughing over some meme they had seen. Plopping down on the couch next to the girls, I pulled my own phone out to check my messages.

It'd been long enough I had expected to get a text from my parents. There was nothing. My mother hadn't reached out at all. I know I used to sneak away and stay at Staton's house for a few days at a time, but never this long. I would always have gone home by now for new clothes. Did she really never notice me there? If she wasn't yelling at me why would she?

"What do you girls think about going to a carnival tonight?" Breygan pipes up, putting his phone down for just a moment to look at our expressions.

"I thought we were grilling tonight?" Staton pops in for a second to question Breygan's suggestion. He held a bunch of steaks in his hands, it looked like he had been seasoning them, and getting them ready for cooking later this evening. Breygan shrugged, rolling his eyes at his friend.

"We can do that tomorrow, let's just go tonight!" Breygan pesters. Aria nods her head looking over towards Staton.

"Let those marinade overnight and we can go enjoy the carnival tonight." It looked like we were outnumbered once again. My body began to tense up at the thought of heading into another tricky situation. Crowds were growing more and more terrifying by the day.

"I guess that works," Staton turned around to take care of the steaks and get them ready for their wait. I jumped up off the couch and met up with Staton, looking at how tense he had grown.

"Looks like we are fighting with killer clowns tonight, because we haven't been through enough shit during this right?" I chuckled, rubbing his shoulders to try and calm him down even if just for a moment.

"Killer clowns it is," He grabbed my hand, squeezing it, he pulled it up towards his lips kissing it gently before placing the steaks in the fridge.