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We head into the Mexican restaurant and the smells alone have my mouth watering instantly. It's so nice to feel like a normal student with normal friends doing normal things. I don't think I've ever felt so normal and mundane in my life. I stuff down everything else and try to focus on right now and just live in this moment.
God only knows how few of them I'm going to get, so I want to enjoy the ones that I do.
Penn and Dante head to the counter to place our order, leaving me alone with Connor at the table. I take advantage of us being alone and finally ask, "Where were you at the beginning of the week?"
He glances over my shoulder before settling his gaze back on me and shrugs. "I just had some family stuff to sort out. The holidays got kind of chaotic for me. My uncle showed up out of the blue. To say that there were some family tensions is an understatement. I've been cleaning up that mess since he arrived on Christmas Eve, and he only left my parents’ house this morning, so I've been there trying to help keep the chaos to a minimum."
I watch him closely looking for any signs of a lie, but I don't see anything. He could just be a good liar, or it could be that I don't know him well enough to detect it, so I take his words as truth.
"I have notes from yesterday's classes if you want them. I've also got the dictations if you like?"
"That'd be great," he responds, smiling directly at me as Penn and Dante slide back into our booth.
"They should only be about ten minutes," Penn announces, bumping her shoulder with Connor, drawing a bigger smile from him than the one that I managed to get before.
"So have you seen that Stone Royal is on tour?" Penn asks, wagging her brows at me, knowing about my small infatuation with him thanks to the fact that we lived together for those few months.
Stone Royal might be way older than we are, but he is a rock god and I might just be a little obsessed with him.
"Yeah, I'd seen that he’s on tour, but they're not coming to New York for at least another month or so, I didn't think," I say as casually as I can.
She shakes her head and shows me her phone after tapping away on the screen. "They announced new tour dates this week. He's going to be here in two weeks at Madison Square Garden. We should try and go."
My eyes go wide as my heart skips giddily in my chest. I've always wanted to go to a concert, but I've never been able to. The thought of my first one being a Stone Royal show is kind of blowing my mind.
"That would be amazing, but if you want me to believe you’re from New York, please call it The Garden," I tease her, and she sticks her tongue out at me.
“We’re not all big city, ya know,” she retorts with a laugh, and I giggle in response. We start to make plans for how we can make it happen. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I grab it to check the notification, finding a few messages in the group chat.
I can't help but laugh at the boys’ back and forth about me going to dinner without them, so I drop a message in the chat telling them to buzz off before locking my phone and popping it back in my pocket, not wanting to be rude.
Moments later, our food arrives. I smile wide, trying not to drool over it.
Days like this are exactly what I need right now, with laughter and friends and zero stress, so I lean back in the booth as Dante hands me my burrito and try to just enjoy the moment, because God only knows how few of them I'm going to get now that I’m supposed to be a Kensington.
CHAPTERTWELVE
BRIAR
"Where are we going? Where are we going?" I ask for what is potentially the eleventy billionth time, and Asher laughs at me again from the driver's seat, shaking his head.
"You’ll find out when we get there."
After my time out with Penn and the others last night, I was all kinds of happy when I finally got home and Asher crawled into bed with me, soaking up some of my joy because it turned out he had not had the best day.
So when we woke up this morning and he was all smiles, suggesting a day trip, I couldn't find it in myself to even think about taking those smiles away from him and I agreed without knowing what was going on.
Except now we've been driving for nearly an hour, and I have no idea where we're going or what we're doing.
“Are we there yet?” I ask, fighting the gigglesnort that threatens to bubble out of me.
He also seems to be getting a kick out of not telling me what we're doing, so while I do really want to know what the plan is, continuously asking him is more about seeing him laugh than it is about finding out what is going down today.
When we pull into the marina, I smile wide and glance over at him, his smile matching my own.
"I figured since I never got my day out on the boat with you, that we could take advantage of it today. I know it's freezing cold outside, but there's still nothing like being out on the water. Especially when we can get warm and cozy inside."
"That sounds like a perfect day," I say to him, my cheeks hurting already from the amount of smiling that I've done today.
