Dane

Don't ask me how, but Ashlyn and Mike have managed to mend their relationship over night and figure things out for today.

It's strange, really, and I often find myself not picturing them as a couple. Mike says that she's the one, but I don't see it. It's just as believable as the day Mike decides he hates himself and say he's ugly, which would never happen.

Mike is the reincarnation of Narcissus, and if he was only a tad bit crazier than he is now, he would kiss himself in the mirror every chance he got.

Anyway, thank God they were able to put that out of the way because now we could do things normally and get down the things we need down, such as shopping.

Because of the stash of food Mike stole from the main fridge to put into the one in his room, we had to go out to the store and buy everything. I tried convincing Mike that he had to give up the fridge in his room because of it's existence was utterly pointless, but he refused.

Now we have enough food to become Walmart, thanks to him.

Ashlyn decided to shop along with me at Safeway today and to meet Mike here at three. He had some business to deal with, I wasn't sure what since he groggily muttered it out to us when he drove off with Mr. Gardner, but I'm sure it was important.

We had hours upon hours to spend because it was only noon and we were half way done with our shopping. 

I have no idea of what else we could do besides be stupid and get kicked out. We were both bored as hell and wanted time to go by faster. The five more hours I had to wait until I see Jacquelyn was too much for me.

I'm so excited to see her, I can barely contain myself. All I could do is rant about Jacquelyn to Ashlyn, who is still surprisingly not annoyed by me yet.

Trust me, I try to shut up, but I just can't. I feel like I have to talk about her or else I would explode or lose my mind.

Pushing along the second cart of food that we had- aimlessly roaming around the store, Ashlyn smiled up at me. "Jacquelyn sounds freaking amazing. I can't wait to see her."

My cheeks glowed from thinking about her, and I nodded my head. "Yeah. I think you two would get a long really well. To be honest, you could be her clone, personality wise. You two are so similar sometimes, I can't tell the difference."

"Woah," she laughed as she dramatically pulled away from me, "you better be able to tell the difference because we can't have you falling in love with me and ranting non-stop, can we?" Ashlyn teased.

We both laughed together, and pulled our carts to a stop to get milk.

I chuckled. "No, we can't. There is a difference between a best friend and that." 

Her mouth gaped open, and she held her hand to her chest in mocked expression of shock. "I'm your best friend?" She announced in surprise, dramatizing most of it to make me laugh.

"Of course!" I smiled "As soon as we met, we hit it off and got along really well. Plus, your my brother's girlfriend. How can I not like you?"

Ashlyn crinkled her nose and a faint line of a smirk outlined her lips. "Are you sure about that? Mike's typical girlfriends are really bitchy, and you're saying you liked all of them?"

"No!" I laughed because it was so true. Mike's girl friends are not always the best, matter in fact, they're the worst out there. "No. I'm saying I actually approve of you to be my brother's girl friend because your a good person. That wasn't the right thing to say, but yeah. You're cool."

Ashlyn happily tossed her hair to the side and pushed her cart a little further to collect the cheese. "Cool. You're my best friend too, and I approve of you to be Mike's brother." She smirked back at me, sticking her tongue out.

I let out a snort at her snappy comeback, and smirked back at her- not really having anything else to say. Instead, we both burst into laughter and continued walking down the aisle occassionally looking at the list and plucking out whatever we needed in the aisles.

Although we were having a good time, I couldn't help but have doubts looming in the back of my mind.

Every time I'm with Ashlyn and we get to the subject of Mike, I am burning to ask her if what they have is real. Nothing about it seems real to me. It seems that they hate each other more than they love each other.

From what I've seen, there isn't a time that they get a long, a time where they hug each other, or a time that they can get intimate with. Both seem to be ticked off the moment the other speaks and have huge personal bubbles. A relationship isn't supposed to be like that; it's supposed to be intimate. Before, I thought that Ashlyn was the problem but she's clearly not.

She's probably the only good girlfriend Mike has ever had.

A fight couldn't last this long, could it?

As the question burned on the tip of my tongue, I glanced over at Ashlyn, who was happily in front of me picking out the few selected snacks we could have in the house.

Would it be okay for me to ask her?

"Ashlyn?" I timidly called out.

Holding a pack of Oreos, Ashlyn turned her head over to me and ignored my question. Maybe she didn't here me. "Do you think we could buy three more packs of Oreos? Please? I swear, I will pay you back sometime."

"Yeah, sure." I agreed to push the question aside. I don't understand why she would ever need that many Oreos, but she can go ahead and get them. We had all the money in the world. "But what is really going on between you and Mike?"

Her eyes popped open in surprise, and she carelessly flung the Oreos into the cart from the shock of the bold question. "Uhm-" 

She seemed to be wrestling her mind for answers, but she innocently looked up at me and shook her head as if she didn't know what I was asking, although it was clear she did. "What do you mean by that?"

"I'm just asking you tell me the truth." I stated seriously, not wanting to play games. "You can tell me. It won't affect anything between you and me. We'll still be best friends."

Biting her bottom lip, Ashlyn turned around and pushed the cart. "I'll get back to you on that." She replied after a while, not bothering to turn around and look back at me. "It's a long story. I'll tell you today, at the carnival if I can."

Something wasn't right here, and she was hiding something from me.

Not wanting to push it any further, we continued shopping for our things and once it was three we pulled to the check out lane to purchase all of our stuff.

For a Tuesday, Safeway there was a lot of people in here. We had to wait in line for at least ten minutes, making it extremely awkward between Ashlyn and me. There was nothing for us to talk about but their relationship, which she clearly didn't want to cover.

Afraid of drawing back to the previous conversation, Ashlyn walked over to the magazines. "Oh look, how to get abs in two seconds." She joked, making fun of the dieting magazine she picked up and showed me.

I laughed and walked towards the magazine section since we had the time. "Royal babies. All the rage these days, isn't it?"

Ashlyn chuckled, but it was stopped short and I had to turn around to see what happened.

Her face was pale as a Twilight vampire and in her hands was a Teen Luxur magazine. At first, I thought that she was an extreme Teen Luxur fan, but that was when I saw it. 

Pictured in the center of the magazine was Ashlyn and Mike smirking at each other with huge letters and the title above them reading 'Young Love' with the subtitle, "Mike Nor, youngest celebrity to get engaged?! Who is she?'

Mike was the only one that was to be in the picture. How did Ashlyn get in there. But most importantly, how did Teen Luxur get this information?

I instantly grabbed another copy and flipped towards the middle, where Mike's interview about the show Blood Run was. I scrolled down and they were all ordinary questions about the show and a few teasers of what was going to be on it, but towards the middle I saw what started to go wrong.

After the interview there was a highlighted section and off to the side it said in bold letters: VIP LUXUR SNEEKPEEK.

Interviewer: This is irrilevant, but I thought it would be interesting to cover, if you don't mind.
Mike: No, I don't mind at all. This is an interview about me, not just the show. *laughs*
Interviewer: Do you think you can never be too young to fall in love?
Mike: Uhm, not a question that I was expecting, but no, not really. It depends on who it is.
Interviewer: How about you for example?
Mike: Me? Uh, I don't get what your saying
Interviewer: With you and your fiance. Some people may say that you are way too young to be engaged. Do you side with them and believe you are an exception, or you believe anyone can be any age to be in love.
Mike: I see... you've overheard. I don't prefer to answer that question if this is going to be written down.
Interviewer: No, it's not.
Mike: Why is your pen still moving?
Interviewer: I got to do something with my hands. The question, please?
Mike:  I don't feel comfortable with this subject. All I have to say is that we met, fell in love, and decided to get married. Enough? Good. I think this interview is over. Thank you.

On the bottom written by the magazine in bright red 'secrets???" was sprawled across the bottom in messy handwriting. 

Oh Mike, my stupid little idiot brother. What the hell did he do in New York? He hasn't told me much about this arranged marriage of his, but I am pretty sure that he wasn't supposed to leak the secret to a major magazine corporation.

That's his problem. He's never careful with anything and screws everything up. Trust me, he acts like he's confident and he has it all in the bag but he doesn't. Mike was one jumbled screwed up mess.

I feel bad for him, really. The kid goes through a lot of crap, and being a natural idiot makes his life a lot harder. Now that he has a fiance, he's making it harder for them both and from the looks of it Ashlyn doesn't look too happy about the news.

Ashlyn's eyes were still transfixed on the cover, and she was completely motionless- looking as if she was knocked dead.

As if he couldn't have timed his entrance more perfectly, Mike quickly waltzed into the store and made a frenzied beeline towards us. Unusually, he looked extremely content and in a good mood- too bad he doesn't know that his his good day wasn't going to last for long.

It took a while for Ashlyn to notice his presence, but she slowly turned around- still unaware of him- and clutched the magazine tightly in her hands. I was about to grab her shoulders and turn her the other way, but it was too late.

"Hey, Ashlyn!" Mike grinned. "Hey, Dane."

I held my breath in and watched Ashlyn grab Mike by his shoulder and angrily pull him away. 

That does not look good, and it wasn't.

Ashlyn wasn't screaming at him, but she had him closely huddled in and was roughly flipping the pages of the magazine to show him the section where he went wrong. Immediately, he grabbed the magazine from her and read it for himself.

"This has-," Mike shook the magazine and bitterly laughed. "got to be a fucking joke."

Ashlyn rolled her eyes. "If this was a joke, we would both be laughing, wouldn't we? You have a lot of explaining to do."

Both stood exactly where they were, but they grew increasingly louder and started catching several people's attention.

It will only be a matter of time until someone figured out who my brother was and bombard him with pictures or signature requests.

In a way, I guess you could say that I was his bodyguard when his professional one wasn't around. It was my job in a way to keep Mike undercover and out of the way of attention. Now was probably the best time to intervene.

I pushed my way between them by using my hands and stood between them but at angle where it didn't seem to suspicious or out of the ordinary.

Somehow I have always managed to find myself to be the middle man. It would be great if I could not get involved in a fight for once.

"Quiet down," I whispered, "people are looking. That's the last thing we need for this scandal, some crappy picture from a flip phone of you two arguing over this magazine. Next thing you know, the picture will be on the next issue. Now shut up!"

Mike shut up the instant I started speaking because he knew I meant serious business. This was for his own benefit after all.

Ashlyn, on the other hand, refused to calm down. Flinging the magazine in front of my face and tapping the front picture, Ashlyn stared at me in disbelief. The moment of our friendship instantly shattered to pieces and was replaced by betrayal.

"Did you know about this?"

I shook my head. "No, I-"

"Ashlyn, baby-" Mike cooed, wrapping his arm around her back and tried pulling her away.

Throwing his arm down, she stepped away from him. "Do not call me baby!" Ashlyn screamed angrily.

Both Mike and I paused, our mouths gaping wide open at how loud she dared to be. For a brief second I swore that I could have heard the whole entire marketplace go quiet and her voice echo at least once or twice.

"Okay," Mike drew a breath and did his best not to look embarrassed "let's go talk in the car. I'll explain everything then."

Nodding her head, Ashlyn walked in front of him, but Mike lingered behind, threw me his credit card to pay for all the groceries, and headed out after her.

I take everything what I said before back. We were not going to have a peaceful evening or a peaceful break. With these two, it was going to be a day at Six Flags. I can't even begin to imagine what their marriage was going to be like.

A/N: Okay, I know this chapter is short, but there really is not much to write about for Dane's POV at this point lol. xD I didn't want to break the pattern and yeah.

Oh yeah, this is the actual chapter. xD

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