back to you//[a.k.]

★ 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 ★

awsten's birthday

i quickly refilled belle's food dish and put it back before grabbing my keys and heading out my front door.

"i'll be home later, belle, be a good girl!" i called to my kitten and then closed the door behind me.

it was awsten's birthday. thankfully, it was on a friday, so i was able to get off from work and help with his party. he didn't know about his party, however, because it was a surprise. which, was where i rolled in. i was supposed to keep him out of his own house for the day so that chloe and geoff could set up without him knowing. and then, around 7, we would go back to their house and all of his friends would surprise him.

all awsten knew, was that i was picking him up at 1 and he was gonna run errands with me. he didn't want to make a big deal about his birthday which was why i wanted to play things off during the day as just a chill day where we spent time together. i wasn't amazing at stalling so i just prayed things worked out in my favor.

as i drove to pick up awsten, i wondered what we could do to kill time. i figured we could go to the mall, since we had 6 whole hours to kill. that was, if he wanted to. i didn't have any backup plan so i prayed it was cool with him.

i pulled up to chloe, geoff, and awsten's and shot awsten a message telling him i was there. two minutes later, he came out of his house and walked to my car. he got in and i started to drive.

"hey there, birthday boy." i smiled. he just smiled back at me and shook his head as he buckled.

"don't remind me. to me it's just another friday. 28 isn't that special of a birthday." he said to me.

"yet, you just had to throw me a big birthday for mine." i reminded him. awsten scoffed.

"and you saw how that turned out. i wouldn't want to chance the same thing happening to me that happened to you."

i let out a laugh.

"awsten, we're not even dating yet. why and how could i dump you?" i pointed out. he laughed with me, shrugging.

"i'm just sayin'." he said. i shook my head at his terrible reasoning.

"i figured we could go to the mall. you down?" i asked him. he nodded.

"yeah, works for me. kinda wanted to stop at guitar center and see if they got anything good."

i silently prayed that he'd change his mind about the last one. i already bought him a new guitar from there for his birthday and i didn't want him to somehow accidentally buy the same one. who needs two of the same guitar?

it was a fairly short drive to the local mall and when we got there it seemed a little busy. i mean, i guess that's what happens on fridays but still. i kind of hated busy places, they tended to make me anxious.

"ready to go in?" awsten asked me when i parked. i nodded and we both got out, walking to the entrance.

"we should go to hot topic first. i heard they got some of our merch in and i kind of want to see." awsten said.

"yeah, i wanted to look at what they got there anyways. we can go first." i agreed. we looked at the map and saw that we had to go upstairs in order to go to hot topic.

"we need to go on an escalator. those things are so fun for no reason." awsten told me. i laughed at his childishness as we then made our way to the escalator.

we walked to hot topic and when we made it there we immediately went to the back of the store for the band tees. unfortunately, our local mall hot topic was really small and it got a little crowded in there.