Shuck Face (A Dylan O'Brien Story)

Chapter 17

"I think I need to walk off all of this food. Ready to go exploring?"

I nodded at the cutie sitting across from me. Dinner had been a success. The only time we weren't talking was when we were stuffing our faces. We spent the next two hours exploring the French Quarter. He took me to The LaLaurie house, which I LOVED. I'm a huge fan of haunted places, and that is a great place to go. We visited the Voodoo Garden's and Market, and listened to some street bands play on Frenchman street. 

My phone buzzed around 11:30 with a text from Thomas.

Hartley's phone died and Dylan isn't responding to me. First: Tell him he's an asshole. Second: Would you both like to meet us at Molly's for a drink before we head back to the hotel?

"Thomas says you're an asshole and wants to know if we wanna meet them for drinks."

A strange noise came out of Dylan's mouth which caused me to look up at him. He had a pained look on his face.

"Why am I an asshole?"

"Because he texted you about the drinks and you never responded."

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw he had a missed text and a missed phone call. He read the text out loud

You didn't answer your phone. What good is it to have one, then? Let's meet at Molly's for drinks. Date is going splendidly, but I'm so bloody nervous. HELP.

We both burst out laughing.

"Thomas is nervous? That's adorable."

"I was nervous too! Are you cool with meeting them for drinks?"

I chuckled and nodded. "I am if you are."

Dylan replied back to Thomas saying we were headed there now and to quit being so nervous. He intertwined his hand with mine and we made our way to meet our friends.

Molly's at the Market is a cute little bar. Considering it was late on Tuesday, it wasn't overly packed. We found TB and Hartley in a table in the back. They hadn't seen us because they were too busy staring at each other. I placed a hand on Dylan's arm, telling him to wait a minute. I pulled my phone out.

"It looks like he's about to kiss her!"

Sure enough, Thomas leaned in to kiss my best friend. I snapped a quick picture and immediately texted it to Hart (even though her phone was dead) and Thomas. Dylan shook his head and dragged me to their table. Thomas had just looked at his phone when we sat down.

"This is stalker status, Charlie!"

He showed the picture to Hartley who simply blushed, too embarrassed to make a comment.

"I didn't know what she was doing until I saw her send the text. She seems to be a weirdo."

I stuck my tongue out at Dylan.

"I like to document cute moments, stalkerish or not. You want to date my best friend and/or be friends with us, hell if you wanna date me... you better get used to it."

My three companions laughed and shook their heads at me. Hartley and I started talking about the different sights we had seen. Let me just say, if you separate the two of us for a few hours doing super exciting things, and then throw us back together and add any amount of alcohol, we get VERY hyper. We kept getting dirty looks from the guys.

"You've only had one beer. Please don't tell me you two are lightweights."

Hart and I burst out laughing.

"We aren't lightweights. We just get very excited when we see each other after being separated."

Thomas' mouth fell open. "You two were apart for less than 4 hours... Are you secretly dating? Perhaps we should know this bit of information now."

"No! We've just been friends for so long, when we do fun things without the other we get very excited to share them. We're hyper around each other regardless of how long we're apart. Another thing you gotta get used to I guess."

We kept talking and laughing. After a while, a guy walked by who looked JUST like my ex.

"Holy fuck, I think I just saw Pete."

I temporarily stopped breathing. I didn't mean to say that out loud. Past relationships wasn't a topic I wanted to happen tonight. Hartley was looking in the direction the guy had walked to see if it really was him or not. I knew what she was thinking. If Pete was here, there was a solid chance her ex Mark was here too.

"I don't see him but I'm sure it wasn't him, Chuck."

Dylan wrapped his arm around me and placed a hand on my chin, turning my face towards him.

"What's going on? Who is Pete?"

Thomas had his hand on Hartley's arm. "Are you two okay?"

We both just shook our heads.

"Pete is my ex. It's fine, don't worry about it."

Picking up my beer, I took a big swig, hoping the guys would drop the subject.

"Something bad happened with him right? That's why you didn't seem comfortable talking about boyfriends that first night at the hotel."

I turned towards Dylan, shocked that he had noticed that.

"It's a long story."

Thomas lifted his hand, signaling to a waitress that we needed another round.

"We've got time."