youngblood | lrh

▷ 11.

The boys were all sitting in my living room while I was frantically running around my apartment trying to make sure we had everything for our 'mandatory group outing,' although saying it like that made it sound so negative. Mr. Augustine had asked us to go on a group outing to bond since I've gotten my new assignment of handling the boys PR stuff. He figured that it would make scheduling their interviews and various other events a lot easier since I would know them better. Little did he know, I had gotten fairly close to all of them already.

"Hurry up Gabi. How many things do you need to take?" Calum asked while digging through my fridge. That's all they had done since they got here. They would open my fridge, stare at it, complain about my lack of food, go back to the couch for five minutes, and repeat the process. I rolled my eyes at Calum as I walked back into the living room.

"Well I need to find three more towels since you guys are incapable of bringing your own. I'd like to bring a back up bottle of sun screen-"

"Lame!" Michael interrupted me with a laugh. I shot him a glare before speaking again.

"I want to take some water because it's expensive to buy things on the beach. I need to take a cover up, I need my sunglasses, and that's it."

The boys all simultaneously groaned at me as I walked back into my bedroom to find the rest of my belongings for this impromptu beach day. We had originally planned to just watch a movie but Ashton thought that would be too boring, so as soon as they got here they decided a beach day would be the best way to do something fun.

Although I couldn't say I was devastated about the beach day. My mom was still in town and after her remarks about Luke, which she did apologize for but still, I was glad to not have to spend every waking moment around her. She had left before I even woken up to go shopping and only left a note.

It only took ten more minutes to find the rest of my belongings and enough towels for everyone. Loading everyone up into the car was a hassle though because Luke refused to drive, but Michael wouldn't drive if Luke wasn't in the front seat but Luke gets too cold in the front seat. Calum and Ashton both refused to sit in the middle but Michael would only sit on the left side of the car. Somehow we ended up with Michael driving, me in the passenger seat, Ashton behind Michael, Luke in the middle, and Calum behind me. The amount of times I had to yell at Calum to stop kicking my seat was far too many.

The drive in itself was uneventful. The boys were being loud and obnoxious and Michael only almost killed us three times. Since it was early in the day, traffic wasn't bad and we managed to get to the beach in fifteen minutes. We even managed to park rather close to the sand, although Michael did almost hit a family of four trying to park.

I grabbed my tote bag from the trunk while the boys ran off to get changed. I wandered along the shore trying to find us somewhere good but I was too tired to carry all of our stuff much longer and eventually settled for a rather secluded place that was much closer to the bathrooms than I wanted to be. The boys came running out as I was pulling out towels for everyone and trying to make one big beach towel for us all to sit on.

"Aren't you going to put a swimsuit on?" Luke questioned me. I rolled my eyes at him. Being friends with these boys felt like I had quickly become the single mother of four toddlers who don't even know how to use silverware yet.

I set down the last of the towels and pulled my swimsuit out of my tote bag. "I had to wait for you guys to come back. I wasn't going to leave our stuff here unattended." He nodded and I ran off to the bathrooms to change. Because the beach day was so suddenly planned, I was forced to the grab the first swimsuit I saw. It was a simple two piece in a weird golden-yellow-mustardy color that looked great on me when I had tan. Since summer had only barely started my tan was a little lackluster so the color seemed to wash me out but I wasn't one to care too much about colors. It was either I dealt with this or left my four toddlers at the beach alone and I didn't trust any of them that much. As I was walking out of the bathrooms, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the full length mirrors. The scar that traveled up my thigh and onto my side seemed so present today, even though it had faded to practically nothing thanks to my mother's scar removing remedies.