it's a match | andrew siwicki

23. Launch Party

The next time they saw each other was mid-week. Andrew had gotten her lunch from Raising Cane's and took it to her workplace. They sat outside her work building, enjoying each others' company and the chicken strips. They saw each other a few more times for quick lunches and dinners, but overall Andrew had been pretty busy with Shane editing the series.

That following Friday, Andrew and Shane put the finishing touches on the first part. The last two parts were not quite ready to upload yet, but they still had time to finish those up. They had planned to upload one part every week this time. The first video was ready and they planned on uploading it tomorrow.

Andrew was feeling nauseous due to how nervous he was about this series. Not only was it something the whole squad worked really hard on, but he felt like he had a lot on the line in terms of his reputation and relationship with Lexie. He worried about the reaction the fans would have to her, and he hoped that they would treat her kindly. He'd hate for the relationship to not work out due to outside factors.

Ryland planned a little get together to celebrate the launch of the series at their house. Only a few friends were invited: mainly the squad, Jeffrey and his friends, Lisa and her boyfriend, James, Shane's mom, and of course Lexie.

Andrew picked Lexie up from her apartment that evening so that they could arrive to the mini-party together. "You look very pretty today," he complimented as she hopped into his car. She was wearing a small yellow off the shoulder crop top with a pair of high waist black jeans and a Gucci belt (hey, she wanted to make a good impression on the people she'd meet tonight, okay?). Her makeup was minimal-the way Andrew liked her most- and her hair was half up.

"Thank you, babe," she smiled and leaned over to give him a kiss. They lingered a little longer than usual, before he pulled away and began driving. "Nervous?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "I can barely breathe," he admitted.

"Everything will be fine," she tried to reassure him, taking his hand in hers and bringing it to her lips to kiss his knuckles. She didn't know if it would be, but she hoped.

While he was extremely nervous about the launch of the series, he was also terrified of what he had planned tonight. Tonight, he wanted to officially ask Lexie to be his girlfriend. At this point, they had known each other for about a month and half. He was confident in his decision to ask her and he knew that this was what Lexie wanted as well. Despite all that, he still felt nervous – and he was going to ask her in front of all his friends! That was nerve wracking enough!

They arrived at Shane's house to find everything in full swing. Andrew took Lexie to each group of people and introduced her briefly before Shane began to do a speech, thanking everyone for coming and celebrating the launch of their new series.

"Andrew, do you want to say something?" Shane asked, stepping down and walking to stand next to Lexie. 

"Oh, yeah sure," he replied and got up in front of everyone. "I just want to thank everyone for your continuous support for Shane, the squad, and me. We have a lot of fun making these videos. At first I was really hesitant about this series, but I'm grateful I agreed to it. So I want to thank Shane and Ryland for giving me this opportunity. And to Morgan and Garrett too. This series would have been nothing without you guys."

"Love you, bro," Garrett yelled, holding his glass of whiskey up.

"Love you too, Gare," Andrew replied with a chuckle and held his bottle of beer up to his best friend. "Lastly, I just want to say thank you to Lexie. Most of you guys met her for the first time tonight, and she was my lovely leading lady for this series. Spoiler alert: our date goes really well and we've been seeing each other a lot recently."