Love Rivalry (A Gabriel Landeskog and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins Fanfiction)

Chapter 18 - Cutting it Close

Ashley's POV

New Year's Eve

It was 2:30 and I was so stressed out. I just wanted to collapse. The boys rented out a sky room at some ritzy hotel for a New Year's Eve party. And of course, being men, they left myself and Natalie with all of the busy work. Getting appetizers ready, decorations, placement of furniture, the whole nine yards. I was uber annoyed. 

"Should I put the fruit and the dip together?" I heard Natalie ask from across the kitchen. 

"No, put it with the carrots and celery and the other stuff." I responded.

The boys had went to "scout" the location they had chosen, which I wanted to call hardcore bullshit on, but they couldn't be doing anything else that involved the party. (None of them are useful enough anyway.)

For a girl in love, it seems ridiculous for me to say such things about Ryan. I didn't really mean these things, its just one of those heat of the moment thoughts that you get every now and then. I wasn't very happy with him, though. 

I mean, this was partially his idea, and he couldn't even get these ready in advance. But the best part was because for some reason, all of the grocery stores close early on New Year's Eve (another thing Ryan neglected to tell me), Natalie and I were using whatever the boys had in the house. Usually, we could get a bunch of those party platters that only 3 people even think about touching the whole night, but that was out of the question.   

"I am SO ANNOYED with Taylor!" Natalie yelled, angrily manhandling food. 

"Ryan's in my doghouse right now too." I said, bagging some of the food that Natalie had packaged. 

The boys walked in shortly after. They were all laughing and goofing around, just assuming we had everything under control. 

"Hey, babe." Ryan said, walking over to me. 

"Hi." I said sternly. I could see from the corner of my eye that he was a bit taken back by my tone. He didn't say anything, he just walked into the living room to put his coat away. 

"Hey, beautiful." Taylor said to Natalie, wrapping his arms around her. 

"Don't even think about it." Natalie growled, shooting him a look. Probably the last thing he expected to hear. 

"What did I do?" 

"What did I do? What did I do?" She mocked. "That's all you ever say!" 

"No, I don't, but why are you mad at me?" 

"Because you left me and poor Ashley with all of this work while you went and goofed off! That's what you did!" 

"Hey, Nuge was in on it too." 

"Hey!" Ryan yelled from the other room. "I had nothing to do with it. This was your play, Taylor." 

"You said they probably wouldn't mind helping out." 

"This isn't what I had in mind." 

I continued to work while the bickering continued. I went to grab some more plastic eating utensils when I heard someone following me into the room. It was Ryan. 

"You're not mad at me, are you?" He asked.

"Honestly, I'm a little upset, and very annoyed. You guys left us with all of this shit to do." 

"I'll help you if you want." 

"No, it's fine, we're almost done, but you and Taylor are taking it to the venue, we need to get ready."