Alex’s POV
My dad took the four suitcases out of the back of the car. I always thought that this was going to be a sad moment. Ash leaving back to Germany, the only contact I’d be able to have with her being through social media and very expensive phone calls. But it was actually nothing like that, I was actually very excited. Ash wasn’t the only one going back to Germany, I was going with her. Rather than having to go back forever, it was just for the short Christmas break. Plus, instead of having to go to England with my parents and see my annoying family, I now got to spend all my time with Ash and her family. Anything was better than having to see everybody back in England. The fact that I was allowed to be with my girlfriend that entire time was just a super big and awesome bonus.

Ok, yes, I was also scared to meet her family. Even though her three brothers were a couple years younger than us, it didn’t mean that they weren’t protective of her. Small kids can throw the hardest punches. Really. They are the perfect height to punch you in the dick, and I prefered not to get my dick punched. And then there was her dad as well of course. I mean, I was dating his only daughter! What was he supposed to think? Especially since she was hurt before, I had to show that I had no intentions than be the best boyfriend I could ever be. I didn’t want him to hate me just because I was a guy and was dating his daughter. I’d understand if he didn’t like me, but I really hoped he didn’t. It would make everything weird if the father of the girl I was in love with didn’t want to have me around. Being on the other side of the world also probably wouldn’t help if things did get awkward.

But then again, maybe he wouldn’t hate me. I mean, he did pay for both our tickets, while I was willing to get a job and work my ass off just to get a cheap ticket to Germany. However, he insisted on getting us both Business Class tickets, there was no way he would allow me to pay anything. Something along the lines of having Ash stay with us for so long and caring for her. It was probably going to look very weird, two teenagers surrounded by people who were actually flying in business class because they worked for a business. Ash would probably fit in, having flown many times before, but all I knew was economy class. Was I supposed to act more sophisticated or something?

I handed Ash her two suitcases, one full of food and one containing some clothes, before taking my own much smaller suitcase. This just reminded me so much of when we all came to pick her up the first time. My parents offered to take her suitcases, but I just wouldn’t have it. God, I was such an asshole back then. If I had been nicer to her from the beginning maybe we would have already been together for much longer. But maybe I would never developed that silly crush on her. Well, I wouldn’t call it silly. Just look how that schoolboy crush turned out.

“Wait, let me take that extra suitcase,” I told her, taking back the gray hard case suitcase that was way too heavy from all the candy we were smuggling along. She gave me a smile small, probably remembering the same thing I was. This time I actually was going to act like a gentleman. If I could, I would have taken her other suitcase as well, but I already had my hands full.

My dad closed the trunk of the car with a loud thud before turning to my mum and Ash, “how about you guys go inside to find where we have to check in? I dropped my wallet somewhere in the car, Alex here will help me find it.”

“Oh, we can wait,” Ash told him, happily being the one that would stay behind rather than me.

“No, it’s ok. You girls go do that and get in line already, we’ll see you there.” Dad answered, ushering them away and towards the airport building.

When he turned back to me, I pulled up the zipper of my jacket to keep me warm. “So, where do you think you dropped it?” I asked, white clouds leaving my mouth as I could feel my lips slowly turn purple.

“Oh, I didn’t drop it, I just wanted to talk to you before we left and give you this,” he put something discreetly in my hand with a smirk tugging at his lips.

I looked down at what he gave me and felt my cheeks heat up. “W-what am I supposed to do with this?”

“I’m pretty sure you know what it’s for, Alex,” he rolled his eyes a little, pressing the button on his keys to lock the car, “I just don’t want you making any mistakes. Your mom has been trying to make sure it hasn’t been happening, but now that we are in two different countries, she can’t keep an eye on you anymore. I just want you guys to be safe in case you guys think of doing it.”

I cleared my throat awkwardly. I thought it couldn’t be any worse than my mom giving the sextalk to both me and Ash at the same time. But, hey, it could! My dad giving me a condom was definitely way way worse. If I had needed them, I would have probably gotten them myself. This was just completely awkward. I couldn’t bare the thought that my mom might have known what my dad was doing right now.

“I don’t think-- I-- Umm…” I was lost for words, not knowing what to say without making this any less uncomfortable for me.

“Just so you know, this doesn’t mean I’m telling you to use it next possible chance you get… unless if it’s really needed. I don’t know what you kids are doing these days, just make sure you are safe.”

All I could do was nod quietly, and put the unopened wrapper in my pocket. The only way to make this go over as quickly as possible and make him stop was by just accepting it. I really didn’t think Ash and I were going to have sex soon. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to do it, I just didn’t want to force her into doing things she didn’t want. I mean, I did have no sex for months, just because I didn’t want to seem like the guy I was before and only wanted Ash. It was just a little more complicated than that. I still assumed she wasn’t ready, but her actions during the party were still in my mind. It was either sober thoughts being drunk words, or she was just too drunk to be rational. I was just going to wait until she brought it up, in the meantime I just had to make sure she was comfortable enough to talk to me about it. I didn’t want some weird tension building up between us; something between sexual tension and embarrassment.

I didn’t say another word to my dad when we went to meet up with my mom and Ash again. We were going to go to the check in separately, then go through security together, before going separate ways again when going to our gates. That way we still got to say goodbye to each other, but didn’t have to hang around until it was time for one of us to board. Simple solution.
I looked at the TV screen to show me where to go and quickly mumbled a ‘see you later’ to my dad. The cue was already pretty long, but I saw Ash waiting for me at the side. I was left confused, wondering why she didn’t just join the cue so we wouldn’t have to wait as long as we would now.

“Did your dad find his wallet?” She asked me after quickly pecking me on the lips.

I was about to ask her what she meant before remembering that my dad had used that excuse to keep me behind a bit longer. I shrugged, “yeah, it was pretty easy to find.”

“Good.” She smiled and dragged me past the entire cue to a separate desk, just to the right of all the other ones.

I completely forgot we got to skip lines now that we were flying business class. To say it was weird to see two teenagers cue up on the business class side, was an understatement (well, I was technically an adult now that I was 18, but I certainly didn’t feel grown up). There were still three other people in front of us, and some people in the normal cue were giving us questioning looks. A member of staff even came up to us to ask us if we were in the right place, but Ash assured that she knew what she was doing.

“You know, we should have acted like a couple that got married at a very young age, just to fuck with their minds, and we have parents that suck so much because they would only pay business class tickets to Germany, and not to the Carribean or something,” Ash whispered to me, glancing at the same member of staff that was still keeping an eye on us. It was like they were waiting for us to do something bad.

“But you have a German passport, so that honeymoon story wouldn’t really work. Most people go to some place both of them have never been to,” I pointed out, taking her red passport with the small golden eagle on the front out of her hand.

“And you have a British passport,” she added, no significance to what we were talking about before. “You know what that means? We get to go through the EU passport control rather than the All International one. Most people here have an American passport, so it shouldn’t take us too long. Coming back to America, however, will take us a bit longer.”

“Got your green card?”

“Of course. You?”

“I think so,” I mumbled, knowing pretty sure I did, but always having doubts.

“Well, if you don’t, I will not be waiting with you for you to get permission to come in the country,” she giggled.

I pouted, knowing full well she would be all ready to leave me all by myself before caving in and staying with me those extra days since we were flying back on a Saturday. It would be a nice story, missing a day of school because we weren’t allowed back in America. Just imagine that. I was never going to let that happen to myself.

----

The flight just consisted of Ash and I basically playing around with the adjustable chairs and trying our best to sync up our movies so we could watch them together. Well, that is until we both fell asleep. She had started dozing off way before me, obviously being a lot more used to airplanes than I was. I just got up and walked around, occasionally going to the bathroom, before I finally managed to shut my eyes and actually catch some sleep.

While the chairs were basically able to recline back into a bed, I was still upset that I couldn’t cuddle up with Ash. There was too much space between us to do that. While we would have been a lot more uncomfortable, we could have been a lot closer in economy class. My knees would most likely be killing me after the nine hour or so flight, but at least I would have Ash sleeping on top of me. Now, don’t get me wrong or anything, because I really wasn’t ungrateful, but I was just a lovesick puppy that couldn’t be separated from his girlfriend for too long or he would have withdrawls.

It was a serious thing, ok?

Anyway, it probably was a good thing that we both got some sleep. We still had to travel by train and bus to get to her house before still having to walk a distance of ten minutes. Because of the time zones, we were arriving sometime around six pm, but it only felt like 12 pm for us. That didn’t mean we weren’t tired, because any flight makes you exhausted.

There also wasn’t much time to catch up on sleep in the train. Ash seemed to think everything around her was normal, but I was so fascinated by the different landscapes and culture here. It was completely different from Baltimore, and even so much different from England. I couldn’t stop staring out of the window, even when we were driving through fields (which happened to be the majority of the time). Ash was sleeping soundly on my shoulder as I watched the scenes pass by quickly, our suitcases at our feet. Two hours seemed like a long journey to me beforehand, but it went by so quickly. Before I knew it, not even half an hour was left.

We were stopped at another station, a couple of people getting off, and some more getting on. The town we were in was small, a size you wouldn’t find back in the US, the weird German name posted proudly in white letters on a blue metal sign. I literally didn’t know where we were. I only knew the name of the town she lived in, so I really didn’t know when to start waking her up. However, the fact that there were two guys who just came on the train, staring at us told me we were close. They were whispering to each other, looking right at Ash, making me feel uncomfortable. Acting like I didn’t see them, I tried to change my body posture so that I was ready to protect Ash if needed. I wouldn’t let something happen to her here as well.

“What’s wrong?” Ash mumbled, having noticed me sitting upright more, snuggling further into my body and innocently giving my neck a kiss.

“Nothing,” I whispered back, running my hand through her hair to comfort her.

“Hmm,” she sat up anyway and took in her surroundings, looking out of the window to see we were moving once again, “oh, we’re almost there.”

She took her eyes off the window, instead making eye contact with the guys who were still looking over at us. Quickly looking away, I saw that her eyes were wide with shock. I had no clue what was going on. Who were these guys, and what did they want?

“They go to my old school,” she mumbled, seeming like she was going move a bit away from me, but instead decided to cuddle back into my side, “they’re probably confused. I’m sort of known as the girl who would never manage to get a boyfriend.”

I frowned. How dare they think stuff and say stuff like that. She was obviously the most beautiful girl ever, she could have any guy she wanted. I was the one to be lucky to have her, not the other way around. With the amount of guys swooning over her back at home, I always thought she was exaggerating the situation back here, but apparently she wasn’t.

“Well, seems like they are wrong,” I replied, wrapping my arm tighter around her torso, “how about we make them even more confused?”

She smirked at me, understanding my plan without me even having to explain it. When she looked up at me, acting innocent, like she didn’t know what was going to happen, I leaned down to kiss her, deepening it just a bit more than what we would normally do in public. Those guys better never mess with her again.

“We have to get off at the next stop,” she breathed again my lips, going to kiss me again with the same passion and heat I put in.

----

We were stood in front of a large house, a tall black fence surrounding the entire plot. This neighbourhood was around 20 minutes away from the main town by bus, and it looked so much different. All the houses here were big and modern, while the tall apartment building in the town had been standing there for hundreds of years. The house in front of me, however, was definitely one of the larger houses here. It looked a lot like those modern mansions you could find in England, with the walls made out of small bricks and stones, and the window frames painted perfectly white. It only made sense that it looked this way, since they did move here from England 13 years or so ago, about as old as the rest of this neighbourhood looked.

Ash walked over to one side of the gate, typing in a code on a number pad, before it opened slowly by itself. She started walking inside as soon as there was enough space for us to fit through. I awkwardly followed, not knowing what I was getting myself into. This house was much bigger than I had expected, but at the same time it also looked so much smaller. The vines on the walls had been growing for years, making the house look darker and more abandoned that it actually was. I could tell that these vines were being grown in this specific way, bending around the windows in a perfect manner.

“I don’t have a key with me, but my brother’s should be at home,” Ash told me, walking up the long rounded driveway, nearing the steps that lead to the front door, “I don’t think my dad’s home though…”

I pointed at the Porsche Cayenne parked somewhere just to the left. “Isn’t that his car?”

“Well, yeah, but there should be two cars in the driveway, he must have taken the family car to work.” She dragged her suitcase up the steps before helping me with the two I was holding.

“Okay…”

So, her family might have a bit more money than Harper’s, which was something I didn’t know was possible. Ash just never acted like a spoiled child, so I never expected this much luxury. She never complained about my dirty old ratty car, so the fact they had fancy cars had really baffled me. It wasn't going to change my view of her, though. She was still the girl I loved, we just happened to be in a different surrounding and environment than before.

She rang the doorbell, a voice coming through some sort of speaker on the wall, “Hello?”

“Hey,” Ash smiled, “I got a message about some ghost sightings--”

The door slammed open, a young boy running in Ash’s arms. She hugged him back tightly, picking him up off the floor, the boy wrapping his short legs around her waist.

“I missed you,” he muttered into her shoulder, not planning on letting go anytime soon.

“I missed you too, buddy,” she ruffled his hair, trying to pry his limbs off her, but it didn’t seem to work.

Two more voices came from inside the house, screaming out my girlfriend’s name as their footsteps loudly came running towards her. Her two other brothers joined the hug, making it impossible for her to move at all. I just stood there awkwardly, feeling like I was imposing in on a personal family moment.

“Alex, these are my brothers,” she laughed as they kept holding on to her, “Jaxon,” she pointed at the tallest of the three and the oldest, “Kayden,” she motioned towards the boy who was squashed against her arm, “and Charley, the ghost hunter,” meaning the one who came running out of the house first. “Boys, this is Alex.”

“Hi,” they shyly waved, continuing to hug their sister.

The oldest eventually broke away first, before reaching out to give me a handshake. They definitely had better manner than anybody I had ever met back at home. No wonder Ash used to be so conservative and neat when she came. It wasn’t just the way she was, it was also the way she was raised.

“Dad’s stuck in traffic,” Jaxon then said, taking Ash’s suitcase inside, before rushing out and taking my suitcase and the extra suitcase as well, “He asked me to make dinner, but to be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I guess I get to make some real German fast food again,” Ash sighed, sarcasm evident in her words. She walked in the house, shaking her younger two brothers off, who then quickly scurried away to do their own thing. They knew better than to just stand around when Ash wanted to cook. Trust me, I know, she’d get mad if you were in her way.

I was taken aback by the size of the hall we were standing in. The front door let us into a small room with another glass door to keep the heat in better, but once you were past the coats and assortment of shoes, it was like paradise. A large grand piano was stood in the middle, two staircases leading up opposite walls before coming together at the next floor. There were more rooms when you went underneath these stairs, the kitchen immediately to the right.

“The bathroom is over there if you need it,” Ash pointed towards a small door to the left, “I’ll give you a tour later on, but right now I need to burn myself some food. I’m too tired to care about it being perfect.”

----

For dinner we had this thing called a snizzle of something like that. Ash and her brothers kept trying to correct my pronunciation, but I just couldn’t make those harsh German sounds. They insisted it was a ‘schnitzel’, but snizzle was close enough for me. They actually were surprisingly good, and her brothers seemed to like me so far. Charley liked me enough to join Ash and I in her bedroom later on to play a board game. It definitely was weird yet refreshing to see an eight year old wanting to play a physical board game rather than play games on an iPad. I could tell that Ash’s dad did not only do a good job on her, but on all his kids.

Of course, the game we were playing was some mystery game that Charley claimed was his favourite. I could still remember the first day Ash was with us and that he called her, going on and on about a ghost he found, until loudly playing the piano. Having seen the house, I could only imagine how annoying it must be to wake up to that noise, it was like the hall and staircase managed to make all the noises louder than they were supposed to be. I didn’t get that ghost-like presence feeling that Charley was constantly talking about. He could definitely be a conspiracy theorist when he was older.

“No! You can’t do that!” He exclaimed as Ash did something that apparently was against the rules of the game.

“Oops…” She apologized, giving me a look and a shrug. We both did not understand how this game worked. Instead of giving us the instruction manual to read, Charley tried explaining it to us himself. Let’s just say he kept contradicting himself, forgot to tell us the point of the game, and completely forgot to mention a couple of points.

“It’s not that difficult!” He had a much more obvious German accent than Ash did.

“I guess you’re just the best at the game.”

We continued to try and play the game with him for a while until Ash suddenly perked up and sat up straight, her head snapping towards her door. Before I could ask her what was going on, she stood up and clumsily ran out of the room, rushing to whatever she was thinking/hearing/seeing. I put the cards I had in my hand down and looked at Charley with a questioning look.

He grinned, showing off some teeth that were missing. “Dad’s home.”

He stood up himself and took my hand, dragging me towards the front door, which was open wide. I carefully looked outside, nerves rushing through my body. This was when I was going to meet her dad; I had to make a good impression. I couldn’t screw this up by saying or doing the wrong thing, everything had to go perfectly and smoothly. So, basically act like somebody I wasn’t was… But then he’d figure out I was being someone who I wasn’t, and he wouldn’t want me to be with his daughter. Oh god, I never met the parents of any of the girlfriends just because I never stayed with a girl long enough. My hands turned cold and sweaty, anxiety rushing through my body. But I couldn’t have an anxiety attack, that would just be the worst. Everybody here would think I was crazy.

But when I saw the sight in front of me, I couldn’t help but smile slightly, even though Ash was crying. She was hugging her dad the way Charley had done to her when we just arrived. Her dad hugged her back tightly, not wanting to let go of his baby girl ever again. She really needed this.

Notes

Super long chapter that should have been split into two. I figured since I won't be able to write much next week, that this should make up for it. Two tests and two concerts to go to. There were actually 5 concerts I wanted to go to last week and next week, but I had to make a decision of one (luckily one of my friends asked me to go to another). Why do all bands come to Europe at the same time? And why haven't All Time Low showed up yet! I'M WAITING FOR YOU GUYS! YOU BETTER COME HERE NEXT YEAR, BECAUSE I MIGHT BE GONE AFTER THAT! The annoying moment when you really get into a band literally a week after they had a concert in your grandparents home town... it sucked. I liked them before, but didn't like them all too much. Still hoping, though! (My friend is super pissed that they keep going to the UK but not to the rest of Europe).

I kid you not, if I hadn't edited the chapter at all the sentence "No wonder Ash used to be so conservative and neat..." would have been "No wonder Ash used to be such a conservative meat..." How the hell did I manage that? There's probably so many mistakes still in there, but that one is gone.