We waited for the family outside on the dock-where we normally are 50 percent of the time. We talked about school, family, and friends, since for the past couple weeks, he wasn’t hanging out with me or his group of friends who I’ve adopted as my own. He held out his hand and I took it and traced the veins on his hand. We sat in semi-silence for a long time, Nick was humming to Superstition by Stevie Wonder and I was listening to him. Even when he was humming, he sounded amazing.
“ALEX! NICK! WE’RE GONNA GO IN LIKE…” Joe paused and looked inside, then one-bye-one each person who was in the house, came out. “NOW!” Nick and I both laughed a little and got up. We walked with his family over to the close by neighbors John and Beth, who we went boating with earlier that day. We were all greeted politely and Paul immediately went over to John who was grilling an assortment of food. Nick, Joe and I sat at the table where Melanie and Frankie were playing cards. We watched their couple rounds of ‘Trash’ and Joe challenged us to a game of Uno. I hate that game with an undying passion, but Joe puppy-dog pouted, so I felt like I had to and if I said no, he would hate me forever. After 2 games (which Joe won both.) and a filling meal, It was almost time for the fireworks. Nick and I decided to take a walk around the lake before they started. We walked around the lake until we got to Camp Richland, when Nick had the brilliant idea of sitting at the camp and watching the fireworks because “there are less tree’s and you can see better…” We sat where the bonfires normally were and he grabbed my hand again. We didn’t have to wait very long until the fireworks started. They lasted about an hour and then we had to go back to the Jonas’s cabin where they were hosting a bonfire for all of the neighboring families. It was very fun and I met a lot of new people. After the fire, Frankie was already asleep in bed and Joe and Kevin were just about to go to bed. Nick and I were pretty hyper off of smores and mountain dew, so we had a lot of energy. We watched a movie on the Lifetime channel and made fun of it for a while, then we changed the channel to the movie ‘Elf.’ and quoted it word for word. After the movie, Nick and Mine’s energy completely disappeared. We slowly dragged ourselves into the room where Frankie and Joe were already dead in their beds and fell asleep quickly.

“Wakey, Wakey, Lexi!” A person shook me in my bed.
“Eh. How about not…” I knew it was either Kevin or Joe. I didn’t want to get up for either. I rolled over to confirm who it was and it was definitely Kevin. “What do you need Kev?” I asked. It was already Nick’s birthday so it was something to do with that.
“Wanna help me get Nick’s present ready?”
“Sure.” I slowly crawled out of my bed and walked out to the living room, where everyone--except Nick was sitting.
“Meet the present!” Kevin laughed. Rolling on the ground was a small golden retriever.
“It’s so cute!” I got down onto the ground to pet it. “Boy or girl Kev-o?” I asked.
“Kev-o?” He asked. “He’s a boy.”
“New nickname for you Kev-o!” Joe exclaimed. Shortly after putting the bow on the puppy and figuring out where everything was, Nick finally got up.
“LEXI! Where are you?!” He called from his bed, almost in an instant, I was right next to him.
“What do you need, honey?” I asked.
“Guess what?”
“It’s your birthday!” I said.
“Yeah, and we’ve officially had a relationship longer than 24 hours!” He laughed rubbing his eyes. He got up and kissed my cheek. “Good morning too.” He got up and I was getting anxious to see his reaction to his puppy. He walked out to the living room and immediately stopped when he saw the dog. “Uh. Whats that?” He turned around to ask me. I pointed to his parents and they yelled ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’ we ate breakfast in the living room and Nick finally picked out a name for his new puppy-Elvis. We took Elvis for a long walk before we had to go back home to Tennessee, and then it was on the road. I was really going to miss it up there.