Chapter 29

3 years later….

****Alyssa****

“Hey beautiful, I was thinking we should get a hotel room tonight?” my friend Nathan says, interrupting my train of thought.

Nathan is a bartender here as well as Luke’s assistant manager. I’m getting a few last-minute things done while I wait for our friends to arrive.

“Really?” I say, feigning a frown. “We’re not going to be out that late.”

I continue wiping down the bar, assuming a disinterested air. Nathan is quite possibly the sweetest person I ever met; actually, he always reminded me of my friend Jay from back home. It always makes my heart hurt thinking of the friends I left behind. Nathan and Jay are the kind of people you instantly know you’ll be friends with forever. Still, I can’t resist teasing Nathan a little.

“Oh, hun, you told me you didn’t have a party for your 18th, or for your 21st, and last year for your 23rd birthday, we went out to dinner. Dinner!? How dull!”

“It was a lovely dinner,” I sing, now stacking glasses behind the ba