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  "Ally, put your arms down. I can't see the full effect of the dress with your arms folded," Kylie commanded.

  They stood like soldiers as Kylie paced back and forth, analyzing the outfits in front of her, while Tyson tried to fight the urge to hold Ally's hand. This experience would be a lot more bearable with Ally's hand in his. He just hoped that she still cared for him the way he cared for her.

  “There’s still something that isn’t quite right,” Kylie pondered. “Tyson, your tie is too short. Ally will you please re-tie it? Apparently, he can’t tie a tie.”

  Ally and Tyson just stood here and Kylie added, “You’ve gotten good at tying that fancy knot for Justin lately. Now hurry up.”

  As Kylie walked over to look at the collection of ties she had picked out, Tyson undid the knot in his tie and left it hanging around his neck. Even though he was sick of Kylie’s demanding attitude today, Tyson couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity with Ally grabbing both ends of his tie.

  “I didn’t know that you could tie a tie?” Tyson asked with sincerity.

  Ally looked up at Tyson and their eyes met. In that moment, his heart stopped. Even though Ally smiled slightly, he could undeniably see the sadness in Ally’s eyes as she shrugged her shoulders and said, “It’s one of my new talents.” Ally focused her eyes back on the task at hand. Tyson was elated, he still might have a chance. What did Kevin say to do next? Talk to her? Be her friend? Tell her he loved her?

  “Ally?” Tyson whispered as Ally finished and looked up at him again. “I just wanted to tell you... I believe you.”

  Ally froze in place with her hands still on his tie. Tyson could see a jumble of emotions pass over her eyes.

  Kylie interrupted the moment, “All right, face me again and let’s see if this tie is the one.” Kylie and Tyson really needed to fine tune their telepathy. “Yes, that’s it everyone. We finally found a match.” Kylie waived over the sales associate and started the process of ordering the ensembles.

  “I really need to talk to you. Can I buy you some ice cream after this?” Tyson turned back toward Ally who was staring at the ground. “Please?”

  “Okay. But I’ll buy my own ice cream. This can’t look like a date,” Ally said before quickly walking to the dressing room to change.

  Kylie was still working out the details of her order when Ally and Tyson had changed back into their normal clothes. Tyson mentioned to David that he was going to talk to Ally and that Kylie and David could leave without him.

  With a smile, David said, “Good luck.” Tyson was going to need a lot of it.

  Luckily there was a frozen yogurt shop next door, because Tyson was growing more and more nervous by the second. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but most of all he hoped Ally would agree to date him again. Ally kept her end of the deal by paying for her yogurt before Tyson had even decided which flavor to get. Neither of them said anything during this process. They sat down at the table and Tyson took a deep breath.

  Ally sat in silence as Tyson told her everything. How he had been angry at first, but once he heard that Ally was dating someone else, he realized that he had messed up. That he had let her get away and he didn’t intend for that to happen. He couldn’t imagine his future without her. He apologized for taking so long to realize that he did believe her. Most of all he missed her.

  By now, Ally had finished her little bit of frozen yogurt and Tyson’s was mostly melted. He hesitated before asking the question that scared him the most. “Ally, I still love you. Will you please give me another chance?”

  To Tyson the seconds that passed seemed like hours before Ally finally answered. “Ty, you know I can’t. I’m engaged. I can’t just go around dating other people. I’m sorry. We can still be friends though.”

  Even though Kevin had prepared him for this moment, he still felt sick to his stomach. He was disappointed, but he gained a little hope knowing that he still had many more opportunities to change her mind thanks to Kylie and David. For now, he would just have to settle for friends.

  “Okay, I understand,” Tyson said as he looked into Ally’s eyes. “I just hope that he makes you happy and he treats you like you deserve to be treated. That he sees how amazing you really are. If that’s the case, then I won’t stand in your way. You deserve the best. And I really do hope that we can be friends.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The next day in class, Tyson tried to get over Ally’s rejection. Did he really think that Ally was just going to drop her engagement to Justin and run back into his arms? Most of all, how could Ally be over him so quickly? Why couldn’t he get over her?

  He glanced over at Beth, who always sat next to him. She was going into marketing as well, so they had been in a few of the same classes over the past year. She always said hi to him when they passed on campus and they had had plenty of conversations before and after class. They had even worked on a couple of projects together. She was nice girl.

  He snuck another peek at her while she wrote something down in her notes. Beth was actually quite pretty. Why hadn’t he ever noticed that before? If Ally could get over Tyson simply by seeing another guy, maybe it would help Tyson get over Ally if he started dating other people too.

  As class ended and everyone started packing up, Tyson decided he had nothing to lose.

  “Beth?” Tyson asked.

  She turned to face him. “Ya?”

  “I was wondering if maybe you would like to, um, go on a date with me sometime?” Tyson asked as he painfully realized how horribly ridiculous he sounded. He hadn’t asked someone out for the first time in a long time and it seemed pretty obvious.

  A big smile spread on Beth’s face making Tyson feel a little bit better. “I would love to. When?”

  “Um,” Tyson hadn’t thought about when. “When are you free?”

  “Tonight would probably be best. I have something going on every evening for the rest of the week.”

  “Alright, tonight it is then. 6:30 okay?”

  “Ya. I’ll text you my address,” Beth said as she headed toward the door.

  Tyson smiled. Maybe he could do this after all.

  Kylie was surprised to see Tyson walk in the door wearing jeans and a t-shirt. When he hadn’t been at his apartment when Kylie had come over to spend time with David, she had assumed that he was at the gym or running. It was how he spent all of his free time lately.

  “How’d your date go?” David hollered before Tyson could escape to his room without talking to anyone. Which he always tried to do when Kylie was there. But apparently he talked to David, because she had heard nothing about this.

  “You went on a date?” Kylie asked. What about Ally?

  Tyson shrugged his shoulders. “Ya.”

  David turned to Kylie, “He thought by going on a date, it would help him move on from Ally.”

  “Oh,” Kylie said disappointed that her brother was giving up on Ally. “Did it work?”

  “No,” Tyson said plopping into the bean bag across from them. “If anything, it made it worse.”

  Maybe Kylie still had hope. “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about Ally the entire time. Every time Beth did something, whether she smiled or laughed or tucked her hair behind her ear or hugged me at the end of the date, all I could see was Ally and how Beth wasn’t her.”

  “Well did you at least have a good time? Maybe you should give Beth another chance. No one is going to be like Ally,” David added. Kylie shot a glare his way but resisted the urge to punch David in the arm. What was he doing? They both agreed that Tyson and Ally were meant to be together, they just needed a little help realizing it.

  “I mean it was fine. But when I brought up football, I could tell she had no idea what I was talking about. Ally could analyze a play with me. Beth didn’t even know that cornerbacks played on the defensive side of the ball.”

  “Yikes,” Kylie said. Maybe David was helping Tyson realize that he was meant to be with Ally
after all.

  “Ya, well I’m going to go for a run,” Tyson said getting up. “But David’s right, I don’t think that I’ll ever find anyone like Ally.”

  “Ty,” Kylie said before Tyson walked out of the room. “Don’t give up on Ally yet. I’m guessing that you saw the same sadness in her eyes yesterday that I’ve been seeing for weeks. Just keep being you, give her some time to see that she can trust you again.”

  He didn’t say anything as he turned back toward his room. Kylie hoped he wouldn’t give up on Ally. Not yet. Their chances of getting back together would be practically nothing, if they both gave up on each other.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  As Ally drove to Tyson’s apartment a couple days later, she thought about Tyson’s declaration of love. She was still trying to decipher her feelings. Ally wanted more than anything for things to be the same with Tyson. To be friends again. But she knew that things couldn’t be the same. Tyson wasn’t her boyfriend. She needed to make sure that she kept those boundaries very obvious.

  She kept remembering the flutter of hope she had felt when Tyson had said that he believed her and that he still loved her. She had quickly suppressed it, reminding herself that she was engaged to Justin. She couldn’t let her mind go wandering like that. She was practically married, for goodness sakes. But did Justin really make her happy? Kylie and Tyson had both hinted at the fact that maybe she wasn’t happy. She was happy, wasn’t she?

  Tonight, Ally and Tyson would be going to check out the cabin that David’s family owned in Park City to see how they could decorate for the party. Tyson had seemed okay with just being friends, but Ally was still nervous to see if they really could be friends. Or did they have too much history to pull it off? They would still be spending a lot of time together before the wedding. Would they just be awkward around each other for forever?

  Once Tyson got into her car, Ally didn’t have anything to worry about. Tyson asked her questions about her classes and he told her about his progress toward getting back on the field. He could finally work out a little and he was studying film again. She laughed as he told her about his crazy professor who wore a different wig to class every day. After a few minutes into the drive, she realized that maybe being friends wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  It was starting to get dark as they pulled up to the cabin. From the outside, it looked like a little log cabin. But once they were inside, Ally knew it would be perfect for the party. The main level was mostly open with an updated kitchen and living room, while all the bedrooms were upstairs. They walked around discussing where they were going to put everything.

  Eventually, Tyson had to sit down because he still got dizzy every once in a while if he stood up for too long. But he smiled as he listened to Ally describe the decorations they could make and where to hang them.

  “We should check out the sound system,” Tyson said grabbing the remotes on the table next him. “David said it is pretty awesome. It’s even Bluetooth, so we don’t have to plug anything in.”

  “That’s cool,” Ally said as she looked in the fridge to see how much space they would have for storing food. They would be feeding at least 20 people. They still needed to figure out what they would be eating, but it seemed like there would be plenty of room for whatever type of food they decided on.

  Ally was torn from her thoughts as music started blaring through the speakers throughout the kitchen and living room. It was one of Tyson’s workout songs with some rapper dude “singing”.

  “Let’s see how loud it goes,” Tyson said with a grin. Ally covered her ears as the music vibrated the cabin. It was a good thing there weren’t any close neighbors.

  “Turn it down,” Ally yelled.

  “What?” Tyson yelled back.

  “Turn it down,” Ally repeated.

  “Turn it up?” Tyson said with a wink. “Okay.”

  Ally reached for the remote to turn down the music, but he quickly tossed it to his other hand to keep it out of Ally’s reach. “Don’t you like it?” Tyson asked mischievously as he stood up and held the remote above his head.

  “No, this ‘music’ is the worst!” Ally jumped on the couch as she tried to grab the remote, but only locked fingers with Tyson’s hand instead as he switched the remote over to his other hand again. Without thinking, Tyson pushed his hand that was holding Ally’s hand around her back and pulled her close.

  “Now you will never get it,” Tyson yelled with a grin holding the remote as far away from Ally as possible.

  Ally found herself remembering what it felt like to be in Tyson’s arms. She tried to resist the urge to relax into his embrace. It was so familiar and natural. More so than Justin’s.

  Justin. She pushed herself away. Tyson must have gotten the hint because he quickly let go of her hand. He turned down the music and pretended like nothing had happened. Once they agreed that they had looked at everything they wanted to, they locked everything up and headed home.

  Tyson smiled every time he thought about holding Ally close to him. He wished she wouldn’t have pulled away so quickly, but then again, he felt a little guilty for putting her in that position. He didn’t want to force anything and make Ally distance herself from him. He thought they were making great progress toward being friends and he didn’t want to ruin it. Tyson still hoped that their rekindling friendship would lead them to more.

  With only a week and a half left, Tyson looked forward to finalizing the details of the engagement party. Their first planning session had been cut short because Justin had called insisting that Ally meet up with him somewhere. Tyson recognized the small amount of jealousy he felt as Ally excused herself, but he reminded himself that Justin was Ally’s fiancé. Maybe it wasn’t wise to let himself quietly continue to pursue Ally. It would only be harder to get over her if she didn’t end up getting back with Tyson. But he would deal with it then. And at least he would know that he did everything that he could do to show her that he was genuine.

  Things were looking up for Tyson. He was practically back to normal. He could stand up for long periods of time. And he hoped to be able to attend partial contact practice sometime next week. He just wished he knew of a definite way to get Ally back.

  He had just gotten back from grabbing dinner, when Ally knocked on the door.

  After letting Ally in, he said, "I hope you haven't eaten dinner."

  Ally shook her head as Tyson continued, "I always hear your stomach growl whenever we get together, so I grabbed us some dinner. I got your favorite. A chicken sandwich, crispy not grilled, a side of onion rings, and a cookie dough shake, right?"

  Ally nodded her head as she took a bite of the shake and savored it. “I haven’t eaten at Iceberg since…” Ally hesitated. “Well since the last time we ate there.”

  "We did frequent that place," Tyson said with a smile.

  They sat down at the table and dove in while they reminisced about their adventures to different restaurants. He hoped that the memories would remind Ally of the good days when they were together. Tyson was practically finished with his meal when he realized that Ally had stopped eating sometime during their conversation.

  "Is that all you're going to eat?" Tyson asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "Ya. I'm trying to watch what I eat."

  Tyson had noticed that she hadn’t eaten much when they had gone to taste test the catering, but he hadn't really thought about it at the time. She had felt skinnier when he had wrapped his arm around her waist at the cabin and her stomach was always growling. He knew she could eat all of the food in front of her. Yet she had only eaten half of her sandwich, maybe one onion ring and a couple bites of her shake.

  "Why?" Tyson asked suddenly very concerned. Why hadn't he noticed this before? Looking at her, he could see it in her face too.

  Ally shrugged, not looking at him. "I could be skinner."

  "Ally," Tyson said as he scooted his chair closer to her. “You have always been skinny."

  "Not skinn
y enough," she whispered.

  "Yes, you are. Who is telling you this? You haven't ever cared about this before. You’ve always looked great."

  Ally shrugged, avoiding eye contact with Tyson. But that was enough for Tyson to guess who.

  "Justin?"

  When Ally didn't say anything, Tyson felt his blood begin to boil. He wanted to knock some sense into that guy. He was messing with Ally and Tyson didn't like that. Didn’t Justin realize that Ally was perfect just the way she was?

  "Ally,” Tyson reached over and placed his hand over hers. Then he quickly pulled back remembering that he couldn’t do that. But it was enough for Ally to look at him. “Sorry, I know I can’t do that. But I just want to make sure that you know that you are beautiful just the way you are. You have always been perfect in every way. You don’t have to change who you are and what you look like, just because someone says you should.”

  “That’s what Kylie said too. You guys really have that twin telepathy thing down,” Ally sniffled.

  “Well she’s a smart one, and as far as the telepathy goes, we’re still working out some of the kinks,” Tyson said as Ally smiled a little and agreed. “So, will you please eat some more?”

  Ally nodded her head as Tyson reach up and wiped a lone tear that had escaped off her cheek. Tyson picked up his shake and took another bite while he leaned back in the chair. He shivered as he wondered what else Justin had done to diminish Ally’s confidence in such a short time.

  In less than 10 minutes, Ally groaned, “I’m so full I’m gonna die. I literally cannot move.”

  Tyson laughed, “Good. That’s what I like to hear.” He cleaned up the wrappers and threw them in the garbage.

  “You missed this one.” Ally crumpled up a napkin and tossed it toward the garbage can, hitting Tyson in the back of the head instead. “Sorry!” Ally loved sports but she wasn’t the best shot in the world.

  “Hey!” Tyson responded. Ally giggled as she jumped out her chair and Tyson lunged for her. Ally ran into the living room but she couldn’t outrun Tyson for long. He caught her from behind, picked her up and threw Ally and himself onto the bean back in the living room.