Two Seconds

Thirty-Three & Thirty-Four

PART THRITY THREE

“Jess, wake up,” a voice said quietly in my ear.

“Hmm…” I mumbled, burrowing deeper into the duvet.

“Babe, wake up.”

“What?” I yawned, turning over to see Aston hovering over me, a lazy smile on his face.

“I’ve gotta go to rehearsal,” he said, “But I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Bout what?”

“So uh… I think our plan from last night is going to backfire a bit,” he said, a nervous look on his face.

“How do you mean?” I asked, sitting up in bed and taking in his look. He was already dressed in his rehearsal clothes and he had a baseball cap on his head twisted around backwards.

“So I kind of slept through my first alarm and I’ve got to leave for the dance studio in like twenty minutes, and I can’t really be late since I bunked off yesterday… Which means I can’t take you home… And if your Dad is still there…”

I let out a small snort of laughter as I took in his frown. “I can handle my Dad Ast.”

“You sure? I could call Joe to come get you and take you back to yours.”

“I’ll be fine, who knows he might have left already.”

“Hmm yeah…” Aston sighed, the frown leaving his face slowly.

“You’re cute you know,” I smiled.

“What?”

“Being all concerned like,” I told him, leaning up and kissing him quickly.

“Just looking out for you,” he replied, pressing his lips against mine again, in a much longer and more meaningful kiss than the first.

“You’re so sweet, but seriously get to work before I get you in trouble!” I told him, pushing him off me so he could finish getting ready, “I’ll call a cab.”

“Your phone’s in my car, don’t forget!” Aston shouted from his en suite.

“I’ll go get it right now,” I said, climbing out of bed and going to Aston’s walk-in closet to steal some clothes to throw over my underwear. Once satisfied I wandered down stairs to the bowl by his front door, where I snatched up his keys.

After retrieving my phone from Aston’s car I went and sat in his front lounge where I flicked through all of the messages on it. There were quite a few from my Dad, as to be expected. I went through them quickly, not really interested in getting worked up over what he was saying. 

When I finished with the texts I moved onto the two voice messages that had been left for me. One from when I’d switched off my phone and one from this morning. I deleted the one from the night before, opting to listen to the second.

“Hi Jessica, its your father, I don’t know what has gotten into you lately but please have a think about what you are doing and how this could affect your racing. I stayed the night waiting for you at your place and I’m guessing you went off with that bad influence. Anyways I have to head home to try and make a meeting this afternoon, but please do call me later today so we can discuss some things. Bye.”

“Cheers Dad,” I sighed, deleting the message. The good news, of course, was that he wasn’t lingering around my place waiting for a confrontation. The bad news, I still owed him a call.

“You ok?” Aston asked as he wandered into the room, a bottle of water and banana in his hand.

“Yeah, my Dad’s gone.”