For you I would ruin myself

four

"Does Lexie go clubbing or drinking or shit like that?" he asks out of nowhere.

"Not clubbing, she goes drinking though sometimes, she's responsible to my knowledge and it's like light alcohol. She'll have like a cider or Smirnoff when she goes to those places and she only goes about once a month. She takes good care of herself cause of sports and everything so she knows what's too much. I've tagged along one time and hated every second of it. Everyone was just downing shots like there was no tomorrow, it just smelled like a candy land on one side and it smelled of cigs on the other. It was fucking horrible just watching people ruin themselves like that."

"I never understood vaping. It's just inhaling sugared water cause no one wants to get hooked on nic but doesn't want to do cigs cause then they'll fuck up their lungs," there was a long awkward pause, "So, no boyfriend, tell me why?"

"Nope, not a conversation to have with a stranger," Lyla scoffs whilst shaking her head.

"We literally live next to each other and we go to the same school and we're going to hang out together right now? How the fuck are we strangers?" Ashton says in a sarcastically offended tone.

"You'll know one day when we're better friends," Lyla says, she gets up from her seat from the bus, "Our stop is next, get ready."

They had arrived at the park earlier than expected and Lyla had texted Lexie to hurry up too many times to count on 2 hands. Ashton had tried to start a conversation multiple times but Lyla got too flustered by all the questions they ended up sitting in silence for about 10 minutes on a park bench until Myles arrived, which Lyla was eternally grateful for.

The two of them have their own conversation while Lyla sits peacefully. She never bothered to get into anyone's business or engage in a conversation where she wasn't needed.

Lexie arrives 15 minutes late, as per usual, they decide to go Pizza Hut for lunch. Ashton protests to get a Hawaiian pizza, which by the way is a crime against humanity, pineapple doesn't belong on bread with tomato sauce thank you very much. They go to a small supermarket in the area to buy small snacks and drinks and head back to the park to eat.

"Where did you move from?" Lexie asks Ashton.

"Uh– London. Had to move cause of um–" he hesitates, "my dad's job. We were there for about 4 years. It's been the only place I really considered home, liked it there to be honest. My dad had to move like crazy, London was the only place we only ever really settled down in."

"Cambridge is only an hour and a half out from London, couldn't he just make the trip every few days and work from home?" Lexie asks.

Ashton looked rather troubled and refused to make eye contact with any of us, "He's a– a doctor, surgeon, trauma, actually. So he kind of has to be near work in case of an emergency you know?"

Lyla, sat there with her mouth shut the entire time, making sure she had food in her mouth so she didn't have to speak too much. "So what was your school like in London?" Lexie continues to shoot questions at Ashton.

Ashton finally loosens up and looks relieved and comfortable answering a question, "It was like any other public school: messed up kids hiding in shitty bathrooms, hallways smelled like cigs, everyone got absolutely hammered over the weekend. Basically all of year 9 and up were hungover on Mondays. Teachers never gave a fuck about anything, a kid in my math class threw a whole ass chair at the teacher cause he accidentally marked his paper wrong. He got put into a psych ward for a week or something cause he just got mental. Pretty sure it was from the coke."

"One hell of a hell hole," Lyla mutters under her breath.

"Pardon?" Ashton tries to force an answer out of her.