Settle Down // Irwin

41

"Are you going to be okay getting into your house?" Ashton asks.

"I think I'll manage some rain Ashton." She replies back smartly and Ashton just rolls his eyes. He opens the car door, letting a whole wave of water spray into the car.

"Christ!" he yells, running into the pouring rain.

Jade laughs and quickly does the same as him. The rain hits her like a tidal wave and she pulls her hood over her head to protect her hair. Ashton laughs as he watches Jade do a strange hop-skip-thing out of the car, nearly dropping her bag in the puddle on the side of the road as she goes.

"Shut up." she says to him.

Ashton just laughs again and pulls Jade into him and pecking her lips. "See you later. Five-thirty, okay?"

"Sure thing." Jade says, running over the road and into the shelter of her house. Ashton stood out in the rain, making sure she got in safely.

~~~

It was five and Jade was almost ready to go. She wasn't going to tell her parents she was staying at Ashton's. She was just not going to come home... it sounds like a dumb plan, Jade knows it , but it might work. And if not she is only across the road. She could go home for a couple minutes just to prove she is home and then sneak out to Ashton's again. It wasn't that big a deal.

The front door slam, indicting one of both of her parents were home. Jade didn't pay much attention at first but then the yelling started. So Jade did what she does best when this happens. She blocks then out. She was fine. Then it got worse. They were screaming at each other, and swearing. They never swore. Not in front of Jade anyway. To help her finish her nail polish in piece Jade put on some music but turned the volume as high up as she could.

Jade had gotten so good at blocking out her parents arguments she doesn't even know when the argument has ended. This is true as now her dad was yelling at her.

"Jade!" He was yelling from the bottom of stairs. "Jade!"

Eventually Jade heard him. The music wasn't helping at all now.

"Yeah?" She turned the music down the tiniest touch. Just enough to hear her dad.

"What is going on with the music?!" He asks. "Switch it off!"

He sounded mad. Really mad.

"Oh." Jade quickly ran over to her laptop, the place the music is coming from, and ejected the disk without pausing it.

"Good." She heard her dad grunt before his big clunky feet were stomping across the floorboards down stairs again.

At quarter past Jade decided go downstairs. She walks as silently as she can go to the hall to get her shoes. Once Jade had them in she slipped into the kitchen to see her mom. She was standing at the stove, stirring a pick pot of something tomato-y, with a glass of red wine in her hand.

"Mom?" Jade said quietly so her mom would turn.

"Oh," her voice sounds surprised and a little distant. "Hi honey."

"I'm going to Ashton's now." Jade tells her.

"Right." Her mom sighs. "I forgot. You were having dinner with him tonight."

"Yeah," Jade should probably warn her about not coming home tonight. "Listen, mom, his parents aren't home and he has asked me to stay over."

Jade watches as her mom presses her lips into a thin line and then lifts her glass to take a sip.

"Jade, sweetheart," her mom begins. "Ashton is a very nice boy, and is only across the road, and I know how much you like him, but," her mom hesitates. "He is still a boy, and not a boy like Calum, he is a boyfriend and I'm just not fully comfortable with that."