chapter 24 ;; cashton

six

The fact that Michael agreed so easily surprised me. He was sat on my bed before I even got up, slapping me in the face lightly, over and over until I had a red mark on my cheek. I groaned, not expecting him to be at my house so quickly.

"Stop, Michael." I swatted his hand away from my cheek. "Go get me clothes."

He went into my walk-in wardrobe and looked for a second before bursting into laughter. I chuckled under my breath at his laugh, pulling the sheets over myself. Suddenly they were pulled back and I was flung over Michael's shoulder. He put me on the ground, and pointed to my shirt.

"Why do you have a pink shirt that says 'princess' on it?"

"Mum must've mixed up our clothes or something." I shrugged, blushing a little as I got up and pulled on some clothes.

Michael and I were driving to the mall before I knew it, and I couldn't stop staring at him. He looked exactly the same. But I didn't like this. In the real world, Michael wouldn't even have a car, and if he did, it'd be his parents' beetle car. He'd be grumbling about getting out of bed early, and playing Xbox.

"Why are you staring at me?"

"No reason." I quickly looked away, stealing his sunglasses off his face and wearing them.

"Hey, I – "

"Shut up." I snapped, wrapping myself into a ball.

We sat in silence, and I listened to the cars pass. I watched him through his sunglasses, still trying to figure out how he got into this story. When we were in the mall carpark, and had been parked for about two minutes, we hadn't moved. He looked at me, and must've thought that I was asleep.

"Oh my god," he sighed, like me sleeping was the worst thing ever. "I'm such a fucking idiot."

I furrowed my eyebrows, and pretended to wake up. He left me to follow him inside the mall and my feet did all of the walking. We walked around for a while, joking occasionally. We ended up getting ice cream and sitting on the chairs that the mall produced. He smiled and laughed at whatever I said, until we got onto the subject of Ashton.

"I'm such a homewrecker," I laughed. "I just came in and started to make out with Ashton." His smile dropped, and I started to wonder if he really did think I was screwed going into that relationship.

"Yeah . . . you probably shouldn't do that."

Nervously, I licked my ice-cream, looking somewhere else. Come on, Calum; where's the bonding? I reminded myself. "How about we go to a movie?"

"Uh, okay."

So, we went to the cinema and watched Inside Out because there was literally nothing on and we weren't sure what else to do. I was moderately entertained, but Michael looked bored as fuck. Since we were front row, I found a way to entertain him.

"Hey, Michael." I whispered, and he turned to me, looking for some fun.

"What?" he whispered back.

"Watch this." I grinned, and threw my one of my Maltesers at the screen. "Boo!" I yelled, earning a few 'shut up's from the back.

He shoved me to try and get me to stop it. "Calum!" he laughed.

And that was how we got kicked out of the cinema. But for once, I'd actually made him smile, which was good. I took that as bonding points. We went back to my house and played Xbox, shoving each other as we went, because I knew how competitive Michael was at Call Of Duty.

"No!" he yelled, standing up from the lounge and pointing at the screen that showed who won. He looked at me, giving me a 'do you fucking see this?' look. "Fucking hell." He said, sitting down.

Then suddenly, my phone rang. I picked it up, giving Michael the hand to tell him to shut up. "Hello?"

"Calum, I-I can't do this anymore." It was Ashton's voice. It sounded like he'd been crying or something, but I didn't bother asking, because I knew I would find out anyway.

"Um, do what?"

"The friends with benefits thing. It's screwing everything up for me." I could barely call it a benefit if we'd only made out twice, but I didn't correct him, just listen to him ramble about how fucked up I'd made him.

"Ashton, shut up. I get it, okay?" I rolled my eyes. "We can just be friends, whatever, I don't care."

I imagined that this was what it was like to being broken up with by the real Ashton Irwin. He'd be apologising on the phone, most likely on tour, saying that we could just be friends, but we both knew it would just be awkward.

I hung up, throwing my phone on the lounge and walking into Michael's chest, hoping that he did just as good hug as the real one did. A few seconds later, I found out that he did.

"Hey, it's okay, he can be a dick sometimes," he tried to comfort me, pushing me away a little to see if I was okay.

"Yeah, but – but . . ." having a heavy obsession with someone who just sort of broke up with you kind of sucked. I sighed. "Now I feel like a slut."

"Wha . . . why would you say that?"

"He was just using me because he wasn't getting any with his girlfriend." I concluded.

He brought my chin up to look at him, and I was too shocked to say anything. He leant down and I could hear my breathing over everything. The only thing that was going through my mind was holyfuckholyfuck.

"I have a plan."