Obsession

Ch 14 - Hi. Hey.

It was exactly two weeks from the day we met the guys that I nearly lost my life because of Ashton. Okay, I'm exaggerating a wee bit, but I did inhale a peanut from the trail mix I was eating when I saw the DM notification. My co-worker, Brittany, was just about to do the Heimlich maneuver on me when I finally got it dislodged.

We were having our usual 3:00 snack in the break room and I was scrolling through the notifications that I hadn't had time to look at during the past two hours. At first I rolled my eyes, thinking it was yet another fake Ashton account trying to give me a heart attack. And when I realized it wasn't, I gasped, which led to the peanut incident.

After I calmed down, Brittany asked what happened, and I convinced her it was just a freak thing and the peanut went down the wrong way. No way was I going to tell her a 21 year old band member sent me a message on Twitter and I got excited. I'd never live that one down. Pretty much everyone I worked with knew of my concert addiction and love of boys in bands and such, but they didn't know the extent of it. I would've DIED if they did.

But anyway, the DM...

It had been sent literally right after my lunch break was over at 1:00, of course, right after I'd put my phone away. All it said was "hi 😉".

I simply replied, "Hey." I wanted to say so much more, but I wanted to act as casual as possible. Though, I was feeling anything but casual. Have you ever had to act calm when you're actually freaking the fuck out? It's so hard being an adult fangirl.

I waited and stared at my phone for the next 12 minutes, but got nothing in return. I wasn't expecting that he would be sitting there waiting for my response and message me back immediately since it had been two hours since he sent his message. But I was hopeful he'd respond before my break was over. I kind of felt like I'd lost my chance. He probably thought I didn't care because I went so long without replying, so he'd likely given up on me. I wanted to scream because I was so upset about missing it. But there was nothing else I could do, and I had to get back to work.

As my luck would have it, all hell broke loose as soon as my break was over. We had to admit three patients, send one to the ICU because they nearly coded, two patients pulled out their IVs, and one of the elderly ladies started going crazy at exactly 4:00 as she did every damn day, so someone had to stay with her constantly. Not to mention, we had to give afternoon medications, get everyone's vital signs, help them with dinner, assist most of them to the restroom afterwards, and do a shit ton of charting before we could give report and get the hell out of that mess. I still don't know why I chose the nursing profession. Ugh.

So I didn't get to even think about checking my phone until I clocked out. I never walked to my car so fast in my life. But there was nothing from Ashton. He hadn't even posted anything on his socials since that morning, but I knew he had a show that night. I was hoping it was just that he'd been really busy and hadn't been able to look for my response yet. Or perhaps he DMed so many people that I was just another nobody that didn't matter, and he didn't care if I responded or not. He probably only bothered in the first place because he was just trying to be nice, not because he actually gave a shit about me.

I texted Traci before leaving the parking lot, telling her about Ashton's message. She freaked out, as expected. And when I got home, I had about 20 text messages from her asking me every minute if he'd answered yet.

Once I finally picked my kids up from their grandmother's and made it home, my second job started. There were baths to be given, dinner to be cooked, and things to get ready for the next day. I was actually thankful Ashton didn't answer me during that time, because it's my most hectic time of the day, especially when I've worked 12 to 14 hours.