The Jerks Next Door || Ashton Irwin [5 Seconds Of Summer]

Chapter 26 | Smoothies, Starbucks, and Sleep

"Uh," he started, but he couldn't finish.

"If you've finished checking me out, would you care to at least go into the bathroom while I change please?"

He blushed once more, seeming not to be able to help it anymore.

"Y-yeah, sure."

**********

Ashton POV

She turned around and squealed as her towel slipped. I watched, mesmerized, as she blew a tiny curl away from her face then turned to make sure I hadn't seen anything.

"Uh." I didn't know what to say.

"If you've finished checking me out, would you care to at least go into the bathroom while I change please?" She spoke with a surprising confidence, especially considering that she was still dripping wet with only a towel on.

I blushed again, knowing that I had been caught staring.

"Y-yeah, sure."

It wasn't exactly my fault that I was staring though. If you were a teenage guy with hormones and there was a girl with only a towel on, locked inside the same room as you, you would be staring too.

I turned around and faced the bathroom as she changed, but I suavely moved over a few inches so I could see her through the bathroom mirror. I promised myself that if she took the towel completely off, then I would look away for respect to her, but it was a pretty weak promise.

I chuckled silently as she tried to pull her underwear on without taking the towel off. I knew she was still suspicious of me and wouldn't trust me not to look. Apparently, though, my chuckle wasn't as silent as I thought and she hissed, "Don't look!"

"I wasn't looking!" I weakly defended, though I knew she wouldn't believe a word of it.

I moved over enough that she would think I couldn't see anymore, but enough that I could still see from the corner of my eye.

It was then that I fully acknowledged the way she looked. I couldn't help but stare at her legs. She didn't have a thigh gap - her thighs were actually a fair bit larger than average, but they were mostly muscle. She had major curves and the size of her hips made the towel rise up even more than it originally would have, which was an advantage for me.

She didn't have a tiny waist at all; in fact, she had quite a wide waist, but it only balanced out her curves and her bust. She would have actually looked very disproportionate had she had a small waist. Her face was round and her brown eyes were framed with her dark eyelashes. They weren't the longest eyelashes, but they were long enough that she didn't really need to wear any mascara.

She had her flaws, and she knew it too, but there was something special about her. She didn't look like a model at all - and she didn't want to. She had an aura of confidence that I had never seen before - not only in a girl, but in anyone. It radiated off of her in waves, like an ocean during high tide.

And her smile wasn't the stereotypical flirty smile that a girl might give. It wasn't the small 'modest' smile ('modest' being another name for 'insecure') that someone might give. It was a proper smile: one that was way too big for your face and didn't need to be bleached white to stand out.

She didn't even wear that much makeup. She said she didn't need it, and she wasn't being cocky. She genuinely believed that no one needed to wear too much makeup. She said that everyone had their own natural beauty and didn't need to hide it.

Ashton's getting soft, my brain said in a singsong voice.

Shut up brain, I thought back.