It Ain't Me, Babe. 》cth

Chapter 15 》"Go lightly from the ledge, babe"

"Hey, Ana and the boys wanted to know if you were going to the party tonight?" Michael asks, leaning against the door frame of my room. 

Flashbacks from the last party I went to swarm my brain and I immediately make the decision that it would probably be best to not repeat that again. 

"No, I'll stay home. I didn't know Ashton was already having another party though." I grimace at that boys party addiction. He should probably be stopped sometime before he gets out of control. 

"Oh it's not Ashton's party, but it's supposed to be huge and there's gonna be a lot of alcohol so we have to go." He states the obvious. Sometimes I forget that beer fuels the existence of most teenagers, because I'm not one of them. I'm the minority, and I don't want to experience what I did last time, even though I had fun for the most part. 

"Oh. Well you guys go ahead, I'll cover for you." I tell him, like a good sister would. Mom will never know he's at a party getting drunk off his ass with me here. 

"You sure?" He asks, and then a smirk pops up on his face. "I'm sure Calum would really like it if you were there."

"Go to the party, Michael." I'm not about to have this conversation with him. He grins and waves goodbye, nonchalantly going back to his room so that he can sneak out his window.

I return my attention to the homework that I was doing before Michael came in, but now I've lost all focus. I've been thinking a lot about Calum's behavior lately, and once I had finally gotten my mind off of it, Michael just had to bring him back up.

I close my textbook and shove it away from me, falling into my pillows to gaze at the ceiling. I'm supposed to hate Calum, but I don't. It's such a foreign feeling to me, and I don't know how to interpret it. While I've had time to think about our behavior around each other for the past couple weeks, and especially since the last time he was here, a question that I never thought I'd ask myself keeps popping into my brain.

Do I like Calum more than I realized?

Everytime it pops up, I sweep it back under the rug in my brain. But it's like a flea, it won't go away, it won't leave me alone. I've been doing everything in my power to not think about an answer for that question every time it pops up, but now it might be time. 

Do I?

It's a good possibility. I can think of tons of reasons to say no, but everything I think of can be countered.

For example, I can't think of a single good reason for why I'm supposed to hate him. Because he's an asshole? Okay, yeah sure, maybe sometimes. But he hasn't been a jerk for a while now, and also, when we fight it's always a two way street. 

I'm rude to him because he's rude to me, and he's rude to me because I'm rude to him. If you take the fact that we are being rude for no reason out of that equation, what does that leave? That's what I can't figure out, and that's what's beginning to worry me. Because based on the behavior that's left between the two of us, it certainly appears that we like each other.

Maybe just as friends, and thats the only thing I would hope for. But here's the problem, I've been thinking about him way too much for it to just be friendly. I notice too many things about him that I wouldn't notice about someone who was just a friend. Like his squinty smile where his cheeks are all squished. It's my favorite thing about him.

I don't want to like him, especially based on our history of conflict. But you can't control your feelings, and maybe this is one of those that can't be tamed. It seems like the more I kick it under the  rug the more it comes back to bite me in the ass.

So what am I going to do about?

Nothing. I'm just going to kick it back under the rug in my brain where it needs to stay, and then I'm going to bed. I'm exhausted from my train of thoughts.