Piece of Cake | Ashton Irwin [au]

Twelve

Ruth’s POV

I close my laptop and spin around in my chair to face Serena who is taking it upon herself to unpack my clothes from the cardboard box on the floor and place them in my dresser. She and Calum showed up with the furniture that I left at their apartment after I left Ashton’s place not too long ago.

I really thought that the rose that Ashton piped onto my hand was the starting point for him changing my mind, but that all changed when he decided to put a glob of icing on my nose. I did get him back and smeared the icing that was on my hand across his cheek and some of it even got into his hair. After that, I sort of picked up my stuff and ran out of his apartment to avoid getting any more icing on me. I will admit it was a little fun though. I was able to clean myself up before Serena and Calum saw my red stained nose and hand and I didn’t have to explain anything to them.

“You have a closet, Ruth,” Serena says as she places my pajama bottoms in one of the drawers. “You could have hung up some of your clothes; they’re going to be wrinkled now.”

I fake a gasp. “Oh dear, what was I thinking, Mom?” I say with a wide grin and Serena tosses a shirt at me for sassing her. “I’ve been a little busy if you’ve forgotten. I just moved in yesterday, I was out shopping today with Ashton for furniture, and I just barely finished my work.” Having my desk here now makes it so much easier to work, although it was nice to be in the company of someone else even if that someone smeared icing on me.

“Sometimes I worry about you living on your own,” she says with a chuckle. I don’t blame her. I worry for myself too.

Calum waltzes into my room after checking out the rest of the apartment. “How much did you say this place is?” he asks with the same shocked expression that I made when I first saw the size of this space.

“About five hundred a month,” I answer and watching his eyes widen in disbelief is entertainment in itself.

“Damn…” he mutters under his breath. “Babe, can we move here? It’s so much bigger than ours and it’s cheaper.”

“As much as I’d like to, there aren’t any vacancies. Ruth took the last one,” Serena tells him, crushing his hopes.

“See, you two should have thought about moving instead of kicking me out. If you did, maybe you would have gotten this wonderful apartment,” I tease. Messing with them has always been a hobby of mine and even though I’m not living with them anymore doesn’t mean that I still can’t do it every now and then.    

Serena dumps the half-full box of clothes over my head to end my gloating. “Yeah, yeah. We’re the bad guys and got the short end of the straw while you get this huge apartment,” she says, placing the empty box on my head, darkening everything around me. “I forgot to ask, what did you think of mine and Calum’s little surprise for you?”

I flip the box off of my head and brush down the stands of hair that have been moved out of place. “You mean my brother?” She nods. “Why didn’t you tell me about it before he showed up at my door?”

“Because then it wouldn’t have been a surprise,” Calum replies and takes a seat on my unmade bed. “We felt pretty bad about making you leave and live on your own and since I already knew that Luke got his internship, I thought it would be a good way to cheer you up.”

I’m not really in need of cheering up, but I appreciate their kindness. Living on my own isn’t that bad even though I’ve only stayed here overnight once. It’s actually kind of fun except for the random creaks that echo from room to room in the middle of the night and scare the living shit out of me. But having Luke here now is probably the best thing that could have happened and I couldn’t be more elated. After several years I can finally be close to him again and not have to deal with the blurry and dropped Skype calls.