Piece of Cake | Ashton Irwin [au]

Fourteen

Ruth’s POV

I’m not even sure what I’m doing anymore. I go from having resentment towards Ashton and now I can actually stand to have a conversation with him. I don’t know what came over me when I asked him if he would like to come to the welcoming dinner at Michael’s; it just slipped out. I don’t necessarily hate his company and lately we have been getting along more. 

He’s not a completely bad person and for him to tell me that he’s actually trying as well as removing the mask he wears for everyone else so that he doesn’t hide who he really is from me is a huge improvement towards changing my judgment of him, and so far, it’s starting to work. I’ve seen two sides of Ashton: the good side, and the asshole side. I’ve seen firsthand that those two sides combined is the real Ashton, and he’s not that bad of a guy.

I take a sip of the lukewarm tea that I made just a few minutes ago and dial Michael’s number on my phone and wait for him to pick up.

“Ruth,” he answers, “I live right below you; you can just come downstairs to talk instead of just calling me,” he teases.

I chuckle and can practically hear him smiling on the other end. “It’s cold and I don’t want to change out of my pajamas when calling is more convenient.”

“Fine, fine. What’s up?”

“Well I have something to ask you about dinner tomorrow,” I say.

“What about it? Do you have to cancel?” His tone quickly changes to disappointment.

“No!” I deny and apologize for giving him misguided assumptions. “I just wanted to know if I could invite some people over to dinner with us.”

Please say yes, please say yes.

I sort of already invited Serena, Calum, and I’m waiting for Luke’s response since he has to make sure that he’s free. Not to mention I just asked Ashton to come as well a couple days ago. I really should have asked Michael first before I started inviting people.

There’s a short pause on the line as he contemplates my request.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he finally says unconvincingly.

“Are you sure it’s okay? You don’t sound so sure.”

“No, really, it’s fine,” he assures sweetly. “How many people were you planning to invite?”

“Serena, Calum, Ashton, and Luke, if he would reply to my text already. I swear he’s terrible at answering his phone,” I ramble. “Is that too many? I don’t have to have everyone come if it’s too much.”

I really am asking a lot from him. I feel rude throwing all of this at him at the last minute.

I hear him sigh and chuckle simultaneously and I’m pretty sure he’s shaking his head at me. “Ruth, I said it’s okay, so don’t worry,” he says. “Just tell everyone to bring a dish so that I don’t have to do all the cooking.”

I lightly chuckle and agree. My phone vibrates against my cheek and I tell Michael to hold on for a second and pull the phone away from my ear to see a new message on the screen from Luke.

“Dinner sounds great! Michael seems like a pretty cool guy and it’ll be good to spend some time with Ser and Cal. Just let me know when to be there.”

I smile at Luke’s message before pressing my phone back to my ear. “Just got a text from Luke,” I tell Michael. “He said he’s coming.”

“Alright,” he says simply.