"Here," a hand extended in my direction with my pants, phone and room key in it.
I hesitated, thankful for the kind gesture but pissed because it was a kind gesture coming from the last person that I wanted to see at the moment. I sighed and grabbed my stuff from his hand and placed my phone and room key next to me as I tried to slide on my skinny jeans while sitting down, which was harder than I expected to be honest with you.
A light chuckle left his lips, "it's easier to put on skinny jeans if you're standing up."
"I know." I refused to make eye contact. I ignored the suggestion and just continued to struggle because the struggle of putting on jeans was probably less painful than facing him.
"Then why are you still trying to put them on while you are sitting down?"
"Because." That was the only real reason that I could come up with so I just left it there.
"Because isn't a good enough reason Pey."
"Can you get Ash for me?" It was more of a demand than a question, but I was hoping that my tone of voice would get the message across.
"No."
"Why the hell not?" I huffed, giving up on the jeans that were half way up my legs at this point.
"Because I want to talk to you."
"Well I don't want to talk to you Calum." I crossed my arms and reached over for my phone so that I could call Ashton. I'm sure that he would come and rescue me. He always said he would do anything for his favorite little sister and this was one of those times that he better own up to it.
"We're going to have to talk about this sooner or later."
"I choose later." I huffed out.
"Well, I choose sooner, as in now." Calum said with more sass than he usually talked to me with, which wasn't out of hand at this point.
"Well you can't make me." I pressed the phone to my ear and waited as it rang. Calum stood in front of me, tapping his foot and waiting impatiently as if I was a little kid was who watching television instead of cleaning my bedroom or something.
"What do you want Pey?" Ashton was pissed, but he's the one who got us into this predicament so I'm sure that I should be the one that's angry at him.
"I want you to come down here and get me away from Calum."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you two need to talk."
"Why do you always tell me what to do with my life Ashton? I needed to talk about the kiss before and we did and now look! We're in a bigger and deeper hole and I'm just kind of hopping that I die in this hole soon."
"Stop being a drama queen Peyton." Ashton almost never called me a drama queen and when he did, I wanted to kill him.
"Fuck you Ash."
"Language."
"I hate you." I slurred.
"You could never hate me."
"I bet you $20 that I could actually hate you."
"You'll wake up tomorrow and regret saying all of this."
That's how fighting between us usually went. One of us would be pissed and we would end up saying rude things to the other about how we hated each other or wanted each other dead. However, the next morning we would act like it never happened or just feel like shit because we remembered what we said, even though we both knew that neither of us ever really meant it.
"I hope I just don't wake up at all."
"Calm down Peyton." He said in a calmer tone.
Wait, wasn't he just pissed a few minutes ago? How did we switch roles? Shouldn't he have beaten the shit out of Calum a few minutes ago? Usually I would hate Ashton if he did that, but now I'm hating him for not doing it.
"It's easy for you to say when you don't have a tall, teenage bass player in front of you looking for answers to questions. Oh, not to mention he just admitted his love to you moments ago and you just ran out on him."
"Peyton, please just talk to him and make this thing better."
"I don't know how to. I want to talk to you."
"You're talking to me now." He was such a fucking smartass.
"In person."
"That's not happening until you talk to Calum."
"Fine." I huffed. "I hate you."
"Love you." Ashton squeaked in as I hung up the phone.
I imagined that Calum was standing above me and smirking about how miserable things had just went with Ashton and me. "How'd that go?"
"Don't ask questions you already know the answers to Hood." I stood up and finally pulled up my jeans, looking him in the face for the first time since he had arrived almost two minutes ago at this point.
I didn't know what to expect when I saw Calum's face. I was thinking somewhere between crying and being pissed and being confused, but instead he was just smiling like he always was. I tilted my head and gave him a confused look.
"What?" He laughed nervously as he stared back at me.
"I hate you."
"I'm your best friend."
"I hate that you're smiling right now."
"I hate that you hate me right now."
That's when it hit me; I had my room key and my room was right behind me. I could literally just slide into my room and lock Calum out. That way, I wouldn't have to have this stupid conversation.
"I'm tired and I'm going to bed." I said, opening the door quickly and closing it before Calum could follow me inside.
I sighed and walked towards my bed, taking off Calum's shirt and throwing it on top of my bed as I rummaged through my suitcase for a shirt of my own. I dug through about two layers of Calum's clothing and cursed myself for having so much of his clothing. I swore that I actually packed clothes that were originally mine though.
"Why don't you have a shirt on?" A voice said behind me and it didn't even phase me to a point of where I started answering.
"I wanted to get out of Cal's-" I paused, realizing thatI was responding to Calum, who I had just locked out of my hotel room moments ago.
"You didn't think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?" Calum sat on my bed with his arms crossed.
"What the-"
"I took Molly's room key." He held up the flimsy piece of plastic that had more power than it was worth.
"Well, what do you want Calum?"
"Don't ask me questions that you already know the answer to Peyton."
"I don't want to talk about this Calum. I told you outside. Can we please just drop this?" I was begging him at this point.
"Drop it? I admitted to you, in front of everyone, that I loved you and you ran out of there acting like I had just told you that I killed someone. I don't think we can just drop this." Calum argued. "Like you said during truth or dare, everything is going to blow up in your face and you'd prefer if it all blew up at once so we might as well talk about it."
I really had to be careful with what I said because these boys always used it against me when it came to this kind of stuff. "Fine," I sighed.
I chose a shirt and sat next to Calum on the bed as his body moved closer to me as the mattress sunk because of the presence of my body weight. "You start it. You're the one who probably knows what to say." I couldn't even think of where to begin with the whole thing so I just left it up to him.
"Ok." He sat silent for a second, "why? Why did you run out after I told you that I loved you? I thought that maybe you felt the same way or something. The last thing I expected was for you to run out of the room."
"I didn't know what to say."
"A simple, I love you too would've been enough," he joked nervously as I sat there, emotionlessly.
I thought of telling him that I didn't feel the same way, but I'm sure that I've already hurt him enough for one day."But- nevermind."
"No, tell me what you are thinking. It'll make it easier for me to understand you and try and make things better." Damn him for being so sweet, hurting him was going to suck.
"You can't do anything to make it better. It's a personal thing and I don't need to hurt you."
"You could never hurt me." Calum said with a serious face and I could feel my strength getting weaker because of how innocent and good-willed he was trying to be when I was just being a pain in the ass.
"Cal-"
"Pey, it can't be that bad."
"I just-" I paused. "I can't say that I love you back."
A moment of silence washed over the room and I fiddled with my thumbs, awaiting any sort of response from him. "Why?"
"Because I don't think that I feel that same way about you."
"Oh," he gulped and the room was so silent that I heard it clearly.
"It's not you, it's me."
"You don't think you feel the same way about me?" I nodded. "How could you not know if you feel the same way about me though? Isn't it kind of like an instinct or a yes or no question?"
"I don't know." I could tell that Calum was about to get angry with me because he did his eyebrow thing that he did before he got angry.
"Why don't you know?"
"Cal-"
"No Pey, I want an answer."
I cleared my throat, "personal reasons."
He tensed next to me and I expected him to do something awful like yell at me or hit me because he was still answerless. Instead, he stood up off the bed, grabbed his shirt that I had worn here and walked towards the door.
"Where are you going?"
He faced the door, "back to my room Peyton." He turned and walked back towards me. "I'm tired of you constantly using the excuse personal reasons when you don't want to fucking talk about something. You can't keep avoiding things that are obviously going to happen and it's fucking annoying." I was caught off guard by his aggressive nature.
"I'm sorry-" I tried to apologize but was cut off by Calum.
"I don't care that you're sorry Peyton. You know I love you as a best friend and now you know I love you as more than a best friend and you didn't have a single thing to say about it." He paused and suddenly his voice got a lot louder, "DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING HARD IT WAS FOR ME TO SAY THAT? I COULD'VE JUST TAKEN OFF MY CLOTHING OR NOT CAVED INTO YOUR CONSTANT FUCKING PEER PRESSURE, BUT I GREW A PAIR AND TOLD YOU. I NEVER ASK YOU ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL REASONS AND I'M STARTING TO WONDER IF YOU ACTUALLY HAVE ANY REAL PERSONAL REASONS TO WHY YOU CAN'T DO SO MANY THINGS AND WHY YOU CAN'T ANSWER SO MANY QUESTIONS! NONE OF US KNOW A SINGLE REASON. MAYBE ASHTON, BUT THEN AGAIN HE COULD JUST BE LYING FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE BASICALLY HIS LITTLE SISTER." Calum accused me and that was the final straw.
"YOU KNOW WHAT CAL?" I stood up and approached him, "I ACTUALLY HAVE PERSONAL ISSUES AND I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING TALK ABOUT THEM BECAUSE I DON'T NEED PEOPLE TREATING ME DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE OF THEM, OK? SO SORRY IF NOT EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PERSON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD LOVE YOU LIKE YOU LOVE THEM. I'M SORRY THAT I DON'T KNOW WHAT I FUCKING WANT AND I'M SORRY THAT I'VE EVER PEER PRESSURED INTO ADMITTING YOUR LOVE FOR ME.YOU KNOW WHAT? I'M SORRY I'VE PEER PRESSURED YOU INTO EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING THAT I'VE PEER PRESSURED YOU INTO DOING, OK?"
"YOU KNOW WHAT PEY? COME AND TALK TO ME WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT BECAUSE UNTIL THEN, I'M DONE." Calum stormed out and slammed the door behind him, leaving me in the middle of the room, alone and lost.
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It's getting intense!