This is me so please accept me for who I am
And please accept me for what I do
I'm just doing everything that I can
Cause all I wanna be is true.
-Lloyd
__________________________
- Ashton
I woke up the next morning hungover, but a comfortable hungover. I always say that I can hold my liquor, but depending in the drink I'm a hot mess.
It was cloudy out and I knew that Justin didn't have anything planned for the day, so hopefully we wouldn't be out at too many clubs doing God knows what.
I sat up in the bed and realized that I wasn't in my hotel room at all. I looked under the covers and groaned, knowing that I was naked and that Justin was next to me, probably still sleeping since his back was facing me.
I checked my phone and noticed that it was still early, but I had a feeling he'd be waking up soon. Watching his back, I noticed how his breaths were small, and how his muscles would slightly tense a little while he rolled around in the bed, turning to face me even though his eyes were closed.
He did have a pretty face, especially when he slept.
His lips were swollen and pouty, while his eyelashes brushed against his under eye. He looked like a drunk ass angel. I knew I was going to regret it, but I laid down further on the bed and traced my thumb against his bottom lip lightly, noticing how his face calmed down when I did, it made me smile a little.
I wasn't catching feelings, but Justin was for sure a sweet guy. I remembered last night and how it all played out quickly, but he made sure to make it all about me.
Not to compare the two, but he's completely different from Christian.
Christian was more of a hard ass. You couldn't tell him anything and he always made sure that at the end of the day, he got his way. Justin was slightly a hoe, but he was an emotional hoe. Like the cute ones who only act this way because they were treated wrong by someone before, so they think this is the best way to go. But I liked him. He was different because of that.
"Well look who I get to wake up to this morning," His voice came through the silence that was in the room, catching me off guard. His morning voice sounded amazing. "Way better view compared to when you left me on our first one night stand." He chuckled and ran his hands over his eyes.
I rolled mine playfully and sat up. "What do you have planned today?" I asked and reached for my shirt and pulled it over my head, taking my hair tie and pulled my hair into a ponytail.
"Nothing today." He paused and looked down at his bed. "I was wondering... do you wanna spend the day with me?" He questioned and looked at me with hopeful eyes.
"Aren't I already? Isn't that what this whole trip is about."
"Don't start off the morning being a smart ass." He frowned softly. "This trip was supposed to be about you shadowing me... not us having sex I might add."
"Fine," I huffed and grabbed my pants that were on the floor. "Just... just let me get changed. Okay?"
"You could always get changed in here you know... way easier." He smirked and winked his pretty but annoying eye at me. "I think you've seen enough." I shot back and grabbed the rest of my things, finding one of his shirts tossed on the floor and threw it over my head.
"You look amazing in that shirt by the way," He smiled and looked me up and down. "You should wear it more often." I felt my cheeks get a little hotter and just decided to ignore him and his smart comments.
The key to my room was sitting on his dresser when I grabbed it and threw my things on my bed before looking in one of the large mirrors. I looked different.
A little glowy but more relaxed than I normally do, and I liked that look. I quickly freshened up before throwing on a pair of sweatpants and a basic white t-shirt.
That Bitch Bea:
How's the trip going so far?
I rolled my eyes seeing her text. She was mainly checking up on me to find out more information about Justin and I, and there was really nothing to tell.
Ashton:
Pretty good he's not that bad of a guy.
That Bitch Bea:
That's the first I heard you say that about a guy in a while. Catching feelings or?
Ashton:
Bye Bea 🙄.
I put my phone down and rolled my eyes. I don't think I'm catching feelings. We rarely got to know each other seriously.
Maybe I was catching feelings towards the sex? That makes the most sense right now. But I wasn't about to become strung out over it in any way.
Taking the towel from around my head and pulling it back into its regular curly puff ball on the top of my head, I walked back into his room to see him still under the covers but on his phone.
"So you didn't get cleaned up at all?"
He looked up at me almost instantly and pulled the covers from around his waist, showing that he was now in black sweatpants compared to him being naked before.
"How do I know you didn't just change clothes... you could still have the smell of the night before lurking on you." I raised my eyebrow and he laughed, raising his arms.
"You can smell me if you want. My hair's still a little damp from the shower." He rolled his eyes. "Now, stop interrogating me and come sit with me." He said, patting the other side of the bed that I was once on.
I walked around and plopped back onto the spot that my body was on and looked up at him on his phone.
"So you're gonna be on your phone the whole time?" I asked and he shook his head before putting it down.
"You're pretty good company, I figured you'd want to just talk for a day, you know? No funny business. Sometimes I just need to talk to somebody." He shrugged and picked at a string that was unraveling from my shirt.
"Sure," I said a little caught off guard.
"What do you want to talk about?"
"I'm nervous." He said almost instantly.
"About?"
"Everything," He chuckled lightly. "I mean what is there for me not to get nervous about nowadays. This album, my image, my life." He shrugged and shook his head. "I feel like I run off of nerves sometimes and it's not a good thing."
I looked over at him while his eyes went across everything in the room but mine. "There's nothing wrong with being nervous. Sometimes it helps us, and other times we do it unintentionally and is psychs us out." I mumbles and flipped my phone back and forth in my hands.
"We all get a lot of responsibility put in ourselves."
"What about you?" He asked me, finally looking in my direction. "Do you get a load of stuff thrown on you from your family and job?"
I bit my lip, hesitant to answer.
"Sorry if I'm getting too personal..."
"No, no! It's alright. " I chuckled. "Sometimes it's good to talk to someone about this type of stuff."
I wasn't one to talk about my personal life with people that I haven't known for that long, but I could tell he needed someone to relate to him in the smaller of ways.
"I don't really get a lot of time to see my family." I started and looked at my lockscreen. "My mom is in Chicago and my little sister goes to college in Iowa... I only get to see them when I'm not busy. Everything I do? I do it for them, but sometimes it drags on myself." I sighed.
"What about your dad?" He asked breaking the short silence that was in the room.
"He's dead. Alcohol poisoning." I said nonchalantly. That was always a sensitive spot that I never liked touching on that much. I was a daddy's girl, so losing him wasn't something that I dealt with easily.
"I'm sorry..." He started but I shook my head.
"Don't worry about it. Just... I just don't want you to feel like you're carrying something on your own. We're all carrying something, just with a different value. Ya know?" I smiled and tried to soften the mood that was becoming way too tense.
"I feel you." He smiled a little and laid back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. "There's this song I've been working on and it's been driving me crazy. I can hear the music but I can't put two and two together for the words. It comes to me at random, you know?"
"Well yes and no. I'm not a musician so I can't understand from that point, but then I've been there before." I hummed and watched him pull over his laptop and opened it to his iTunes. A piano played on the first few seconds of the song. It sounded like it could be a ballad, but I wasn't too sure. It was sweet sounding but had a lot of power behind the few chords.
"Feeling like I'm breathing my last breath. Feeling like I'm walking my last steps..." He sang slowly and a look of frustration grew on his face. "I can never finish the line... I don't know what it is about this song... all of the others come easy but this one... it's a pain in the ass."
"Good things come to those who wait." I said softly causing him to look over at me and tilt his head.
"What?"
"I know you heard me." I rolled my eyes, "Stop rushing it and take your time on it. If it's not coming easy, that means this song might be one that touches you and a lot of people. Trust me, and let it marinate." I smiled and rested my head on his shoulder, catching the both of us off guard, but I stayed.
"You know... you're a little confusing." He chuckled.
"How, Sway."
"One day, you're all loving with me, friendly, and open... the next it's strictly business. It's like a whirlwind of emotions with you." He smirked. "I kind of like this side of you more though."
"I'm not bipolar if that's what you're gonna be getting at sooner or later," I rolled my eyes and smiled. "I just... I don't know. I guess I have this wall up sometimes. I have for a while."
"And why is that hmm?" He hummed and I felt his hand rubbing small circles on my waist. It was awkward, but soothing so I didn't stop him.
"Are we just gonna spend today digging into our feelings?" I asked and looked through my phone at my snapchat, catching up on what everyone else was doing.
"I mean, we can. Not like we have anything else better to do." I didn't have to look up to tell that he was smiling.
"Its... a long story."
"And we've got a few long hours." He shot back.
I groaned and rolled on my back, crossing my arms to my chest.
"This... this guy I was dating... I was with him for a while. I loved him... he said he loved me, so we went with it. We were inseparable for the first few months to a year. I was able to be so open with him that I had nothing to hide. I pretty much became so clear and open with myself that it would make me seem like a even bigger pain in the ass now." I chuckled. "He; Christian, was pretty great and all, but just like any guy who feels like their girl is getting too comfortable; he wanted to make another girl feel the same while keeping me... so I caught him cheating on me at his house one night."
"Fuck..." Justin sighed and shook his head. "I'm sorry... that's pretty messed up."
I just nodded. "We were going to get married. Not many knew about it, not even my best friends. We wanted it to be a surprise. Have everyone show up for a family gathering, then just tell them the good news. I had the ring and everything, but we didn't even make it that far along. He's engaged now to the girl he cheated on me with."
"I understand why you keep a wall up sometimes now. You pretty much can't trust any guy because of what that jackass did."
I turned the bed and wrapped my hand in the blanket. "It's in the past now... it's whatever."
"It's not whatever if you keep building that wall back up after someone cares enough to knock it down piece by piece to bring you out, Ashton... Some people actually care. And there's gonna be someone who'll be patient enough to knock down every brick that dumbass helped build around you just to see you happy." He said slowly and looked down at me, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Thanks. I'm sure you say that to all girls you come in contact with though, huh?" I giggled.
"Just the beautiful ones who deserve to hear it and deserve to know how valuable they are." I felt my face heat up again, and there was this look in his eyes when he looked down at me.
I bit my lip and tried to look at something else in the room:
There's the wall. The paint looked really expensive and shiny.
The large bathroom that was in front if us.
His lips. They looked perfect and almost begging for mine to touch them.
The TV. I wonder how many channels there are on that thing... gotta be a lot.
His arms. God, how perfect it would be to have them holding me up again and f-
No.
The bed. The sheets on the bed were really white-- and smelled like his cologne. That amazing smell that I inhaled when I felt his lips go against the ski of my thro-
Fuck, it's not working.
My heart was beating out of my chest and my eyes were going hazy. Just at the thought of him kissing me. For once, I wanted it. Badly.
His thumb traced around my bottom lip and back to the corners of my mouth. It was light enough to make me push a little closer towards him, and my eyes never left his.
"Fucking beautiful.." He mumbled and looked me over, taking in my basic appearance at the moment.
"That ex if yours really messed up. If I had you, I wouldn't do you like that. You'd be put on such a high pedistal you wouldn't have to come down for anything at all." He smirked softly, brushing his nose against mine.
"Justin, please. You're killing me." I groaned at his gentle touch.
"Don't want to do it if you don't want me too." He whispered lightly, his phone going off seconds after his sentence was finished with texts and calls from some girl.
Hailey.
I didn't know her, but I knew of her from social media. He never confirmed if that was his girlfriend or not, so to be on the safe side, I moved to the opposite side of the bed. He sighed and muted the phone.
I wonder if they were together.
"We're not together," He stated, almost reading my mind. "She's... a friend."
"Why are you assuring me? I didn't ask." I said. There goes the walls, being built back up again over a guy that I'm not even sure I want to be with. But, I felt jealous none the less.
He must have caught on to the mood change and smirked, sucking on his teeth and shaking his head. "There you go..."
"There I go, what?"
"Putting the wall up again." He said waving his finger up and down in front of me.
"Stop." I rolled my eyes.
"Stop pushing me out then, we were getting close to a good place, and you want to throw it away because of a text and a phone call?"
I bit my lip and shook my head. "I could care less about the text."
"You were going to kiss me before you saw it."
"Changed my mind." I faked a smile.
"You're something else." He smirked and looked back at the ceiling. "You like me." He said and snapped me out of my short but quick thoughts.
"Don't know how serious it is yet, but you do. I'll be patient and wait on you to realize it though babe. And when you come around, you'll realize how great it feels to be treated right by someone who means it." He said and looked over at me.
"Whoa.... relax. Never said that one bit. But whatever helps you sleep at night."
"You. Curled up next to me against my chest." He bit his lip and smiled.
"Bye, Justin." I rolled my eyes and walked toward his bathroom.
"I'm serious, Ashton. You like me, and sooner or later you'll realize it." Sitting up on his elbows, he smiled at me.
"Whatever you say." I mumbled and rolled my eyes. I'm not sure if I liked him.
Maybe I was just infatuated.
__________________
CHAPTER EDITED
__________________