Chapter Text
Ashton’s P.O.V.
The ring tone blaring from my cell phone provides me with a rude awakening way earlier than the time my alarm goes off, and making matters worse is my roommate’s shrill voice yelling at me to “turn that fucking thing off”. I throw the blankets off of me with a groan and grab the phone off my desk, seeing Adam’s name on the caller ID. “Hello?” I say, rubbing my sleepy eyes with the back of my hand.
“Hey, Ash, could you, um, come get me?” His voice is a little shaky, but luckily he doesn’t sound drunk.
“Of course,” I tell him, not even asking why. It’s never mattered why he needs me, just that he does and I’m there as soon as possible. “Where are you?”
“I’m outside of Beth’s place.”
“I’m on my way.”
I hang up the phone and toss it on my bed, removing my cotton shorts as I walk towards the wardrobe. I change into a pair of jeans and almost trip in the darkness while struggling to pull on a pair of Keds. I don’t bother changing my t-shirt before slipping on a zip-up hoodie and making my way through the dark halls of the dormitory.
When I’ve started my car and the display lights up, I really notice for the first time how late it is. Three a.m., four hours before my alarm should be going off and six hours before my Latin class starts. Not the ideal time to be picking someone up from their girlfriend’s place, but for Adam, I won’t complain. I know he’d do the same for me in a heartbeat.
The drive to Beth’s apartment isn’t a very long one, but driving in the dark makes me nervous, so it’s filled with some anxiety. I’ve been to this building quite a few times before, always to pick Adam up. He’s only been with Beth for a month, but it seems like I’m picking him up from here at least three times a week.
Adam’s standing in front of the door when I pull into the small parking lot. I unlock the doors and he climbs in, letting go a sigh that sounds like a mix of exhaustion and exasperation. I open my mouth to ask him what happened, but he beats me to the punch. “We broke up.”
The words are devoid of emotion, but I know that he’s probably more upset than he’s letting on. I stay quiet and wait for him to tell me the full story.
“I’m not really sure what happened- things kind of blew out of proportion- but there’s a zero percent chance of us getting back together. It ended with her calling me a selfish prick and telling me to get the fuck out of her apartment and her life.”
“That’s harsh,” I say, taking one hand of the wheel and grabbing one of his. I squeeze his hand gently and he gives me a sad smile.
“I probably deserved it, honestly. I’m a shitty boyfriend.”
“No, you’re not,” I reassure him. “Any girl would be lucky to have you.”
“Then you date me,” he says, feigning seriousness. We both laugh and I say, “There are so many problems with that statement.”
“I know, I know,” he says. He becomes serious again, saying, “Really, though, I was a shitty boyfriend. You know what she said to me? She said that I was only around long enough to fuck her and then I was ‘emotionally unavailable’ every other time she wanted me. And you know what? She’s completely right. I am emotionally unavailable.”
My thumb rubs slow circles into the back of his hand, but I know it’s probably not doing much to comfort him. “Do you want to stop to get some breakfast or something?” I offer, hoping that being able to talk it over some more over food will help him.
“Yeah, sure.”
The drive to the diner is mostly silent except for the radio playing in the background. Adam switches it to some rock station that I never listen to except for when I’m with him, and he quietly hums along to the music.
I think about Beth’s ‘emotionally unavailable’ comment as I drive through the dimly lit streets. I’ve never thought about Adam that way. I mean, he’s always seemed to be a guy that’s willing to put himself out there for a girl if he loves her, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve known him for ten years but still don’t fully know every aspect about him. I thought I did, but I also thought that things were going great for him and Beth. They might have been great when he told me they were, and things just recently went sour. I don’t know, but that’s what I’ll find out at the diner. Part of me feels like a shitty best friend for not knowing already what was going on.
When we get to the diner, Adam gets out of the car quickly, slamming the door and startling me. I follow him inside and we take a booth in the back away from the windows. There’s not a single person in here besides us and the few workers. This must be the most boring shift for them.
The waitress comes over the second Adam and I sit down to take our drink orders. We both order coffee, knowing that neither one of us has a high chance of getting sleep any time soon. After we leave here, I know I’ll be wide awake with or without the coffee.
“So,” I say as soon as the waitress leaves, “tell me what happened from the start.”
“Well it started on a Wednesday in late August,” he starts sarcastically. I glare at him and he gets more serious. Well, as serious as Adam can get. “After her last class, we went back to her apartment and made dinner. Everything was fine- she was smiling and laughing and everything like that. But we were watching a movie on the couch after, you know, and all the sudden she asked what she was to me and it threw me off, you know? I mean, I thought we were on the same page with that kind of shit from the beginning. So, I told her that she was my girlfriend and she was like ‘no, I meant are we a serious thing’. I didn’t really know what to say, you know? We’ve been together for only three weeks and I’m no where near ready to be serious with her. So that’s what I told her and she got all angry and started saying that she’s not just this girl that I can fuck and leave or whatever.”
He pauses when the waitress comes back with our coffee, but continues when she leaves again. “I told her that just because we weren’t serious, doesn’t mean that’s what I thought, but she just kept saying all this shit about how she wanted more from me. I tried to calm her down because, you know, this was our first fight for fuck’s sake and she was talking crazy. Then she threw the emotionally unavailable thing at me and that was pretty much the end of it. She’s not right, is she? I’m not unavailable like that, right? I don’t feel like I am, but should I have been getting serious after only three weeks? Yeah, we were fucking and all that, and I spent the night a few times, but that doesn’t mean I should be ready to be ‘serious’ or whatever, right?”
“Hell no,” I scoff, dumping a few of the little containers of half-and-half into my coffee. I take a sip of it, but it’s still too strong for my liking. I open another as I say, “It’s been three weeks. You don’t get ‘serious’ after just three weeks. Honestly Adam, you’ve probably dodged a major bullet with her. She’s clearly overly attached already if she thinks you’re supposed to be doing anything other than what you guys were doing at this point. You were probably already farther along in the relationship than most couples that have been together for three weeks. That’s just not realistic to expect anything more.”
“And you are definitely the expert on realistic,” he says jokingly. I kick him gently under the table and he pretends to be actually injured. I would not say that I am the ‘expert’, but I would like to think that I have a pretty mature view on love. I don’t expect love at first sight anymore or even finding ‘the one’ in the traditional sense. I think love is a strong force that shouldn’t be fucked with, but it’s definitely not the only thing that matters in a relationship. There are things equally, if not more, important. Adam has a tendency to fight me on that belief every time I bring it up, but I still think I’m right.
“You’re not emotionally available, alright? You’re basically the farthest thing from it. I really meant what I said earlier about how any girl would be lucky to have you.”
“And I really meant what I said about you dating me then,” he says with a flirty wink.
I roll my eyes at him and he laughs. I’ve always found it weird but always strangely enduring when he makes comments like. It’s impossible that I would ever date him, and not just because he’s been my best friend for
so long. It’s not him I don’t like, just the anatomy in his pants. It’s ironic flirting, he calls it, because neither one of us are attracted to the other.
“Shut up.”
The waitress comes back to take our orders, and even though neither one of us has so much as glanced at the menu, we’re ready to order. This diner and the coffee shop down the street receive frequent visits from the two of us. So many visits, in fact, that a lot of the workers know our orders without us having to say a word. But, that was mostly freshmen year. New workers have come and they lack the knowledge that Adam always orders a burger for breakfast from here and I always order blueberry pancakes no matter what time of day it is. For some reason, that change saddens me a little. A lot of changes sadden me, though. Adam likes to say that’s because of my father and what happened to him, but I like to avoid blaming my father for anything.
“So, anything exciting I need to be caught up on?” he asks when the waitress leaves again.
“We saw each other right before you went to Beth’s,” I remind him, taking a long drink from my coffee mug. It’s still a little too strong for my taste, but I don’t add any more half-and-half.
“I know,” he says with a shrug, “but a lot can happen in a few hours. A lot did happen in a few hours for me, anyway.”
“Well, when I got back to my dorm after class and Kate and Brad were there.”
“Of course,” Adam interjects.
“And they were fucking.”
Adam makes a face, though this is not the first time this has happened. He’s seen it himself a couple times on accident. I’ve asked Kate a million times to do the cliched action of leaving a sock on the door to warn me but she refuses to. She says that everyone would know they were having sex and that would be damaging to her reputation. I always bite my tongue to avoid reminding her that she already has a reputation as a whore and a sock on a door handle wouldn’t change that.
“Gross,” Adam says, and I nod in agreement. “And they never even stop when someone walks in, either. Like, who the hell does that? Absolutely no damn shame.”
“None at all.”
“Ashton,” he says, pointing the spoon he used to stir his coffee at me to emphasize his words, “you need to promise me that when you get a girlfriend, and I walk in on the two of you fucking, you will at the very least wait until I can get out to continue, alright?”
I laugh, but not because of the promise he’s jokingly asking me to make, but because of the sheer improbability that I will have a girlfriend in the near future that he could even walk in on me fucking. I just don’t see a girl in my cards right now.