What Doesn't Break You (Ashton Irwin Fanfic)

Chapter 14

A.J.’s POV:

Choosing the parts of yourself that you want the world to see is a difficult task. It’s hard to choose which attributes you want to display, which ones you want only a certain group of people or a single individual to see, and which ones you will take with you to the grave. It’s even harder to discern all of these things on the spot.

As I sat on the porch swing in my back garden looking at Ashton sitting across from me, I found myself having an intense internal battle with myself. Thoughts took turns racing across my brain waves and fighting each other for attention.

What do I say? What do I not say?

My hands were sweaty and my heart was pounding, but he looked completely calm as he sat across from me waiting patiently for me to begin talking. I knew I couldn’t share every single detail of my life with him. Nobody would do that with a stranger, and let’s face it; he was still kind of a stranger to me.

But even more importantly, I had things I couldn’t even confess to my closest friend or even my Aunt or Uncle. If I started talking about my dark past that led me to end up here in the first place, he would surely leave at the drop of a hat.

Wouldn’t he? I thought.

I decided to keep it simple. Just a short and condensed version of my life story that included where I was from, what school I went to and what music I listened to. No need to go into detail about my family, just their names should be good enough.

 I took a deep breath and started rambling away. I looked at the ground mostly as I spoke. I would chance small glances over to Ashton every now and then to see if I was boring him. I wasn’t good at talking about myself. I didn’t do it much, and I couldn’t believe I was doing it now.

I don’t know what it was about him, but he made me feel different. It’s like his mere presence just flipped a switch inside of me that made me want to not be so secluded. I wanted to pour a bit of myself out and let him know me, but at the same time I was terrified of what he would think. I wasn’t a very interesting person. I was just a girl from a small town who loved music and books; I wasn’t preppy or very girly; my favorite movies were horror and period films; and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life after high school.

But however boring I thought my personal life was, he continued to sit there and listen to me as we sat outside for a good couple of hours. He would nod occasionally and ask a question or two every now and then to keep the conversation flowing, but for the most part I just kept talking. It felt amazing to talk to him. And it was even more amazing to have him listen to me and react to what I told him about myself. I never thought I would say it, but I was enjoying talking to someone else and letting them in.

I don’t think I talked about anything too serious that night. Though I enjoyed opening up a little and letting him in, I didn’t feel comfortable opening the door all the way. I just cracked the window a little and allowed him a peek into my life. It was enough to let him see a portion of the real me, even though I would never let him or anyone else see the whole me.

The truth was I wasn’t a whole person to be seen anyway. I was a broken mess on the inside. A fucked up individual hiding behind my walls that I made to hide my disfigurement. To let him all the way in would mean scaring him away, and I couldn’t handle that kind of loss.