UNLEARN // CTH

10

Calum's POV

It's the last day of working on this song and the boys have acted normal since their field day when Octavia and I walked into the studio together. I had texted Octavia last night and apologized for that day but she told me she wasn't mad at all and that I had nothing to apologize for.

I walked into the studio and sat in my usual spot. Right off the bat, I could tell that Johnson was stressed, 'stay out of her way, and do as she says.' Octavia's words run through my head.

I notice Johnson already pacing the room. "Where the fuck is she? She was supposed to be here 20 minutes ago!" she practically yells

That's when I noticed Octavia wasn't in the room. Matt goes to open his mouth to speak when a ping goes through the room and Luke pulls his phone out.

"She just texted me, she said that she slept in and is on her way." he reads

"I'm gonna kick her ass." Johnson seethes

I wanna speak up and defend her, the girl I once despised, I shake my head at the thought.

"It's not her fault we all oversleep, cut her some slack," Luke says.

It makes me almost want to roll my eyes. Almost. Why does he care so much about her? He literally met her 2 weeks ago.

5 minutes later she bursts through the door.

"Sorry I'm late, I didn't set my alarms," Octavia explains as she takes her seat.

Visually she looks okay but something about the way she doesn't look us in the eye tells me something is off.

If there is one thing I've noticed over the course of working with Octavia it's that she loves eye contact, something I'm not very fond of. Usually, she greets us with a smile and says hi, making eye contact, but this time she hardly even looks up from the ground.

We went on through the entire session like that, us making suggestions and her just simply nodding a yes or shaking her head no. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but I guess I've gotten used to her being more vocal on changes and why they were being made.

So when we were finally dismissed I followed her out to ask her if we could work on my song again, I've decided to show it to the boys to potentially put it on the album.

"Hey," I say, catching her upper arm. "Can we work on the song?" I ask as I let go of her.

She closes her eyes and lets out a sigh, "no." is all she says.

"Why?" I press

"I'm tired, Calum, I'm so tired I just can't today," she stresses, and now that I'm actually getting a good look at her face I can see how tired she looks, her eyes are dark and sunken in and her skin is pale.

Before I realize it she walks away, I want to ask her what's wrong but Luke gets to her first. I find myself getting... envious, not of Luke but of her.

Luke and I used to be really close but over time we grew apart. He's still my best friend but I just feel like we aren't as close as we used to be, I mean, there was a point in time where I told him everything, stuff I wouldn't even tell Mikey and Ash.

Now it feels like my best friend found a new best friend. It's been harder for me to trust people the past couple of years. It seems like I only attract people who end up fucking me over.

I guess part of the reason I didn't like her was that the boys grew close to her quickly. I mean it was rare that we got along well with one of the writers on our team.