Ashley ✓

Thirty-Seven | Butterflies

SOTC: All I Need Is You by Kesha

Mustafa and I were silent the entire car ride.

Not one second had we made a noise as he drove us through the night, when the Sun's rays had turned their back on the Western Hemisphere for a set amount of hours. The additional silence had been because Haneen offered to have Xavier to stay with the family so everyone could spend time with him.

According to one of Mustafa's uncles, it had been so no one would have to face the kid's father.

Or me.

At some point, I had dared to look at Mustafa. One of the car lights above was on, so it made it easier to drink in his upper half.

Particularly his eyes.

He was just staring ahead, but the way he did had played with the wires of my brain. His irises visibly drank in the scenery provided by the headlights with such a placid dullness yet a provoking intensity, like he was seeing through eight dimensions. Like a blink of eyelids was foreign to him.

Eventually, we were sitting on opposite ends of the couch of my foster home. Of course, with our legs extended because the couch was shaped like a half rectangle. Sienna, Fedor, and Belle had their own things to do yet again, so it allowed me to turn up the volume of a season one episode of Burn Notice without worrying about waking anyone up.

I had turned the show on in hopes that it would distract me from my craving to say anything, even a word to the boy on the couch with me. But every time I had tried, my throat had closed up.

"Ashley?"

It was from Mustafa in a raspy, barely hearable whisper. With the help of the TV's brightness, I drank in two brown eyes locked on mine like they recently returned to the greener pastures of Earth.

"Yeah?" I whispered, the word feeling foreign from my own tongue.

"Can I hold you?"

I blinked a few times and then asked, "What do you mean?''

"Like you would sit between my legs and lean back, I guess." He paused, shuffling in his position. "You don't gotta if you don't want to but... yeah."

For a couple of seconds, I just sat there and looked at him.

Then as if something clicked, I straightened my legs to get up from my side of the couch and walk to him. Mustafa's eyes changed out of what I guessed was surprise as he spread his legs out, and I climbed between them. Then I laid my back on his chest, which allowed me to lay my head on the left of his neck.

"May I put my arms around you?" he then whispered.

I impulsively made an, "Mhm."

So his arms snaked around me just below my chest, slightly squeezing me.

It was probably because I wasn't registering what the hell was happening, but for a good minute after that, I focused on the color difference between our socks. His were the deepest black, and mine were white. Specifically, they were a pristine white due to me buying them yesterday.

Yes, it's useless, dull information, but those were my honest to god thoughts at the moment.

"Ashley?"

It was the way he said my name in such a quiet yet reality-bringing rasp, one with a slight pitch at the end, that made these thoughts crisp to nothing.

"Hm?" I asked.

There was a pause until he said, "Sorry, I forgot what I was gonna say."

"Oh."