Stressed, Depressed & BoyBand Obsessed

Chapter 25:

"What day is it today?" I said laying on the bed staring up the pale ceiling, playing with the sleeve of my hospital gown. Ashton sat in the chair next to me, another spare chair pulled up for him to rest his feet on. "Sunday I think." He replied looking over to me, "why?" He asked still staring at the side of my face. "Just wondering." I shrugged and continued to look above me.

We had spent most of the morning just lying here staring around at the bland room. Nurses occasionally wandering in, offering me food and checking the monitors. This was usually how I spent my weekends anyways, apart from I wasn't usually in a hospital and was usually alone in my room, in complete darkness.

"So what do you want to do?" Ashton asked, trying to spark up some kind of conversation from me. I shrugged my shoulders, my eyes still not moving from their fixated position. "Maybe we could watch some TV or play a game or..." He looked around the room for things to try and occupy me with, "watch TV." He repeated with a smile, obviously trying to get me to laugh along.

After we had finished our laughing fit, my black slug called depression decided to push me down and pin me to the bed. Not allowing me to move or be happy under any circumstances. Any sign of happiness was quickly consumed by sadness and pain. Ashton had tried to push the slug off of me multiple times throughout the day but had failed every time. It stayed splayed across my stomach whispering words of self hatred to me.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the expression of disappointment spread across Ashton's face as another attempt to make me smile had failed. I decided then that the only way to move the slug from me was to do it myself. Even if it only would help for a few hours before it would crawl back again.

"Watching TV sounds fun." I suggested. The way his whole face lit up at the sound of my voice made me think that Ashton wasn't expecting me to be speaking any time soon. "What do you want to watch?" He asked, his voice sounding like an excited young child's. "A movie?" I said, well more of asked, my voice sounding shy and unsure. "Yeah sure do you want to pick or should I?" It felt like he just kept asking me question after question. "You pick." I said sitting up and passing him the remote to the small TV. It was so far away you could barely see the faces of the characters faces on the screen but it would have to do.

He leaned over the bed to get a closer look at what movie he would be choosing, squinting his eyes slightly, causing small crinkles to appear at the corners. I patted my hand on the spare piece of bed next to me, beckoning him to join me. Only so he could get a better look at the TV of the bed of course.

He gave me a confused look for a moment before climbing up next to me. He didn't sit like he usually does when it comes to us, pressed up against my side with an arm hooked around my shoulder or waist, it felt as if he was sitting on the very edge of the bed making sure not to touch me. I didn't like this, it felt... strange. He was treating me like some china doll and if he were to put one finger on me if would shatter.

I decided to be daring for once in my life, not the type of daring you might think but for me this was going way out of my comfort zone. I drew in deep breath and extended my arm out and snaked it around Ashton's waist, trying to pull him closer. He stopped scrolling for a second and looked down at me. An expression of pure confusion on his face. His eyebrows furrowing together like always.

"What are you doing?" He asked. I couldn't tell if it was out of confusion he as asking this question or if he was basically telling me to get the hell off of him. "I-I wanted to... cuddle." I tried to sound confident with me answer but obviously that didn't happen. I sounded pathetic and desperate. Honestly I wanted to slap myself and go die in a dark hole somewhere.

His face softened slightly from the scrunched up expression he had on it before and was replaced with a lopsided smirk, showing off his dimples perfectly. Once again he had surprised me. Ashton hooked his arm around my shoulders and pulled me over to him with ease and continued to scroll through the minuscule list of movies available.

Eventually we ended up watching an action-adventure movie that I had never heard of before in my life but Ashton swore that I would love it.

Ashton was wrong. About 15 minutes into the movie I had already grown bored. I looked up at Ashton to see he was engrossed in the fast cars and fighting scenes. How could anyone be so caught up in a movie this boring?
I started to draw small patterns on my hand with my fingers, weaving around the drip connected to my hand and continuing down my hand towards the bandage. Drawing these small swirling patterns bought a strange comfort to me.

I was too busy drawing on my arm to notice Ashton's attention had been drawn away from the movie and was now staring at me.

"I'm guessing you don't love the movie then." He said with a smile on his face. "Uh... no, not really." I mumbled, sinking further into the bed. He smirked at my response, shaking his head lightly and pulled me closer with the arm hooked around my shoulders. Why was he laughing, my answer wasn't that funny?

I must have been staring at him confusedly because his smile dropped and he looked at me puzzled, a small crease forming between his eyebrows where he was frowning. "Why are you staring at me like that?"
"Like what?" I said avoiding his question and looked away.
"You looked confused."
"Oh, sorry I didn't mean to." I apologised, not revealing the real reason behind why I was actually staring at him. "You don't need to apologise you know." His statement caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting him to say something like that. I was expecting a witty joke to lighten the mood with one of his signature giggles that showed off his perfect dimples.

Wait, what was I saying? Perfect dimples? It sounded like I was about to go off on some long tangent about how amazing Ashton's laugh was, or how his eyes lit up when he was talking about a passion, or how soft and inviting his curly hair was, or how his jokes were so stupid but you laughed anyways because how could you not smile at his beautiful face?

Oh my God! I was doing it again. It was as if I couldn't do anything other than think about Ashton. It was almost if I had feelings for him. Not feelings like you would a friend but something stronger than that. I had never actually thought of Ashton as anything other than a friend, not even after yesterday, but now it all seemed to sort of make sense. The way I would call him if something was wrong or to make myself happy again I would think of him or how I would find myself thinking of him when he wasn't around or I would always long for his touch when he was close to me but not close enough. This was more than just some high school crush. It was almost like I was in... in... love.