iMessage ☾Ashton Irwin

23

Jet lag was killing him like homicide, he wished it didn't exist since he woke up around five in the afternoon the next day. The bed was vacant, his shoes were on the ground beside the bookcase and he was tucked in with the comforter folded under his body like he would do with his siblings.

When he looked around the small apartment, he noticed that Mason was sitting crisscross on a metal fold up chair cuddled in a quilted blanket in front of the dinosaur age computer.

He stayed quiet and shuffled in the bed a bit, not wanting her to know that he was awake. Slowly but surely, he finally tiptoed up out of bed and over to her before leaning close to her ear and whispering, "What're you doing?"

She jolted up from the chair and into the air before landing back on the seat with an oof, her butt taking most of the impact, "Jesus Ash, you scared the crap out of me."

He kissed the top of her head, "Sorry love," he mumbled, wrapping his arms around her, draping his large hands over her body before he began tickling her.

She swatted his hands away, but to no avail, so she gripped his hands in hers to get him to stop and she intertwined their fingers, "Last person that tickled me, got kicked down a ditch."

Mason glanced up at him, or more so his chin, then he looked down at her with a look of worry, "When was that?"

She giggled, "When I was twelve or thirteen, can't remember. Around ten years ago, that's all I know."

His eyes bulged, "This kid is still alive, right?"

She laughed harder this time, "Yeah, he's actually my best friend to this day, we've been through a lot but he's always been there for me and it's nice to know that I have someone like that in my life," she looked up at him again, smiling brightly which made him grin, showing his dimples, "but it looks like I have another person like that in my life now."

"Are you only friends with boys or...?"

She looked at him and rolled her eyes, "Is that a problem, Ashton?"

He shook his head vigorously, "No, that's not a problem, I was just wondering," he responded, his voice slurring within his accent from talking too fast. He knew he would have to share her, she's not property and he respects her.

"Well, if you want to know, I only have or had one sibling. His name was Jeff and although he was like five years older than me, he was my best friend, so I hung out with all his friends which were mostly boys, then when I went to school, I would try to hang out with the girls there, but I remember that they just irritated the crap out of me, so I ended up becoming another one of the boys."

"What happened to your brother?" He asked, noticing how she used the words 'had' and 'was', hinting that he was no longer here.

"He was reckless," she huffed, shaking her head and laughing breathlessly, "He didn't know boundaries. He had a family, one that loves him dearly and he had a girlfriend, her name is Trish. He was a bmx biker, very dangerous depending what you do, trick wise. He wasn't the best driver either, last year he ran a stop sign and boom, all of a sudden, I'm kneeling beside a hospital bed holding his hand, listening to him say his last words and take his last breath."

"I'm sorry," Ashton mumbled, gathering a mental image of her brother. He imagined him in his mid twenties with brownish hair instead of bleach blonde like Mason, he could see him at six feet maybe even taller with bright green eyes like his sister.

"It's whatever. I miss him so much, but I can't get him back, grieving won't do me any good. I know he wouldn't want me moping around and destroying myself, he'd want me to have a life better than his, I know him well enough to know that," she explained, glancing at the tiny clock in the corner of her monitor, "Speaking of which, I have to go to work."