Deciding on You || a.i. (Book 2)

08 | Maddie & Ashton

=Maddie=

When I get to my seat in Chemistry, Ashton immediately gives off a nervous energy about him. He taps his pencil in sync with his foot and I watch as he licks his lips and clenches his free hand.

We're doing a lab today, which means we're actually going to have to talk to each other. I'm a bit nervous, but not like him.

He's so nervous that he shows it, that he can't control it.

"Hey," I force myself to say, setting my books and backpack down. He glances up and gives me a small, shy smile.

"Hey, ugly," he says just above a whisper. I feel myself start to blush as I pull my chair out and sit down.

I look to the front of the room and see Calum sitting beside the teacher's desk on a stool, swiveling from side to side. I catch his eye after a moment and he grins, waving at me.

I start to wave back, but Ashton clears his throat.

"Do you understand this?" He asks me, leaning back in his chair and pulling his completed homework out of his folder.

I grab mine from inside of my book, still incomplete, and shake my head at him.

"You can copy mine," he slides his paper over and I squint at him. He hardly does his homework, let alone well enough to be copied. "I kinda get it, I think."

"Since when?" I ask.

"Since I came in to get help," he says. I look up at his face and he's staring ahead, with a smirk on his face and a glint in his eye.

"Well, thanks," I say, and I take the paper. I attempt to copy his work as fast as I can before the bell rings.

I manage to get it halfway done before our teacher asks us to pass it forward, which is better than nothing. I really have to start paying attention, or get an actual tutor.

Once the homework is collected and the assignment is explained to us, we head into the lab. Ashton grabs me an apron and slips it over my head first before he gets his own.

I walk over to our counter and attempt to tie it myself from behind. Before I can even make a decent effort, though, a warm pair of hands are on mine. I know who it is without even looking.

"I got you," Ashton says, and I feel the apron tighten around me.

I try not to smile, pulling my hair out from under the strings around my neck and putting it in a ponytail. When he's done, I turn to help him too, but he already has his tied. He unlocks our drawer and starts pulling equipment out like nothing happened.

"So, the first thing we need to do is burn some magnesium, I guess," He chuckles lightly, walking over to the main table to get the materials we don't already have.

This is a fairly simple lab, because all we're doing is looking at different chemical reactions, describing them, and writing equations for them. Ashton, though, seems to be taking this assignment extremely seriously, as though he could hurt himself if he isn't careful.

With each reaction, while we're pouring solutes or mixing solutions, he doesn't say a word. Usually, he'd be cracking a joke here and there, but he is completely silent. The only time he speaks is when we're discussing the assignment.

"How are you?" He surprises me by asking in a voice that's just as careful as his demeanor, while I'm writing down a description of the temperature change of one of our test tubes.

I look up at him mid-scribble. He's already finished writing. 

"Um, I'm okay, I guess," I shrug, finishing my sentence and moving to look at the instructions for the next experiment, though I'm not really reading it.