Forced | cake au ✓

Chapter SEVEN

Edited - 7/28/19

Calum

"You haven't talked to each other in three days? Seriously?"

I looked up from where I was tuning my bass. Michael looked a little more shocked than I hoped. "What's the big deal? We're seeing each other again today."

"Today?" Ashton called from the kitchen just as the microwave beeped. "Yes, Ashton," I sighed, strumming. "Today."

"You sound depressed," Michael raised his eyebrow. "Want to talk about it?"

"There's nothing much to talk about," I said, placing down my bass. "It's still awful between the two of us and now Dave's asking us to post stuff online so it'll be a bit more interesting for people."

"Why?" Ashton walked into the living room, placing the bowl of popcorn in the middle of the coffee table. He tossed Michael a bag of chips, opening one for himself as he plopped down beside me.

"Hey, I just remembered," Michael said before I could reply to Ashton. "We have that radio interview tomorrow, right?"

"And that's exactly why he's making us do it. I'll have to finally say that I'm dating someone, and of course they have to make it obvious that it's Luke. As if it weren't obvious enough." I said. There was a moment of silence as I picked up my bass again. All three of us have been writing in the studio for our next album already, but our tour is a few months away.

"Calum, why do you guys hate each other?"

I stopped strumming, looking up at Ashton. "I told you why already." Michael shook his head. "No. All you told us was that something happened between you guys and you haven't talked in three years."

I shrugged. "It's a long story, guys."

"And we have time," Ashton said. I raised an eyebrow at his eager smile, shaking my head. "No, you don't. Luke's on his way here."

"So just tell us some parts of the story!" Michael was never one to get mushy or cute about moments, but here he was pouting at me. "Please? Ashton and I have been coming up with theories but I don't think we got close to what actually happened."

I stared at my two bandmates. Of course they deserve to know what happened, they were dragged into this mess because of something I did. And it's not like I was going to keep what happened a secret from them forever. I just hoped maybe Luke and I would've been in better terms when I finally decided to share the whole story.

But, since it looks like that's not really going to happen any time soon, might as well just rip off the band-aid.

"Alright," I sat straighter, pausing when both Ashton and Michael suddenly scooted closer and leaned in almost in sync. They were unbelievable, really. "Luke and I," I paused again. Luke and I. "We were childhood friends. My family moved to the U.S. when I was ten, right? Well, it just so happened we moved in at the house next door to theirs."

"You were neighbors?" Ashton's eyes widened. "And your houses were actually beside each other?"

"We became best friends, actually."

It seemed like Michael wasn't expecting that, either. "I thought he was an ex boyfriend."

My mouth opened then closed promptly. I had to think about how to answer that one. "Um, we grew up together. Our bedrooms happened to be right across from each other, again it was a coincidence. We had like these mini balconies, they very tiny and you could barely step out the room without the fear of falling. Anyway, as small as they were, it proved helpful when we wanted to visit each other. We'd just.. hop over."