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

23 | Ashton

By the time Maddie gets home, the idea that she could leave Ohio without us ever getting a chance to have a true relationship is eating me up inside. I can't even talk to her about it until she brings it up first, and that makes it a whole lot worse.

She sits cross-legged on top of her toilet seat, running dye through her long, blonde hair with gloved hands. She keeps glancing worriedly at me because, as she's been looking at the box and mumbling directions to herself, I've been standing silently up against the doorway.

Because I refuse to say much, she's started playing Bastille and humming along. I have to snap out of this and enjoy the time I have left with her, but it's incredibly hard.

Clearing my throat, I attempt to speak over the music, "Why does it look so red?"

I grab the opened box off of the counter and my eyebrows knit together. The dye she's using is "Rich Auburn True Red"; nothing close to the brown I was thinking of. I guess her and Reagan must have picked something else out.

"I have to get my warm undertones back first, Ash," she says, giggling at what must be an insanely confused expression on my face.

"Oh," I say.

I put the box back down on the counter and she uses one hand to fish something out of a bag in front of her. She throws another box at me and I almost don't catch it. On this label, though, it says "Medium Golden Brown," and it's practically the same color as her natural hair.

"I don't get this whole hair dyeing thing," I admit, and I put that box on the sink too.

At that, she gasps, "You should let Reagan dye your hair a weird color."

"Why would I do that?" I chuckle, crossing my arms. Her hair is so long that she's still applying the auburn dye to it. This one is going to turn out looking absolutely ridiculous.

"'Cause," she shrugs, "It'd be fun."

Shaking my head, I smile, "Maybe."

"Or maybe, like, pink streaks or something," she says. Her jaw drops as she pulls the color through to the end of her hair. "I could do that! That'd be so fun."

"Alright," I say, nodding now, "I'd let you do that."

If there's anything that I'm going to do in the next few months, it's let her have as many stupid adventures with me as she wants. It'd probably help her find happiness again and, even if we aren't dating, might give her a reason to come back here in a year.

Finally, she finishes applying the dye and she pulls the plastic gloves from her hands. After throwing them away, she sits back in Cooper's old Pokemon t-shirt. It looks like she's used it for dyeing a few times already.

"Have you ever been camping?" she asks me randomly, tilting her now-red head as she sets her mom's old kitchen timer.

"Once, for last year's after-prom with a few guys from the team," I say, "We put whiskey in everything, and I got drunk and jumped into the lake with my clothes on. My mom wasn't too happy about that."

"You went to prom?" She asks.

"No, just one of the after-prom trips," I laugh lightly but stop when I see her bite her lip. "Did you want to go to prom with me? I really hate those kinds of things."

"Oh, um," she looks down at her hands for a second and swallows, "I don't know. But I've always wanted to go camping."

"Since when?" I snort.

The prom argument is one that we can have at another time. I managed to get out of homecoming by ignoring the fact that it was happening, but I'll have to come up with an explanation for this one. If there's one thing I wouldn't do for Maddie, it's go to a school dance. I'd kill a man for her, but I wouldn't kill him anywhere near a prom.