Ashes // l.h.

27. short temper

Angus & Julia Stone- Hold On

27. short temper

Ashton's hand in mine now feels a bit unnatural. It's like he only holds my hand anymore when he's telling me something I might get mad about or when he's trying to calm me down over something he said or did I got mad about. I'm literally getting nauseous looking down at our intertwined hands and I can't understand where all this bottled up anger is coming from. Or maybe I do.

"I'm going to be gone for three or four days so me and the band can meet with someone who does sick merchandise and advertising/ promoting- all that stuff. Then I'll come right back home." He says, lifting my hands up to kiss my knuckles. "And we can spend time together when I get back."

I stay looking into his eyes, looking for sincerity and I find it. "Alright."

He smiles at the same time his phone vibrates on the dashboard. He quickly reaches across to grab it and looks down at the screen. Suddenly, he looks back up at me and says, "It's Carter." His lips turn into a small frown, probably because he noticed how interested I was in knowing who had texted him. "Don't tell me you're going to have trust issues now, Andie."

"Of course I'm going to have trouble trusting you again after I found nudes in your phone that weren't mine." I snap, feeling like I've been saving those words for this moment right now. On the day me and Luke went to his father's house, I had an argument with Ashton. It started when we were laying in bed together, taking silly pictures on his phone. He opened his photo gallery so we could look back at all the photos we had taken when I saw a separate album with a naked girl's body as the cover. Ashton immediately tried to hit the home button, but I had already seen it.

"I thought we dropped this already. This happened weeks ago." He says.

"It still happened."

He huffs, running a hand over his face. "I told you, they were pictures I got way before we started dating."

"Then you should have deleted them- you know, that's the logical thing to do."

"You always want to fight with me-"

"Alright, I'm done." I forfeit for now. "I don't want to argue about this again, especially in front of our friends." I'm the first to get out of the car, Ashton following soon after. A feeling of dizziness hits me as soon as I'm standing on my own two feet and I pause for a moment to recollect myself.

We cross the street to the Diner where everyone's all seated in the usual large booth; even Christina is here. I haven't seen her hang out with the entire group all at once in a while. There is one person I don't recognize, a woman who's seated beside Mikey and to the right of Faye. I assume it's Cathy just because she looks a bit older than the rest of us. Now that I take a good look at Grace, she looks beyond annoyed by her presence and quite frankly, I am too. Grace and Mikey belong together, nobody can tell me any different.

"Hey," I say to everyone.

"Thank God you're here." Grace scoots over, shoving Faye into Cathy, most likely on purpose. I take a seat beside her and Ashton squeezes in too. Grace suddenly realizes Mikey heard her and rushes to save herself. "Because I need to tell you about my date with Jake last night."

"From State Farm." Calum butts in out of nowhere.

"Fuck off, Hood." It's obvious Grace is moody.