One Night (Austin Mahone Fanfic)

Chapter Twenty - "Refreshing"

One month: four weeks, thirty days, seven hundred twenty hours, forty-three thousand two hundred minutes, two million six hundred seventy-eight thousand four hundred seconds. It didn’t matter which way I viewed it, a month was a month. There was no getting around it. And to say waiting for a month to go by was easy would be anything but the truth. It was the exact opposite. Nothing about it was easy whatsoever. Time could not have gone any slower. I tried my best not to think of Austin. Allowing myself to do so would only make the entire situation harder to deal with. Complicating it anymore was useless; I couldn’t speed up time. 

Austin would return and when he did he’d come back to me. I knew that for a fact and quite frankly it was all I needed for comfort. He was mine and I was his. No one else mattered, not when it came to the two of us. 

Initially, I didn’t want to accept that he was leaving. My heart ached at the thought of it. I desperately wanted to tell him not to go, to stay here with me. But I didn’t, I kept my mouth shut. Not going would have upset JJ and there was absolutely no way Austin would risk that. 

When Austin had left that night I had said see you later, which caught him by surprise. He looked at me with a raised brow questioning my word choice for the moment. It took him a couple of seconds before it hit him. Once it had he smiled and said, “See you then.” What he had failed to realize at first was that I would never say goodbye to him. Goodbye meant forever, and this was not forever. 

I couldn’t just mope around the whole month though. If I did questions would be asked, questions I wouldn’t know how to answer. What’s wrong? Why are you acting so different lately? Where’ve you been? 

The only answer I’d be able to give would be some lie I‘d come up with on the spot. The two of us were still a secret. And as far as I knew it was going to stay that way. At least until Austin could get JJ off his back, which of course wouldn’t be any time soon.

No, to avoid the questions and lies all together I found ways to occupy my time. I did everything I could to keep myself busy: hung out with friends, spent time with family, and even found myself a summer job at the local country club. 

I spent at least four days a week at work. I mean it was a win win for me: It kept me busy, my main focus at work was doing my job, and now I wasn’t the typical broke teenager. I was the assistant to the club’s director, who was basically right under the club’s owner in seniority. The director, Angela, clicked with me right away. She was like the older sister I never had. She made me look forward to work. Angela mainly had me at the front desk making sure everything was taken care of for all the members. 

* * *

It was a hot Wednesday afternoon; we had the air conditioning blasting inside the building. I was sitting in my usual position at the front desk. Angela had left me to finalize next week’s schedule. But needless to say I started to daydream and eventually began to doze off.

“You good Kollar?” 

I jumped, startled by the sound of a familiar voice. I looked over to see Scott, one of the club’s lifeguards, staring back at me.

“Sorry I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said immediately.

“Oh no, it’s fine. I shouldn’t be sleeping anyway,” I said giving him a little smile in return.

“Alright, cool.” 

“So um, did you need something or?”

“Oh yeah, Ang told me to come by to give you the days I need off.”