It's Just Life

Troubles and Confusions

"Sidney?"

I jerked my head away from the man's neck at the sound. There, in front of me, stood Ashton with a confused face. My heart started to hammer in my chest as I stared at him. Air seemed to heat up around me.

Okay, what do I do. I diverted my eyes momentarily away from Ashton and gently ended the hug with the old man by pushing with my hands until he was at shoulder length.

"See you later." I said smiling to the man.

"My name is Marty." He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand, laughing silently. He fiddled the sweater between his hands.

"Okay. Hi Marty, I'm Sid." I took my hands off from his too skinny shoulders and made a small wince when he instantly shrank back away from me. But then he smiled at me, and everything was okay. It also brought Ashton's burning gaze to my attention, making me feel uncomfortable. After short goodbyes with Marty I with much struggle lifted the heavy bag and turned to face him. I scanned him from head to toe, which seems to have become a normal routine for me. He was wearing a a t-shirt which to my suprise recognised as a While She Sleeps band's logo. The shirt let his biceps show, he wasn't covering a bit of the hard work that he must have put in them. His legs were supported by black skinny jeans, which clung tightly to his legs making him seem even taller than the last time I saw him. Had he just grown a couple of inches or did I just shrink?
His curly hair was a mess like always, fanning to every direction in the gentle summer wind and slightly sticking to his forehead. His left hand was nervously fidgeting, as always. This time he had a pair of black rimmed glasses on his face, making his eyes look bigger and giving him more childish expression. He looked even cuter, if that was in some way possible. He had his usual bright smile on his face while looking down at me. His smile was so contentious that I couldn't help but mirror his smile. We just stared at each other smiling as the wind blew harshly around us, messing up my hair too. I didn't care about the cold wind anymore. My mind seemed to have completely frozen, leaving everything but Ashton aside. The scary part was, that I didn't even care.

After a while his eyes started to wonder scanning my whole body up and down, teasing me with his slow eyes and making it perfectly clear that he was checking me out. His eyes seem to grow wide as he noticed something. An emotion that I didn't recognise flickered across his face, clouding his features with sudden greyness. It was shady, like a fluttering flame that I just couldn't seem to grasp. But I recognised something else.
Worry. Worry had suddenly made its way on his face, and I just couldn't understand why. I looked down at myself, wondering what he was thinking about. One look at myself and I would have blushed crimson red, if it wasn't for the unusual worry on his face.

I didn't have anything under the hoodie except a really low cut tank top. When I say low, I mean really, really low. But he wasn't looking even near at my chest area where I guess he should have been looking. His gaze what set on my arms.

My arms, where the deep scratches were splattered from last night. I almost let out a small cry from the realization. I was so sick of today. Why did everything go so wrong?

I should have remembered them. He wasn't suppose to see. Now I'm going to have to lie to get out of this.

He looked at me with a puzzled face as I quickly scrambled and took the other hoodie from my bag and put it on. At least I had jeans on, so he couldn't see the deeper marks on my legs. I was overwhelmingly glad about that. He frowned at my actions as he just stood there, but letting me do whatever I wanted to do in silence. I awkwardly stared at the ground after getting the hoodie on me, hoping that it would just swallow me whole. And never return me.

A short stunned silence seemed to scretch out forever. In reality though, I took one forced deep breath and Ashton was already striding up to me and taking my arms in his. His hold was strong, like he was afraid that I'd try to run away and he had to make sure that I didn't. He was much stronger and probably faster than me anyways so running wouldn't have helped anything. That would have just ended in an embarrassing fiasco for me. My hands had started to shake, to match his. I unintentionally squeezed his other arm back, wanting to do something to the movement. I couldn't stop it, no matter how I tried. The though of running surfaced to my head again as he slowly started to wrap his fingers around the sleeves. At the same time it dawned to me that for some reason didn't even want to run. I didn't want to think about why. I didn't want to know why.