Piece of Cake | Ashton Irwin [au]

Five

Ruth’s POV

“You’re really serious about this aren’t you?” I ask, circling my finger along the rim on the empty plate in front of me.

“Completely,” he replies without hesitation. “Just give me a chance. Push aside your first impression of me and let’s start new. If I don’t change your mind about me by Serena’s wedding, then I’ll leave you alone for good. And as an addition to convince you, from now until then, you can have one free dessert per day, at least while I’m working.”

I chuckle. “So now you’re bribing me?” It’s not too bad of an offer if you ask me.

He shrugs his shoulders. “If that’s what it will take.”

He really is insistent on wanting to prove himself to me and I’ll admit I actually want to see if he can accomplish this goal of his. It will take a lot of convincing for me to change my mind about him, but I can at least give him a chance. And to get free desserts out of this, maybe it’s not a bad idea.

“Fine,” I state. “I’ll play along with this little game of yours.” Ashton’s eyes light up to my agreement and it looks almost as if I have just made his day. “But don’t think that just because I am doing this makes me not like you any less because it doesn’t.”

Ashton chuckles; his dimples hollowing more than I’ve seen before. “This is only our second meeting, Ruth. I don’t expect you to like me at all at this point…not yet at least.”

He’s getting cocky again.   

I roll my eyes and sigh inwardly. “Now how are we going to go about doing this whole ‘you get to know me, I get to know you’ thing? It’s not like we’ll see each other outside of the bakery.”

“There are ways around that, Ruth,” he says. Why does he keep saying my name? Once is enough; don’t overuse it, dude. “You know, texting, phone calls, the stereotypical meeting at a coffee shop. Plus, won’t you be coming with Serena to keep track on the progress on her wedding cake?”

All three of his suggestions aren’t pleasing to me, but I can’t just back out two minutes after I agreed to all this. “If her fiancé is unable to come with her, then I will.” I’ll most likely be the one coming every time since Calum is more of a pie guy and he dislikes cake with a passion. He even tried to persuade Serena into getting pie instead of cake, but she shot him down in a heartbeat.  

“Then we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other,” his lips curve up into a smile. “Just think of all this as making a new friend. Getting to know each other is the first step and after that, well, that depends on whether or not I’m worth your time.”

“Let’s just take this one step at a time and we’ll see where this goes.” I don’t think I could ever say that someone isn’t worth my time. I may not like Ashton and I literally know nothing about him other than his name, but I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He nods his head in agreement, his curls on his forehead bouncing along with his movement. “Alright, now that that’s settled, should we start off with telling the basics of ourselves?”

As he’s speaking, I catch a glimpse of his silver watch. Without thinking, I grab onto his arm and pull in towards me so that I can see the timepiece better: 4:27.

“Oh shit, no,” I gasp and pull my phone out of my purse which for some reason ended up on silent mode, leaving me with several missed calls and texts from Serena. The latest text saying: “We just left the last venue. We’ll be home around 5:30ish.” Okay, I know I didn’t wake up at the crack ass of dawn, but where did the time go?