Shattered (Continuation of: The Chase) ▹ Ashton Irwin

Chapter Fifty Two

*Brooke's POV*

This is so stupid, this is so stupid. I thought helplessly as I tapped my legs up and down and stared out the window. After spending the night at Jessie's because I was too scared to sleep on my own, I insisted that I get out and actually do something on this Saturday afternoon. The main reason why I was so afraid to sleep on my own, alone in my room, was mostly because I didn't feel any trust in myself at all last night. I kept having this weird feeling that I was going to cave in and do something stupid and along the lines of all the things I'm trying to stop doing, so I assumed that being with a friend would help prevent that.

This morning I had gone home kind of early, just because I felt that I needed to. I thought about a lot of things last night, all of which having to do with Ashton. My sweet, sweet little Ashton whom I've seem to have forgotten just how sweet he actually is. Lately I haven't seen him portray an ounce of sweetness or his usual loving self, which both worries and confuses me on a large extent like how it used to. All I've heard are bad things about him that are probably 100% false, but seen him in action of being a loud, obnoxious, mean, and violent person.

The truth is, though, is that he is nothing like that. I know that I'm one of the few people that are aware of who Ashton actually is as a person, and it sucks that no one else can know it too. It makes me sad to see how he's gone from my little sweetheart to a total jerk to everyone at school, but at the same time we all deserve it. I look back on what they all said and everything that I said, and I realize that we all pushed his buttons way too many times. I don't necessarily blame Ashton from resulting back to how he once was; it just worries me.

I decided to go out today and find something to both entertain and distract myself from everything thats been ruining me lately. They say that finding distractions to your problems can help, but it all depends on what you physically do to create the distraction. Me, being the stupid slut I am, was using this method in a terrible way by doing bad and dumb shit and thinking that it was "helping" me. I'll tell you: getting drunk and being selfish doesn't help you. All it does is make you lose everyone you love.

So, to try and distract myself from thinking about Ashton day in and day out, I decided to spend this afternoon out of my house and conducting in any harmless activity I could think of. When I got home from Jessie's, I took and shower, washed my face and my hair and everything, put on clean clothes and told myself that I can forget about him. I was lying to myself, obviously, but I'm just trying to gain whatever confidence I lost. Which, I've lost a lot of.

So now I'm out my house, trying not to mope around for at least one afternoon. I'm going to try and see how long I can go without aobbing over Ashton or smelling that black hoodie I never gave back to him. I swaer I've smelled or cuddled with that thing at least 50 times this week. I remember that hoodie like it was just yesterday that I was folding it up and setting it down on my desk to give back to him the night after he let me wear it. He let me wear his hoodie the night we first kissed ontop of that old trailer, and I never even gave it back to him. That was literally so long ago, yet that hoodie still smells like him. I can still smell that trace of Ashton, the one scent I miss more than anything. I don't think I'll ever get that hoodie back to him. I'd rather just keep it, as creepy as that sounds.

I've been sitting here for about an hour now, just thinking over and over again of how much I fucked up. I fucked up real bad, and the fact that this is all my fault is the thing that consumes my thoughts every second of every day. The guilty feeling never leaves my stomach; you know, that one sickly feeling that washes over you and makes your stomach feel queezy whenever you think of the mistake you made. I made many, so the guilt has been taken to a whole new level. It sucks. I hate it. But I don't know what to do. My mother told me I should appologize, but everytime I imagine myself being face to face with Ashton, I imagine it to end very badly. I can't get myself to feel as though I would have the confidence to do that, especially after all the things we said to each other. That night was filled with so much hate and betrayal, I don't even want to think about it. I try not to think about it as much as I can.