Insecure {AUGUST ALSINA}

53.

CATALINA
I got an early start on the day so that I can see Ashton before he leaves. Despite the fact that I just got out of the hospital, I'm having an exceptionally good morning. After vowing to change the way I overreact to things, I decided that if I want to be positive, I have to start acting that way.

I knock on Ashton's door, holding the cookies that I helped make in my hands. I hate having to knock on doors, the paranoia in me always makes me think that if a person takes too long to answer, they're on their living room floor dead.

After another round of more aggressive knocks, I hear him unlocking and opening the door.

"Hello." I beam at him with a smile on my face.

"Hey." He doesn't reciprocate the same energy as he lazily opens his door to let me in.

That's unusual. Typically, he's the one who's bubbly and happy to see me: it's the reason I became bubbly and happy to see him all the time. When a person is always ecstatic, it's not hard to tell when something is upsetting them.

"Uhm...okay?" I shuffle behind him, awkwardly holding the plate in my hands. "I bought you cookies. I didn't actually buy them, Catarina made them, but they're good."

"Thank you." He says, but he doesn't smile like he normally would.

I know people don't smile about every little thing, but he isn't one of those people. He smiles at me for any little reason.

"Okay. Are you mad at me or something?"

"No, I'm not mad at you." He looks at me when he says it, so I'm assuming it's the truth.

"Oh....okay."

We sit in an abnormal, unusual silence for about two minutes. He moves around things in the kitchen to prevent from having to talk to me, and I sit at the counter, silently growing frustrated until he finally speaks.

"That guy—I don't know his name, I didn't ask— wants me to tell you that he's sorry. I forgot to say it yesterday. Sorry." He informs me as he moves around the jars on his counter so that he can appear to not care as much as he actually does.

"What guy?" I raise an annoyed eyebrow.

I'm not agitated with him, but more at the fact that he waited two minutes just to say that. Maybe it's because he didn't want me to get angry with him like I do so quickly with everyone else, but after thinking about for a minute, he's decided that he doesn't care.

"I don't know his name, but I think you know who."

"Oh..." August. Of course he has the audacity to talk to him. I close my eyes to recollect myself, I don't want to get mad at him while I'm trying to talk to Ashton. I can't believe he'd actually speak to him....why would he— okay...it doesn't matter. That's not what's important.

"I'm really not mad, but I just want to know. I don't want to ask, because I don't want to be that person, but I have to. Do you two have a 'thing'?"

"What? No, of course not." I answer him so quickly that I don't even blink. "I wouldn't do that. It's not a thing how you think. It's more of me hating him and him wanting me to stop hating him. Nothing else."

"Oh, why does he want you to stop?"

"What?"

"Why does he care if you hate him or not?"

I could say I don't know, but then I'd be lying—and that's the last thing I want to do. I don't want to tell him the real reason August cares about me so much to the point where he'd go as far as talking to my boyfriend is because he says he loves me, but I have to. If I don't want to lie, and I don't want him to be able to tell that I'm lying, I have to. Why should I lie? If I do then I'll make it seem like I have something to hide. Lying to him will only make me lose him, and if I lose him, I can't let it be because of August.