A Certain Romance || Ashton Irwin

Changes

"You looked really cute this morning in that cheer meeting." Michael said a few octaves higher than his normal voice, scrunching his face while twirling his nonexistent long hair.

"What about me?" Luke spoke. "Did I look cute at football practice?"

"Wait..." I finished swallowing my food before speaking. "So Calum cheated on Elizabeth with her sister?"

Michael and Luke nodded. I knew Michael enjoyed locker room talk because he was basically getting the inside scoop on all of those guy's fucked up lives without having to try. One of the linebackers thought he contracted genital herpes from a college girl, Calum was hooking up with a woman who probably didn't care about him, another guy was afraid his dad was going to find out he was hooking up with his step-mom, and someone else was trying to get the team to buy drugs. Fucked up problems that the outside world didn't believe us private-schoolers to have. It should be a known fact that with crazy restrictions, we'd always end up doing things a billion times worse than expected because we had the simple need to rebel in high school and feel free.

"Isn't her sister like 30-years-old?"

"Yeah," Michael threw his sandwich on his lunch tray. "Funny thing is, Calum doesn't give a shit."

"Calum doesn't give a shit about what?" Ashton, uninvited, slid into the spot next to me. The three of us giving him a once over before returning to conversation.

"How did things go with Kay yesterday?" Luke tossed a fry at Michael's head.

"I was going to talk to her, but I chickened out." He slammed his hands on the table. "I literally grabbed the pizza boxes and threw money at her then slammed the door in her face because I couldn't breathe!"

"Is Michael in love?" Ashton sang. Michael blushed, shaking his head as we all continued to ignore Ashton.

"I hate myself so much!" He tangled his fingers in his hair. If he gripped too hard he'd end up losing to patches of hair on either side of his head. His hair looked very sensitive these days from bleaching it too often. "I gave her even more of a reason to hate me."

That's when I spotted Kay entering the cafeteria, looking around for a familiar face, "Kay! Come sit!"

At first she looked behind herself because she wasn't sure if I was actually talking to her. I waved her over and she took her time getting to the table. "Um, hey guys."

"Take a seat next to Michael, lets have a nice little lunch together." I smiled up at Kay.

"Oh, I was gonna go sit with Callista." Kay pointed to the girl sitting alone two tables over who was picking at the dead ends of her hair with earphones blocking out the unbearable student noise with whatever music she was listening to. Callista and Kay were always together. Their classes had been the same since freshman year, they were in the video game club together, they always hung out when they were free; where one was, the other was sure to be lingering around somewhere.

"Invite her over." Luke just wanted to add to the amount of people who would possibly give him attention that he craved. Luke had a fascination with feeling wanted and loved, no matter who made him feel that way. He once sat down with an elderly man outside a gas station and offered the man fifty bucks to tell him that his hair looked nice and that he was cute.

"O-okay..." Kay set her tray down, hesitantly walking to Callista.

There wasn't much to the conversation with Kay and Callista, solely a few nods and a couple of words shared between them then they were making their way to the table.

"Are you going to game on Friday?" Luke leaned on the table to get a better look at Kay and Callista who were sitting to his left.

I was actually offended that no one besides Ashton ever wanted to sit next to me. I always ended up sitting by myself on the opposite side of the table while everyone crammed themselves on Michael and Luke's side. Did I smell? Or did Michael and Luke spray me with people repellent every day that they and Ashton were immune to?