not in the same way • ashton irwin

1. The Long Way Home

My eyes were basically glued to the clock as I watched the minutes tick by hoping that history would end soon. I glanced up at the desk three rows in front of me. There sat my best friend Juliette. We've been friends since basically forever and I considered her my sister, which made the fact that she sat all the way across the class slightly hurtful. It's probably good for the rest of the class that we were separated though, because in every other class that we sat beside each other in we disrupted everyone and teachers hated us. That didn't change the fact that it still sucked that she was at the front of the class talking to her stoner friends and I was stuck at the back by myself doodling one single name in my notebook.

Not just any name though, it was the name of Juliette's brother, Ashton Irwin. I'd known him for as long as I had known Juliette, so basically all my life, but as we got older he got hotter and I got hornier. It was such a cliche and I hated myself for it. I also hated that literally every girl in the school wanted him and pretended to me me or Juliette's friend to get to him.

They were all jealous that I could even talk to him and that he actually gave me attention, let alone go home in his car, but it wasn't like that between us. While I might have spent my classes and all my free time daydreaming about what it would be like for me to sneak into his bedroom late at night and for him to slam me into the wall and kiss me like I had never been kissed before, I had never acted on those feelings. Plus as he got older he moved into the garage so even if I wanted to I couldn't get down there without being loud and more importantly I would never do that to Juliette because I cared most about our friendship.

Juliette was honestly the reason that I never acted on my feelings because she meant so much to me, well that and the fact that he would never go for a girl like me. I just wasn't his type, I was nothing like the hoes he walked the halls with. The tall skinny blonde bitches that every guy wanted. I'm the furthest thing from that.

I'm a slightly chubby, nerdy, light skin black girl who stuttered over anything she ever said to Ashton. What would Ashton ever want with me? Maybe for me to do his homework. He deserves someone prettier, someone smarter, someone funnier, someone that was overall just better than I was. He deserved the world. So I was left in my classroom daydreaming about what we could be even though I knew we never could be anything, and that thought truly broke my heart.

I shook my head, I knew I was being delirious. I'm sure he would find a nice girl and I would find a nice guy and in the end we'll both be fine and be on our separate ways. When I looked back up the clock a surprising amount of time had passed. Thinking about Ashton always did that to me.

I glanced back over to Juliette and see her looking back at me. I smiled at her and motioned towards the clock signalling the five minutes left in class, she nodded back at me understanding exactly what I wanted to do. Quickly she got up asking Ms. Opal if she could go to the washroom and a minute later I did the same, bringing my bag along with me. This is our foolproof way of getting out of class early. We didn't do it every day or else Mrs. Opal would become suspicious, but most of the time when we were going to her house after school we tried to sneak it in.

"That class is actually the worst. Ms. Bitch makes me want to shoot myself in the head," said Juliette. I giggled, unlike her I never had the balls to say stuff like that about my teachers, even if they were the absolute worst. Many people would call me kind of a suck up, but hey I was getting good grades and had a best friend who didn't give a fuck so I didnt care.

As we walked through the halls we quickly made our way to her locker to pick up her weed and textbooks. Not paying attention I bump into someone and quickly apologized, my cheeks getting red and flustered.

When I look up and meet the person's eyes I realize that it's actually Ashton and for some unknown reason my first reaction is to giggle. "Sorry Ashton I didn't see you there," I say borderline shyly even though I've known him for 9 years of my life. At this point I feel like Ashton liked me, but not in the same way that I liked him.