Meet You There | Calum Hood

21

A knock on the door surprised Calum. He shot a look over to the clock on the hotel room bedside table and saw that it was after one  in the morning. Who would be at his door, now?

He approached the door in question and glanced through the peep hole, he was a bit confused when he saw Ashton looming just on the other side. His best friend had been withdrawn, basically ignored him all day and he had been concerned about him since the airport.

"Ash?" He asked as he swung the door open, the dark haired man moving immediately through the door way and taking a seat in the chair at the room's desk.

"What's going on?" Calum asked when Ashton failed to reply, his face falling into his hands, his elbows propped against the cheap wood.

"I fucked up, Cal." He said finally.

Calum frowned at his tone. His usually cheery and positive friend was crushed and he still wasn't exactly sure of the cause, though based on the day's events he had a strong hypothesis.

"Is this about why Kay didn't come to the airport?" He asked softly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed and watching Ashton for his reply.

"Yeah."

Calum didn't want to pry but he assumed since Ashton was here, in his hotel room at this late hour, after their incredibly exhausting day, that he wanted to talk about it.

"So, what happened?"

"Everything was fine, great even, last night. I mean, you saw us, it was normal. We were completely and totally fine at Luke's."

Calum nodded and listened to his friend, trying to understand where things had gone so far south that Kay hadn't even wanted to say goodbye the next morning.

"So, we get home and I made a comment about how Holland seemed like a nice girl."

Calum's curiosity was piqued at the mention of his girlfriend. What did Holland have to do with this?

"Kay didn't like Holland?" He asked, already on edge and feeling an extreme need to protect Holland from anything bad that had been said.

"No, no. Quite the opposite actually. I said that she seemed nice and Kay said 'Yeah, she seemed sweet, I almost wanted to tell her to run.'"

"What?" Calum said, his tone doing absolutely nothing to hide his annoyance.

"That's what I said!" Ashton told him, his voice raising in volume as he stood and began to pace.

"And?" Calum asked, trying really hard to not jump to judgement.

"And she went off on this whole tangent of how she wished someone would have warned her how hard it would be. How lonely it gets when I'm gone. How I'm always busy even when we are in the same place at the same time. She said that she loved me but that it wasn't easy to do so and that led to this whole spiraling argument that ended with us screaming at each other, me telling her that if it was so hard to be with me the door was right there and her saying she thinks we could use some time apart."

"What?"

Ashton stopped his pacing and his eyes met Calum, the glossy sheen on them not going unnoticed.