Burn ▹ Ashton Irwin

twenty nine

A few quiet days passed after the crazieness of Thursday night. In a few ways I still feel like I'm recovering from our second robbery stunt of the season; I was most confused over the fact that Ashton is just so manipulative, that he can convince a guy to not tell a soul when we steal 800 dollars from his store. We also kind of lucked out on that one, since the cashier was new to the job and probably didn't know what to do, but still. Either way, I belive the only reason why no police officers have come pounding on Luke's front door is because Ashton just scares people too much to do anything.

It's been almost a week since Ashton and I found Luke, and I think the others are still a little shocked he's actually alive and well. They've been catching up with each other everyday, and I've gotten to learn a lot about what his life was like after he left New York last year. I learned a lot about what the rehab life was like from what Luke has told me so far. Rehab seemed kind of difficult, by the way Luke explained it. He's told me a few stories about relapses and how much they fucking suck, and all I could really do was nod my head and feel kind of bad for him. I mean, come on. He's only 18 years old and that's what he's had to spend his youth doing. Getting addicted, getting over it, and facing a lot of bumps in the road on the way.

Calum and Michael seemed really interested in Luke's rehab stories, as did I. But Ashton never said anything about it. He never had a comment, a question, or a response to what Luke would tell us. Over the past 3 days, with every new story Luke would share while we all sat on the couch, Ashton never said a word. He just held my hand and whispered in my ear from time to time, asking if we could go into the other room and cuddle or something. It was hard to say yes, because Luke's stories really were interesting.

"...Do you ever have anything to eat besides toast?" Michael was saying to Luke, who stood across from us at the kitchen counter. It was a simple Sunday morning, around 10:00 AM, and the four of us have been awake and talking for about an hour. Everyone in the house was awake except for Ashton (he was still in our room. His snores woke me up again).

Luke frowned and glanced down at the buttered toast on his plate. "I like toast. What's so bad about that?"

"But you always eat it," Michael said. "It pisses me off."

"Michael. It's toast."

"So?"

"It's toast."

"At least put some jam on it!" Michael groaned, walking over to the refridgerator and pulling out a full jar of strawberry jelly. "Use this."

"No. I like the butter." Luke shook his head, blocking Michael off from his plate. Michael already had a knife in his hand and was ready to smear jelly on his food. "Michael back off!"

"Chill. It's just toast." Calum laughed from behind me, where he sat ontop of the counter near the sink. I kind of had to laugh too; it was just toast, after all.

"You guys are funny." I chuckled. I remembered to cover my hand over my mouth since it was full of my own breakfast (toast as well, actually). Ashton never does that - if he's in one of his rambunctious moods then he just speaks freely, even if his mouth if completely full of food. Somehow I find it cute, but everything Ashton does nowadays is cute.

"Michael's not funny. He's annoying," Luke said, sliding over to my side of the counter. "Even all this time later he's still annoying."

"I know," Michael shrugged, digging a spoon into the jelly jar to eat by itself. "What can ya do."

Luke opened his mouth to say something back, but everything in the kitchen came to a stop when the guest room door was shoved open and hit the wall beside it. All of our heads turned to see Ashton marching his way into the main room, his arms held out wide with an excited look on his face. He was actually clothed this time, believe it or not. He was dressed in a plain black T-shirt with a pair of plaid pajama pants hanging loosely from his hips. Not gonna lie, I kind of wanted him to burst into the room in just his underwear and socks again so I could stare at his butt like I usually do.