Thantophobia • A.I

Everything Is A Okay

Song of the chapter: A Party Song - All Time Low

Sticking my tongue out at Leo as he sped down the road after dropping me home, I pushed open our blue front door and kicked off my black vans. The house was strangely quiet, lacking the usual screaming and door slamming that happened most evenings, and as I moved further down the hallway I thought I heard laughter from the dining room.

Confused but ultimately curious, I slowly entered the room and stopped dead in my tracks as I saw my parents listening intently to a blonde woman talk, gesturing elaborately with her hands, her words making the young girl next to her groan in embarrassment and the boy with brown curly hair sat next to her giggle in amusement.

But my eyes scanned straight over them, landing on the boy who I had been running into and desperately attempting to figure out all week; the boy who I now recognized as Ashton. His eyes were moving around the room, taking in every detail and when his eyes suddenly narrowed and he angrily sighed, I followed his gaze and bit my lip as I stared at the framed photo hanging on the wall. It was taken on my birthday, the year that Ashton had befriended me and was a candid picture of the two of us racing along the beach towards the cake, laughing as we sprinted through the sand.

"Holly, you're finally here!" My mother's voice announced my presence to everyone in the room as their eyes all snapped to me and I forced a smile that I'm sure looked like a grimace.

"Oh wow, look how much you've grown!" The woman - who I could now place as Anne - gushed as she beamed at me.

"You remember the Irwins don't you Holly?" Mum questioned.

"Of course." I muttered, carefully sitting down as my words were met with an angry laugh from the blonde haired boy sitting directly across from me.

The conversation began to flow around the table as I stared at the table in front of me and hid from reality by remembering the conversation I'd had with Leo that afternoon.

"Leo, that guy at the car shop was Ashton." The words spilled out of my mouth as soon as we made it through the doors of Rosie's Diner. I had spent the drive from the car shop to here in complete silence as my brain tried desperately to make sense of everything, and Leo had been waiting for me to tell him what was wrong. He wouldn't push me to tell him - it was how we worked. I didn't bug him about coming home and he let me be when I got lost in my thoughts.

"Wait, he was Ashton? The one that moved to Australia?" His eyes widened and he drew in a sharp breath as he finally connected the dots.

"I knew he looked familiar."

I sighed, still wondering how I didn't recognise my childhood best friend, and scanned the familiar diner. This was the cafe where we went for our catch ups - Leo refused to come home even if our parents were out and I refused to eat food in the car shop, so we compromised with Rosie's Diner.

It was the only cafe our town really had apart from Costa, and it served the best burgers I had ever had. Most people who passed through were put off by the tacky neon sign outside and the plastic booths, but all the locals came here.

"He hates me. He really truly hates me now and I don't know how to fix it." I murmured, the realization that I had messed up the best friendship I had ever had suddenly hitting me, and I didn't know what to do, or how to get him to talk to me.

"Things can always be fixed Hol, they just might take a bit of work." Leo smiled, his wise words ruined as he winked at me and started flirting with the waitress, who had just placed our food on the table.