We're Getting There // A.I

Chapter 18 // The Sacred Masculine

^My friend who helps me get my ass into gear and write

I'm so sorry i haven't updated sooner I just feel like I haven't had time since school started back, but I still love this story and even if I don't update for awhile please know I have every intention of finishing it

Also this chapter switches point of view a lot, sorry if it's confusing!

~*~

July 2 : 132 days till due

~Ashton~

Hot and uncomfortable.

I am incredibly hot and uncomfortable, stuffed in a small room with fifteen pregnant ladies and awkwardly wet from the pouring summer rain outside. My clothes cling to my chest and my thighs, and I try to scoot my whicker chair away from Geraldine, the pregnantist pregnant lady I'd ever seen who's giving me bedroom eyes. I think she said she was having triplets, but I missed orientation when I showed up late.

"So..."

I look up, and Patricia has her mouth open, half way through forming a sentence.

I watch as her eyes look around the crowd in front of her; pregnant women, and a single, young man with wet hair and wet clothes, holding a duck shaped umbrella close to his chest and looking devotedly up at her.

"I'm glad we could all come today..." she says, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye and knitting her eyebrows together.

"...and I'm so overjoyed to see every one of your...glowing, faces" Patricia smiles at the end to make up for the lack of happiness in the sentence.

The pregnant ladies all shift around me, some of them eyeing me like I'm a big, fat, donut, but I try to ignore them and watch as Patricia looks around for Charlie.

She's not here, I want to say, but I don't. I wait for her to realise I'm here alone.

~*~

~Charlie~

Calum is polite, courteous, nice, understanding, sensible, neat, and painfully, boring.

I watch him fold and refold his napkin 40 times before he thinks it's perfect, and then he lays the second napkin on his lap to stop any food falling on his immaculate pants.

I clear my throat and he looks up from straightening his silverware.

"So, are you going to talk to me or do you need to wipe down the table first?" I ask, one hand out of sight on my stomach, almost impossible to hide.

Calum gives me a brief laugh, flashing white teeth before smiling fondly down at his plate.

"I'm really happy you came tonight" he grins at me, his eyes crinkled around the edges.

"I'm happy I came tonight" I lie.

Today, this morning, I woke up and Ashton was asleep in my bed with me, except knowing he hadn't really been invited in, he slept with his head down by the footboard, upside down. I had woken him up by tickling his feet, but then he'd floundered in his sleep and banged his head against the end of the bed. After that it had been an awkward fumbling of proper clothes and a silent breakfast, before we both had to work and parted ways with a stiff kiss on the cheek.

Needless to say, unspoken words hung between us, making the things we did say shallow and meaningless. Ashton looked like he was five years old, and I felt like I was 100.