A Certain Romance || Ashton Irwin

Cake

Since opening the name-assigned envelope and revealing the contents inside to myself, I had sat at my desk fumbling with the God awful pink pocket knife Ashton had "gifted" to me while I was carefully staring at the photo of my mother with four strangers. It had come across my mind to hang up the photo on the wall and do some knife throwing at it, but I knew very well that my aim would be way off and I would end up making the knife go all the way downstairs and hitting Ashton square in the eye. That thought completely left my mind once my eyes directed towards the note that came with the photo. I knew no one with the initials "H.H." and I didn't think my mother did either. So right off hand I was met with another dead end if I wanted answers behind any of this.

"Finally taking a liking to that knife, are you?" Ashton said lowly.

Startled, I dropped the knife to the flat top surface of my desk and swiveling around in my desk chair. Ashton was in mid-wipe of removing sweat from his forehead with his forearm. It was day 2 of clean up and it seemed to be going pretty sweaty. As many times as I had seen his bare torso, this moment was just a little bit better than those before. The sunlight must've shone into my bedroom at the correct contrast or my eyesight had significantly heightened with approval of what was before me. Whatever it was, I loved it!

"Forgive me if I'm incorrect but I think knocking on doors is kind of a thing in the 21st century." I accidentally snapped. Sighing, I tossed the knife in one of the drawers of my desk. I mumbled out an apology.

"It's funny because your door was open. Plus, no one will master the art of knocking until, maybe, the 23rd century." Ashton peered over my shoulders. "Doing some scrap booking?"

I hated having him this close to me with his bare chest pressed against my back as if we were emotionally and physically closer than we were letting on this entire time.

"If that's what girls my age do, then, yes, I'm scrap booking." I sighed, turning back to the desk to gather the photo and the note so I could stash them away once again. I mean, playing detective looked fun on those television shows, but, really, other things appealed to girls my age. Sleep and making boys cry were two prime examples.

"Whoa!" Ashton gasped as he snatched the photograph away from me. "Who's this with Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee?"

"Why are you in my bedroom?" The real question that needed to be answered.

"Right," Ashton tossed the picture on my desk. "A special delivery for Sage Sirois is downstairs."

"I'm 17 and sassy, not 47 and fraught! Male strippers do not appeal to me because I am not going through a mid-life crisis."

"Sage..." Ashton muttered with his face full of disgust. "It's Luke...he has a cake..."

"Okay that's great, but who said I wanted to see him?"

"He has a cake. He said you love cake..."

I loved cake so much. Luke knew me too well. I wouldn't deny cake.

I hesitated for a minute because that cake could be poisoned. It was just one of those days where I was paranoid the whole world was out to get me with poison because I didn't confess all of my sins in confession last week. That was definitely it. Religion had a way of making you feel guilty even when it wasn't around.

At the bottom of the stairs stood Luke holding a plate of strawberry cake, looking nervous as ever and on the verge of tears. He also looked like his eyes were begging him for more sleep, but I knew Luke well enough to know that anxiety always got the best of Luke.

"You look pretty today, Sage." He brushed my bangs to the side, pulling them from my eyelashes, making my eyes visible. "I missed you in mass this morning. It's not the same without you."