youngblood | a.i.

fifty six || you get drunk and call about a hundred times

friday, november 6th

Once the sun had finally set, I crawled back in my window. Like so many times before, I just used it as a break from the world around me. The whole world could keep spinning but when I sat on the roof, everything went quiet. It was peaceful for the first time in a while, no one barging in and interrupting me like the previous times.

When I crawled back through the window, I immediately got a flash of hot air from the temperature change from the cold outside to the warm inside. I guess I'd been out there for so long that I'd gotten used to the outside temperature. I pulled the hoodie up over my head, immediately feeling a rush of relief from the heat. I turned on my TV, climbing on top of my covers in shorts and a sports bra.

I flicked to my most recent episode of Criminal Minds, feeling a wave of guilt flash over me as I remembered all the times Ashton and I had laid on the couch of the lake house watching it.

I shook myself out of it, clicking out of the show and turning on a random movie with no intention of paying attention anyways. I threw the remote down, rolling onto my side to grab my phone from the bedside table.

I distracted myself with anything I could find, avoiding my photos where all the memories of Ashton and I would have been. I didn't want to delete them, because I didn't want to give up yet.

As everything unraveled, I was slowly realizing he was one of the only people I could trust. No one understood me like him and he continued to try to prove himself to me to make sure I knew that.

My mind started falling to everything he had ever done, and there were so many goods outweighing the bad. There were so many simple moments looking back that I realized was his way of showing he cared- the stupid nicknames, the taking me to the lake, the buying me food even when I said I wasn't hungry, the calling me drunk instead of anyone else, the pushing me away to protect me, the stopping himself for my own good, the trying to make me breakfast, the dancing around the kitchen, the homecoming proposal, the support at games, the noticing the small things, the dancing at homecoming even though he didn't want to, the slow dancing in his room, the satellite, the music, the cassette, the note, the pinky promises.

My mind stopped on the cassette, remembering the walkman he had given me with it in it. I got up from the bed, wandering over towards my desk where I knew it was. I pulled it out of the drawer, setting it down and just looking at it.

× × ×

I lolled my head over to him as I awaited the start of the next song, listening carefully for the opening beats.

"You're gonna have to give me a cassette one day so I can make you one," I smiled over to him.

"Okay," he nodded back, sounding more excited than I was getting mine.

× × ×

His cassette would be nowhere near as happy as mine was but my emotions got the best of me as I decided to sit down and write out the tracklist, all my emotions spilling onto that paper.

After almost 30 minutes of picking and choosing, I finally had 16 songs- just like the date we first kissed.

I'd completely lost myself in the music and the lyrics, random scribbles across the paper from all my random thoughts being spilled from my mind.

I looked to my phone, noticing almost 40 minutes had passed. I looked through my notifications that I had been ignoring, noticing one from his contact.

ashton

are you really not coming?

I sighed, knowing I didn't have the mental strength to deal with any of it tonight. If I was going to try to trust him again, I needed time to process what I was truly doing.