45" ▪︎ a.i.

4"

Sunday evening. 

My phone buzzed. 

My heart still skipped a beat every time, hoping it was Ashton. We had been texting a lot since our hike. It became so natural so quickly, almost scaring me. I had been working my usual shifts and started reading a lot about concert photography, trying to get the theory in. 

I was a bit scared because I've literally never done anything like this before and I don't know how they would act if there came only bad pictures out of it. But I had to start somewhere.

 That's what I was telling myself every day since our hike. I was a beginner, I was aware of it, and I had to practice. Simple as that. But still...I was nervous.

I picked up my phone and immediately felt myself smile when I saw the notification from Twitter. I tried to control myself and not grin like a love drunk fool, but I was just happy, I guess. Maybe star struck, we'll see about that. 

He had tweeted a picture of him drumming in his own rehearsal room at home and added that the band would start rehearsals on Monday. I liked and retweeted it, not caring if it was too fast and looked suspicious. 

Seconds later my phone buzzed again, this time with a WhatsApp notification. I opened it and it was Ashton.

"Hey! You were quick on twitter, still got the notifs on? ;P Wanted to tell you about rehearsal, I talked to the boys, they don't mind and want to meet you. Maybe before Tuesday if that's alright with you? Just get to know each other before you'll spend the whole day seeing us messing up our own songs. I mean, I don't mind, but Luke's ego...damn. Jk, I was thinking about dinner on Monday? xx Ash"

Those little "xx" at the end of every text still got my heart beating even faster. I quickly replied and then tried to distract myself. The nervousness was building up now. But not because of photography. 

Taking pictures seemed like an easy task, now that I knew I would be meeting all of them together tomorrow evening. The only thing separating us was my morning shift and a sleepless night. I got ready for bed to at least attempt to get some sleep. An hour later I found myself with my phone in my hand, scrolling through twitter and Instagram. 

I wasn't able to keep up with everything like I used to. I stopped following everyone back to keep my timeline somewhat clean. I tried to just talk to the people I used to talk to anyway. They asked about Ashton once but stopped soon, when they got the hint, I wouldn't talk about him. It seemed so weird. 

I had always thought if I ever met him, I would be quick to take to Twitter and report about every word, every gesture, every expression. But now that it actually seemed like we became friends (?), I didn't want to anymore. 

I read a few of the theories, who I was and why we were seen together. But after a while I got tired of it. They had found the picture from the record store relatively quickly but hadn't been able to discover why I was in it. 

I switched to Instagram. I had looked through the pictures from our hike and edited most of them. I decided to post a few, mostly without Ashton except one. I had shown him those and he was fine with them being online. It wasn't anything wild, just the back of his head with the sunset but fans would go crazy about it, I would have...I still do.

I captioned it with a simple "adventures.", added the usual hashtags and stopped, my finger hovering over the tags button. Damn it, I muttered to myself and tagged Ashton. 

His fans would find out anyway, it'd be all over social media by the next morning and they knew we were together that day anyway. I posted the pictures and quickly likes piled up. It was weird. Before that day, I had maximum 50/60 likes and now it were thousands.

"Why are you still up? Don't you have the morning shift tomorrow? Go to sleep."

Ashton.

"You're up as well and you have rehearsal tomorrow. I just stand there and keep an eye on vinyls no one wants to buy. And I can't sleep."

"I literally drum in my sleep, I'll be fine, nothing coffee can't fix. Why can't you sleep?"

"too nervous I guess"

"aww you don't have to, the vinyls won't do anything differently 😉"

"idiot"

"but for real, you don't have to. They are so easy to be around and if they give you a hard time, I'll give them one. You'll be fine."

"yeah I guess so."

"now go to sleep, one of us has to be functioning."

"I'll try, good night 😊"

"sweet dreams xx" 

The next morning, I woke up early, no surprise. I somehow got through my shift at the store, editing pictures, taking new ones to post on the stores page. At least it got some publicity out of it. But there's no point in it if the store is still empty. I got home around 2pm, giving me enough time to freak out about the evening which is why I had texted Sav to come over. She should be on her way by now. 

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short one, i know. next one is getting ready and the dinner, can't wait :D