MAGNETIC [H.S.]

41. did we look like lovers?

songs: one for each section :)
partners in crime - finneas
all i wanted - paramore

The cold had officially chilled New York City. Ice and slush crunched under my shoes as I walked down the sidewalk, my ears were red even under the beanie on my head. I was missing my shaggy, overgrown hair. It provided extra warmth in the winters here.

The cold didn't slow this city down a bit, everyone was still piling out of the subway and filling the sidewalks with the same uninterested facial expressions that they donned every season. Consistency was key in this city. I moved with them down the block, following a route I was all too familiar with. Niall had found Hal's Deli when we first moved here, a tiny Jewish deli with the best soup I've ever eaten. Well worth the walk.

The smell of menthol cigarettes moved past my nostrils as I crossed the street and for those few moments that smoke filled my mind with memories of Ashton. Ashton leaned against dirty walls or sitting on curbs with a smile on her face and a smokey haze around her head. Ashton was driving that black beetle with her hand out the window, flicking ash and singing along to the playlists while the Florida sun warmed her face. The way she'd brush her teeth like four times a day to get the taste out, and an extra time if I came over. The hit of cigarette always lingered though, like a dirty little secret.

I walked the last few steps to the door of the deli and flinched when I heard police sirens pass. My breath hitched as her face flashed through my head again, pressed to the ground while she defended me. It wasn't the first time that I'd seen her features lit with red and blue lights, but I hoped to god it would be the last.

My body moved through the diner and took my number and walked to the back of the line, but my mind was somewhere else. My mind was back in Florida, on a sticky hot night in July, the summer after graduation. Ashton was drunk as hell, Zayn had taught her how to take shots like a champ. Louis was so fucked up you could barely see the color of his eyes, Niall had just pickpocketed hundreds of dollars off of old men outside a strip club, Zayn was a giggling mess from keeping up with Ashton, I was at least three joints in, and Liam was getting arrested in an alley.

Zayn had taken off in our car and Niall had pulled Louis into a shop to hide him. Which left me and a very drunk Ashton hiding behind dumpsters while they cuffed her brother. She was so scared and overwhelmed that when they tossed him over the hood of the car to cuff him she threw up on herself. "Fucking christ, Ashton!" I remember whispering at her as I shushed her and pulled her hair back away from her face.

She was so drunk that she never remembered that night, but I got her home and snuck us up to her bedroom. She laid in the shower and washed the vomit out of her hair while I washed her clothes out in the sink. She fell asleep that night practically on top of me while I rolled the ends of her hair dry ass, bleached hair through my fingertips, and texted the boys and made sure they had made it somewhere safe. By the morning Ashton didn't remember a thing, and that afternoon Liam was back at home as if nothing happened.