As It Seems

Ch. 12- Don't Know Why My Heart Begins To Race

I woke up the next morning to the feeling of someone gently rubbing my back.

“Cayley” the person whispered. “We gotta get up.” I immediately recognized the voice as Ashton’s. I opened my eyes slowly, and, not surprisingly, I was correct. In front of me was a very sleepy looking, but adorable Ashton. “Good morning sunshine”, he flashed his beautiful smile at me. For a second, I was confused as to why I was being woken up by him, but I quickly remembered last night and how I must’ve fallen asleep in his bed.

I don’t know what was wrong with me, or why I was thinking all these things about him… adorable, beautiful smile… NO. I’m not supposed to be thinking like that. I just… can’t help it.

“Morning” I said back as I forced myself to sit up. “What time is it?”

“6:30”.

Ugh. The downside to this amazing life… waking up this early every day.

“Whyyyy do we have to be up this early?” I rubbed my eyes and saw makeup on the back of my hand, which means I fell asleep with makeup on. Even more ugh. I hate doing that.

“We gotta start driving to Minneapolis in like an hour. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

His morning voice was really cute, not gonna lie.

I pulled myself out of bed, went to the bathroom and managed to wipe off most of the smeared eyeliner and eye shadow with just a tissue with some water on it. I grabbed my phone and the present off his table and after saying a quick ‘thanks for letting me crash here, see ya later’, headed to my room.

Thankfully, Alainey was already up. I knocked a few times, and she answered immediately.

“Where were you last night?!” Oh. So no hello, no good morning… straight to getting in trouble. Yey.

“I had to crash in Ashton’s room cuz SOMEBODY never got back last night, and that SOMEBODY had the only key!” I shot back.

“You slept in Ashton’s room?!” I could hear the jealousy in her voice.

“What, did you want me to sleep on the floor in the hallway?”

“No. I would’ve let you in as soon as I got back if I knew where you were! But you didn’t bother to tell me!”

“I tried but your phone was dead. Harry was supposed to tell you to text me as soon as you turned your phone back on, but you never texted me. So don’t get mad at me! I tried to stay up for you. So… what, did you not come back last night?”

“I did! I got back at like 1:30. But Harry never told me to text you. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even know he was supposed to tell me.”

“Ash said he’d send him a text when he got back to the room! Which…. Now that I think about it… he probably never did… he just went straight for the pizza…. Right.” I said, looking down in a bit of shame.

Instead of getting mad at me even more, Alainey just laughed. That’s the beautiful thing about best friends… they always understand that misunderstandings and miscommunication and all that stuff… it happens. And my best friend in particular, she’s da bomb. She just let me in our hotel room and we went straight to getting ready for the day.

Three hours later, we were about 2 hours into the bus ride to Minnesota and we decided to stop for a snack at a gas station. The buses pulled over and we walked inside. When I walked over to the candy isle, I was greeted by a familiar face. Cameron, one of the tour managers, who is super awesome, was there.

“Hey, Cay” she smiled at me.

“Hey Cam.”

“So… I heard from a little birdy that you shared a bed with a certain boy last night, whose initials may be A.I.?”

“You… may have heard correct…” I slightly blushed. Oh, crap. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that to her… I probably wasn’t even allowed to sleep in a boy’s room…

“Relax, you’re not in trouble” she giggled. I sighed with relief. “I just wanted to know if it was true.”

“Yeah, I had to crash there since I didn’t have a key and… well, it’s a long story.”

“Oh? Ok, well… I was just wondering. So… if you don’t mind me asking… is there… anything going on between you two?” She asked with a devious smile.

I guess I waited too long to reply with ‘No’, because as soon as I did, she raised her eyebrows as if to say ‘yeah right. Spill all the deets.’

“I mean, he’s cool, and his accents cute and stuff but… Alainey seems to really like him, and I couldn’t hurt her. Plus, I kinda like someone else… Maybe. I don’t know. It’s complicated. Feelings are… complicated.”

She gave me a friendly smile before saying, “That’s ok, I understand. If you ever need someone to talk to, a female other than Alainey, I’m basically the only other one on this tour. Think of me like… an older sister, or the ‘cool aunt’ or whatever! I’m here to help! And I give great boy advice! …Sometimes.”

We both laughed.

“Thanks, Cameron. You’re a pretty great tour manager. More like… tour sister. Yeah, that’s what I’ll call you!”

“Perfect. Love it. Alright, well the boys just got back on their bus, so we gotta roll. Just remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“No purpleing.”

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. Did I even want to know what she meant? I gave her a genuinely confused look.

“Purpleing… you know…” She paused, and looked around, then continued in a softer voice. “Boys are blue, girls are pink…. No making purple! We don’t need any babies on this tour! We’ve already got, like, 9.”

I started cracking up. That’s a good reference, which I will be adding to my vocabulary. Purpling. A better word for baby making.

Nice.

Cameron walked off to check out, and I turned my attention back to the candy in front of me. Just as I reached for a bag of gummy worms, I felt something unexpectedly poke me in my side, which immediately made me jump. I turned to face the source, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that it was Ashton, standing there with a goofy grin on his face.

“Hey stranger, good choice in a healthy breakfast.”

“Ashton you scared the crap outta me! Don’t do that again!” I playfully hit him on his chest.

“Can’t make any promises.” He smiled back cheekily, to which I just rolled my eyes.

That boy has definitely got a thing for making my heart beat faster than I’d ever thought was humanly possible. And I slightly liked it.

~~~

A/N: wow I actually posted 2 chapters within like 2 days whhaaaaat total plot twist. hahaha. I just felt bad not posting for like 3 weeks straight so I figured this would make up for it. it's more of a filler, just a short chapter, but... hope you like it (:

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