The Drummer || a.i [completed]

70 - not gonna let you walk away

without saying you're sorry

People just want information. They want to know things. They hoard intel on all kinds of things, and it seemed like I became a new source of that kind of information.

As I've made new friends and distanced myself from my old ones, these new friends have asked me all sorts of questions. What upset me, though, was that the majority of these questions were not about me.

They want to know things about Ashton, Luke, all the people I've been trying to get away from. I guess there's no getting away from people who were that important to me.

After a while it became monotonous. The same old people would ask the same old questions and I'd give the same old vague, non-answers. There was no way I'd tell these people stuff about my friends. I wouldn't betray them like that.

All I wanted was space, not to leave them altogether.

Soon, prom was just around the corner, and I had no idea what I was doing. I knew what I wanted to do, but I had to make a decision first.

So, here I was, sitting with Fred on a wall and trying to decide. He'd shown me his favourite hangout place, knowing I'd been having a tough time recently.

"Hey, for the record, I'm glad you've been able to hang out with us the past couple weeks," he said as we watched the skaters. Fred had brought his board, but he'd assured me that he wasn't any good - which I didn't believe for one second.

I smiled at his comment, but didn't look at him. "Thanks, Fred. That means a lot. I'm sorry," I muttered.

"For what?" He asked.

I sighed and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He was staring down at his shoes, swinging them around and bouncing the backs of them against the wall.

"I'm sorry that I didn't meet you guys earlier. I think it would have saved me and most of my other friends a lot of pain if I'd met you, Jason, Nick and Ava last year, and just became friends with you," I said.

"You make it sound like we're some kind of backup choice," he muttered, his voice defensive.

My eyes widened. "No! I didn't mean it like that. I would have had an amazing year with you guys," I sighed and ran a hand through my hair in exasperation.

"Octavia, we have our problems too. Every group of friends has divisions, you just need to work through them to strengthen yourselves."

"What do you mean? What are the problems with you guys?" I asked, although I had a pretty good idea of what it involved.

He smiled. "How about I tell you my problems if you tell me yours?"

I trained my eyes on one skater. She was short, but absolutely awesome. She was doing all kinds of tricks, and it almost seemed like she was flying.

"Fine. Honestly, I have multiple problems. And, as you know, I ran away from them. I'm scared, Fred. I know Calum has feelings for me, and I could tell that eventually he was going to come out and tell me. I'm not ready for that. I only recently broke up with Ashton, and that hurt too much. I'm still wounded from it, and that's another problem of mine. If I'd stuck around with Cassy and the gang, I would have had to see Ashton more times than would have felt okay. I couldn't handle the pressure, and I know most of it was because I overthought it, you don't have to point that out for me, but it was still just too much for me," I explained. My breathing had sped up as I spoke, and I could feel the familiar choking feeling in my throat warning me that I was close to sobbing.