17 Nights {c.h.}

+two+

The Second Day

I was woken up by the murmuring of low voices, one coming from the human I was leaning on.

“How long has she been here?” One voice asked from across the room. I adjusted my grip on Calum’s hand, tightening my fingers around his before nuzzling my forehead deeper into the person’s shoulder.

“Just since yesterday, but she flew all the way from California. She’s still trying to adjust to the time change.” I believed it to be Mali who spoke next, stroking my hair in a comforting way. “She left her class and had to make it to two different airports before she could even get a plane ticket.”

“She really loves him.” A masculine voice commented, which I took as my signal to “wake up”.

“Hmm?” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. “What’s going on?” I ran my hands down my face and pushed my hair out of my eyes before they wandered to the group standing on the other side of the bed.

“Bella.” Aubrey acknowledged, her eyes rimmed with red as she crossed the room in long strides before hugging me.

“Hi Aubs.” I yawned, my voice still raspy from waking up from moments earlier.

A wave of people eventually drifted to where Mali and I sat next to Calum, occasionally glancing in his direction while we conversed. I hadn’t realized we were missing a few people until we were lounging around the room.

“Where are Ash and Luke?”

“Ash is on his way back from New York right now. He got a good job at a tattoo shop, and he’s driving now. Luke’s coming back from a family trip to Europe tomorrow. I’m going to call him when he gets back home.” Aubrey clarified.”Oh, okay.” I nodded, pushing Calum’s hair away from where it had fallen over his eyelids.

After an hour everyone else had gone down to the cafeteria, excluding Michael and myself. I was subconsciously biting my lip and playing with a loose thread on Calum’s blanket. Michael must have sensed my unease because he came and sat on the arm of my chair and slung his arm over my shoulders.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry about Cal. He’ll pull through, he always does.” I couldn’t tell if he was trying to console me or himself, but I graciously accepted his comment anyway.

We sat in silence for a decent amount of time before I spoke again.

“How did you guys meet?” I asked, looking at the brown-and-red haired boy.

“Ash actually introduced us,. I got into some trouble back home in Aus, so my parents sent me here because her sister lived here and all that shit. She lived in the house next to Ash and Aub, so that’s how I met them.

“My aunt’s work visa expired and she moved back to Aus after a year, but Ash said I could stay with him if I didn’t want to go home and my parents were okay with it. Anyways, one day Ash decided that Cal and I would make a good pair, plus he wanted me to hang out with someone besides his sister, and introduced us. Then Cal introduced me to Luke and the rest is basically history.” He smiled softly at the memory, almost as if he was reliving it somehow.

“That doesn’t tell me the story of you guys meeting.” I rolled my eyes, giggling when he lightly pushed me after retracing his arm from around my shoulder.

“I think Calum hated me when you first met. I mean, if I was him I would have hated me too.” Mike admitted, blushing. “I kind of almost broke his finger.”

“How?!”

“Well, you see… Uh, I- um- I’m actually not sure. We were playing fifa or something. Ash wouldn’t play so it was just Cal, Luke and me. Ashton pushed me off the couch and I fell on top of Calum… I knew we were going to be friends when he made me pay him for his ‘insurance purposes’ or whatever he called them. He bought me lunch the next day with the same money, so it’s not like he actually took it or anything.”