Affection // irwin

Chapter 17

 I spend the rest of the afternoon scrolling through Facebook. I haven’t been online since I moved here and besides, nothing new ever happens. But I guess that’s because I’ve only got 20 friends on there and all the posts are statuses about how they love their boyfriends/girlfriends, post photos of parties and their food. I honestly don’t care who’s dating who or who’s eating what. I could block them all, but I guess I like having something on my feed considering I’m not liking any pages, except for one posting funny pictures but they barely update anymore.

Truth is, I’ve never liked Facebook. I’ve never understood why people ‘like’ things. Is it for acceptance? My profile pictures has 2 likes while I’ve seen a girl with 87. Not that I care though. A like doesn’t make me feel better. 87 likes…maybe, but I will never find out.

The only reason I joined Facebook was because of a group project in school a few years ago and we had to communicate in some way. The teacher then decided to create a group for the class on there so we could contact him if we had any questions. No one ever did. I left the group the minute the year ended.

I see the symbol for friend requests turn red and a 7 is next to it. 7 new friend requests? This is a new record for me! I click to view them.

Michael Clifford, Emma Harris, Ashton Irwin…He’s wearing a red beanie on his profile picture, a little hair sticking up under it. You can tell he took it himself, one of his arm holding the camera. The other one doing a half thumbs up. He smiles and his dimples are showing. I open his profile, but it’s no luck. It’s not public. Should I accept him? Three seconds after I do, my phone buzzes.

*What’s up?*

Just stalking your Facebook page, but you probably got a notification about me accepting your friend request so you already knew that. The last status he’s tagged in is from three days ago with Calum and another random guy. I go to Calum’s profile and notice he’s sent me a friend request too. I accept it and then move over to accept the rest, Michael, Emma and some people from class that I’ve actually talked to. The glasses girl is one of them. Her name is Sarah and when I click on her profile all I can see is recycling, save the environment statuses and links and pages that she likes. I’m glad at least someone has a passion for something.

*Nothing special. You?*

*Same. Mike told me he met you in the park?*

Did they really tell each other everything? Since you can put people as your sister, brother, cousin, and God knows what, I bet Michael and Ashton would do put each other as ‘best friend’ if the label exists here on Facebook.

*I was running*

But he probably told you that too.

*Can I call you?*

I’ve never talked with Ashton on the phone before. And there is a reason why I haven’t. I hate talking on the phone. Why? Well, because you have to talk. You can’t just nod or shake your head. You HAVE to talk, right away. By texting you could at least think a little before you type something back.

I answer on the 3rd signal.

“Hey.”

“Hi. I just figured it’d be easier talking on the phone than texting long texts.”

Texting long texts? Sounds like something I would say when I’m nervous. I wonder if he’s thinking of what he told me yesterday, about his dad. I’ve never lost anyone close before so it’s hard understanding what he went through. I can only imagine, yet that is hard to do.

“But it requires you to speak,” he says, and can hear him smirking on the other side.

“What’s that sound?”