Paint You Wings // Ashton Irwin [au]

Forty-five

Song of the chapter: Tenerife Sea – Ed Sheeran

Emilia's POV

After shoving my notebook inside my backpack for the last time this semester, I go into my bathroom and stand in front of the mirror and stare at the girl who I don't even recognize. If I were to have taken a photo of myself at the beginning of the semester and compare it to what I see now, I would be looking at two different people. The short brunette in the mirror is someone who I'm proud of. She made it. She overcame her struggles and leaped over every hurdle that came her way. It was difficult and there was so much to be learned, but she did it. She became strong and courageous, though she's still a bit anti-social seeing that she still only has five friends, but it's more than what she started out with.

To think this is me now...

Damn.

Not only is my mentality different, but also my physical self. My hair is longer and now reaches past my boobs. I'm pretty sure this is the longest that I've ever had my hair. When I was younger I always kept it shoulder-length because it was easier to handle, but after my parent's death, I just let it grow out. Now, I actually like the way it looks. The natural waves to my hair don't look like shit and it makes it look like I actually put time and effort on it when in reality, all I did was brush it.

I've even lost a little weight too. My shirts fit me even more loosely than they did before and I have to pull up my jeans all the time and it's rather annoying to be honest, but I feel comfortable in my body. I don't know how I even lost weight seeing that all I do is eat and sleep, although, I guess walking around campus burned all those calories over time. And stress. There was plenty of that.

"Emmie?" Ashton walks over and stands behind me, placing his chin on my shoulder. "What are you doing? I know it's the last day of class, but we're going to be late if you keep standing here and you're very meticulous about being on time."

The last class of the semester and I am not prepared at all. I got over most of the cold, flu, or whatever study sickness I had on Sunday thanks to Ashton telling me to stop thinking about school and just rest because I was over-working myself. I only have some congestion now and somehow Ashton is still as healthy as can be and not showing any signs of sickness whatsoever even after kissing me. Damn him and his superhuman immune system.

He was also nice enough to take me to each of my classes for my finals and waited for me just to make sure that I was alright. Even though Michael was there during our history final and promised to look out for me, Ash still waited outside the classroom. He earned himself a good amount of "awesome boyfriend" points, as Julia says, for that.

My trig final was the most difficult and I ended up feeling light-headed because there was too much math. But the great thing about going to a private university is that since there are smaller classes, it doesn't take that long for tests to be graded and I thankfully passed trig—barely, but I passed nonetheless. It'll hurt my GPA a bit, but since I made A's on my other two, that should make up for it.

All that's left is our communications project presentations and I am just now starting to freak out about it.

"Being late one time won't kill me," I say.

Ashton down at me in disbelief. "Really?"

Who am I kidding? "No, it definitely will."

"I know you too well." He smirks and looks back to the mirror. "So why are you just standing here?"