just ash

chapter 15

"Hello?"

"If you're going to break up with me, just fucking do it."

Ash sighed, already feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by the conversation with Drew one word in. After unplugging her phone from the charger at her nightstand, Ash sank down to curl up on her bed. It was still warm where Namjoon had just been laying, and she felt her heart thud at the thought.

"Drew," she said, trying and failing to keep the wariness out of her tone. The pounding in her head intensified, and she raised her free hand to massage at her temple. "Don't jump to conclusions, please calm down."

Ash could hear Drew scoff through the speaker of her phone.

"You're always telling me to calm down. What else am I supposed to think when you never talk to me anymore, Ash? We literally haven't spoken in days and you text me 'Can we talk?' Who wouldn't automatically think that means we're breaking the fuck up?" Drew snapped.

Ash could tell he was trying to keep his tone hard, doing his best to conceal how he was really feeling. But they had been together for years. She could pick out the tiny waver of hurt and panic in his voice even from the other side of the world. Ash swallowed past the tightness in her throat that was already forming.

"Just...listen to me, please."

"Are we breaking up or not?"

Ash shakily sighed.

"I don't know." Drew's breath whooshed against his phone's microphone, echoing loudly in Ash's ear. "Something happened last night, after I texted you. I didn't plan for it to be like this – "

"Did you cheat on me?"

Anger flared in Ash's core at his interruption, and her heart pounded heavily in her chest. Her first instinct was to defend herself but...

She couldn't.

Ash didn't answer for a few beats, at a loss for words, and that's when Drew began to cry, knowing exactly what Ash's silence meant.

"Oh my god, you – oh my god, Ash you cheated on me," Drew choked out, his voice watery and wobbly. "For how long?"

Ash wanted to feel terrible. She wanted to cry with him, wished she could scrounge up some empathy and grieve with her boyfriend of three years. But all she felt was tired.

"It depends on what you count as cheating," she murmured and regretted her choice of words instantly.

"What the fuck, Ash?" Drew sobbed.

"I never slept with him, Drew, last night was the first time we even – it was the first time we even kissed. I swear I was planning on talking to you about this," she lied through her teeth. "I didn't expect last night to happen. We got drunk, and things got out of hand."

At least that last part was the truth.

"Who is he?"

Ash almost laughed. Oh, you know, Korea's It Boy.

"He's just some guy I met one of the first days I was here. He's been helping me with my Korean."

"You've been fucking with him since you got there?!" Ash could hear the hysteria rising in his voice, and all she wanted to do was crawl into a sound-proof hole and stay there for at least two months.

"I just told you we haven't had sex – "

"I knew you shouldn't have gone there. I knew this would happen, I fucking knew it," Drew seethed, and Ash should have probably felt bad at how relieved she was when his anger hit.