A Certain Romance || Ashton Irwin

Precaution

"I'll be in the stands with your dad and his girlfriend." I opened my mouth to tell Arrie for the billionth time since arriving to the stadium that Ms. Irwin and my dad were not dating. Arrie was convinced by how sincere my dad acted towards Ms. Irwin that he thought they were probably having an affair in between surgeries. "50 yard line, 8 rows up." Arrie took a large bite of the hotdog he'd bought from the concession stand. Surprisingly, mustard didn't end up on his facial hair. Good, because I would've gagged.

We slowly walked through the crowds of people trying to get snacks and drinks before the game started or trying to find their friends so they could all sit together. The school's band was already playing a few songs, so you practically had to shout over the instruments to have a conversation. I should've been stretching along with the other girls, but Arrie wanted me to follow him to the concession stand, so if I ended up pulling a muscle in my lazy body it'd all be Arrie's fault.

"Thanks, but I don't think anyone would try to murder me at a football game." I tried making him feel guilty for the hundredth time because he really didn't need to be here.

"Precaution, Sage." Arrie reminded.

"Arrie, how old are you?" I stepped in front of him, stopping our travels. I felt us being practically the same height meant that I could make intimidating eye contact with him and get all the information I needed from him.

"Old enough to know that you're too young for me." He wiped mustard from his face. The way he spoke was not cocky. He sounded like he got that question from many young girls and was already annoyed with giving a proper answer. "I won't go back to prison because you might be interested in me."

"Thankfully for your criminal record, I'm not attracted to men who have hair longer than mine own." I slapped his shoulder before jogging off to meet Lydia and Sammy.

-

We won the game 21-20. It was as close and stressful as those numbers appeared.

The first quarter typically meant that St. Eugene's team would always be too pumped up, resulting in the dumbest injuries to our team and the opposing team. The first quarter ended Luke's game time for this game completely. With two dislocated fingers and a few bruised ribs coach didn't want Luke to ride out the injuries and end up with something worse. So, second-string Calum came to the rescue. His mixture of cocky and rusty surely did show out there on the field. He took his plays too seriously, running further out than he needed to, making Ashton's throws be off by five yards.

The third and fourth quarters Calum finally got it together and stopped making mistakes, but none of that mattered. What mattered was that we won.

"And you're sure that the party isn't going to get shut down?" Arrie asked for the tenth time in a row since arriving at my house.

The disaster in the first floor of my house was still the same, nothing had been moved, nothing had been fixed. It still looked like a tornado wiped the area. My dad insisted I ignored it until tomorrow, so I was trying my best to.

"They never do." I coated my eyelashes with a small amount of mascara that Lydia had given me. It was apparently a gift from Elizabeth, who had bought every girl the same one and expected us to use it for special occasions such as Calum's parties. "Can you look in that second drawer for some socks?" I pointed to the dresser.

"What's this?" I turned around and Arrie was holding up the envelope that had my name written out on the back of it, the one I had stuffed away and wanted to come back to at a better time. I wanted to add it to my list of things to ignore for now.

I snatched the envelope. "Nothing."

"It's obvious you're hiding it."

"It's a note from an old boyfriend." False. No boy my age was romantic enough to write a letter for a girl.