Chapter 7

    We get on the bus to head home after school on Monday and the kids start teasing Ash. “Hey Ashen, who’s the friend,” the new boy in the middle seat asks, his skin is a light tan and he has a smooth accent.

   “He’s not my friend,” Ash says rubbing the ring on his finger but no one except me notices that.

   “Then who is he?” the boy asks, waving his hand. I guess he doesn’t know that Ash is gay since he’s new.

   “Ash, you don’t have to answer I will,” I say, patting his head and he catches on to what I’m going to do and gives me a ‘I swear to god’ look.

   “Who are you then?” the boy asks, leaning on his hand.

  “His boyfriend, duh,” I say shrugging.

   “Really? Prove it.” the boy says, leaning up straight.

   “Ok,” I say and lift Ash’s chin and kiss him. Most of the kids say ‘ew’ but to my surprise, the new boy says ‘awe’. Ash and I go to our normal seat in the back and the boy moves to the seat in front of us and a girl follows him. She has similar tan skin and looks a lot like him so I instantly catch on that they’re related. 

   “My name is Eli and this is my twin sister Elly.” the boy says and the girl waves with a smile and then boops Ash’s nose and giggles calling him adorable.

   “My name is Waylen and this is Ash as I guess you knew since you said his name earlier,” I say, wrapping my arm around Ash.

  “Yeah, we have English class together, nice accent by the way, where are you from? Elly and I are Australian,” Eli says smiling. 

 “Germany,” I say with a small laugh.

  “You two are such a cute couple.” Elly says booping Ash’s nose again causing him to put up his hood and hide his face in my shoulder which makes Elly say ‘aww’. 

   “So you two are gay?” Eli says nudging Elly to sit down and leave Ash alone.

   “Yeah, well he is I’m bi,” I say poking Ash and he leans up and takes off his hood.

   “Cool, I’m trans, my sister is lesbian she got a little mad when I got the surgery though, well not exactly the surgery but more of just me cutting my hair.” Ash and I both looked up when he said that, we couldn’t even tell that he used to be a she. The surgery must have gone well. 

   “Wow, I couldn’t even tell,” I say and hear an ‘ew’ from Subree in the seat across from us.

   “Why is every boy I think is cute turns out to be-how do I put it- gross,” she says and Eli looks over at her and puts his hand on his hip, and does the gayest move ever.

  “I take that as a compliment, I may be gross but I look prettier than you, I’m gorgeous.” Eli flips his head as if he still had long hair and Ash and I laugh. 

   “Whatever,” Subree says and looks out her window. I feel Ash lay against my shoulder and fall asleep. 

  “He must have been tired,” Eli says and Elly looks at Ash and leans to boop him again but Eli slaps her hand and she sits back down. 

  “Yeah he hasn’t been getting much sleep I guess.” After I say that I look down at Ash and listen to his small snores and I feel my face heat up.

  “Oh my gosh, are you blushing?” I look up at Eli and he gasps.

   “You are blushing, that's adorable,” Eli says and runs his hand through his hair, and sits down. I look at Ash and smile.

   We finally got to our stop, Eli and Elly waved at us, and Ash and I held hands as we walked off of the bus. We start walking to our houses and I see my dad standing on the porch, Ash and I quickly let go of each other's hand and I nudge Ash for him to run to his house and he does. I slowly walk up to my dad and he grabs me by the arm yanking me into the house. When he lets go I back up against the wall but he throws his bottle at me and it shatters against the wall causing the glass to cut me. “I told you to break up with him.” 

   “I’m the only person he has,” I say and run off to my room quickly locking the door. I look out the window and see Ash with a worried expression so I climb out and walk over to his window.

   “Are you ok?” Ash says reaching over and touching one of the cuts on my face making me wince in pain. He walks over to his desk and grabs a few bandages and covers up the cuts.

   “I’m fine, at least now that I'm out of the house,” I say with a small smile but he flicks me in the nose.

   “This isn’t something to smile about dumbass,” he says and walks over to get some cut cleaning stuff. When he walks back he takes off the bandages.

   “First off, language, second off, Ow, that hurt,” I say leaning away.

   “You big baby,” Ash says purposely ripping off one of the bandages.

   “Ow!” like before he may be cute but he’s evil. After making me hurt and getting the cuts clean he gives me a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the head. 

   “So I'm guessing you're probably staying the night here,” Ash says plopping onto his bed.

   “Well, I don’t want to go home so I guess,” I say, shrugging and standing up. 

   “Ok, then you're sleeping on the floor,” he says, throwing a pillow and blanket at my face. I stick my tongue out at him and he does the same but I licked his tongue causing him to blush and kick me out of his room.

   “Aww come on Starboy I’m sorry please let me in,” I say banging on his door. I sit down and lay back against the door and decide to sing ‘do you want to build a snowman’ from Frozen. Ash opens the door causing me to fall back.

   “I hate that song,” He says and walks away leaving the door open. I walk in and he sits down at his desk and I plop down on his bed.

   “We haven't had dinner, wanna go to a restaurant?” I ask sitting up. 

   “Sure,” Ash says standing up.

   “Actually, can we just have a picnic at our spot,” he says walking over to me.

   “Ok, sounds good to me.” I say and pull him onto the bed with me, he smiles and kisses me, I smile as well and hold his hand, moments like these are nice. 

“Ok, come on,” he says and pats my shoulder before sitting up. We both walk into the kitchen and make sandwiches.

   “Oh, I need to get something out of my room,” I say and climb out of his window and into mine. I grab my acoustic guitar and go back through his window and we both walk to our spot almost tripping over the tree stumps. We finally make it to the waterfall and we lay out my checker blanket and sit down and eat while I strum at my guitar humming some lyrics to a song I’ve been trying to write.

   “Hey, checker boy?” Ash says laying down his sandwich.

   “Yeah?” I say taking another bite of my sandwich. He looks away as if he’s shy and mumbles something I didn’t understand.

   “What?” I say setting down my sandwich. He’s silent for a little while so I poke him in the cheek making him smile his sunshine smile.

   “Ok ok, all I was going to say was ‘I love you’ ok.” when he says that I feel my face get warm and I smile.

   “I love you too, Starboy.”

When we got back to his house we’re both tired. I waited outside of his room for him to change into more comfortable clothes.

“Crap, forgot to do laundry,” I hear Ash mumble to himself before he swings open the door hitting me with it, he’s in sweatpants and a blanket over his shoulders, holding a laundry basket. My face heats up, he’s too cute. I look at him rubbing my arm where the door hit.

“No clean shirts,” he mumbles to me before walking off to his laundry room that’s also his bathroom, I chuckle a bit. He comes back holding his blanket tightly around him as he messes with the thermostat to turn up the heat. He walks back to me with a small scowl. I hold up my sweatpants and t-shirt.

  “May I change now?“ I say laughing a bit, he nods and sits at his bedroom door. I walk into his room and set my clothes down before climbing out of his window and into mine grabbing an extra AC/DC t-shirt and climbing back into his room before getting changed. I hear him knock on the door.

  “You’re slow and I’m tired, hurry up,” he yawns in the middle of talking and I laugh before opening the door.

  “I’m done,” I say and open the door. He's standing there clearly tired, I smile and look at the blanket.

  “You look cozy,” I smile as I say it, he just laughs a little and nods.

  “My softest blanket,” he smiles and holds the blanket tighter. I grab two sides of it and pull him to me, wrapping the blanket around myself as I kiss him. He wraps his arms around me and I feel his smile against my lips. I stop and look at him before touching the blanket.

  “This blanket is soft, I might steal it,” Ash and I laugh and he shakes his head before walking into his room.

  “Never,” he says before looking down at the extra shirt I grabbed. I grab it and hand it to him.

  “As cute as you look, I thought you might be more comfortable in this,” he smiles with a blush before grabbing it and putting it on, I can’t help but laugh at how big it is on him. He ignores me and hops onto his bed covering himself with his blanket and then the comforter on his bed. I crawl under the covers and lay next to him. He smiles calmly at me before laying his head on my arm and snuggling up to me like the perfect puzzle piece.

  “Good night Starboy,” I whisper.

  “Good night Chekarboy,” he mumbles, already half asleep.