Icing on the Cake

~111~

“What do you want?” I asked Ashton, somewhat forcefully. He had always made me feel so small and insignificant, like I was so submissive around him after everything went down. I decided to go on the offense. “It seems like we’ve done this multiple times before to no avail. Are you just trying to dangle us?”

“I’m sorry.” Ashton said. “There’s nothing more than that. There’s nothing more than sorry.”

“That should’ve been a lyric.” Calum said.

“Why the change of heart?” I asked.

“I’m so tired of being angry.” Ashton said. ‘I’m so tired of being so angry at people that I know I still care about.”

“Okay…” I said cautiously, not knowing if I believed him or not.

“I’ve been so mad for so long. I’ve decided that what happened to us wasn’t your fault. It was Megan’s or the producers, or both.”

“And you just came to this realization and decided to try and put everything behind us?” I asked.

“Kind of.” Ashton said. “But there’s more.”

“What more?” Calum asked.

“I was thinking. What if that never happened? What if we were still touring? I loved it, don’t get me wrong, and I’m so glad we did it, but what if that became everything? Our lives were so one dimensional. We weren’t living, we were existing. We traveled and entertained and traveled and we…”

“I get what you mean.” Calum said.

“I’ve had those thoughts, too.” I admitted.

“We couldn’t have relationships. We couldn’t see our families. We were never home. I know we had each other, but…” Ashton trailed off. “We were alone.”

“We were.” I admitted. “We were totally alone. We were around people constantly, around thousands of people all the time, but we were alone.”

“Robin Williams said it best.” Calum said. “I thought the worst thing was being alone. But the worst thing is being around people that make you feel alone.”

“I don’t want to ever feel alone again.” Ashton said.

He was so vulnerable around us, I started to believe him. “Neither do I.” I said. I hoped that one day, we could be back to what we were.

Notes

Donald Trump fucking won WHAT THE FUCK

I'm moving to Australia. Fuck the cunt known as the 45th President of the United States.