Jack’s POV

I really had no idea what got Alex so pissed off all of a sudden, so the next morning, I was actually really curious. He was already up and was sitting at his desk, doing something on his laptop, which was really unlike Alex. Normally he would sleep until one in the afternoon. And the mood swing he had was also completely unlike him. First he was all worried about Ash not coming home, then he was happy and thinking about asking her out, which I fully supported, then he was worried again, and then Ash came home. The last thing he did before going back to bed was slam the door shut and acting super mad about something. I just really wanted to know what got him like that.

Alex typed something before fully concentrating on reading the screen. I tried shuffling a bit in bed to see his screen, but there was too much reflection going on; the screen was set to dark and there was too much light shining through the curtains. So, I figured that he’s just tell me, like he always did.

“Is everything ok?” I asked, my voice croaking a bit and I sat up straight.

Alex jumped and quickly shut his laptop. His head snapped towards me and he almost stumbled backwards with the chair. After he composed himself he groaned, “I guess…”

I got out of bed and stretched, my bones cracking and clicking back into place, “what you doing on your laptop.”

“Nothing,” he stood up himself and started walking towards the door, “how about we go get something to eat?”

“You can go,” I told him, wanting to be alone in this room for a bit, “I just want to put on some jeans, so I won’t scare Ash away with this magnificent dick.” I looked down at what I was wearing: nothing except some black boxers.

“Fine,” there was no emotion in Alex voice as he closed the door and went to the kitchen himself.

Of course I wasn’t just letting him go alone because I wanted to put on some clothes. To be honest, I wouldn’t even give a shit about it. I would walk around this place naked if Alex would allow me to. It was my body and I definitely wasn’t ashamed of it. I mean, why would I? Sure, it wasn’t the best body or a body to be proud of, but it was still just.

Anyway, enough about that. I wanted to check what Alex was doing on his laptop. That sucker once told me his password, and I never forgot it after. I would use it so often when I was here, you could basically say it wasn’t just Alex’s, but also mine. This was like my second house. So, I opened the laptop and quickly entered the password, only having to redo the whole password once because I hit the wrong letter. That always happened; you would know you only messed up the last letter, but you’d have to do the whole password again just because, if you know what I mean.

Ok. Sorry. I keep sidetracking. I swear to god, it was a sin, not a gift.

The first thing the opened, was the thing I was looking for. How stupid was Alex to leave the site open? All teenage guys knew what to do when getting caught doing something on their laptop. He forgot the most basic rule ever. Close the fucking window. But I guess it was only to my advantage this time. Only, you could say what I saw wasn’t what I was expecting. It was a twitter post of last night’s party. There were two people kissing, and one of them looked a lot like Ash, but the gy did not look at all like Alex… But I could technically be anyone, the photo was actually of something else, and the couple was in the background. It was blurry, so there was a chance it wasn’t Ash at all.

Oh, who was I kidding. This was definitely Ash. She was wearing the same clothes and the hair was the same length. No wonder Alex was mad. But how did he know about this yesterday? The photo was posted this morning, not while the party was still going. Maybe he was mad at something else. Or somebody could have texted him that they saw it happen. But then again nobody except our friend group knew that Alex had a crush on Ash… Hmm… this was weird.

Oh well, my stomach was rumbling and I was really hungry. I quickly put on my jeans, to make sure Alex didn’t get suspicious, and ran down stairs to the kitchen, where Alex was staring at his cereal sadly. I sighed to myself and made a mental note to cheer him up. That was what I was there for.

I grabbed a bowl of cereal for myself and sat next to him, attempting to get him to talk, but to no avail. He gave me short answers and was more focused on swirling around his soggy cornflakes than on listening to me. I even tried making dick jokes that he would normally think were hilarious! But nothing changed. This was definitely going to be a difficult case.

“You know you’re going to tell me what happened yesterday, some time, right?” I told him, giving up with trying to get him to forget about it.

Alex shrugged and played more with his food, “maybe.”

“I saw the photo,” I continued, hoping he would finish off the sentence, which I didn’t even know how I wanted it to be finished.

“Cool,” Alex nodded and rested his head in the hand that wasn’t stirring the milk with the metal spoon.

“You don’t know if anything happened though,” I told him, thinking I was going in the right direction with this conversation, “so don’t lose hope just yet.”

Alex dropped the spoon in the bowl, “you know what, Jack?” He looked right at me, “I know exactly what happ-”

He was cut off by giggling, which sounded a lot like Ash. But what confused me was that there was another laugh along with it… a rumble that was a lot lower, a voice different to Alex’s father… No… it couldn’t be… There was no way Ash came home with a guy last night.

Oh, wait, no. Yes, she did. There was definitely a guy following her into the kitchen. Ok, now I understand why Alex was so mad and upset earlier. This guy was like a god. I wasn’t gay or anything, but I couldn’t even deny that this guy was good looking- no, he was just fucking hot! No wonder Alex was acting like this! Ash was with a guy that wasn’t him, and he was a perfect specimen of the human race! Couldn’t he just share some of his good looks so things would be a bit more fair?

“Morning,” Ash chirped and the guy nodded at us giving us a small ‘hey’, you know, just one of those greetings guys did.

When I realised Alex was not going to say anything back, I took over, “morning. How was last night? Anything to gossip about?”

“Other than that Harper totally ditched me for a guy 5 minutes into the party, not really,” Ash grabbed two bowls, standing on her toes to reach for them, and put them on the counter, “Oh, wait! I have an announcement to make!”

“You’re not pregnant, are you?” Alex tried joking, but I could sense some seriousness and awkwardness in his statement.

“No…?”Ash apparently also noticed some of the awkwardness, “I was just going to say that I remember every single detail of last night despite the hangover! I might still be a little drunk, though.”

“What did you drink?” I looked at her very astonished, definitely realising that there was still some alcohol in her system now that she mentioned it.

“I started with a Jack and Coke,” Ash thought back, “but the rest I don’t know. People were just giving me stuff, and I drank it. It all tasted good, though, so I didn’t mind.”

“You also had some beer and some shots,” the guy added, “and I forced you to drink a whole bottle of water.”

“Very true,” she nodded and started making two bowls of cereal and milk, just like mine and Alex’s, “and I thank you for that.”

“No problem,” he kissed her cheek. I could see Alex cringe away slightly. He probably wanted nothing more than to disappear and not witness any of this, but we both knew that if he left now, his crush would be way too obvious.

“Oh right,” Ash suddenly looked up at us, “I forgot to introduce you guys,” Ash pointed and the tall guy who had no shirt on, and had surprisingly good abs, “this is Luke. Luke, this is Jack and that is Alex.”

“Hey,” Luke greeted again, now knowing our names.

I replied to him by saying the same thing back, but Alex said something completely different, “aren’t your parents going to be super worried about you, maybe you should get back home?”

Luke chuckled and shook his head at Alex’s statement, “I hope they’re not worried, we’ve gotten past that stage during my freshman year of college. And, besides, I live by myself in a small one story house.”

Oh, wow. A college guy. That definitely made Alex feel even worse about himself. He probably felt like that guy was so much better than him. And, as much as I was concerned about my best friend, I couldn’t help but wonder what type of party this was.

“Wasn’t it a high school party?” I asked curiously, making sure my tone wouldn’t offend him, because that was not what I wanted.

“Technically, yes,” Luke accepted a spoon from Ash, “but one of my mates wanted to get revenge on his ex, so then my other friends decided to tag along, and I wasn’t going to be the buzzkill, so I joined along. I was about to leave, but then I met this pretty little lady,” he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her cheek again.

“Cool,” I told him. Well, that question definitely didn’t help me with the Alex situation. He was still just stirring his cereal, it not mixing together with the milk to made a weird mixture.

Ash noticed something was off about him, and asked him, “what’s wrong, Alex? Is everything ok?”

Alex only hummed in response, so I once again I came to save the day. I quickly answered before Ash could ask anything else and make stuff even worse, “he’s not feeling so well, I’m guessing a stomach bug or something.”

“Oh, that sucks, I hope you feel better, Alex.”

Alex didn’t do anything and just kept staring. Well this really wasn’t going good at all. Maybe I just had to get him away for them for a while. And maybe talking would help a bit to get rid of some of the feelings he had. I wasn’t really the guy to feel something for a girl, but I understood how he felt. The couple of times I did develop feelings, I was always left heart broken. But I was better at hiding it than Alex. Nobody ever knew.

“Maybe we should go back upstairs,” I suggested and took away the bowl from Alex, putting it in the sink along with mine. Alex stood up unemotionally and I walked with him as if he were actually ill, just to make this whole lie a lot more believable.

When I took a quick glance back at the kitchen, I saw Luke’s hands on Ash’s waist, and Ash’s arms wrapped around his neck. The space was closed between them and their eyes were closed while their lips were touching.

Well, this situation was very messy.

Notes

So, I decided to switch it up a bit and do a chapter from Jack's point of view. There are more chapters planned for the future for him, so I thought I'd try it out now. Plus, I didn't think Alex' POV or Ash's POV would work for this. I mean, nobody can be Jack's crazy mind.

Anyway, how are you guys feeling about Luke? This is a very important question so I know what to do in the future. I want you guys to tell me if you like him or not, and if you can imagine him with Ash.

RottenCriminal has been giving me so much good feedback! And I love it (like seriously, thank you). But I want more. And I'm not saying this because I want more comments, because trust me I don't care about that. Nor am I saying it because RottenCriminal's feedback isn't enough (because it really is amazing). I'm saying it because I started writing to improve my skills in something I really love. However, I want to know whether I'm doing things wrong or right. It can literally be about anything: the writing style, the plot, the characters, etc.

And now I have to give you a gif... hmm... A sad Jack maybe?