Alex’s POV
I actually set an alarm for once. At ten to six, I was going to wake up, get ready, and be on my way to school. Of course it wasn’t just any day ever. It was the day we were going to go to New York. I sure as hell didn’t care that we were going to be stuck on a bus for over four hours. New York was a pretty big fucking deal, and I was completely prepared for the city trip. Sure, we were there for school, but we still had free time as well. I couldn’t wait to stroll around with my friends and find some cute spots with Ash. It was just going to be absolutely amazing.

I was already awake before my alarm went off. Turning it off in no time, I jumped out of bed and opened my curtains. It was still completely dark, but it didn’t ruin my mood one bit. Sure, it would have been nicer if the school let us go on the trip in spring or during the summer, but we were still going to New fucking York! I had been there a couple of times already with family, but going with friends just made it a whole lot better.

Rushing out of my room, I entered Ash’s room and jumped right on top of her sleeping figure. She let out a groan and tried to angrily push me off, but I kissed her cheek instead. I couldn’t be the only one excited right now, could I? So, I got off, ripped the covers off her, and picked her up in both my arms. She was still practically asleep, but I still brought her to the bathroom so she could take a shower. I carefully put her down, but my finger accidentally hooked in the waistband of her pajama shorts, causing me to snap it as I fully let go of her.

That definitely seemed to wake her up. She pushed me away as hard as she could, making me slam into a wall before glaring right at me. There was an emotion I could not recognize behind her eyes, but I didn’t even have time to figure out what it could possibly be before she slapped me right across the face. My eyes went wide as I reached my own hand up to touch my burning skin. There was no time for me to apologize to Ash before she ran out, slamming her bedroom door behind her. I stood there in shock, trying to process what had just happened.

My mom came stomping out of her bathroom looking like she was ready to get mad… really mad. I slowly emerged from the bathroom, still holding my cheek, afraid of what was to come. There was no way I could deny that this was my fault. I was just so ecstatic to be going to New York today, I forgot that some people might not be as hyper as I was.

“What is going on here?” Mom growled, ready to kill me if necessary. Seriously, if looks could kill! I wouldn’t be surprised if I was going to get grounded for life as soon as I got back from this trip.

I gave her a sad look, feeling horrible for being the reason why my girlfriend was freaking out. I wasn’t trying to get out of it, because I really deserved a punishment, but I still talked back, “I- I didn’t mean to. It accidentally happened. She lost it, and ran away. It all just happened so fast.”

She seemed to calm down a bit, and disappointment quickly took over, “Alex, you’ve got to be careful with her. We don’t know exactly what happened, anything can remind her of it. Don’t think you can do anything just because of what’s going on between you guys.”

“I am careful, mom!” I argued, not understanding why she would believe I would intentionally do something like this to Ash, “it was an accident. I didn’t even know I was doing it! I was doing something completely harmless!”

“Ok, well what did you ‘accidentally’ do?”

“I, umm, I…”

She crossed her arms, still not believing me. “If it was an accident, like you’re telling me, you shouldn’t be having a problem telling me what it is.”

I sighed, knowing I was going to have to tell her no matter how embarrassing this was for me. “I was holding her. When I put her down, I got caught on her pants. The fabric snapped against her skin and she freaked out. Of course I didn’t mean for that to happen on purpose.”

“Ok, I can life with that answer. Now, go apologize to her, or would you rather have me go check how she’s doing?”

“No, I’ll go.”

I carefully knocked on her door before opening it. Ash was puttin some last minute stuff into her suitcase, sniffing as she stood back upright. As she stood back upright, I walked in, ready to apologize for what had happened so far. A tear dropped from her cheek and fell onto the neatly folded up clothes, and I felt horrible. I shouldn’t even have woken her up the way I had. That was already mistake number one.

“I’m fine, you can leave,” she muttered, drying another tear that had escaped from her tear ducts.

“No, it’s not fine,” I shook my head and walked up to her, “what I did is completely messed up. All of it. First of all, I shouldn’t have jumped on you like I did. Not only is that really stupid, I also know you’re still having cramps so I shouldn’t be the one to make that worse. Then, I should not just take you out of your bed like that, because nobody likes being ripped away from their bed.” Ash turned around to look at the pictures she had standing on her desk, causing her back to face me, but I still knew she was listening. “And then the last thing was completely horrible. It’s the worst thing I did. I just want you to know I didn’t do it on purpose, but I’m still very sorry.”

After staring at one specific picture for longer, she turned back towards me and ran into my arms, her body shaking with small quiet sobs. I knew that this was about more that what had gone down just minutes before. This was worse than just the flashback she had. I held her tightly, slowly sitting down on her bed, bringing her with me. She immediately curled up on my lap, resting her head against my chest. My fingers ran smoothly through her hair as I occasionally kissed the top of her head, trying to get her to calm down.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered, hoping to god that I could help her out. It was absolutely heartbreaking seeing her in this state.

“I-I just w-want her here!” She hiccupped, clutching onto me tighter.

I didn’t understand what she meant at first, but when I squinted my eyes to be able to see the photos more clearly, it all made sense. Right next to a picture of her with her brothers, was one of her as a child laughing with her mom. All Ash wanted was her mom to be here for her, but she wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do. As much as I loved to be able to say ‘Hey, you can always just call her’, it wasn’t an option. Ash didn’t have a mother figure in her life. All she had were her brothers and her dad. The one thing a girl really needed in this situation wasn’t available.

“I don’t mind sharing my mom with you,” I told her, hoping it would make up for it just a bit, “and I’m pretty sure Jack doesn’t either. You can also always talk to me and Jack. Maybe we don’t know much about girls, but I’ll be happy to google stuff for you.”

She let out a small giggle, still burying her face in my shirt. I smiled lightly, being happy to hear her laugh even though it was only very short and quiet. Her laugh was the cutest thing ever and I couldn’t help but love that about her. To be honest, I loved everything about this girl, no matter how screwed up some things were. I wasn’t in love with her yet, but I could feel it could happen very soon. How was it possible not to?

“We should start getting ready if we want to make it to school on time,” I lifted her chin up to look at me before carefully kissing her, not trying to fuck up another time.

----
Ash’s POV

I stood right in front of Alex, my back nearly touching his chest, as we waited for the whole class to collect on the school grounds. Rian was already here, standing right next to us, also waiting patiently. The only problem was, he was the only other person here from our group. In two minutes everybody was supposed to be here, ready to go. But there were obviously three people missing… the only three people missing. Why was it always people I knew who would cause a scene?

“I’m starting to believe it’s just going to be us three,” Alex sighed, leaning forward to rest his chin on top of my head, but not daring to wrap his arms around me, “They might show up, but they will probably way too late. Knowing Jack, he’ll be here just as the bus leaves.”

“The only reason why were are on time is because you were too excited and made us skip breakfast,” I chuckled at him being a hypocrite. He was always the only to be late to important things, so he couldn’t act like Jack was the dumbest person around. “You forced me to eat cereal right out of the box in the back of your mom’s car.”

“That’s not the point!”

“I really hope they show up, because I will not be enduring you guys teasing each other the entire week,” Rian groaned and rolled his eyes at us, but couldn’t help and smile a little.

“Oh, look who’s teasing now!” I called him out.

Before he could argue and defend himself, there was a high-pitched scream and loud footsteps. Everybody turned around to see what was going on, only to be met with the sight of the one and only Jack Barakat with a duffel bag hanging from his neck, pulling two girls behind him. Harper and Lianne were trying their best to keep up with him while also dragging along a suitcase each. It was truly a magnificent sight.

“My mom freaked out a little when she found out it was just two girls staying over and nobody else,” Jack tried explaining himself, panting as he tried to catch his breath. He was one of the most hyper people I knew, but also one of the people who just couldn’t do anything without it causing him to be out of breath.

“Can’t be worse than when my parents found out about us,” Alex muttered in my ear so only I could hear him.

I burst out laughing, making everybody give me weird looks. Ever since it happened, Alex and I kept making subtle jokes about it. Whenever he had the chance, he would make a stupid remark about it, reminding me of the embarrassment we shared at the time. Looking back at it now, it was just absolutely hilarious. Especially when Alex’s mom didn’t even know about her own son being sexually active. Of course her telling us we had to use condoms was also easy to laugh about. It was definitely going be something to make inside jokes about forever.

“I’m sorry, but it is very suspicious, especially when it’s you, Jack,” I shook my head at him, trying to make it seem like I was laughing about what he said.

“She was ok with you staying for a couple of weeks,” he shrugged, like it would prove why he thought it would be fine to have Lianne and Harper over.

I tapped his temple. “You’ve got the wrong logic going on in there, buddy.”

When we got on the bus, which was luckily not a school bus, but a coach, Alex was quick to take the seat next to me. He beat Jack to the race by just a second, nearly crushing me when he jumped the last couple of feet. I, of course was happy to have Alex sitting next to me, even though I acted like I was in agony for not being with Jack. But, come on, who wouldn’t be happy being able to sit with their boyfriend on a long terrible bus journey? I knew for a fact that he wouldn’t care if I fell asleep on him. It wasn’t like Jack wouldn’t be fine with it, but it just wasn’t as comfortable.

So, as soon as the vehicle started moving, I rested my head against Alex’s shoulder, trying to catch up on the ten minutes of sleep he had deprived me of. It didn’t seem like much, but it was a reason for me to sit as closely to him as possible without getting weird looks from other people. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they thought I was either together with Jack or Alex. Nothing was official to them, but I knew only one of them was true. Thinking about my relationship with Alex, I managed to fall asleep in no time.

When I woke up, I found myself lying with my head on Alex’s hoodie, which he had put on his lap as a pillow. That wasn’t what caused me to stir, though. There was some other commotion going on, starting with, “Yo, Alex, how’s the slut doing over there?”

I could immediately recognize the voice coming from the back of the bus as the one belonging to Stewart. Ugh. I had been ignoring him the entire time, acting like I didn’t hear the stupid insults he was throwing at me behind my back, but it was pretty obvious I couldn’t just act like I didn’t even notice this one.

“Don’t. Call. Her. That!” Alex growled, not realising I had woken up, trying to glare at the bully without moving me.

“How do I know she’s not sucking you off right now? She’s obviously not sitting upright.”

“Dude, seriously--” Alex continued wanting to defend me, but I held one of his hands, causing him to quickly look down at me. I softly shook my head, telling him not to go any further. It wasn’t worth getting himself in deep trouble. Instead, I took over and raised my middle finger up so it could be seen over the headrests of the chairs.

“Oh my god! She’s noticed me!” Stewart gasped as sarcastically as he could possibly do.

I rolled my eyes, and pulled myself up to stare right at him. “Does it look like I give a fuck? If I would have cared about what you have to say about me, you would have realised ages ago. You see, nobody here cares what you have to say. Sure, if nobody would have known what happened, then there might have been a small possibility of them believing you. I don’t get the correlation between me being raped and me being a slut. How does being forced into a car and given a concussion only to be brought to some weirdass creepy motel make me a slut? I’m sorry, but it makes no sense to me. Now, if you have a good reason for calling me that, please tell me, because I would love to know.”

Stewart remained completely silent, not having expected such a blunt reaction from me. I just smiled as politely as I could. “Thank you. I already thought so.”

Notes

I told you the drama would come back...

It's a short shitty chapter, but it was going to be way too long with the next part as well. It seemed like this was a good place to stop it for now.

I'm starting school again next Tuesday. I thought I would have maybe gotten more time to write, but it doesn't seem that way. It seems like I'll have to be at school at 8:30 everyday and only end at 5pm every day... I won't be writing at school, because I keep them apart. Let's see how this goes... Junior year, here I come!

I hope to put out one more chapter before that... or at least when I know my exact timetable.