Alex’s POV
It had been a couple of days, and Ash was back up on her feet, ready to catch up with all the schoolwork she had missed. I had tried to keep her updated by showing her my notes and homework, but, as we all know, I was not the best at that. To be honest, I was much more busy trying to come up with song lyrics than I was with writing down stuff from the board. Really, I couldn’t care less. Initially, Ash was pretty mad at me for not taking decent notes and insisted on going back to school no matter how ill she was, but eventually, she just gave in, saying she’d just have to ask the teachers what she missed.

She had gotten quite a load of work for each class. We had only done our morning classes, just having reached lunch, and she was already walking around with a pile of books and paper. If I were her, I’d be having a mental breakdown. Seriously, that was way too much work to be able to catch up on in one day. We hadn’t even had Math or Biology yet! Imagine how much she was still going to get for that? It was just physically and mentally impossible to cram so much work into a couple of hours. And knowing Ash, she’d spend time to understand everything, so she wouldn’t just do a quick scan through. That was definitely something I would do… Wait, no, actually I wouldn’t even bother to ask my teachers what I had missed. Seriously, who cared? Well.. Ash obviously did…

She dropped all of her books onto the table our friends were already sitting at. Everybody looked up at her, wide-eyed, having jumped from the loud noise. She just ignored them and sat down on a chair while I put down both our lunches. There was no way she would have been able to carry a tray as well, so I gladly offered to at least do that.

“What are all those books for?” Jack decided to break the silence just as I sat down as well.

“Material I need to catch up with everything I missed,” Ash sighed, looking at the massive stack with a frown while taking a bite of her pizza, “I would start now, but I’ve got a date with the beautiful piano in the music room.”

“Ah,” Lianne nodded in an understanding way, “at least tell me this piano is hot, and that you’re not wasting your time on it.”

Ash shrugged a little, eating some more of her pizza, not wanting to waste too much time here. “I mean, I guess you could say so. The only problem is that it thinks I’m just playing it--”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Jack interrupted, hitting his hand against the table, “no more puns. I am done with puns. I have had enough of them. If I hear one more, I swear I’m going to walk out of here and shoot myself. I can’t deal with them anymore. I’m just done.”

“What’s got your panties in a twist?” I asked him, chuckling at his bluntness. Normally Jack was the one with terrible jokes, or he absolutely loved them, but now he seemed to be fed up. It was actually pretty funny to see him like this.

“That would be my fault,” Lianne giggled and put her hand up innocently, “I’ve been annoying him with puns the entire day. It all started in English when the teacher was getting mad about somebody using terrible language. So, I whispered to Jack ‘A rule of grammar: double negatives are a no-no’.”

“And then somebody went to the bathroom and took a while to get back, so you said ‘I guess he was stalling’. Yeah, we all know, you're great at puns, but they are driving me insane!” Jack pulled on his hair as he seemed physically in pain.

Lianne smirked evilly. “I radish the fact that you've mustard the strength to ketchup to me.”

“Fuck this!” Jack groaned and hit his head against the table, not moving an inch as he just lay there, seemingly dead.

“Well, I’ve got to go,” Ash announced and struggled to pick up all her books again, so I helped place them in her hands, “I’ll see you guys whenever.”

I watched her as she rushed off to the band room. I still couldn’t believe that I could call her mine. Well, call wasn’t exactly the right word, since we weren’t public with our relationship yet. But I could still think of her as mine, and know that it wasn’t in some creepy stalking way. My very unrealistic crush that I thought was never going to happen, actually happened, and I was determined to make it last. While it did hurt me a little bit that she wasn’t able to say ‘I love you’ back, I also fully understood. I had been falling for her for so much longer than she had known, and she didn’t have that good of an experience last time she shared such a feeling with someone. Maybe I was able to show her that she didn’t have to be afraid, that whatever Luke made her feel and what he showed her was not real love.

I had to bite my lips to keep back the smile creeping up on my face as she finally disappeared. When I looked back in front of me, I saw Jack and Harper giving me weird looks. I furrowed my eyebrows at them, wondering what was wrong. Had I done something that I wasn’t supposed to do?

“Ok, there’s no easy way to put this, so I’m just going to ask,” Jack started, staring at me as if he would be able to read my mind if he wanted to, “doyoustillhaveacrushonAsh?”

“What he meant to say was, do you still have a crush on Ash?” Harper rolled her eyes at Jack and perfectly articulated all her words slowly, teasing Jack about his uncertainness.

“What?! No!” I defended way too quickly. Well, technically it was true; I didn’t have a crush on her anymore, I actually loved her. There’s a big difference.

“Ok…?” Jack muttered, before sighing, actually having been able to read my mind in some way. “Look, just don’t get your hopes up. She’s been through a lot, so she might not be ready to even come close to the idea of relationships or anything to do with them. I know you can’t just turn off her feelings for her, but don’t make her do something she’s not ready for. I’m sorry to tell you this, but there’s a high chance she won’t ever consider being with you.”

I wanted to get mad, real mad. I wanted to get up in Jack's face and prove him wrong, that I already had her. That my feelings weren’t just some hopeless case. That maybe he should just stop being overprotective of her, and let her date me if she wanted to.

But I couldn’t. Not without Ash’s permission, at least.

“But what if she does?” I said in the calmest voice I could, trying to make it sound like I really was wondering.

“Look, you’d understand if you were the one to find her in that motel room. It was the most horrific sight I’ve ever seen. Don’t think she’s stronger than she actually is.”

That was it for me. I needed to see Ash before I lost it. I knew that I said that I wasn’t jealous of Jack anymore, that I knew nothing was going on between the two, but I could still feel that small pang of jealousy going through me as he reminded me that she had gone to him for help instead of me. Plus, the fact that he was basically saying that she would never even give me a chance made me try and calm my leg that was bouncing up and down.

“I, umm, actually have to go as well, John wanted to talk to me about some project or something… I’ll see you guys in music class later, ok?” I scrambled to get all my stuff together before walking out of the cafeteria, not waiting for a reaction from the others.

I went straight to the band room, where I knew Ash would be. The whole having-to-talk-to-John thing wasn’t a lie. I was going to talk to him, he told me to show up whenever I had the time, but I was planning on doing that the next day. Secretly, I actually hoped he wasn’t in the classroom at that moment. I just wanted to see Ash and know she was actually mine without having any restrictions on what I could and couldn’t do.

I carefully walked in, closing the door very quietly behind me. It seemed like Ash was the only person in here. She had grabbed some paper from a cupboard used as storage space and was smoothly walking back to the piano on the raised stage. Quietly sneaking up to her, I wrapped my arms around her waist and quickly kissed her cheek. Instead of screaming like she would have done a couple of weeks before, she let out a small happy squeal before giggling, knowing that it was me already.

“What are you doing here?” She asked me, putting the paper on the stool, still giggling while I still didn’t let go of her.

“Well, Jack was saying so stupid stuff, so I decided to leave before I did something stupid I would regret,” I whispered and put my chin on her shoulder, hugging her tighter.

“Oh, is that so?” She turned around in my hold and grinned up at me. We had managed to walk closer to the piano so that she was now leaning against the side.

I nodded, “yeah, so I thought ‘why not come here, see my girlfriend, and make our mouths touch’. Seemed like a pretty good idea to me.”

So, she did exactly that. I when I say exactly, I mean exactly. She wasn’t kissing me, no, she literally just put her lips against mine, not moving an inch, before pulling away. I couldn’t help but laugh at her while I shook my head, “that’s not good enough.”

This time, she held my face in her hands and gave me a long slow kiss. Before she could pull away, this time, I was quick enough to start kissing her back, deepening the kiss while I still could. She didn’t seem to mind, though. One of her hands slid down to my neck, her thumb still caressing the side of my chin as she accepted the new rhythm and my body pressed up against hers. In no time, I had managed to pick her up and put her down on the grand piano, not making her lips part.

The new position gave her full control over our kiss, being the one that was slightly taller now. But she knew exactly what to do. Her legs wrapped around my waist, pulling me even closer if it was possible. All my worries were washed away immediately. She really was mine; nothing and nobody was going to interfere with that, not even my old ways.

Somebody cleared their throat from behind us, causing Ash and me to jump apart. Well, apart from if you considered one foot away from each other apart. I snapped my head to the front of the classroom to see John standing there, putting some paper and student notebooks on his desk.

“Don’t mind me.” He grinned at us and winked, acting like he hadn’t seen a thing going down.

“Please don’t tell anyone, nobody except my parents know,” I begged straight away, not going to risk him blurting it out during class. And the parent's card was always useful to try and convince teachers.

“Your parents know?”

“Yeah…” Ash swung her legs as she still didn’t move from the piano. “That was pretty awkward.”

“I’m just glad you’re finally together!” John smiled, always being the cool teacher and not the stuck up one. “Alex has had a crush on you for ages!”

“What? Really?” Her eyes went wide as she suddenly looked at me. I was blushing like crazy, having hoped to keep that out of our relationship for another while.

“School hadn’t even really started yet and I could already tell. The way he was bragging about you during our first class, and then the looks he kept giving you the weeks after that. Really, it seemed like he was head over heels for you!”

“Why didn’t you tell me, you idiot!” Ash exclaimed as she hit me lightly while I was trying to look anywhere but at her (was it embarrass Alex day or something?). “I would have chosen you over Luke any day!”

“Really?” I asked her skeptically, remembering the way she swooned over him before their first date.

“Well, maybe not in the very beginning, but as soon as things started going wrong, yes. I feel so stupid now! I was the girl who you had a crush on? I’ve been calling myself a bitch the entire time for not liking you back? Alex!”

I couldn’t even say anything. Did she really just say that she would have chosen me over Luke? I couldn’t believe it! Jack was going to be so surprised when I told him-- wait. I couldn’t tell him just yet.

“You know, you should have made your move at the theme park,” she hopped off the glossy black instrument and took the paper of the stool so she could sit down, “it would have totally worked. We were already pretending, why not make it real as well?”

Notes

Reference to the theme park chapter. Who still remembers their first kiss? It seems like such a long time ago!