Chapter - 8

LOVE IS... A SURPRISE

'Love always comes as a surprise, you don't need to close your eyes 'cause soon you'll recognize its colors.' - Love Always Comes As A Surprise by Peter Asher

"What the hell do you think you are doing?"

Ashton's head snapped up to look at me in surprise, which he quickly concealed with his ever annoying smirk. "You cursed!" My widened eyes narrowed at him, and he answered me, "Going through some really interesting stuff."

My eyes widened, again and I sprinted towards him as soon as I came out of the bathroom and saw him looking at my laptop screen with intense concentration. He stood up from the couch in an instant. He jumped towards the back of the couch with the laptop in his hand and a huge smirk on his face.

"Give it back to me," I said with tightly clenched jaw and narrowed eyes.

He laughed in reply and ducked to avoid the pillow I had thrown his way. "I'm not someone who'd bear violence, Liana," he mocked me.

Ignoring him, I stood up on the couch and made lame attempts of snatching it from him. It had personal stuff! "Give it back!"

"Strip first!"

"What?" I asked appalled as I froze on the couch with my right arm extended towards him.

He laughed again and raised his hand high above his head, making it impossible for me to even touch the corner of my laptop. "I was so expecting this reaction from you."

"Very funny," I said sarcastically. "What's there in my laptop for you, Ashton? You've already seen all the profiles of the sexy candidates. Give it back."

He scrunched up his nose in distaste and said, "They were so boring." I shook my head and tried to snatch the laptop that he had hidden behind him. He smirked mischievously and told me, "Though I did find something really very interesting."

The way he said it made the alarms ring in my head. "What are you talking about?" A simple thought that maybe he was just kidding entered my head and I said, "You don't know the password. It's not possible that you saw anything. I locked it myself before going to the bathroom. You're lying." I satisfied myself with this little hope.

But his growing smirk made all my hope disappear into thin air. "Or am I?"

I looked at him skeptically while my nervousness was growing with each passing second. "I get it that you're a writer. Great for you. Even though your vocabulary is not that great and you can definitely cut down the use of the word 'and'." I scowled a little at his words but tried to understand where he was going with this conversation. There was no way that he could know my password. Yes, I had entered my password in front of him but my typing speed was fast, really fast. I was a writer for God's sake! Ignoring my scowl, and noticing my confusion, he continued, "'aeiou98765' Why would someone ever keep such a password?" He asked incredulously as a gasp escaped my lips at his correct guess.

"Because it is a weird password and nobody can ever guess it," I justified my creativity with a straight face. But, he guessed it. "Well, could have guessed it," I corrected myself with slumped shoulders. "How did you?" I let my curiosity get the best of me and asked him this question.

He informed me with a victorious smirk on his face, "I made a little video of you typing your password, and played it at snail's speed."

If I would not have been at the receiving end of his prank, I would have perhaps applauded and laughed at his antic. But, I was the only one facing his genius mind and thereby, I settled with giving him a death glare and yelled, "Jerk!"

"Sexy beast!" He corrected me, looking very content with his prank and my reactions.

In order to calm myself a little, I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. 'The photos that I don't want him or anybody else to see are saved at such a chaotic path in my laptop that he could never reach there in such a short time,' I told myself and proved to be successful in calming myself. With a little smile on my lips, I opened my eyes and saw him looking at me with furrowed eyebrows.

He narrowed his eyes at me as I looked back at him with an innocent smile. But he managed to wipe it off with his next words. "Drive E - Work - Lia - Other - Bleh." My jaw dropped open as he narrated the path of the folder I did not want him to see, and he continued, "Guys use such a path for hiding porn." He laughed at my expressions of disbelief.

"I - I don't know what you're talking about," I stammered, blinking my eyes rapidly.

His smirk grew as he took a step towards the couch, on which I was still standing. Ignoring my words, he said, "I must say, nice pictures. Way too much love for my taste in them, but still nice." I swallowed the Texas sized lump in my throat. All I could do was hope that he must not have noticed the last dates of the pictures. I never wanted him to see those pictures to begin with. But, now he had. Much to my annoyance, he continued, "Nolan and you look nice together." My jaw clenched and I stared at him with what I hoped was a blank expression. Noticing my lack of response, he remarked, "But why are all your pictures of either five months back or earlier than that. Didn't get any pictures clicked recently?" He tilted in head to the side as he raised his eyebrows at me in what looked like mock curiosity.

No words could escape my mouth. My mind couldn't form any kind of sentence that I could reply him with.

Nolan was not somebody I wanted to talk about. Ashton was not somebody to whom I wanted to tell about my break up. I was in a 'very happy' relationship according to him. I couldn't let him know the truth.

Narrowing my eyes at him, I responded with a question, "Is it important to save all the pictures in my laptop?" Not letting him to reply, I continued with a lie, "Nolan has all the recent pictures. Can we please focus on you now?" He chuckled while shaking his head and I decided to drop the bomb question at that very moment, "When are you planning to shave? You look like a hippie. You know, you can't meet the candidates like this." I motioned towards his bearded face with slight disgust.

I proved to be successful in diverting his mind from my pictures as he looked appalled and replied, "Who said that I'm going to shave?"

"I just did!"

"And you think I'll obey your every stupid wish because?" He challenged me with his narrowed grey eyes and a cunning look on his face.

Because... because... there was just no because! I couldn't make him do something he didn't want to. I was not his mother, well, as if he ever even obeyed his mother.

My lack of response and utter helplessness made him roll his eyes at me and I took that very opportunity to take the leap and snatch my laptop from him. But somehow, very clumsily, I ended up falling from the couch, taking Ashton with me to the ground, and landing on him.

Sound of something crashing on the floor reached my ears along with 'what the f*ck' from Ashton's mouth and a little squeal from my lips.

"F*ck!"

"Crap!"

We both cursed in our own different styles at the same time. My jaw, very effectively, collided with his very hard chest which made me hiss. But that pain subsided the moment I opened my eyes and looked at his grey ones, which were staring right back at me. Any more my type of curses that were at the tip of my tongue, somehow, found their way back to my throat and died somewhere inside. How could he have such intense, gorgeous eyes? And the way he stared back at mine, made me forget about each and everything momentarily. My hands rested on his shoulders, our chests touching, me completely hovering him. It was anything but a decent posture!

The only thing I could say was, "You've a very hard chest."

He blinked and his lips curled up in slight amusement. He tilted his head to the side slightly and whispered in his husky voice, "You can get something else hard too." Very slowly, I felt a hot trail moving up my waist as he snaked his arms around my waist and squeezed me lightly, vanishing every little distance between us. That squeeze brought me back to my senses and what he had said and thereby implied, finally registered in mind.

"Shut up!" I exclaimed wide-eyes and lifted myself off him. Thankfully, he let me get up easily, and started laughing. Once I managed to stand up on my feet, I glared at his lying form, but my glare had no effect on his laughter. He was enjoying it. A sigh escaped my lips and my scowl started to fade away as I watched him.

He looked so happy, so carefree when he laughed, but then why was he generally in a terrible mood? What was the need for him to be so rude from time to time? It wasn't like he was not capable of having a civilized conversation. He definitely was. But then why was he being so difficult to deal with?

These were some questions of which I was never going to get any replies probably, and so, there was no use of dwelling on them. I shook my head to get rid of them, and stepped back from him. But I landed on something hard that made a cracking noise. A gasp escaped my lips and in complete horror, I looked down at the floor to see the thing that I had stepped on to.

Ashton's laughter was not ringing in my ears anymore. A cry in agony and helplessness was threatening to erupt from my throat, and it definitely did. "My laptop!"

******

"Do you want something to eat?"

I didn't bother looking towards him as my eyes were fixed on my laptop's broken screen at the moment. I was pretty sure that if an eye contact would be made, he would easily be able to detect the anger that I had concealed in my eyes.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw him sitting on the recliner opposite me. The aura around was deadly and probably he could feel it too as the last few words he had spoken sounded uncomfortable and so not like him. But I was too lost in the dread of losing my laptop. It felt like a very important piece had been ripped out of my body, like the drug that I was so used to, had been taken away and the supply had been stopped in the entire continent by Narcotics. It was that feeling of emptiness. All my pictures, important videos, all my thoughts, and all my articles were saved in it; not to forget Ashton's candidates' profiles as well. Not that I couldn't get all the data back. Of course, I could. Only the screen had broken very badly. But temporarily, I was left to survive in this cruel world without my support system. My written thoughts, ideas, articles, and write-ups that were just for me to read were all taken away from me.

"Do you want something to drink?"

My head snapped towards Ashton as he brought me back from my misery state. "Do you have some poison?"

He looked thoughtful for a moment, and asked back, "Would rat poison do?"

"Sure, but I would need a lot of it," I replied, looking straight in his eyes. He looked cautious, probably because of my anger and the situation that I was in. It was absolutely opposite of how he had been since I met him the day before - overconfident, laid back, rude and a pervert. Narrowing my eyes at him, I continued, "I've to give it to a beast."

He pressed his lips together while looking at me. "It was just a laptop, Liana." He sighed, running his fingers through his dark hair.

Looking at him with wide eyes, I asked him, "Just a laptop? Really, Ashton?" I scoffed at him in disbelief, and continued, "It's obvious that you don't value anything in this world other than yourself. Do you have any idea about how important things I had in it? Of course, you don't know. Why would you? All you know is how to be rude and how to spoil someone's mood. Watching those pictures was funny for you, wasn't it? It doesn't matter to you that those pictures might be very important for someone else. All you need to do is have your fun, and you don't give a damn if you hurt somebody's feelings in the process. You just don't care, Ashton! You just don't." I was ranting a completely irrelevant rant, but I couldn't stop myself. What was the need? It was good that I was taking out my frustration of last two days on the person who was the very source of this anger in me.

Maybe I was over reacting; okay, not maybe, I definitely was overreacting, but at the moment, I didn't care at all.

I watched with narrowed eyes as his jaw clenched and unclenched, his grey fumed with unsaid anger and as he stood up from the recliner, not breaking eye contact with me even once. "Brittany James is the first girl, right? Let's go and meet her." I blinked at his randomness and looked at him in slight disbelief. We didn't have any meeting scheduled for the day. Before I could tell him this, he continued in a very hard voice, "Let's get the f*ck over with this f*cking sh*t."

My eyes blinked at his continuous cursing but I didn't refuse. I, too, wanted to end all of this soon, very soon.

*******

After about an hour, we found ourselves waiting outside an apartment in a rather posh area. I had tried to inform Ashton that we had our first meeting with Brittany the next day, but no words were exchanged between us after our banter. I had no idea how he knew her address and didn't even bother asking. Ignoring each other's existence made the car ride a very awkward one, but that didn't mean we started talking. We both had too much of ego to do any such thing.

Ashton had changed from his pajamas to dark washed jeans, while I was still dressed up in my work black shirt and pants. He rang the bell and when after a few seconds nobody answered, he cursed, "What the f*ck is wrong with people? Can't they open the door at once?"

I tried to stop the laughter that was threatening to erupt from my lips and I looked at him with raised eyebrows at the display of his hypocrisy. He noticed my expressions and his lips twitched up slightly while he shrugged nonchalantly. Before I could make any type of comment about his behavior, the door flung open slightly and a girl with big blue eyes peeked through it. Her red hair was sprawled all over her shoulder which looked bare as he hid behind the door.

I was too busy looking at her in complete confusion that I couldn't say anything at all. It was obvious that she was nude and hiding behind the door. 'Maybe she was taking a shower,' I wondered.

"How can I help you? Are you some door to door sales girl? Look, I don't want anything." she said in a irritated voice, as she looked at me.

"Um... I..."

"Who's there, Brit?" A male's voice from inside interrupted me, and she opened the door slightly only for us to look at her clad in a very tiny towel. My eyes popped out of their sockets when my eyes landed on a guy who had just came out of a room, followed by two more guys. All of them were covering themselves in merely boxers.

A laugh converted into a coughing sprint from my side, made me look at Ashton who covered his mouth with the back of his hand as his eyes roamed around at the scene in front of us.

"Who are you?" Brittany asked Ashton in a flirtatious tone as she noticed his presence.

My jaw dropped open at the change in her tone. Wasn't she already satisfied by the three guys in her apartment? Why did she need Ashton now? I was so going to remove her from the list if the candidates.

Oblivious to my growing rage and embarrassment, Ashton answered, "We are here to join the party." His smirk was detectable in his voice, and I shot him a glare to which he replied with a bigger smirk.

"You're so welcome," she replied back in a whisper and my face scrunched up in complete disgust.

Getting annoyed by the lustful looks they were now giving to each other, I interrupted, "We are here to sell some manners and shame." Her head snapped towards me in distaste and I continued, "But I don't think that will help you. So, goodbye!"

With that, I gripped Ashton's arm and started dragging him towards the elevator, leaving the girl and her play toys behind glaring at the back of my head. Ashton didn't protest to my dragging, which I was grateful for as it was obvious that I didn't possess the inhuman strength of dragging him. I heaved a sigh of relief once inside the elevator and Ashton burst into fits of laughter.

"Yeah, yeah... laugh all you want." I allowed him as if he even needed my permission and leaned at the back of the elevator.

"If all the candidates are like her, I'm so going to enjoy myself in the next eighteen days." He managed to say between his uncontrollable laughter.

There was no denying that the situation upstairs was hilarious, and with this realization, I allowed myself to laugh, too. We laughed till we were back in his car and eventually, driving back to his place.

"She didn't know who we were. Did she?" I asked him amidst my laughter.

He threw his head back laughing and changed the gear. "I don't think so. She thought that we had to meet her tomorrow, not today."

A chuckle escaped my lips and I mumbled, "I guess, the surprise meeting did prove fruitful."

He looked at me for a moment and focused back on the road ahead. A very little smile covered his face and he agreed with me. "Surprises are always more fun."

I smiled at him and added, "It's good that she didn't know who we were." He nodded and chuckled. "Well, she is definitely cancelled then."

He laughed a little and commented, "I should have accepted the invite to the party."

"Yeah, right!" I snorted at him, shaking my head with the same smile on my face.

"You do know the purpose of having three guys in one room with just one girl, right?" he asked with a huge smirk on his face when we stopped at a red light.

"Ashton! Spare me!" I shrieked and hit his arm at the incoherent images he was trying to put in my head.

"Do not hit the driver." He chuckled.

"You are gross," I informed him.

"Thank you!"

"And a jerk," I added.

He smirked a bit and bowed a little just as the light went green.

"And a huge pervert." I mumbled when he started to drive again.

"Touche!" He laughed and added in good humor, "only for you, Liana."

"Oh, that reminds me, also a big flirt." I squinted my eyes at him while my traitor lips were smiling up at him.

He just shook his head at me and continued driving. All the awkwardness from before had disappeared and was now replaced by a very comfortable and happy silence. Just when he parked his car in his parking lot, his phone rang indicating arrival of a new message. He read the message and groaned, "What does he need now?"

"Who?" I inquired while unbuckling my seat belt.

He thought for about five seconds and replied, "Harry. He is waiting upstairs for us."

"Harry?" I smiled at the mention of his very like-able friend. "I was actually wondering when I would get to meet him," I chirped and stepped out of the car.

In an instant, he, too, got of the car and locked it. He joined me as I made my way towards his apartment to meet Harry sans the Potter, and he asked, "Who said his name is Harry?" I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at him to see if he was kidding. His expressions were a mystery as he looked at me with a challenging gaze.

His name was Harry. This is what they had told me the day before. Were they making fun of me? Huffing, I followed him inside his apartment and sure enough noticed Harry waiting by the door.

"Ahh... Katniss!" He exclaimed, making me look behind me to meet someone named 'Katniss'. But no one was there. Ashton chuckled from beside me and