"I'll tell you what, we head to the change rooms now and take nice a warm shower and I'll take you for a coffee afterwards okay? My treat," was what Benji had suggested to Ashton.

And now, forty five minutes later—the two of them were seated around a table in a small coffee shop down the road.

Ashton stared down at his ice mocha latte, his thoughts bubbling away. If possible the coffee was only making it worse. But he knew Benji hadn't invited him for coffee specifically, he had given the boy a silent offer to talk.

Talk about his feelings. Something Ashton never did unless it was towards a girl he had taken interest in—but even then, the feelings weren't deep he just wanted a hook up.

This was different. He had been so adamant that he liked Betsy, and yet here he was, having second thoughts, doubts and a whole fuck tonne of confusion burning within every inch of his blood.

"You don't have to tell me anything Ashton. You can just sit there and think but I've got the feeling you're tired of thinking. So, express what you want, how you want. It isn't good to keep those things bottled up," Benji's words snapped him back into reality and Ashton processed them with the sip of his coffee.

Benji's smile was warm and welcoming, it always was. The softness that eased into his features told him, he could trust him.

"I–I don't know," he grumbled, shifting his eyes to a flawed spot on the table.

"That's okay, not knowing is okay," Benji soothed, pouring in a packet of sugar into his all black coffee.

Suddenly, Ashton phone buzzed with a message notification. It was Betsy.

hey, how was the game?

Ashton found himself reading the message over and over again. He finally picked up the phone and typed out a reply

good. we won.

And that was it. A conversation, short and simple but strangely enough—far from a bubbling excitement Ashton expected himself to feel.

He asked himself,

Why wasn't he excited?

And then he'd move on to a new question.