Serena's POV

The next morning, I woke up quite early. It was 5 am. One hour too early. Suddenly, my head was hurting painfully, like, really, really bad, but I did nothing about it. I never do anything about my headaches, even though I have them quite often. Maybe it's just psychosomatic. I don't want to go to the doctor, waste his really important time in which he could help others with serious illnesses, and diagnose me with 'just didn't sleep enough' or 'just imagining stuff'.

Sometimes, my headaches are bad, sometimes just stitching a bit. Had them since the fire, that's why I think it's psychosomatic. I wanted to visit a therapist, but why the waste of time? Also, thinking about it, I don't want a person telling me I need to change. Like who I am is wrong. Even though I don't like myself, I am myself. That's something no one can change, also, being myself is not wrong. I don't get the idea of taking meds that make you less sad, or less crazy. It's like being myself is wrong, and honestly, even though I don't like myself, feeling like I am myself, is the only thing that makes myself acceptable for me. I feel like, if I would try to change myself, I'd give up.

Giving up would be so easy, wouldn't it? Not being there anymore. Maybe die in a car accident, or of a disease. I would never ever try to kill myself. NEVER, because I'm scared of missing my chances of experiencing something, but if the universe really decided to erase me out of it, I wouldn't complain. I'm not afraid of death. It's natural, the only thing we will definitely do. We already are dying, so where's the problem? But then, I think about people, who wouldn't want me to die, who I'd hurt with my death. It's not like I'm loved by many people, but I don't want to hurt anyone, even though this makes me feel like my life doesn't belong to me, like I live to not make someone sad. It feel like my life is a burden, like, even if I wanted to die, I couldn't. The decision wasn't in my hand. I don't want to imagine May and Dawn, crying, and my parents in heaven telling me they didn't want to see me so soon.

Life is so complicated, death so simple. I'm not hurting myself with death. I'm just affecting everyone around. Sometimes, I imagine people's hypothetical reactions to my hypothetical death and completely zone out. It feels like I already died, and my ghost watches the ones affected by my hypothetical death.

No. I can't stand it. I don't want to be the reason to make my best friends cry. I know how much it hurts. I know, sooner or later, I would die anyway, but loosing someone by dying too soon. Thinking, that you could have done something about it, that you could have beaten destiny, and saved your friend or family, sucks. It's the worst feeling ever. A mix of guilt, anger, sadness and the feeling of being about to throw up. Exactly what I feel every day of my life, when I think of my parents.

Suddenly...

beep. beep. beep.

It's 6am. Time to get ready for school.

               —————Time skip—————
At Misty's (05:00 pm):

Work already started an hour ago, but Ash's still not here. When I asked Misty what's wrong, she told me he asked if he could come a bit later, probably to unpack his boxes, so, here I am, working on my own, but I'm not complaining. Luckily, we don't have many customers today, so I'm doing pretty okay on my own. Not like I've been dying to see him... hehe, he.

Whatever, things couldn't be more fine at the moment. Palermo isn't much home lately, Miette acts like I don't exist and ignores me , which means she lets me alone and in peace, I have a lot of fun with May and Dawn and everything is good at work. I finally have order in my life again.

Wow I thought. I was just mopping the floor because one of the customers spilled his coffee before he left, but I stopped in my tracks, when a thought popped into my head. Two years. It took me two years, but it seems like I finally did it. My life isn't chaotic anymore. I finally have a plan, an order.

This thought, believe it or not, truly made me happy. It took me two years. Two years, to finally go on with a new life I needed to build up all on my own, but I did it!

This thought made my vision blur, and before I could think about why my vision even blurred, tears started tickling my cheeks. I was crying, but that weren't tears of sorrow... those, were tears of relief, of joy. I didn't make any noises. I was just standing in the middle of the cafe, leaning on the mop, and smiling and crying quietly, with no one noticing.

"Why so happy, princess?"

I looked up and saw this all too familiar, beautiful face. I didn't even know boys could be beautiful, but here he was, living proof that I was completely wrong. And, wait a moment... did Ash just call me 'princess'?

„Oh, uhm, it's nothing... really. And, 'Princess'? Really?"

I asked and wiped my tears away. He just shrugged but still had this illegally evil, cute, smoking hot smirk on his face. He came one step closer, and it looked like he was about to pass by, but then he came a bit closer, bringing his lips to my ear.

"This uniform makes you look like a princess, and I love it"

He whispered and passed by, going into the staff room, probably too change into his 'uniform' which you can't even really consider a uniform. It's actually just black jeans and a white T-shirt with the logo of the cafe on its back.

Omg, he's driving me crazy!

His rough voice filling the atmosphere, his breath tickling my skin, his body warmth meeting my rather cold skin, gave me the worst goosebumps ever. Oh my lord, will I ever be able not to feel like this when he does stuff like that? When he says stuff like that? I won't survive this. I'm sure of it. I don't know if I hate or love this feeling!

I just realized I still didn't move from my spot, so I carried on mopping the coffee from the floor, and when I was finally done, I put the mop back in the 'only staff' room and got back to work again, taking people's orders, and so on, and so did Ash. At work, we harmonized pretty well, you couldn't deny it, even if you tried to.

After an hour of work, we started getting more customers, including a group of 5 boys. I went to take their orders. "Hi everyone, what can I get you?" I asked and one boy replied and took the orders for all of them "Yeah, hi, we'd like two strawberry milkshakes, 3 chocolate milkshakes, 5 chocolate cakes, ..." he paused for a moment and just looked at me, started smirking, then carried on "and lastly, your number".

I just wrote down the orders (except the number thing), not showing hints of surprises on my face, because I wasn't surprised. These kind of situations aren't really rare. They're part of being a waitress. When I was done writing, I looked at him with an apologetic look on my face, even though I wasn't apologetic at all. "I'm really sorry, but I won't give you my number" I said and walked away, when suddenly a hand grabbed my wrist.

The boys hand.

"Well, if you won't give it to me, I'll just take it" he said, stoop up and looked in my skirt pockets for my phone. The other guys were cheering for him loudly, and I tried to get rid of his grip, but I couldn't. It was really tight.

After he couldn't find my phone in my pockets, (because it was in the staff room, but he doesn't need to know that) he wrapped his other arm around my waist and pulled me closer to him, but I was too weak to fight against his strength. I still had a headache. Everything hurt. The noises, the light, his touch. Everything. I really thought I should just give up and give him what he wants, when suddenly an even stronger, but also softer hand pulled me back from the boy's grip. It was Ash.

"What the hell dude?!"

Ash snapped, his body language looking aggressive and defensive. It was obvious the boy was scared of him. "This is none of your business man, stay out of it!" the boy snapped, but Ash stepped a bit closer, crossing his arms, showing his well built, muscular arms, scaring the boy even more. "Look, I'm really not in the mood for fighting right now, so why don't you just leave?" Ash asked with his soft voice, no sign of wrath in it. The boy didn't respond, but instead tried to punch Ash, but Ash dodged the punch faster than you could follow with your senses.

"Guess that's a 'no' then" Ash said and with one twist, he turned the boy's body with the back to him, and his arm was painfully twisted in some way, so Ash had perfect control of him. He pushed him in the direction of the door and kicked him out. After that, he came back and looked to the rest of the group. "I really hope that at least you are gonna behave" Ash said with warningly with his hands in his pockets,  and the boy's nodded scared.

I didn't realize I was kneeling on the ground all the time. Suddenly, Ash dropped down on his knees and stroked my hair with both of his hands.

"You alright princess?"

The next thing I knew: I woke up in a hospital.

OMFFFFLLLLL! I'm so sorry, but I feel like time passes soooo faaaaasssttt!!! Ugh, I just hope you enjoyed this chapter, cuz I definitely enjoyed writing it! Idk when the next chapter is going to come up, but definitely soon! Probably sometime in the next 2 weeks. Thank for reading!

♥