CHAPTER - 7

LOVE IS... STUPID

"Love is being stupid together." - Paul Valery

Day - 2

"I see that you clean up well," Ashton said the second he opened the door while running his eyes through my naked 'hairless' arms.

Shooting him a fake smile, I retorted, "And I see that you still didn't bother cleaning up at all."

"Of course. Why would I? I'm a sexy beast."

"Yeah, right!" I rolled my eyes at him and waited for him to get aside from the door so I could enter. He leaned on the door, looking at me with his challenging gaze. He looked fresh as compared to how he looked the day before. The bags under his eyes were lighter, which made his beautiful grey eyes shine. He was handsome, very handsome. No doubts about that. In fact, he, somehow, made the beard on his face suit him amazingly well. "Well?" I craned my neck towards his living room, motioning for him to let me enter, but he didn't budge even a bit. "Oh C'mon, Ashton. Please!" I groaned, looking at him in disbelief as he seemed to be very pleased at the aspect of repeating yesterday's telecast of not letting me inside his place.

His lips formed a smug smirk and he whispered, "Yup. Scream exactly that when I'd be ravishing you."

My mouth dropped open in surprise, which pleased him more as he smirked victoriously and stepped back inside his apartment. I chose to keep my mouth shut and entered the apartment. After shutting the door behind me, I watched him moving towards his room. He was way too keen on repeating his routine of the day before. The only problem was that I was not in a mood to clean his mess of an apartment yet again while he rested on his bed.

My eyes widened just as he entered his room lazily, and I ran towards the door, literally. Thanks to the powers above that I avoided having the door shut in my face, yet again, or worse, getting squished between the door and the door frame. I stopped the door from getting shut with my hands and quickly entered his room behind him. I swear the ninja within me was way too awesome and I, genuinely, felt so proud of it at that moment.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Ashton yelled, stealing away my moment of pride.

"What do you think you are doing?" I counter questioned him with my wide eyes.

His jaw clenched tightly and he took a step towards me in a very intimidating way which was successful in making me step back lightly. "I've better things to do than spend my time with you."

Involuntarily, I flinched ever so slightly at both his voice and his words. Even I had better things to do in my life. I was also not in front of him facing humiliation by choice. But he didn't have to be so blunt and rude about it. "Well, so do I!" I exclaimed, looking back at him with firm eyes and lightly clenched jaw.

It was the start of our staring match and none of us was ready to give up. For him, it must have been his male ego that was stopping him from backing off. For me, it was the perfect opportunity to show to him that I wasn't scared of him and I wasn't here to back off. Well, a hidden agenda was also to have a deep look in his eyes from this close. They looked like a weird yet beautiful combination of black and dark grey, latter being the prominent one.

"You've beautiful eyes," I murmured, too lost in his eyes to comprehend my words.

He blinked, taken aback at what I said and I stopped the urge to face palm myself. His surprise was short lived as he smirked at me and said, "So I've been told."

"I won." I smiled as I won the staring contest, but he looked at me with raised eyebrows and I mumbled, "Um... it's good." I lowered my gaze from his to look around his room. It was a simple white colored room; way too simple. The only pieces of furniture were a bed with its side tables, a cupboard, and a study table that had a laptop resting on it. It was nothing like what I was expecting. For some reason, I thought it would a be a dark color painted room with mess all over, but unlike his living room, his bedroom was spotless. It was simple and I liked it. I liked the fact that he was not somebody who wanted to flaunt all the money his family had. The first proof of my conclusion was his apartment and its surroundings. Second was the simplicity of his furniture and the simplicity of the décor. Lastly, it was the fact that he didn't look even the slightest bit like his brother, who was probably the definition of an upscale businessman, who wore tailor made suits to perfection, and was undoubtedly the most eligible bachelor in town.

But that didn't mean that Ashton was any less good looking. In fact, despite of his baggy eyes, weird beard, and mustache, he looked very appealing; way too appealing and hot. Maybe it was because of his broad built as he was extremely fit or maybe it was because of his attention demanding eyes. I guess it was the combination of all.

"Are you done checking me out?" he snapped, making me pay attention to his words instead of his facial features.

"I'm not checking you out," I denied the obvious. It was good playing safe around him. He snorted, while I continued with a little smile, "You've Priscilla's eyes." '...but more beautiful' I added mentally.

"No sh*t, Sherlock!" he said deadpanned as he started moving towards his bed.

Ignoring his remark, I continued spilling my observations, "Did Dylan get his eyes from your Dad? I mean, he doesn't resemble you much."

He turned abruptly and looked at with narrowed eyes and a little smirk. "A crush?" Before I could tell him that it was a thing of the past and his brother was someone with whom I got along quite nicely, he added, "How typical of you."

A little scowl covered my face. He really couldn't talk in a nice way. "Can we get to work now?"

"Sure! Here in the bedroom?" he asked with a sly smile.

"I prefer the living room. It's more comfortable on the couch," I told him, frowning at the thought of doing some research works in the bedroom.

A smirk covered his face as he commented, "Kinky."

Just this one word from his stupid mouth and those annoying expressions on his face compelled me to rewind the little conversation we just had, in my mind, and when I realized in what direction my normal words had been taken, I blushed hard and struggled with my next words. "You're a pervert." I scowled in annoyance.

"And you can beat Sherlock with your mind-blowing and precise observation skills," he reverted, looking at me with wide eyes filled with an overdose of sarcasm.

"Bleh!" I dismissed him and started moving out of his room, but before I stepped out, a door in his room caught my attention. "What's in there?" I asked, pointing towards the door on the right side of his bed.

"Direct entrance to Hogwarts. Harry and I often use it," he replied in a flat voice.

I narrowed my eyes at him and shot a fake smile. "Haha. Very funny." My eyes landed on one more door that was directly behind him, right opposite his bed, and I frowned in mild curiosity. "And what's there?"

His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and his head snapped behind him to look where I was pointing. He looked back at me and rolled his eyes. "Hermione is supposed to use it to enter Hogwarts."

A scowl made its way to my face and I glowered at him. "Why can't you ever give normal replies? There is no need to be sarcastic all the time." It was strange for me to say these things. Sarcasm was my first language, but after meeting Ashton it seemed like a foreign one.

Now that I expected him to give a rude or sarcastic reply again, he surprised me by simply shrugging and moving towards the living room. My eyes widened slightly at the thought of him giving me simple answers and having a civilized conversation with him, finally. Jumping with slight joy, I followed him out of the bedroom and sat down on the couch beside him. Smiling, I took out my laptop and turned it on in order to continue my work.

"You know, you're smiling like a creep just because I let you sit beside me, and you call me a pervert?"

My smile disappeared at his smug dialogue and I looked from my laptop to him with a little scowl. "I just have to show you pictures of some girls that your mother has shortlisted for you. You've to select few of them and meet them, starting tomorrow or maybe today," I informed him with a roll of eyes.

"Bullsh*t!" he cursed with his jaw tightly clenched and I looked at him in slight surprise. "What the f*ck makes you think that I would have even the slightest interest in any of the girls that my mother has shortlisted for me? F*ck! I don't even want to go through this f*cking torture. I just want her, Dylan and you to stay the f*ck out of my life. Is that so hard for you to understand?" His eyes were stormy and his voice was low but hard as he took out his anger at me. In order to look intimidating, he leaned towards me so that there was very little distance between our faces. He was so close that I could see the details of his face, and somehow, he looked familiar.

The familiarity was probably due to the fact that I had searched him up on Google this morning and searched about him. The annoying facts were that mainly all I got was the various rumors that were of no importance to me, and there were hardly four to five pictures of him, which were either too hazy or he had his beard in them. There was one picture in which his grey eyes stood out the most, maybe because of the fact that he looked pissed off in that one. The main picture had Dylan in the background, holding his arm as if stopping him from doing something wrong. Dylan looked, as always, calm and composed, but Ashton was a completely different story.

I stayed silent for a moment after his outburst and he waited for me to say something. Licking my lower lip, I raised my right hand and brought it towards his cheek. He shut his eyes in reflex, waiting for me to slap him. Using my index finger and thumb, I picked up the single eyelash that had fallen on his cheek. I held his right hand and curled it in a fist, after which I placed his eyelash at the back of his palm. Slowly, I looked back in his eyes and found him looking at me with surprise. "Make a wish and blow away the eyelash," I whispered, finding it hard to look away from his eyes that were fixed on mine.

He stared at me for a moment and his lips twitched up ever so slightly, but he quickly covered it up with a smirk. Shaking his head at me, thereby breaking eye contact, he muttered, "You are an idiot; a hopeless idiot."

I looked at him in mock defense and said, "You should be grateful that I noticed it. Most of your eyelashes must get lost somewhere in your heavy beard. Think about how many wishes, you must have lost."

"I'll call you Sherry-lock from now on," he commented, rolling his eyes at me.

"Where did that come from?"

"You want me to call you 'Sherlock'?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Can't you just go with 'Liana'?" I pleaded.

He smirked, tilting his head to the side. "You want me to go out with you? Are you on the list of shortlisted candidates, too?"

My mouth gaped open and I clarified, "You know I didn't mean that."

He interfered and shook his head. "You waste too much time. Don't we have work to do? Can we start it now? I do not have all day, Sherry."

"I'm not Sherry." I tried to correct him in a meek voice as I knew that it was of no use. Well, at least he was not being rude at the moment and he, himself, asked me to start the work. It was a good sign, wasn't it?

"So 'bear'?" he asked, giving me the other option for my nickname.

"Let's just focus on work, please." I attempted to stop his name calling by ignoring him and looking back towards my laptop.

"Sure, Sherry."

"Oh, God!" I groaned, while opening the folder that Priscilla had sent me the day before.

"Yes, that name is fine when we are alone, but not in front of anyone. I want to keep my identity a secret." He smirked at my annoyed expressions.

I decided to change the topic and asked him, "You made a wish?"

"You think I'm stupid?" he retorted with raised eyebrows.

"So you just brushed it off? You should have given it to me. I wanted to make a wish," I complained, looking at him with wide eyes.

He shrugged and suggested me, "Pluck an eyelash of yours and make a wish."

I snorted and told him, "You can only make a wish of an accidentally fallen eyelash." He was so stupid. Didn't he know this simple fact?

"Really, Sherry? And you don't know that you can make a wish of only 'your' accidentally fallen eyelash?"

I pouted a little at his logical talks and tried to justify my theory. "The eyelash does not know who it belongs to?"

He shook his head at me and with a little smile on his face, he commented, "You're stupid." That was the first smile I saw on his face, and it left me speechless for a moment.

I knew I was being stupid and proving this in front of him. Well, he was being stupid too. We were just being stupid together.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N

Sorry for the delay & sorry for the filler chapter. It was supposed to be longer, but life is not being life, meaning highly hectic & stressed. Please cooperate with me.

Hope you all enjoyed the developing chemistry between Liana & Ashton. :) <3 This is an important chapter too. Ashton smiled! Duh! :D

VOTE, COMMENT, FAN. :D

Thanks! :) <3

PS. Anybody who wants to make a banner, PM me. :)