Ex's Can't Be Oh's

Zack never thought he would hear those words coming from Alex Gaskarth’s mouth again while Madeline was the subject of conversation. According to Maddy before she left he had wrecked her life and she would never, ever forgive him. On the actual evening that she packed up her whole entire life and shot out of town in the middle of the night she had practically given Alex a black eye. So the fact that she had seemingly forgiven him over coffee was just unfathomable.

“What exactly did you say to get her to change her mind?” Cassandra asked in a whisper and subconsciously everyone in the room moved forward to hear his response.

“Well I basically told her that I wanted to bone her and she said yes.”

Her laugh echoed out from the kitchen as Alex sat back in his chair with a smirk. Madeline appeared at the door several seconds later as everyone else rolled their eyes or glared at her new again friend.

“You wish,” she grinned and Alex nodded quickly his smirk still firmly stuck in place. Two kinds of silences followed, for Alex and Madeline it was comfortable; they shared a small smile and they were happy. For the rest of the guests it was totally uncomfortable and Zack seemed to be getting suddenly very jealous.

“I’m going for a walk,” he mumbled as he stood up from the couch and exited the lounge, slipping on his shoes at the front door before he swung it open stepped out and slammed it shut.

“What crawled up his ass and died?” Alex asked jokingly as Madeline stared at the door and gnawed on her lip nervously. Some part of her, a really rather very stupid part wanted her to follow him to ask him why he had hurt her. Of all the people she had ever let in to her life he was the last person she expected to do it, but then Madeline never had been a very good judge of character.

“Maybe someone should go and see how he is,” she muttered softly and all of the attention quickly flipped onto her. She shifted uncomfortably in the doorway and stared them all down, daring them to say something about her comment. It was a compromise with her conscience; it wanted her to go and check on him herself but she wasn’t ready for that so she was going to send someone else.

Rian stood up and sent her a curt nod before he too disappeared out of the apartment.

Jack it seemed was the only one brave enough to say anything, “You still care about him don’t you.”

Madeline rolled her eyes and sighed deeply, “He was my first love Jack, and I don’t think you ever stop caring for them.”

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

Her front door slamming again caused Madeline to sit bolt upright in her bed, the sweat from her nightmare trickling down the back of her neck. She could only just make out the voices in her hallway and as she laid back down to listen to them she realised that they belonged to Rian and Zack.

Fighting against her better judgment, she pressed her ear up against the wall she shared with the hallway and squinted as she listened. The voices were incredibly muffled and she could easily have been mixing up what they were actually saying with words that sounded similar.

“Why did she do that, forgive Alex? Now everything’s weird,” Madeline scoffed almost silently and battled not to roll her eyes at the wall. Her forgiving Alex had made things awkward? Like they hadn’t been awkward before.

During her irritated inner conversation Madeline missed two thirds of the conversation that followed.

“You can’t exactly blame her though can you, I mean even you know what you did was wrong,” she smiled at this and reminded herself to thank Rian later; he was right Zack had no right blaming her for anything.

There was a very light sound that followed and Madeline assumed that it was Zack sighing deeply, “I know it’s just that I love her so much.”

The sharp intake of breath she took caused her to choke on her own saliva and the oxygen she had inhaled, which in turn caused her coughing fit. She quickly rolled over onto her side and laid back down as her throat choking subsided.

She was silently cursing herself when she heard her door being inched open very slowly and as she feigned sleep (something she had become very convincing at) she fought against her own eyelids to keep them firmly shut.

“She’s asleep, come on let’s go.”

When her door clicked back into place her eyes snapped open and she pulled a pillow over her head in anger. She felt like such an idiot for letting him into her home, the place that she was supposed to feel safest in, okay so she hadn’t actually invited him herself but she hadn’t really fought that much against it and the more she thought about Jack’s comment the angrier she became with herself and Zack.

He just had to go and complicate things.