Two Way Street

I tapped my fingers against the table in the kitchen area of the hotel suite, gnawing on my lip as I waited for Mara to call me back. I really needed to talk to her. There was no way what she was thinking could go unaddressed, not even for a few more hours so the two of us could get some sleep.

The longer I had to wait, the more anxious I got. Simple lip biting had evolved into the table-tapping, and my leg soon followed suit, bouncing up and down, my body trying to channel the nervousness into something productive.

“What are you still doing up?” Zayn asked as he walked by me into the kitchen, his voice thick and garbled with sleep. His normally carefully styled hair was sticking up in a million different directions, but he was too knackered to care.

“Talking to Mara,” I responded. It wasn’t until then that I realized my own voice was scratchy from exhaustion, desperate for any kind of rest it could get.

“You’re not talking to anyone, mate,” he pointed out. Light filled the dark kitchen for a few seconds as he opened up the full-size fridge that came with the room and grabbed one of the pre-stocked spring water bottles. “You’re just sitting in the dark.”

I leaned forward on the table, propping myself up on my elbows, massaging my temples to try to get rid of the stress headache that was starting to rear its ugly head. “I realize that, Zayn. Mara’s walking home from the pub, and she’s going to call me when she gets there.”

Zayn settled down next to me at the table, looking concerned. “How long ago did she tell you that she was walking home?”

I checked the clock on my phone for the tenth time. “About seven minutes. Should I start worrying yet?” I tried to remember how long it took to walk from the closest pub back to her flat, but I came up completely blank.

He shook his head. “Nah. I’m pretty sure it’ll take her at least fifteen minutes to get home. If she’s not back in a half hour, then you can worry. How drunk was she? Do you know?”

“No, but she sounded pretty coherent to me,” I answered as best I could. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have let her walk home.”

“Uh, I don’t think you had much say in the matter,” Zayn snickered. “Whether you wanted her to or not, it’s not like you’d be able to do much to stop her. You’re here, and she’s all the way over there.” There was a short pause before Zayn looked at the clock. “And I just realized what time it is. It’s really late back in England. Shouldn’t you just let her sleep?”

“What we have to talk about can’t really wait until morning,” I grumbled, knowing that he was right, but also realizing that my conscience wouldn’t be able to wait until a more reasonable hour. “And I’m not sure that she needs to sleep. She sounded pretty awake to me.”

He shook his head and got to his feet, taking his bottle of water with him. “Whatever you say, mate. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she just passed out when she walked in the door.”

With that, he disappeared back into the room that he shared with Harry, shutting the door very softly behind him to make sure that he didn’t wake up anyone else in the suite.

I let out a long sigh and rested my chin on my crossed arms, waiting and waiting for my phone to ring. My stomach twisted itself into knots, and I couldn’t untie it, no matter how many deep, relaxing breaths I took.

I had pretty much decided that I was going to lose my mind if Mara didn’t call soon when my phone finally started to sing at me, her name popping up on the front screen.

“Mara?” I asked after accepting the call on the first ring.

“Hey,” she responded in a breathy voice, as if she was whispering, even though she lived alone at the moment, since Harry was clearly in America with me. “You wanted to talk?”

“Are you safe at home?”

“Yeah, I am,” she replied. I could hear her yawn shortly before her voice came back. “So what did you want to say?”

“I get it,” I burst out without thinking. “I get what you were talking to Louis about. And it kills me to say it, but I'm gonna go with it. I don't want you to be miserable.”

There was a really long silence on Mara’s part, and I was almost afraid she’d fallen asleep. But after three minutes, she said, “What do you mean, Liam?” in a pained voice. Almost like that of a little girl who’s just fallen off her bike.

I took a deep breath to control my emotions before speaking again. “It’s really difficult not seeing you every day, knowing that whenever I miss you, I can’t just pop by your flat or text you to come over to mine. And not hanging out with you is really taking a toll on me, too. I was willing to work through it, to keep up our relationship over phone calls and Skype and everything else the internet age brought with it. I was willing to do whatever it took to keep you, since I really do love you.”

“Will you just get on with it?” she snapped. It was pretty obvious that she knew where I was going.

“What I’m saying is that you’re giving up, Mara,” I told her point-blank. “What I’m saying is that you clearly don’t trust me enough to work with me, and this relationship isn’t as important to you as it is to me. Don’t think I didn’t notice the short hesitation you had on the phone just a few minutes ago before you replied that you loved me, too, or that your tone changed dramatically, from friendly and conversational to guilty and upset. We’ve only been apart for a relatively short while, and you’re already starting to doubt whether this is going to work out. I know that you have trust issues and that you’ve been through a lot of shit in your past, but by now, you should have more faith in me than you do. It’s actually really offensive to me.”

“You’re breaking up with me,” she said as if she was observing it was raining outside.

“You could say it like that,” I mumbled. “But I’d rather think of it as setting you free. You’re not exactly hiding the fact that you don’t want to work through the difficulties that are going to come along with continuing this relationship while we’re an ocean apart. So there you go. Now you don’t have to bother with it.”

She was quiet again before saying, “Fine. If this is what you want.”

“This isn’t what I want,” I replied sharply. “I thought I made that pretty clear. But making you happy is one of the most important things to me, and this is definitely what you want. I’m not working out, right? Isn’t that what you told Louis on the phone?”

“Did he tell you that?” she borderline shouted at me. “Whatever happened to loyalty, huh?”

I bit my lip, realizing that I’d kind of thrown Louis under the bus. But before there was too long of a silence, I replied, “You might think that I’m dumb, Mara, but I’m not that stupid. Metaphors aren’t that difficult to decipher. I could figure out that you were talking about me, about our relationship. And if you’re not willing to call the repairman, then just get rid of the garbage disposal.”

“Fine,” she responded. Her voice wavered with emotion, and I realized that she might have been a little more buzzed than I thought she was. After all, Mara didn’t do emotion too often, no matter how much something hurt her. So she was either drunk, or I had misinterpreted everything, and I was ripping her heart out of her chest and doing a Mexican hat dance around it. “Thanks for proving me right, Liam.”

And the line went dead.