All Grown Up

Waking up, I expected to be in my room. But all I wasn't. All I saw was white.

White walls. White floors. White ceiling. It was blinding. And it smelt of disinfectant. I was in a hospital. Why was I in a hospital? And why did my whole body ache?

"Ah, Miss Foster," a nurse spoke, walking in the room with a clipboard. She sent me a warm smile. "It's good to see you awake. Your mates were about to pace a hole in the floor out there."

My eyebrows furrowed, and I instantly regretted it. Even doing that hurt. "Who?"

She shuffled over to the machine next to me and checked my vitals. "Um, the blonde Irish lad and the tall lad with the tattoo on his lower left arm."

There was no denying my heart breaking when she said that. Harry wasn't here. My own boyfriend wasn't here. But his band mate was. If that didn't show his true colors then I don't know what did. This relationship wasn't worth it. It was making me lose my sanity. And my sanity wasn't worth it. My time wasn't worth it. From this point on, I wasn't going to waste my time. Nobody else mattered but me.

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened to me?" I questioned. "I feel like I got hit by a few cars." I gratefully took the cup of ice water she handed me and slowly sipped it. My throat was scratchy and sore. It felt like I hadn't drank anything in a days. She glanced up from the clipboard. "Well," she started. "You actually did get hit by a few cars."

"What?"

She then went on to tell me everything that happened. "A few nights ago during a bad storm, you got hit multiple times in your car. It was a three car pile up. You had surgery to repair a collapsed lung and casts put on your ankle and wrist."

My wrist and ankle? But I had competitions to prepare for. I had classes to teach. I used my legs to make a living. If I didn't work, I didn't get paid and if I didn't get paid, I didn't pay my bills. I couldn't drop my half of the bills on Lilly. Yeah, her parents would be more then willing to pay all of it, but that wasn't the point. I liked making my own money and paying for my own things. I've always been independent. Now wasn't any different. This—

"Is there anything I can get you?" She questioned. "Some lunch? The cafeteria is serving vegetable soup with hot rolls and bread pudding for dessert."

I numbly nodded. "Yeah, that'd be nice. Thank you."

She flashed me a blindingly bright smile. "Not a problem, dear. I'll be back in a jiffy." As soon as she shut the door, it was opened again. This time it was Ian and Niall. At the sight of me, they smiled, but they were forced. I'm sure I was a sight for sore eyes. Train wreck had to be an understatement. There would definitely be no photos taken of me in the next millennium.

Niall greeted me first. "Hey Stasia. How yeh feelin'?"

"Good as I can be," I replied. Now it was Ian's turn. "If you ever do that to me again, I'll fucking kill yeh. I have never been so scared in my entire life."

"Nice to see you too." He gave me a look, instantly making me shut up. He had every right to be acting the way he was. He was the closest thing I had to family. So when he gave my head a peck and grabbed my free hand, I let him. You could read the worry in his eyes plain as day. No amount of teasing or consoling from me or anyone else could change that. Worrying was something he did well. His Dad passed that down to him. Niall pulled a chair up on the other side of the bed and sat down. "Harry—"

God, that name. It made my heart do stupid things. And the heart monitor let it be known. The beeping was very apparent. It made me want to hide under the itchy covers and never come out. For me to think he would take us seriously was the stupidest thing I could've ever done. And it's just what I did. He wasn't here when I woke up. I was in the hospital for Christ sake. Niall was here and my own exboyfriend wasn't.

I cut him off. "Can you sneak me a Snickers, Niall?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I'll be back in a sec. You want anything, Ian?"

Ian shook his head and with that, Niall walked out of the room. As soon as the door was securely shut, I looked at Ian with tears in my eyes. "He wasn't even here when I woke up." My voice cracked all over the place and each time it made Ian grip my free hand tighter. "He's my boyfriend and he wasn't even here."

"Babe, listen to me," he started. "If he's not here, that should go to show that he isn't interested in anything serious. And I hope and pray that you don't stay with him. No boyfriend wouldn't be here when his girlfriend woke up in the hospital after a bad car crash."

A few tears leaked from my eyes. He reached up and wiped them away. "I don't want him in here."

He nodded. "Okay. I'll let the nurses know."



"Miss Foster?" My eyes moved from the telly screen to the doorway. There stood a nurse in purple scrubs. "There's a guy here by the name of Harry who wants to see you. Do you want me to let him back?"

I instantly shook my head. "No, I'm not feeling up to visitors at the moment."

"Okay." She shot me a sad grin. "I'll tell him to come back later."

"No!" I burst. "Just... don't. My friend, Ian told the nurses on this floor that he wasn't allowed back here."

"Oh, okay then. I'm sorry to bother you. If you need anything give us a ring and we'll be here as fast as we can. Get some rest now, yeah?"

I didn't give Niall a chance to question anything last night. As soon as he came back with a few Snickers, Ian and I got to talking about what would happen to my students. He agreed that he would take them on and reluctantly agreed to let me sit in on all the classes. They were after all my students. But there was no missing the looks Niall gave me. He was itching to talk about me and Harry. There wasn't anything in this world that would make me talk about us. I didn't feel any reason to. There was no longer an us. And nothing could change that.



He didn't even realize it. I opened my text conversation with Ian and typed a quick text.













"Need anything, love?"

I shook my head. "I'm fine, Ian. Go take a bath or something."

"Men don't take baths." That made me laugh. "Those bath bombs in your master bath suggest otherwise."

He settled for sticking his tongue out at me. With one last look over his shoulder, he left the door cracked and padded down the hallway. I had stayed the required week at the hospital and once they told me I was free to go, Ian was there. He informed me that I was staying at his new place in Hampstead. His small flat was traded for a big house. There was no doubt that his parents were helping him pay for it, but I knew he worked hard and didn't blow his money, so it didn't bother me.

As soon as I heard his footsteps head up the stairs, I switched on the telly in the guest bedroom. A rerun of last nights X Factor was playing. I wasn't a big fan of the show. But my pain medication I took a half hour ago was taking effect and I didn't have the energy to change it. So the remote was put back on the bedside table and I relaxed back into the mountain of pillows Ian had me laying on.

There was one thing I was good at doing and that was pushing people away. Including the people closest to me. Niall and Harry had been pushed away. Everyone besides Ian and Lilly had been pushed away. That didn't stop them from trying though. Niall came by the hospital every day, but I was distant. Harry did the same, but when the nurses still wouldn't let him back, he got fed up and practically blew up on them. I could hear him having words with the nurses down the hall. Over the last few months I had been told about his temper. It wasn't bad until someone really made him mad. And I guess the nurse telling him that Ian was behind him not being allowed back in my room was just icing on the cake.

"'Lo?" I put my phone on speaker and set it on my chest. "Stasia," Niall stated.

"Niall."

"Why aren't you at the hospital? I went there and someone else was in your room."

I may have forgotten to tell him I was going home today. "I got to go home today. I guess I forgot to tell you."

"Which is why I went to your flat and nobody answered, which leads me to my next question; where are you staying?"

"Oh," I giggled. "At Ian's new place in Hampstead. He's got this massive house with the cutest rose bushes outside the gates of the driveway." 'Cutest' wasn't in my normal vocabulary. This medicine was really getting to me. "Guess what he said? He... He said I get to decorate the guest room however I want. Because I'm his favorite."

Niall let out a hum. "Is his new house white with black shutters? And has a Mercedes SUV sitting in the driveway?" My drugged self let out a gasp. "Yes! How'd yeh know?!"

"'Cause he lives two houses down from Harry, and I just passed his house," he answered.

I gasped again. "Come visit me, Nialler! I haven't seen you in ages!"

"What's the code to his gate? I'm sitting outside it now."

"Um," I trailed off. What was the code to the gate? "Um, try, uh... five-nine-six-three-two."

A beep sounded from down the hall. I'm assuming that's the alarm system alerting us that someone opened the gate. This house was something that a famous celebrity and rich person belonged in. Hence why loads of famous people and rich people lived around here. I heard a few car doors shut and then soon after, the front door shut. "Stasia?"

"Guest room!" I sang. It took him a minute or so to find me and when he did, he walked in the room with Louis trailing behind him. I greeted them both with a dopey smile. "Hi guuuys!"

"How you holding up, love?" Louis asked, setting on the edge of the bed. I gave him a short shrug. It caused a dull pain to shoot through my body. The pain medicine obviously hasn't taken full effect. "Good as I can be. What're you lot doing here?"

Niall let out a sigh. "Just left mopey Harry's place."

Mopey Harry's place. I knew what Niall was trying to do. He was trying to get me to feel guilty. He was trying to make me feel like proper shit for pushing Harry away. But Harry did this to himself. I didn't do it. There was nothing stopping him from telling everyone that we were a couple. No one else was in our relationship. It was just me and him. "It's his fault that he's mopey."

They both looked at me with raised eyebrows. "How so?"

I shrugged. "He refused to tell anyone about us. We were dating for Christ sake and his excuse was that he wasn't ready to share with the world that he was dating me." It seemed as if my mouth had a mind of its own. Or maybe it was the pain medication? "He was embarrassed of me. I'm not going to be hidden from the bloody fucking world because he's fucking embarrassed of me. Fuck him." And apparently I had a major potty mouth.

But let's be honest here, the truth hurt.

Harry was embarrassed of me.

And that hurt. It hurt more then anyone would ever know. This was right up there with being told I deserved to die. Everyone had irrational fears and I was one of those people. My irrational fear was of being unloved and rejected. That's why I kept a safe distance from anything of the sort. I had never had a boyfriend. I hadn't even given it a second thought. But Harry doing what he was doing made me feel unloved and rejected. That was enough to make me want to curl into a ball and cry. But you know, seeing as I had just been in a bad accident, I settled for drugging myself up, becoming a hermit, and allowing Ian to take care of me. No one had taken care of me for years, so it was refreshing.

"The fact that he's being all mopey should go to show that he cares about you," Louis stated. The look he gave me made me look away. "He didn't want to tell people because he knew they'd hurt you. He knows you're fragile and he doesn't want the past repeating itself."

"No he—" He cut me off.

"Don't even think about saying he doesn't care about you because we all know that's a bloody lie." Now that made me mad. Louis didn't know anything. He didn't know our whole story. But he was about to. And the pain medication was all to blame.

"You don't even know—" I cut myself off, shaking my head. "Don't act like you know everything about us. Because you don't."

Both his and Niall's faces read confusion and question. He didn't tell them. He didn't tell them about our past. Figures.

"We grew up together," I started. "Him and his mates gave me hell from the day we started kindergarten, until he left for the stupid X Factor auditions. Do you know what he told me after my parents died? He told me to go kill myself. Kill myself. And yeh know what? I tried to. I would have too, if he hadn't of grabbed my arm when I jumped. None of this shit would be happening if he had just let me be. I was just doing as he said."

They were speechless, which was understandable. That was a lot of stuff to take in at once. Hell, it was a lot for me to take in and I had lived it. I would be laying in bed at night with my eyes closed and flashes of my past would buzz through my mind. They haunted me. Forgetting was something I had tried to do and told Harry that I would do, but that was one thing that was hard to forget. I had permanent reminds on my body that I had to look at every day. My wrists and thighs were a few things I tried to overlook. But no matter how hard I tried to overlook them, there was a voice in the back of my head screaming that the scars were there.

"He's the reason I have these." I pushed up the sleeves of my jumper, showing them my wrists. "And these." I shed the covers and pointed to my short clad legs. The pink scars were sticking out more then usual against my unnaturally pale skin. It made them look worse.

But would they ever look better?