Saving Grace

Breaks from school are the best. Especially Christmas break when you’ve got like basically a month off and can go home and relax or whatever you do around Christmas. That’s what I did, Aspen had left like two days ago for her Christmas vacation with her parents, Liam had left the same day for some thing his parents wanted him to tag along on. Harry and Louis had left early this morning, and Niall well that lucky bastard had been gone since Monday. Apparently he’d taken all his finals but one the week before everyone else, I don’t know why but he had and only had one this week and had left right after he finished it. Which left me alone, I wouldn’t be here long though. I’d just finished up my last final thankfully the day before, and was about to get in my car and head home for this lovely break. Which was much needed.

It’d been a stressful month to say the least. And the last week or so had been the worst. Aspen and I had gotten into more fights in this last month than any other time in our relationship and it was annoying. So I was kind of glad to be going home for a while, it’d give me time to be away from her and hopefully not be so annoyed with her when we both got back.

I totally understand the whole ‘I’m dating Aspen thing’ really I did. I understood that as her boyfriend I was given special privileges that others weren’t given. Like holding her hand, kissing her, and just I guess making it known that we were together. There were also things that I got to do when it was just us that others didn’t, like shag her and all that good stuff. And truthfully it’s not hard to know those things, but in my own mind being her boyfriend gave me this right to be protective and get jealous every once in a while. Plus I mean she was fit, and I’m not an idiot I know there are plenty of other guys who look at her because they wanna shag her, and I don’t want that to happen because she’s my girlfriend. All of those reasons lead me to wonder why she was so mad at me. I mean I got kind of jealous that her ‘friend’ was hugging her and it looked like more, but it happens. Yet she’d been mad at me about it for like nearly three days now.

We’d kind of talked about it before she’d left but I think she’d just ended up more pissed off than she had been to start. And she hadn’t answered any of my texts or phone calls since she’d been gone. Of course I’ve been letting it slide for the most part since she’s kind of in a whole new time zone and all and was on a plane and whatnot. But really she could at least reply to something, unless she was just having such a good time without me that she’d already forgotten we were still together. I didn’t really know. Sometimes dating Aspen could really be a pain in the ass.

Personally I decided that if she wasn’t going to worry about me while we were on this break then I wasn’t going to worry about her. I didn’t really know where we stood, or what the hell was going on with us, and since she hadn’t talked to me at all since she’d been away I kind of took it upon myself to say we were on a break. Which was probably going to end up being a really stupid decision, I’d probably get a lot of shit for it when Aspen and I did talk again, or if she found out or whatever, but I wasn’t that worried about it. In my mind we were taking a break while we were on a break from university and it wasn’t a big deal.

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Being home was something I still had to get used to. I didn’t really come home a lot, or at least not as much as my mum wanted. And usually even when I had a chance like a three day weekend and such to come home I didn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t love being home, because I did. Being home meant my room with my bed, it meant my mum would wash all my clothes and cook for me, pamper me pretty much because she’d missed me so much. Not that I minded cooking for myself and all. Actually I never cooked for myself. Usually Harry cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner in our flat and so unless I went out to eat with Aspen, stayed the night at her flat, or ate a sandwich then Harry made the food. Which was kind of sad but it was true. The point was my mum would do all kinds of things for me, because she’d missed me so much. Even if I told her she didn’t have to worry about it.

Another wonderful thing about being home was that I didn’t have to think about Aspen and our shitty relationship. While I was probably far from her mind while she had fun over in America with her family, I was here in Bradford having my own fun with this girl I knew, who in fact was a fantastic shag. Everything was fine. It might’ve been kind of sad that I didn’t even feel a little bad about whoring around with someone else, because I really had convinced myself that Aspen and I were on a break. Hell I didn’t even think about Aspen once until I got a phone call from her a few days before Christmas.

“Hello?” I picked up my phone totally get getting in, even though it was nearly 10 at night.

“Zayn! I’m so glad you answered! I’ve been meaning to call you since I landed but it’s been really hard to find very good service here. I got your messages, of course again the service is awful and so none of my messages sent. Plus I’m in another country and figuring out timezones and all. Anyways I’m sorry it took so long. I miss you.” Aspen said through the phone and I ran my hand over my face knowing then and there that I’d made a pretty big mistake, but of course I was planning to stick to the whole thing about if she didn’t know it wouldn’t even matter.

“Don’t worry about it babe. I figured you were just having too much fun to waste time calling me.” I joked with her lightly, which I had kind of thought that so it wasn’t even like I was lying. “And I’ve missed you too. So how is it there? Are you having fun being cooped up with your family?”

She paused for a moment and even over the phone I could tell there was something she wanted to tell me, yet she was probably just worried I’d overreact or something.

“It’s nice here, I wish you could’ve come with us. Apparently my parents bumped into Liam’s parents though and invited them along so I’ve been hanging out with Liam the whole time so I didn’t get bored. What about you? Are you finally home enjoying yourself?”

Liam was one of my best mates, I trusted him with most things. Knowing however that he was in another country with my girl while I wasn’t there kind of made me uneasy a bit. I mean I didn’t have a bone in my body that actually thought Liam would try anything but even that didn’t calm my nerves. Probably because I knew that I hadn’t slept with anyone else since I’d been with Aspen and I’d promised that I wouldn’t yet I had. Which meant that for all I knew Liam could be trying something. Somehow that made even more sense for me to keep this from her.

“Yea, I’ve been hanging out with my sister some, and met up with a couple of old friends. It’s been kind of boring here. I’m sure you and Liam have been having a lot more fun than me. And I wish I could be there too.”

“Well I’m gonna go okay, I just wanted to call you and let you know that I didn’t forget you, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t mad or anything. I know it’s kind of late there though and well Liam’s calling me, the guy’s back at the hot chocolate stand finally, but I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay, I’ll talk with you later.” And with that the call was ended and I was even more jealous.

Even if Liam wasn’t trying to steal Aspen away from me, he might not have been trying to hook up with her because that wasn’t the kind of thing he did, I still didn’t like the idea of the two of them being alone at some fancy ski resort in another country together. It made me uncomfortable, there was a part of me that even wondered if she was sleeping with him while they were there. If they were I wouldn’t even know. I don’t know when our relationship had went so south but maybe it would get better soon, like once we were both back at uni and could talk things through.