Left My Heart Out

Cutting Liam cold turkey is not as easy as I thought it would be.  Not that I thought it would be easy, but I didn’t think it would be so damn hard.  The night after I pinky-swear to Lila that I’ll stay away, I actually do.  I go home to my own flat and take a shower and tidy my room and do my insufferable architecture history reading, and I only spend two hours lying in bed thinking about what Liam would be doing to me if he were there.  

So it’s no surprise, really, that when Liam texts me the next night and asks me to come over, I basically turn into a cartoon road runner and speed over there.  To tell him that we’re done, of course.   

“Back again, are we?” Niall asks when I show up at his door (it’s Liam’s door, really) only the night after I pinky-swore to Lila that I’d stay away.  It’s nearly 10 PM, and Liam texted me to meet him nearly half an hour ago.  I was hoping he would be home already so that I would be able to tell him things were over between us (at least, the sexual things) and then run quickly out the door.  No harm, no foul.  Instead, I’m faced with his jerkwad flatmate, who thinks it’s his job in life to make me hate myself. 

“Don’t be an arse,” I tell him, trying to squeeze past him into the flat.  But he spreads his legs out, and even though he has his arms crossed over his chest, he manages to block my way.  Niall’s not much more than a stringbean, so I’m surprised at the way he’s managed to turn himself into a human wall in front of me.  I look away from his chest and back up at his face.  “Are you going to let me in, or what?”

“Liam’s not here,” he says.  Whenever Niall talks to me, he always sounds like he’s laughing at me with himself over an inside joke that I’m not privy too.  I think it’s mostly just because he’s an asshole.  

“So you’re going to make me wait in the hallway?  What a great flatmate you are.”  I roll my eyes but stand my ground.  I even move a bit closer in the hopes of making Niall uncomfortable – I’m pretty sure I smell like coffee and Liam, seeing as I’m still wearing his hoodie – but it doesn’t work.  Niall just looks at my boobs (he can’t see them, obviously, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that boy had x-ray vision) and smirks.  

“I am a great flatmate,” Niall says.  “I make all of Liam’s whores wait in the hall.”       

All of Liam’s whores.  I repeat his words in my head as I try to figure out what to say. He watches me think, that smirk still on his face. That stings, even more than him calling me a whore.  I know he’s just trying to get a rise out of me, but it’s hard not to react. His words make me think that there are others that Liam’s sleeping with, and I know that isn’t true – Liam would never do that to me, even though he doesn’t love me – and I find myself biting my lip, trying to keep from crying.  

“Great,” I manage to say.  I take a step backward and turn away, intending to make a run for the stairwell before I burst into tears.  “I’ll just come back later, then.”

“Wait.”  Niall grabs my shoulder and spins me back around to face him. When I look at him, his cheeks are red and he’s biting his lip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“Really?” I say, letting out a sniffle despite myself.  Niall’s apologizing to me?  I don’t believe it.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding as a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.  “I shouldn’t have said that.  You know you’re Liam’s only whore.”

“I–” I start, hoping a clever retort will come out of my mouth even though I haven’t thought of it, and that’s when, thank God, Liam shows up.  The lift dings, announcing its arrival on our floor, and Niall and I both turn toward it.  

Out steps Liam, looking like a Greek god as usual, despite his red nose and the giant puffer coat, complete with furry hood, that he’s wearing.  And I’m standing here wearing his hoodie.  No wonder he gave it to me: he clearly didn’t need it.

“Q!” he says when he sees me, his face erupting into an adorable smile.  As he walks down the hallway toward us and unzips his coat, the smile gets wider.  God, I love that smile.  I mean, I hate it.  I really, really hate it.  I wish he’d never smile at me again.  “Good, you’re here.  Sorry, I missed the train and I had to catch the next one.”

“It’s fine,” I say.  I no longer feel like crying; instead, I feel like I should beat Niall up.  “Ni and I were just talking.”  I put extra emphasis on the last word, and out of the corner of my eye, I give Niall a look that says, one wrong move and you’re cooked, bucko.  

“Oh, were you?” Liam says, completely oblivious to the way Niall’s crossing his arms over his chest and trying to sneak back inside the flat.  “That’s nice.”

“Yep, so nice,” Niall says stupidly.  “But now that you’re here, Quentin doesn’t need me to entertain her anymore.  Have a good night!”

Then he disappears into the flat, leaving me to spring into action and catch the door before it slams shut on my foot.  I crumble to myself as I cross the threshold, and I can hear Liam laughing at me.  He wouldn’t be laughing, though, if he knew what Niall said to me.  But I know that I’m not going to tell him.     

Liam follows me inside, his cold hands creeping up underneath my hoodie.  “I’m glad you’re here,” he says.  I shiver despite myself.  I’ve already forgotten that I came over here to dump Liam, not shag him again.  “I missed ya.”   

“Didn’t we see each other yesterday?” I ask, trying to wriggle out of his grasp.  It doesn’t work, though.  Of course it doesn’t work.  He doesn’t answer me, and as we round the corner into the corridor, heading toward his bedroom, he crowds into my space and puts his hot lips on my neck.  We pass Niall’s doorway, and I hear him turn up the volume of his music as we go by.

As soon as Liam shuts his bedroom door behind me, he has me flat on my back, and before I can do anything about it, he’s straddling my hips and pulling his hoodie up my torso and over my head.  Once he gets it off, he grins down at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling.  I’ve always thought that’s so cute, the way his eyes do that.  It makes him look like an old, wise man and an eager, innocent little boy at the same time.

And then he says something I don’t expect.

“Hey Q, do you ever think about the first time we met?”  His voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, and I know that means he’s serious.  Liam’s rarely serious, and when he is, strange things happen in my nether regions.

“Sure,” I say, trying not to stutter as Liam slips his fingers under my top, tickling my stomach.  “You were playing the piano.”

“Mmhmm.”  He looks like he wants to say something else, but then he decides not to say it.  I can see it in his eyes, the second he decides to keep whatever it is to himself.  And in that second, there’s nothing I want more than to know whatever it is.

But the moment passes. Liam quirks his eyebrows and laughs and that makes me giggle, and I laugh until he grinds his hips down into mine and shuts me up.

+++++

Liam loves to cuddle.

This normally isn’t a problem for me.  In fact, it’s usually a delight.  But it’s 3 in the morning, my arm has fallen asleep, trapped as it is underneath Liam’s head, and I really have to pee.

I fell asleep around midnight, I think, after a couple of indescribable orgasms so good my toes went numb. And now my whole arm is numb, and, even worse, I can’t stop thinking about what Liam was going to say to me. Was it a good thing? A bad thing? Why did he chicken out? And, perhaps the biggest question of all, will I ever know what he didn’t say?

I stare at the ceiling, listening to Liam breathe and thinking about all the ways my life currently resembles an American country song. Boys, booze, and beds. Two out of three. What I wouldn’t give to be drunk right now.

There’s nothing I can do about that right now, though, so I turn to the problem closer at hand: restoring blood flow to my hand. I could move, and I normally would – I have no qualms about waking Liam up – except then Liam starts talking.

“Queen blah,” he mumbles, the words muffled by the sheet covering his mouth.

“What?” I ask, heart beating in my throat. When Liam doesn’t answer, I realize that he’s talking in his sleep. I listen to his steady breathing for a minute, and then he speaks again.

“Kwinton,” he says. “Kwinton.”

Is that my name? It sounds like my name. He could be dreaming about raccoons, I suppose, or speaking a secret language only he knows. Either way, I’m afraid to move. What if he reveals what he was going to say earlier? Maybe it’s something he couldn’t say while awake, and now’s my only my chance to unwrap the mystery wrapped in an enigma that is Liam Payne.

This is an awkward position that I’m in, I know.  I’m trying to break things off with Liam, and instead I’m in his bed, thinking about how adorable he looks while he talks in his sleep.  He’s even drooling a little bit on my arm, and it manages to be endearing.  Oh God, I’m an idiot.  After my awkward conversation with Niall earlier, Liam and I came inside and got right to work, stripping each other of our clothes and diving under the covers.  It was great, really, but now I’m at the part where I’m regretting it, because I pinky-promised Lila that I’d go cold turkey, and instead I went really, really hot turkey.  The hottest, sexiest turkey of the bunch.      

I stay still for another minute, waiting for Liam to confess his undying love for me in his sleep.  But when he doesn’t say anything else, I extract myself from his limbs and go to pee.  I pick one of Liam’s t-shirts up off the floor and pull it over my head before I slip out the door.

My bare feet stick to the floor as I pad down the hall.  There’s light coming from under Niall’s door, and I pause outside it for a second, listening.  Sometimes I wonder if Niall ever brings girls back to the flat for a shag.  I’ve never heard him going at it before, but, then again, Liam and I aren’t exactly quiet.

I hear voices, soft, American ones, and I realize that he must be watching telly on his laptop.  I wonder if he’s lonely, and then I wonder if it’s strange of me to be wondering that.  Why should I care if Niall’s lonely?  He’s a jerk.  He’s the kind of jerk who lets the word “whore” roll off of his tongue as if it’s easy to say.  

So I turn away from Niall’s door and continue down the hall and tell myself that Niall isn’t worth a second more of my time.     

When I get back to Liam’s room, he’s awake, lying on his back with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

“Did I wake you?” I ask, conscious of the way his eyes slide down my bare legs as I cross the dark room.  

He shakes his head.  “Where’d you go?” he asks as I slide back under the duvet, grateful for its warmth.

“To the loo.”  I curl up on my side, my favorite sleeping position, and in an instant Liam spoons himself around me, securing his arm around my waist.  “That a problem?”

“Oh,” he says.  His voice rumbles through me from head to toe, making me shudder.  “I thought you left.”  Then he kisses my hair.

He’s never done that before, but I don’t want to think about it.  “It’s three in the morning, Liam.”

“Yeah, well,” he mutters.  “You don’t have to stay.”

“Where the hell would I go in the middle of the night?” I mutter defensively, but Liam doesn’t respond.  He’s already asleep again, his sweaty limbs pressed against mine.  So I have no choice but to go to sleep too, thinking about how much I wish I hadn’t done this.  In my sleep, I know I’ll manage to trick myself into thinking that Liam’s my boyfriend, that he loves me, that things are perfect, and when I wake up and realize none of it’s true, all I’ll be is disappointed.  

And I’ll go home smelling like sex and disappointment, and the next time Liam calls, I once again will not be able to resist him.

God, I’m hopeless.

+++++

“So how’s it going?” Lila asks me after architecture history lecture the next day.  I’ve been avoiding her texts for the last day, and so when she slams into the seat next to me (I’m early for once) and begins clicking her pen in my ear, I know she’s going to ask me about it.  I try to race out after lecture’s over, but she grabs hold of my sleeve and escorts me to the coffee shop. “You know, Operation: Ditch Liam?  You haven’t been answering my texts.”  

“My mobile died,” I lie, avoiding her eyes, “and I forgot my charger at home.”

“You didn’t go home last night?” she asks, her eyebrow raised.  “Q, you slut.  You pinky-promised to stop!”  

“I tried,” I say, ignoring her use of the s word.  It was called for this time, I suppose.  Even I’d classify my recent behavior as slutty.  “I went over there to tell him I couldn’t do it anymore, and then his flatmate was a dick to me so–”

“So you just hopped right into Liam’s bed?  God, Quentin.  You’re hopeless.”

“I tell myself that everyday,” I say, looking out across the coffee shop like that painting of a man in a windswept coat staring dramatically off of a cliff.  Lila, meanwhile, sits there and looks at me like I’m crazy.  “It’s just harder than I thought it was gonna be, okay?  He’s cute, and my vagina likes him.”  

“Your–” Lila cuts herself off and looks around the room to see if anybody overheard me.  But everyone’s too busy shuffling around their notebooks, and then the barista begins grinding coffee beans like her life depends on it.  “God, Q, do you have to be so crude?  Someone could hear you.”

“This is uni.  We’re all adults here,” I remind her.  Despite Lila’s calm and collected demeanor and her kickass nails, she’s a bit of a prude, and talking about sex makes her blush, which is wholly amusing from my perspective.  Not so much from hers.

“Whatever,” she says with a roll of her eyes that doesn’t cover up the redness in her cheeks.  “You should just avoid him, then.  You’ve been pretty good at avoiding me, so it shouldn’t be an issue for you.”

I hold up my hands in self-defense.  “Hey, I knew you were gonna yell at me, and I just wanted to wait until we were in public so at least you would do it in a hushed tone.”  

“I’ll show you a hushed tone,” Lila says.  “You’re just gonna have to start ignoring him.  That’s the only sure-fire way to cut off his access to your genitals.  When he texts, you don’t answer.  When he shows up, don’t open the door.”

“He never comes over,” I tell her.  My flatmate, Lucia, is possibly a vampire, and I don’t want to expose him to possible contamination.

“That’s not the point,” Lila says.  “If he comes over, you bar the door.  And you can’t go to his.  At all.  You have to double pinky promise this time, okay?”

She holds out both of her pinkies and crosses her hands at the wrists.  I have no choice but to do the same.  When we link pinkies and shake, she looks me straight in the eye and says, “Don’t let me down, Q.”  

I don’t tell her, but I know that the only person I’m really letting down is myself.  My heart can’t take much more of this.  Maybe I should take a page out of Lucia’s book and become a vampire.  Yeah, that’ll solve this.  

Back when Liam and I first met and I fell immediately and hopelessly in love with him, I never imagined this is where I’d end up: having meaningless sex with him at least once a week and feeling guilty about it the rest of the time. Because, the thing is, Liam’s not actually a bad guy. I know that’s what films teach us: that any bloke who gets into a friends with bennies relationship is only in it for the sex. He’s a jerk who thinks emotions don’t exist, or that he doesn’t have to have them, or that girls are more controlled by their sex drives than their hearts.

Except Liam’s not like that. Liam has a heart, a really big one, and I know that because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it full to bursting with love and laughter, and I’ve seen it cracked and bruised, and I’ve pieced it back together again like a puzzle.

It was first year, just a few months after I met Liam. That girl he wrote the song for? She dumped him outside the campus pub on a Thursday night, so he went inside alone and parked himself at the bar, which is where he was when I found him a few hours later. His eyes were red-rimmed and his hands were shaking, and to this day I hate myself for the way I felt when I looked at him.

I sat down next to him and put my hand on his arm, and when he looked up at me the sadness in his eyes disappeared for a second as he smiled.

“You’re a good mate, Quentin,” he said. “The best, even.”

And I looked back at him, not even drunk yet, and I thought, Someday he’ll love me back.

“Why are you making that face? Q? Are you okay?”

I blink to bring Lila’s face into focus. She’s wearing bright pink lipstick that makes her look like a Barbie, and she’s raising an eyebrow at me.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, scrunching up my nose and reaching for my coffee. When I raise it to my mouth and take a sip, I find that it went cold during my trip into the past. “I was just thinking?”

“About Liam’s you-know-what?”

“No!” I roll my eyes, but Lila doesn’t drop her know-it-all smirk. “I was just thinking about how much it’s going to suck when I stop sleeping with Liam and he doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore.”

“Quentin, don’t talk like that,” Lila says. “If Liam doesn’t want to be your mate anymore after this is over, then you shouldn’t want to be his mate anymore either.”

“Hmmph,” I mutter, taking a big sip of my cold coffee.  I know that what she said is true, that Liam doesn’t deserve me as a mate if he doesn’t want me as one without the sex.  But that’s not the part that I’m thinking about.  Lila’s words echo in my head like church bells: After this is over. Over.  Over.  Like it’s inevitable, the ending.  Like I can’t just keep doing this over and over, breaking my heart repeatedly until I become numb to it.  But maybe I can.  Maybe I just won’t let it end. Then I’ll never have to know what life is like without Liam as my mate.