Tell Me a Lie

Saying Goodbye

I woke up to loud snoring the next morning. After the Nerf war the night before, I let Libby and Mads sleep over at my place. It had been a long time since we got together to have a sleepover and I figured that we needed the girl time. But I just remembered why it had been so long. Having a sleepover with someone who has a snoring problem was never fun. I grabbed a pillow and swung it over my bed, hitting the person sleeping on the floor.

"What the hell?" Mads asked, obviously half asleep.

"Your snoring woke me up," I responded, whispering so as to not wake up Libby.

"Well that pillow woke me up so can we call it even and go back to bed?"

"Ugh, fine,"

I rolled over but I couldn't manage to fall back asleep. Liam was leaving to continue the tour later that morning and I couldn't stop worrying about it. He said himself that it's really hard to manage a relationship while on the road. That was the reason he and Danielle broke up, and they dated for years. Liam and I only met each other earlier that week. How could we possibly make it work?

My thoughts were interrupted by Mads' snoring and I decided that I wasn't going to get any more sleep. I crawled out of bed, doing my best not to step on anyone in the process. After I got through my morning routine, it was still only six thirty. I decided to waste my time on the internet until Libby and Mads got up.

I checked Twitter when I got bored and let my cursor hover above my notifications. I knew that there was always a ton of hate whenever one of the boys got a new girlfriend. But I also knew that I couldn't avoid it forever, so I looked at my mentions. I was prepared to see posts from jealous Directioners. But I was definitely not prepared for what I saw. The tweets started out supportive, but as I delved deeper, they only got harsher. Some of them were vague, telling me to "go die". But others were more personal, and those were the ones that I wasn't prepared for.

"You're just a rebound #payzer"

"You're soo fake,"

"You don't deserve @Real_Liam_Payne. He'll never love you,"

And of course there were plenty more about how I wasn't pretty/smart/athletic/funny enough for Liam. The haters even managed to find information about my past and used it all against me. For example, I won a science fair in middle school, and they used it to show that I was too "nerdy" for him. Practically every tweet was hateful. It seemed like no one was supportive.

It especially hurt because I was a fan. I used to think that Directioners were a family. My friends on Twitter were always great to me, and they didn't even know me. Being a Directioner was something that tied complete strangers together to form a tight knit community. But apparently all bets are off when you start dating a member of the band. Seeing all of those people who were like a second family to me turn on me so quickly really hurt.

Most of the hateful tweets were made a few days ago, when Liam and I had just started dating. The more recent ones were nicer, supportive even. And that made me feel a lot better, being accepted by the fans was really important to me. I knew that they were a huge part in the boys' lives and I wanted to be on their good side.

As I kept scrolling through more recent posts, I noticed a few from Liam:

"Why does this happen evry time?? Get some f*cking respect,"

"#stoptheh8 #done"

"@Ava_Marie Ignore the h8rs <3 u xx"

Well that certainly cleared up the mystery of why the posts got nicer all of the sudden. And it also reassured me that Liam would care about me no matter what his fans thought. But even knowing that, all of their comments really hurt. I typed a quick response to Liam and then scrolled through the Ava Chapman tag. Most of the tweets were begging Liam for forgiveness after what he said about the hate.