Over Again

❝can we stop this for a minute❞

      I grabbed my earphones and made my way back to my seat beside Harry. I plugged them into my phone, but didn't actually play music, instead just stared out the window, thinking about what I had heard. How long had Ashleigh been ignoring him for? Niall had sounded confused, and distressed, which meant it had to have been a while, more than a couple days. It kind of hurt to see, actually, not just because he was hurting, but because he was hurting over Ashleigh.

      I wasn’t sure if I could do this anymore. Pretend that everything was okay, that we didn’t have a history, that everything he did was okay with me, that everything he did, and how he didn’t remember, didn’t hurt.

      “You okay?” Harry asked, pulling me from my thoughts. I nodded, not speaking. “Just because you’re not talking doesn’t mean I can’t tell you’re lying,” he said in a slight singsong voice.

      I sighed. “I don’t know if I can- It hurts that he doesn’t remember,” I said quietly. I looked around the plane. Louis, Liam and Zayn were still asleep, and Niall seemed to have fallen asleep as well.

      “So tell him,” Harry suggested.

      I shook my head. “It wouldn’t be the same.” I sighed. “He’s happy now, even if he doesn’t remember.”

      “Where are you going with this?” he asked, forehead scrunching a little, probably in confusion.

      “I’m thinking about not going with you guys,” I said slowly, pausing before each word.

      Harry was silent for a long moment, what he said after wasn’t at all what I was expecting. "Are you really ready to give up on him?" he asked.

       No. But I would for him to be okay. I didn’t want to break him. "What if I said yes?"

       He stared at me, seeming to study my expression. I tried to keep my face blank, but it probably didn't work. A moment later, he shrugged and turned to look at the seat in front of him.

       "Then I'd say you're lying."

♡over again♡

      We got to the hotel around ten at night. It had been a pretty silent ride, since Liam, Louis and Zayn had slept the whole time. Niall had woken up about an hour after Harry and I talked, but he didn’t speak. He looked distracted by something.

      I found out, along with guys, what exactly he had been thinking so hard about as soon as we got our hotel room. “What is this?” Niall asked, pulling something out of his bag and turning to look at us.

      “A picture,” Zayn said slowly, not really looking at it. The guys didn’t really look, I think they were too tired to pay attention. I bit back a gasp when I saw it. It was a picture of me and him. I had thought I had gotten all of them, but obviously not. It wasn’t an innocent picture like us just standing side by side, of course it couldn’t be that. Instead, it was a picture of us kissing. This really wasn’t the way I wanted him to know. The one good thing was that you couldn’t see my face, it was covered by my hair. But it was obvious that it wasn’t Ashleigh, our hair colours were noting alike.

      “Did I cheat on Ashleigh?” Niall asked. This made the guys wake up a bit more. They glanced up at the picture and stiffened, but none of them said anything, which made Niall upset. “It’s a simple question! Yes or no?”

      None of wanted to answer, I don’t think any of us knew how to answer. Finally, Zayn did. “No.”

      “This picture is dated a month ago,” Niall said, flipping it around to show the date written messily across the back. In his handwriting. That’s when I knew where he must have gotten the picture from. Niall had joked about have something – a scrapbook or a box, he hadn’t specified because he thought I would try to find it if he did– with all the pictures of us since there weren’t that many. I didn’t like having my picture taken. I hadn’t thought that he had actually kept them.