Ashley
Nathaniel and I totally forgot half of the responsibilities that our parents gave us and ended up with no sleep. Right now, it's midnight. Nathaniel and I were driving to our aunt's house to leave them with our cars since we can't really bring them overseas. I took our car whilst Nathaniel took mum's. We were racing and I was in a call with him.
"Where the fuck are you?" I hear Nathaniel say. I had my phone connected to the car so I can hear him pretty well.
I look back and saw his car. "Like four cars ahead of you."
"What?!" He exclaims before peaking out his head from his car. He sees me and squints his eyes at me. "You're going down, Ash."
"You wish." I smirk and turn back around.
The stoplight turned green and I stepped on the gas pedal. I turned to the road that Nathaniel and I would always take since there's no stoplights for the next 20 miles. Our aunt lived in Wiltshire. It was just a little town that goes way back and a lot of the houses had thatched roofs, they look like they were the 1400's.
"You are going down Nathaniel Charles Johnson." I say as I sped down the road.
"You wish."
I ultimately beat Nathaniel. We parked our cars and hopped out. We knock on the door and was greeted by our aunt.
"You two grew up so fast." She says, smiling at us. "Are you hungry? I have some left overs from dinner earlier."
"As much as we'd love to stay, we really need to go back. Our flight is at 6 A.M." Nathaniel says. Aunt Zoe frowned and I raise an eyebrow at Nathaniel.
"Slow down there, there's somebody I want to see." I say. Aunt Zoe smiles, she knew exactly who I was talking about.
"He's in his room, I don't think he's asleep yet." She says, stepping aside to let us in. I walked up the stairs and threw the door open.
"Jasper!" I shout. He jumped and look at me, eyes wide open and his mouth agape. Jasper was our cousin and we grew up with him, though he's about two years older.
"Ashley! Nate!" He shouted, putting his video game on pause and standing up. He walked over to us and gave us hugs. "What are you doing here?"
"You heard about dad right?" I ask him, he just nods. "Well, he wants us to come stay with him in America as he recovers. Nate and I are just here to drop of our cars."
Jasper frowns and glares at us. "Of all the times you guys could have visited it's when you're about to leave? You two never change."
"We were handling somethings." Nathaniel says, scratching the back of his neck.
"Like what?" Jasper asks curiously.
"Had a lot of relationship and friend drama, then the thing about dad happened." I explained. Jasper gasps and looks at me in surprise.
"You? Relationship? You're joking."
Jasper knew just about everything about me. Including my rule of no boys rule. I've never had a boyfriend. Ever. So, this must have been shocking news to him.
"Well, they just can't resist this." I say sarcastically, gesturing down my body. Jasper laughed.
"Little Ash-y is growing up." He says before giving me a noogie.
"Let go of me." I groan.
"Yeah, we just stopped by and should be going since our flight is at 6." Nathaniel says, looking at the time on his phone. "It's quarter to 1 and we still need to go back and get things ready."
"You're right." Jasper says, "You two better contact me."
We soon left and took a cab back to London. When I got home, I went straight for my bedroom to finish up packing, I only had a couple more things. As I went to go pack my laptop, I found a note beside it. I furrow my eyebrows and sat down on the ground before opening it.
Dear Ashley,
I knocked at your door and found out that you weren't home through your mum. She told me that you guys were leaving soon to go to America. Why didn't you tell me you were leaving so soon, Ashley? But, I guess it's a good thing since I wouldn't have been able to handle seeing you.
I had only one person to visit before being sent to the Maudsley Hospital to get 'healed' and I couldn't really think of anybody but you. When you weren't home I just wrote you a letter and told your mom to give this to you. I hope she won't read this when I leave.
The couple of months we had together was quite the ride. And I can't believe I was stupid enough to lose you.
You mean so much more to me than you think you do. I've never really trusted anyone besides you. I didn't even trust myself. In fact, I despise myself.
You made me happy when I felt like I couldn't smile again. I don't know what it was about you, but you could always cheer me up no matter what the situation was. I hope you haven't told the others about my life, I don't want them to worry. Though, they'll soon find out through whispers.
I was so happy when I saw you in the hospital. I wanted to let you in so bad. I fucking hated it in there. I wanted to be out there with you and tell you that I'm fine and apologize for the stupid shit that I did to hurt you. You probably won't believe me but I didn't hit on Lizzy in my own free will. I was drunk. I needed something to make me numb and I couldn't have access to you so I got drunk. I didn't know I would make such stupid decisions while I was intoxicated.
I love you so much Ashley and I care about you so much. I wish you will have the heart to forgive me for my actions.
There are so many things that I haven't told you and wish to. I'll tell you the next time I see you. That is, if I ever get to see you again.
Love,
Niall xx
I felt emptiness all over again. It was as if, I was already okay with what happened and I was healing, but he poured salt into my wounds. I shoved the letter in the laptop bag and finished up packing. Taking out my pain in random objects by pushing them, shoving them, maybe kicking them. Nathaniel walks into the room and furrows his eyebrows at me as he found me just sprawled on the floor, looking at the ceiling.
"What are you doing?" He asks and takes a seat next to me.
"Anything to end the pain." I mumble.
"Deep." He laughs. I roll my eyes at him and chuckle. "What's bugging you?"
"When we were gone, Niall came to visit." I say. Nathaniel just nods. "And he left me a note."
I handed the note to Nathaniel before curling up into a ball in the floor.
There wasn't a point in hiding it. We're leaving in a few hours so it doesn't matter. This will all be past one day. It's quite amazing thinking of the fact that 'the now' will be 'the past' one day. Something we can look back and laugh about or maybe learn lessons from.
Nathaniel puts down the note before hugging me and then walking away. I finished up packing and I decided to take a piece of paper out and started to write a letter to Niall. It was just one quick letter.
I brought down the rest of my stuff and hopped into a cab. I go over to Niall's house and stood in front of the door. I exhaled in and out deeply before knocking. The door was opened by an older man. I assumed this was Niall's brother.
"Greg, you don't know me. But, please do me a favor." I say and he looked at my skeptically but also with a look that said 'go on'. "I have a letter for Niall and I can't give it to him myself because I'm leaving soon. I swear I'm not like a bully or a psycho ex-girlfriend."
Greg just nods. "I know who you are, sorta. Don't worry, this will get to him."
I smile at him an give him a quick hug.
"Thank you!" I shout before getting into the cab and back home.
Brianna was asleep in mum's arms, Cameron looked like he can't wait to pass out, Mallorie was just texting away from her phone, Dad was in a wheelchair, and Nathaniel was just sitting on his suitcase.
"Shall we go?"
"We shall."
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Author's note [4/9/15]: I feel like this is the shortest chapter I've ever written for this fan fic. I just ran out of ideas and didn't want to bullshit my way into 3k words so I hope you guys are okay with 1.5k. I promise the next chapter and the epilogue won't be as short as this.
Still in denial that this is ending soon.
Love you guys,
Jean Chanty