Hearts Of Gold h.s

Chapter 31

H

El and I have been home for two weeks now. And for the entirety of those fourteen days I've been trying to make up for how I treated her. I knew I wasn't being the nicest, but it didn't really click in my head how cruel I was being until she left my apartment without an ounce of hesitation. 

I wasn't trying to make her feel that awful. I was just putting myself before her, before us. And that's not okay.

I know it's not okay.

It took her eight days to finally tell me to stop apologizing for it. Every chance I got, I was telling her that I was sorry, that I'm going to do better. And after eight whole days of that she told me to knock it off.

She's entirely too forgiving. I mean I don't know what kind of treatment I deserve, but her forgiveness that quickly isn't it.

She told me as long as I keep trying to open myself up rather than shutting her out and being an asshole, I'm forgiven.

For the whole week though, I tried to do little things for her to just make up for how I treated her.

I made her breakfast in the morning, held her close at night, cleaned anything and everything as she painted her little heart out in her room for school assignments. I did as much as I could to show her that I'm sorry and that she means a lot to me.

Those actions are only a surface level of what I truly need to do for her though. I could buy her the world, clean every inch of her apartment and hire the best chef in all of New York to make every meal for her, but if I don't open myself up on an emotional level, this won't work. She won't deal with me closing myself off to her anymore and she made that clear.

As she should though.

She started classes the other day and I can see how tiring it truly is for her. She has classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays which means she's working every day she doesn't have class and will even come in after classes. Well that's what she told me she'll be doing. It's only the first week, so we'll see what ends up happening. I told her she can take the days that she has classes off, but she just brushed my words off and showed up every day this week.

It's Sunday today though which means we both have time off and can spend the day wrapped up in the sheets doing absolutely nothing.

Well, that's what we would normally do on a Sunday anyway, but this Sunday is a bit different from our normal.

El and I push the glass door to the small blue building and the ringing of the bell alerts everyone that the door has been opened.

"Welcome to the Animal Care Center. How can I help you?" the young brunette behind the counter smiles at us.

We're adopting a cat today. Our cat.

I figured since we hit a small rough patch that there would be a delay on when we did this, but she assured me this is what she wanted. It's a step in our relationship that I had no clue that she was ready to take, but I let her pick when that step was taken. In my opinion this is more than just us getting an animal. This is us taking responsibility together. Taking the responsibility to care for something other than ourselves.

El and I talked the day after Christmas about where the cat would actually live since we don't live together. Even though it was a present from her to me, we decided that it would be better for the cat to live at El's. Niall had agreed very easily and we both thought it would just be better because we spend majority of our time there and there is almost always someone at El's where my house can be pretty empty for the most part.

"We want to adopt a cat" El speaks up and woman's smile beams.

"Oh, that's wonderful. I can take you back to the room where we keep most of the cats. You can get to meet them all." she starts walking from behind the desk, so she's standing in front of us.