Over Again

❝can we stop this for a minute❞

❝can we stop this for a minute❞

c h a p t e r    e i g h t

      "Hey babe," Harry said, dropping into the seat beside me. We were on the airplane, getting ready to fly to Toronto.

      Babe? I raised an eyebrow at the endearment.

      Harry looked around, then lowered his voice. "Aren't we supposed to be fake dating?"

      I almost laughed. We hadn't tried that for two weeks. "Niall knows we aren't, Harry."

      He grinned. "He does?"

      I nodded. "I don't think we're really good at faking it," I whispered loudly. I don't know. I felt the urge to lower my voice since he was whispering, but I found it a little too funny to just use a whisper. Harry and I sucked at fake dating. We had gone out on one fake date, which Louis had crashed, then never really did anything to continue with it. I wasn't even really sure we had been fake dating, since we hadn't talked about it. It had actually been a little awkward. Harry was like a little brother to me, which had made it just weird. Since neither of us liked each other, we both hadn't been really committed to making it look real.

      "Oh." He didn't sound all that surprised. So I told him that. He shrugged in response. "Well, I didn't really want to fake date. No offense, but I don't see you like that, you're Niall's girl."

      Was, I thought, but didn't correct him out loud.

      "I wanted him to remember, and fake dating would only slow that down. I did the fake date to try and cheer you up," Harry explained.

      "Aww, you're so cute," I teased, then proceeded to ruffle his curls, something he, and probably all his fan girls would kill me for. But I was genuinely touched that he would do something like that for me. He shot me a playful half glare, pushed away my hand and then pulled out a magazine to read, apparently having decided to ignore me for teasing him.

      Thirty minutes into the flight and Louis, Liam and Zayn had all somehow fallen asleep. Well, maybe not somehow since I knew they were all tired from recording and helping Niall re-learn the songs.

      I reached into my bag to pull out my earphones, which I had brought so I could listen to music during the five hour plane ride. They weren't there. Which meant I had probably accidentally packed them into a suitcase. I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood up, then walked to the back of the plane. There was a small room there with all of our luggage, and the band's equipment. Benefits of a private jet.

      The door was closed when I got there. Not a surprise, since it was supposed to be do stuff didn't roll out into the main part of the plane. Then I heard a voice from inside the room. Niall's. It was bad to eavesdrop, I know, but I leaned against the door anyway, listening.

      "-do something wrong? Why are you ignoring me, Ash? Call me back, please," he was saying. Ash? Like Ashleigh? But why would Ashleigh be ignoring him? The door opened, almost making me trip into the room, but I quickly switched positions before that happened. Niall gave me a slight smile as he passed me, giving no indication that he might've thought that I had been listening. I breathed a sigh of relief and walked into the room.

      That had been... Weird.

      Not that Niall had called Ashleigh. I had, sadly, gotten used to that. But that Ashleigh was ignoring him. Why would she ignore him after she worked so hard to get him? The only think I could think of was that maybe the fact that she had broken her promise to Niall and lied to him had finally caught up with her... Except, why now?