Anyone Else But You

Chapter 25 - When You Just Don't Want to Talk to Anyone

Birdy – Skinny Love

By the time Maddie got home she was seething, she couldn’t believe Jasper had gone to see Ali without telling her and the fact that he’d so blatantly lied to her when she’d asked him. The house was still empty when she got back, which was lucky as she’d come through the door storming about and kicking her shoes of. One had struck the family photo above the sideboard sending it skewwhiff, the other struck the glass vase holding a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums. Maddie lunged and caught it before it smashed on the hall floor.

Placing the vase back in place, Maddie wiped her wet hands on her trousers and grabbed a handful of paper towels from the kitchen. Wiping the wet up, she chucked the sodden tissues in the bin and slammed the lid. What the hell was Jasper up to? Why was he going round to Ali’s house?

Nothing could calm her down, she dropped onto the sofa but was up within seconds pacing around. Maybe slap girl had been right, the two of them were getting back together; Ali had been incredibly quiet for the last few days and the fact that she had come round to apologise the other day suggested maybe she knew something Maddie didn’t.

On impulse she pulled her phone out and tried to call him, she listened to it ring for a minute before it went straight to voice mail. Why wasn’t he answering his phone? She sat down and turned on the television, flicking through the channels before finally settling on a repeat of an episode of friends.

*

At nine o’clock Maddie was lying on her bed listening to her iPod on shuffle. She’d had six missed calls, well six calls she’d ignored from Jasper. He’d come round and knocked on the door at six o’clock like he’d put in his message but she’d been sat in the dark ignoring him. When her parents and Kate had returned home, he’d tried the door again but this time Maddie’s dad had answered.

She’d told him to get rid of Jasper because she didn’t want to speak to him, as a result her dad had thought they’d had an argument and refused to the let him in to see her anyway. Jasper had tried calling both the home phone and her mobile but she’d ignored him. Now she had retired to her room to try and forget him.

Unfortunately that just wasn’t going to happen, even through her earphones she could hear the light tapping on her bedroom window. Eventually it got too annoying to ignore, Maddie pulled the buds from her ears and pushed herself off the warm, comfortable bed. When she got to the window she could see Jasper looking up from the path to her house, he spotted her and grinned. Maddie’s heart lurched when she saw him, he looked stunning in the moonlight and she could have stopped and gazed at him all night.

Pushing her window open, Maddie shivered as the cold night air hit her. “Jasper, just leave me alone.” The grin instantly dropped from his face.

“Why? What have I done?” He called up to her, looking worried and confused all at once.

“You know! I saw you go into Ali’s house, I followed you after you lied to me. What do you take me for?” Maddie called back, she was not happy. She didn’t want to cry in front of him and the only way she could not do that was to be angry and pissed off at him.

“I . . . what? You followed me? Why would you do that?” It was his turn to look angry this time.

“Somebody told me you were meeting Ali afterschool and I didn’t want to believe them. But when I texted you and you lied to me, I followed you and oh, look where you went. Running back to your ex, just like I was told.” Maddie began to pull the window down as Jasper tried to stop her.

“Maddie, Maddie wait! I went there for you, I went to see Ali for you!” She ignored his shouting, then ignored his attempts at calling her and went to bed. She felt guilty about ignoring him but then she remembered the way he’d lied to her and no longer felt bad about the way he’d treated her.

*

Maddie spent the rest of the weekend trying to forget about Jasper. She went to gymnastics with Kate but Lucy was, which only reminded her of Jasper. Then she watched the Arsenal match with her dad, but that only reminded her of the game Jasper and her had gone to together. Every film, every song, everything reminded her of Jasper and the fact that he’d gone behind her back.

She missed him more than she thought possible. By Sunday she felt even worse, they didn’t have a match this week but the girls had planned to meet for a meal. Maddie couldn’t face telling them why she was so down, she couldn’t face seeing them at all so instead stayed in bed all day. She moped around under the covers much to her mum’s annoyance and ignored all the attempts by everyone in her house to coax her out of her room.