(DISCONTINUED)

○ 0.7 :: Nervous ○

Dedicated toTierney (@stylesfocus) - for being the the first person to ask for an update :).

[[Just know that you have inspired me to write in your own special way. It's good to know your enjoying my book :) x ]]

I MAY HAVE USED THAT GIF BEFORE BUT I LOVE IT MAN HARRY PUT THAT TONGUE AWAY

*

I woke up to the first few seconds of 'Sweet Disposition' by the Temper Trap, and for a second I was confused; nobody ever called me. If my dad needed to talk to me, even he'd text, and he had serious issues with modern technology. To be honest, all I knew was that I was going to kill whoever interrupted my sleep.

The phone stopped ringing and I realized I took too long trying to figure out who it was and mentally planning their murder. Oh well. I snuggle back into my pillow, already drifting away.

Sweet...

"Argh!" I lifted the pillow from beneath my head and put it on top, trying tug it down over my ears but the song kept blaring. I sat up and picked up the phone so fast that I accidentally slammed it against my face. The sting only fueled my anger.

"What?!" I snapped into the receiver.

"Well, Bethany, that is truly no way to respond to your mother," an overly posh accent smirked condescendingly into the speaker.

"M-mother." My voice lost all its edge, no matter how much I wished there was a text virus I could send to her phone to make it blow up or something.

"That is much more like it. I called you once before, where were you?" She asked impatiently. I could hear tapping her perfectly manicured pink nails on her desk in the background.

"I was sleeping," I answered honestly.

"At 9am? You get to college and you think you can suddenly throw away everything I raised you with, simply because I am not there?" She sounded so disapproving, like I just told her that I was an exotic dancer instead of telling her I was asleep an hour later than she always let me sleep. The tapping had stopped, and I knew it was because she was examining her immaculate nails for the tiniest chip in the polish, the tiniest hangnail. I hated how controlling she was. I hated how calm her voice always was. I hated how fake she was. I hated how small she made me feel.

"I was just-"

"There are no excuses, Bethany," she interrupted. She knew I loathed my middle name with a passion, but she refused to call me otherwise. It was supposed to be my first name, but like me, Dad hated it, and switched my first and middle name when my mum sent him away to sign the papers. She was furious, but Dad won't let her change it back. It was the only thing he'd ever stood his ground on against her. "How are your classes?"

I thought of my very first lesson ever at Princeton last week and how I was humiliated and kicked out. If my mother were ever to find out, she'd kill me more brutally than I wanted to kill her. I decided to tell her a censored version the truth. "They're okay-"

"They are okay," she corrected.

I rolled my eyes but obliged. "They are okay, I-"

"You had better not be letting me down, Bethany," she cut me off again. My mother had an allergy against not being the centre of attention for more than three seconds, which made it almost impossible to have a normal conversation with her. The tapping had restarted, though it was slightly muffled over the phone, and consequently less annoying. I thanked God for small mercies. "How is college? Have you made any new friends?"

I thought about Niall. I thought about Liam and Louis and Dylan and Harry. I couldn't mention any of them, however, because they were boys, and they were poisonous, and god forbid if I found anything that made me happy. I wanted to scream all of their names down the phone, to tell my mother that I had gone out to dinner with a complete stranger and that I'd had boys in my dorm room. I wanted to tell her that I had attended a party and slept in a boy's bed, and then tell her about how that same boy had literally swept me off my feet and held me tight in his arms once he'd found out I was okay. But I couldn't. As much as I hated it, my mother still had her pink claws firmly stuck into me, and I was letting her sink them deeper and deeper every day by force of habit.