Falling Slowly {{ sweeran }}

Chapter 9

"You're not her, although I've tried to see you differently." - 'Sunburn', Ed Sheeran

            Weeks went past, and nothing much had changed for Ed. He kept going to gigs, writing, eating pizza and hanging out with Taylor. Same old, really. Oh, except he sort of found himself going out with Ellie Goulding. But nothing new really.

            He didn't even know if they were totally exclusive or even if dating was the right term for it. All he knew was, one night she just showed up at his hotel room door with a bottle of tequila and a half-smirk on her face, and that was that. They didn't really talk much; they only texted to arrange evenings out together and after that... Well, let's just say there weren't exactly a lot of opportunities to talk.

            Taylor took the news weirdly, to put it bluntly, and it confused Ed. He just chalked it up to the fact that she'd found out by seeing a picture of them on 'E!' rather than him actually telling her directly. It still seemed odd, though. She never said Ellie's name, if it could be avoided, and would immediately go quiet if she was mentioned.

            "You guys should hang out some time. Ellie's always banging on about how she admires you, and it would be pretty cool if you guys met each other.", he drops casually as they tune their guitars in her studio. Ed tries to ignore the way Taylor's gaze drops to the floor and refuses to meet his own again. He doesn't know if his secret message comes through - the implied 'Please don't hate me'. She sighs.

            "I don't know, Ed. I'm pretty busy, and besides, I wouldn't want to steal time away from your girlfriend." The way she says the word 'girlfriend' seems uncharacteristically bitter, but Ed must just be reading the situation wrong. He wants to say that she's not too busy to hang out with him, but he leaves the conversation there, afraid that a fight might be on the cards. Which is ridiculous, there's no reason to fight.

            So he continues to hang out with Taylor by day before heading off to meet Ellie in some random club by night. He tries to ignore the way that every morning when he wakes up to see blonde hair on the pillow next to him, his heart soars. And then when he shakes off the last traces of sleep and realises who it is, he tries to ignore the sudden acid taste in his mouth that he knows has nothing to do with the alcohol from the previous night. Harder to ignore is the way that every time he looks into Ellie's brown eyes, he wishes they were stormy blue. Or the way her hand doesn't quite seem to fit in his, or the way her kisses feel mechanical - as though they're on autopilot, just going through the motions.

            And sure, they have fun and Ed genuinely likes her. She's nice, funny and certainly very pretty (attraction definitely isn't the issue). He just somehow knows that he won't ever love her. Maybe Ellie realises too, because she sleeps with Niall Horan and doesn't tell him.

            She doesn't need to tell him, because it's plastered all over the tabloids anyway. It should make him angry, the betrayal of it all, and maybe it will once it all settles. But anger feels oddly hypocritical for a reason that becomes clear to Ed when he calls Ellie to end their stunted relationship.

            "I don't see what the problem is here, Ed. Yeah, I had sex with Niall, but haven't you been fucking that man-eater Swift for months on the sly? We're all adults here, and nothing was ever exclusive between us." Ellie says as she strolls down some street somewhere, the sounds of traffic filtering though the phone. Curiously, the only time that rage bubbles through him is at her comments about Taylor. He can feel a rant forming in his mind, about how Ellie has no right to speak about Taylor in that way, and that they haven't been sleeping together anyway (he blushes at the thought). That's when it hits him. He hangs up the phone, dead silence on the other side, and drops it on his bed.

            He felt guilty because all this time, on some level, he wished Ellie was Taylor. He loved her.

            Well fuck.

            He stood up quickly, having made either the best or worst decision of his life. As he grabbed his coat and barrelled through the door, he remembered Taylor's poorly masked jealousy and smiled. Maybe, just maybe, she loved him too.