Pretending (C. H)

Chapter 6

Calum was lying down on his bed, eyes shut with earphones plugged in. He was slowly drifting to sleep until Luke knocked on the open door.

"Bro," He called.
"What?" Calum said.
"Nia's here." Luke said and Nia appeared beside him. Calum smiled at her, and so did she. "Make yourself at home." He said, she nodded and sat down on Calum's bed. Luke chuckled softly before closing the door and going back downstairs.
"I don't suppose you brought Edgar, did you?" Calum asked.
"No. Did you want me to bring him?" Nia asked.
"Nah, it's okay." Calum said, sitting up.
"Anything else you wanted to do today since songwriting seems to be stressing you out now?" Nia asked, placing a hand on his knee.
"Do you want to watch a movie up here?" He asked.
"Um,okay. What did you have in mind?" Nia said.

She sat down, her back leaning on the headboard as Calum went back to his desk, grabbing his laptop and sitting down beside Nia. He opened up the movie folder and his laptop.

"Anything you want to see here?" He asked, turning his head to face her.
"Um," Nia said, scanning the large collection of movies. "I never expected you to be such a movie geek." She said and laughed, he laughed with her.
"Yeah, it's something not a lot of people know about me. Not even the boys know." He said.
"Am I the first to know about this?" She asked,he nodded. "Hey, it's not much of a big deal if someone finds out or whatever." She said and patted his shoulder.
"I guess so. Anyway, what do you want to watch?" Calum asked, nudging her.
"You choose." She said.
"Okay, let's watch this then. Oh, and if you cry you better thank me." He said and clicked on Me Before You.

They watched the movie together quietly, dishing out comments every now and then. Nia was focused so much on the movie she didn't immediately notice that she let her head lean on Calum's shoulder. He chuckled and looked at her. Nia came to full realization that she literally just leaned her head on his shoulder when they were supposedly just friends. He straightened her head and apologized quietly.

"No it's okay,really." Calum said, his hand softly pushed her head back to his shoulder and putting his arm around her.
"I learned from Ashton that people can be this close and still be friends, you know?" He whispered, pressing the space bar to pause the movie.
"Yeah." She said.
"Hey," Calum said. "Can I ask you a question?" He asked.
"Sure." Nia replied.
"What was it like to be with Brennan?" He asked her.

Nia and Brennan were in a relationship for almost a year until Brennan broke it off with her without fully explaining why. She didn't know what she did wrong, but she still blamed herself for it. Nia barely spoke to anyone for almost a week until Miranda practically dragged her out of her room to go and socialize with her bandmates again. So far, she's doing a good job with moving on but, she's still quite sensitive about the topic.

She remained silent with a straight, depressed look on her face. Calum got the hint, sighed and shook his head.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up to you like that. I just wanted to know what it feels like to be in love because,it's been a while." He said.
"Um, it's fine. So, he was a really caring boyfriend. He took me on lots of adventures and trips and stuff. We were pretty close and comitted, I guess. We even had matching tattoos which I always knew was a horrible idea but I was too in love with Brennan to care. He broke up with me and all he said was 'this isn't gonna work out' and that left me really depressed, just ask my bandmates." She said.
"I'm really sorry about that." He said. "You'll find someone else, not all couples are meant to be, you know?" Calum said.
"Yeah, I guess you have a point." Nia said, smiling a bit.
"You'll find someone one day. I promise." He said, rubbing her arm.
"Thank you." She said. He smiled at her and unpaused the movie.

At the last few scenes of the movie, Nia started tearing up. She glanced at Calum and noticed that he was holding back his tears. It made her laugh a bit.

"What, are you too punk rock for crying too?" She said, giggling.
"Shut up." He said, shaking his head.

Nia turned back to the screen, watching the scene where Lou was in Paris reading Will's final letter to her (A/N: spoiler alert btw) and letting a few tears fall. Calum's grip on her arm tightened as he tried to prevent himself from crying.

"It's okay, let go." She said. His face flooded with tears. "Do you need a hug?" She asked.
"Yeah, I kinda do." He said, his voice breaking a bit.

Nia put her arms around his torso, squeezing tightly while his arm was still around her back. The end credits started to roll as Calum closed his laptop and Nia let go of him.

"So, are we still going out with your family tomorrow?" She asked, trying to change the subject and wiping a few tears away.
"Yeah." He said, sighing. "Anything else you wanna do?" He asked again.
"No, I should head home now, actually." She said. He nodded.
"Oh, by the way, Kendall Jenner invited us to a party at her house in two weeks. Wanna go?" He asked.
"Is the rest of my band invited too?" She asked.
"Yeah, of course." He said.
"Okay. I'll tell them about it then." She said. "I gotta go now." She said, hugging him one last time before walking out the door.

~~~~
Nia went inside their house, excited to tell her bandmates about the invitation to a party. They were all seated around the dining area, eating lunch from Burger King. She sat down on her seat next to Rena.

"Where've you been?" Rena asked.
"At the boys' house." Nia said, sipping on a cup with her name written in Miranda's writing on it.
"What did you do?" Casey asked.
"Watched a movie with Calum." She replied.
"What movie?" Miranda asked.
"Does it really matter?" She asked.
"Did you eat yet?" Rena asked, taking out a Whopper from a paper bag and passing it to Nia, she took it.
"No, actually. Thanks." She said to Rena and unwrapped the burger before taking a bite.
"So, Calum told me that they were invited to a party at Kendall Jenner's house and they want to bring us with them." She said, her mouth still full.
"When?" Miranda asked excitedly.
"Two weeks from now. You guys want to go?" She asked.
"Of course!" Casey exclaimed.
"Wait, a party?" Miranda said.
"Yeah." Nia replied.
"With alcohol," Miranda said.
"Uh huh." Nia agreed.
"And Calum and more boys will be there?" Miranda said.
"We're friends without benefits, okay?" Nia said.

(Heyooo! Sorry if these have been pretty boring so far but, I swear they'll get way more interesting. Tnx for reading if you did :D xxx)