I dread telling you the story of Fern. I dread reliving it. No one in my life has ever made me feel so small and so worthless as she did, not even the bullies of primary school. Not even Sam's horrid model girlfriend Amelia with her handful of coins. But this is meant to be a Christmas tale, and Fern was my last Christmas before you.

It wasn't always bad. I like to think it wasn't always bad.

There were good times. We laughed. We had these undeniable bouts of creative energy, both of us, sparked by the undeniable chemistry. As I said to Niall, I wouldn't have stayed with her for almost a year if there hadn't been good times.

I always get ahead of myself. Let me backup and tell you about the night we met.

It was my 17th birthday, and I was drunk. A befitting start, perhaps. Our relationship was a bit like being drunk. At first it makes you tipsy, giddy, giggly. Then you're loud and laughing and out of control. Then angry, fussy. Maybe even maudlin. Maybe even crying. At the end of it, you're exhausted, head spinning, stomach sick. At first, she made me giddy.

It was her red lipstick that caught my attention as I sat outside the pub, wasted. My hands were scraped from a fall I didn't remember, and my legs were folded awkwardly beneath me on the crusty footpath. She leaned down in front of me, red lips swimming through the night air toward me like a goldfish in a bowl--no place else to go.

"Hey, kid are you okay?" She asked, her posh accent almost hidden under subtle American. I later learned her father was a business magnate from the East Coast. I slurred some response, intending to tell her it was my birthday. The message must have been conveyed because she rested her hand in my hair and moved her face closer, muttering, "happy birthday." She kissed me. I imagined red. Everywhere red. As my hand groped at her face, she pulled away and sat down beside me. "How old are you anyway?"

"Seventeen."

"Well, he was just seventeen," she sang, snapping. We laughed. "I'm 22."

"Nice to meet you, twenty-two. I'm Harry," I held my hand out for her, but instead of shaking hands, I fell apart giggling, rolling onto my side.

She laughed along, and eventually helped me sit back up. She told me her name. Something plant related. I couldn't recall.

I woke up beside her the next morning, absolutely no memory of what had occurred, wearing nothing but my boxer briefs. I blinked at her sleeping form, covered in my long-sleeve tee. "Um..." My brain scanned through the possible names. Hedge. No, that's not really a name. Leaf? Like the Viking? She was rather tall. Vine. Rose. No it wasn't a flower. I knew it wasn't a flower. Cotton? "Fern!" I shouted.

She flinched and covered her head. "Whaaaat?" She whined.

"Sorry, I, um, hi. I...do you remember me?"

"I was nowhere near as drunk as you, kid. I remember." Her voice was all apathy and sleeplessness.

I shifted on the bed, searching for the rest of my clothes. "Oh. Okay. Sorry. I--"

"You wanna go get breakfast?" There was a faint trace of a smile. "I could really go for some pancakes."

I grinned back, "Sure. Just let me clean myself up."

She pointed me toward the bathroom. I washed the sleep out of my eyes, ran my hands through my hair in an attempt to make it presentable, and took a piss. The stream faltered when I noticed red lipstick...piss going everywhere as I fumbled awkwardly. I regained my composure and finished my business, then searched for something to clean the mess I'd made. And the stain she'd left on my skin.

When I finally made my way out to the bedroom, Fern was sitting on the bed cross-legged, lips freshly painted that sinful red. "Everything all right?"

"Oh. Uh. Yeah." I swallowed nervously. "So, breakfast?"

She laughed and tossed me my shirt, and we went out for breakfast. She laughed when I lifted my fork to my mouth, sticking her tongue out and mimicking the way I ate. I didn't realise at the time that it was true mockery. I didn't realise how cruel she could be. I didn't realise how much she would eventually hurt me.

By the end of the meal, she asked me to hang out with her and her friends again that night. I didn't really have anything else on, so I agreed. We parted with a friendly wave, I gathered the boys, and a few hours later, we were back at it. Drunk and wandering the streets at midnight, laughing and kissing and falling. Literally. Literal heart of Jesus falling down drunk on the side of the road.

And that's kinda just how it was with her. We were loud and laughing and out of control, even when we weren't drunk. She looked so innocent with her curly blond hair and pouty lips, but she was wild. She always looked for something crazy to do, like crossing the railing on London Bridge and walking along the ledge from one side to another. Or taking the train under the Channel, just to go to Amsterdam for the day. Or taking E at a club (she offered me some, but after my experience with Cassie, I had vowed never to touch drugs again. She pouted and called me a square but still took me to bed that night). In retrospect, I can see how much like Cassie she was. They had the same wild, out of control streak. But the difference was Cassie was never mean; she was never cruel. And Fern was.

We never really officially said we were dating, we just kept hanging out. Making out. And then more. We were with each other so often those first couple of months, I assumed we were dating. I assumed Fern was my girlfriend. I introduced her to Gemma as my girlfriend when we ran into each other out at a music store.

"Whoa!? Girlfriend?" Fern scowled at me. "We're just hanging out."

I was humiliated. My face burned. I looked at Gemma awkwardly, unsure what to say next. "I sort of thought we were dating, we've been dating for awhile." I suppose we weren't really, though. I never took her out, really. We truly were just hanging out.

She rolled her eyes. "Dating and girlfriend are two different things."

"O-ohh. O-okay," I stumbled over my words.

She shook her head, a faint grin tugging at her lips. "God you're lame. If you want me to be your girlfriend you have to ask. Man up." I cringed at the last phrase. I hated it. It reminded me so much of my dad and stepdad, and how they were so harsh when I was being bullied. Gemma knew how much those words hurt me. She gave me a look of concern.

"O-ohh. Uh-umm." My stutter had returned full force. "Well, do you...I mean, d'you want to? Um will you be...my girlfriend?"

"Whatever. Yeah." She waved her hand like it was nothing. That's just kind of how she always talked. She always played it cool, but she had shown me moments of her true feelings throughout the months we'd been together, like when she told me about her cold and distant parents, how they ignored her unless she was busted for something. Maybe that's why she was always in trouble. She just wanted them to notice her. I grinned at her. She shook her head, smiling fully. "Just calm down, okay."

I laughed a little. "I love you, Fern." I bite the inside of my lip, realising how crazy it was to go from hanging out to dating to girlfriend to I love you, all in one day.

"Oh god," she rolled her eyes again. "You're such a sap." Her expression softened. "I kind of can't help but love you too."

We slid from that loud laughing out of control fun side of being drunk on each other into the angry, fussy side before very long.

I remember one night, maybe six months into our relationship, we were on another of our late night forays into the city. I started singing one of our new songs as we walked in the street. "What are you doing?" Her voice dripped with derision. "There's a reason Zayn is your lead singer."

Little shots at me like that...those were becoming more and more common.

"Ugh. Jesus Haz. Close your mouth."

"What?"

"Your fucking tongue is hanging out like some mutt." She snapped on another occasion. "Have some decorum."

I hated eating around her. I can't help the way I eat. I can't help the way my tongue sticks out. On the rare occasion she didn't make some snappy comment about it, she at the very least glared at me in disgust.

Here are a few more of the harsh things she said to me: You're so cute when you try to concentrate! Look at you trying to think. Let me do the talking; it takes you seven hours to get one bloody sentence out. One night when she couldn't come, she said: what the fuck, Haz? You should know by now what you're doing down there. That made me feel so worthless and so emasculated.

God, I seriously hate writing about this. She was awful to me. I don't know why I ever thought I loved her. I don't know why I stayed. The bad so far outweighed the good. And I'm not even done.

By the end of our relationship, I was exhausted, head spinning, stomach sick.

The boys and I had started talking about moving to LA at the end of summer. We'd made our demo and had little success. We'd created our YouTube and had a little more success. But we'd not been able to break through and get a deal. Louis and Eleanor had a really ugly breakup, and he was desperate to get away. Liam and his girl Sophia split, as had Zayn and his fiancée Perrie. All of them were itching for a new start somewhere else. I was the only one still attached, and I tried to convince Fern to come out to California with me. She said she couldn't, that her father would never pay for her to go.

My last attempt was when we went away with her family for Christmas. Yes, finally I'm getting to the Christmas part of this Christmas story. I'd never met her parents, but she assured me it would be fine. We took the train to France and met up with her family there. The entire week was tense. Her father made his disapproval of me quite well known. "Does he even have a job?" he sniped, talking to Fern about me, in front of me, as if I didn't exist. "Needs a haircut." It was easy to see where Fern had learned her talent for harsh remarks.

And he was just as harsh with her, cutting her to the bone with his words. He criticised everything from how she dressed to what she ate, and obviously, who she dated. "Fern, come with me to the States. You don't need him. We can make it work together. We can start fresh out there."

"I don't know, Haz. He'd cut me off, for sure. I can't just go with you and be homeless and penniless."

"You could get a job. I've already got a job lined up, and maybe you could work there too."

She pressed her lips into a tight line. "Maybe."

I dropped the topic for the moment and tried to enjoy the ski trip. It was impossible. Her father endlessly berated me. Fern grew colder and more distant every minute we were in his company. Christmas morning, I slipped and cut my chin on the ice outside the lodge. It wouldn't stop bleeding, and rather than let me go be seen by the hotel medic, her father told me, "quit your bellyaching. Man up. It's just a little blood."

Our waiter during the hotel's holiday meal saw me holding a napkin to my chin and asked if I was all right. I nodded, but when I pulled the cloth away, it was pretty well covered in blood.

"Oh, no. Sir. Please come with me. You need stitches." I looked around the table at Fern and her family, eating and talking and entirely ignoring me and my bleeding face. I stood and followed him to the small medical office.

Six stitches.

I went up to my room and called home. I just needed to hear the voice of someone who actually cared about me. I'd had enough of the cold Christmas there in the French Alps. I needed the warmth of my mother's love. It flooded through me as soon as I heard her voice, and I deeply regretted going with Fern and her family rather than home to mum.

Two days after Christmas, Fern's father pulled me aside and handed me an envelope.

"What's this?"

"Incentive." I opened the envelope to find a cheque for £50,000. I closed it slowly and stared at him, speechless. "Leave her. End it. Don't ever come back into her life, and it's yours. I can't have my daughter wasting her life with some aimless--"

"No thank you, sir." I handed him the envelope and walked away, furious and once again feeling worthless. Well, I suppose I shouldn't have felt worthless. I was worth about 50k, apparently. A fact proven when Fern came to our room an hour later and broke up with me.

"I'm sorry," she shrugged.

"Let me guess," I said, "he offered you money." She widened her eyes briefly before returning to a passive expression. "And you took it."

She nodded. "I'm sorry."

I shook my head, "Don't be." Inside I was crumbling. She'd chosen money over me. I couldn't let her see how hurt I was. She'd only mock me. I sighed and took her hand. "We had some good times, didn't we?"

She smiled sweetly, warmly, the most care she'd shown me since we got there. "We did. We had some good tricks up our sleeve."

I thought maybe we might still have. "Fern, you don't need his money. You can make your own way. Just come with me." I tried one last stupid desperate time.

She shook her head. "I can't. We can't." It was over. The fact that I felt as much relief as I felt sadness really says something, I suppose.

I nodded, looking down at my lap. "Friends?" I asked.

"Always," she squeezed my hand.

I flew home to London the next day and onto Los Angeles a few days after that. I thought we'd left things in a good place. I thought we'd still talk. I thought maybe if I could maintain a friendship across those thousands of miles, maybe she might come back to me. I thought if I had even just a little bit of her heart, I could win her back. Of course now we all know how foolish I was. She was never mine. She was someone else's.

Madelyn, my sweet beautiful, Madelyn. You make me feel so loved and valued and important and all I can say is thank you. Thank you for being so good to me. So loving and so genuine. I don't know that I've always deserved your love and kindness, but selfishly, I take it. And for all the times I've made you feel anything less than the queen you are, I'm so deeply sorry. I love you.

~~~~~

FINALLY! 🙄 Lol. Regular Friday updates should be back on track 👍🏻

Thanks for your patience and for reading and voting and commenting and yeah 💖