He decided to end it 2 weeks ago, did it over the phone

Aug 5, 2015 09:55 GMT  ·  By

Zayn Malik left One Direction in March this year, and last week announced he’d signed a solo deal with RCA, promising he’d be releasing “real music” under it. Before that, he made another major change in his life, calling up fiancée Perrie Edwards of Little Mix to let her know the engagement was off.

This happened about a couple of weeks ago, People Magazine reports, citing sources close to the former couple. Edwards has been keeping her chin up and even saying she was “fine” (video below), but she’s “devastated.”

Zayn dumped Perrie

Zayn and Perrie met in 2011 and became good friends, but would only start dating towards the end of the year. They went public with their romance in May 2012, breaking the hearts of millions of One Direction fans in the process: apparently, few could stand the idea of Zayn being “taken.”

Things got even worse for these fans in August 2013, when the two lovebirds confirmed their engagement. They never announced a wedding date, saying they would keep these details private.

When Zayn left the band in March to lead a “normal” life out of the spotlight and spend more time with his family and fiancée, Perrie became the Yoko Ono of One Directioners, who blamed her for his decision to leave.

That was probably not the case since she got dumped rather quickly after the fact. People says that Zayn might have even broken up with her over the phone.

“She's been putting on a brave face, as Little Mix have had promotion to do, but she's obviously devastated,” a source says. “Perrie's being supported by her bandmates, but she's really in pieces about this.”

So her saying on E! News that she was “fine” was just her polite way of saying she didn’t want to have to answer that question.

Zayn is single, the Internet rejoices

The Internet can be a very mean place, so the second word got out that Zayn dumped Perrie and she confirmed they were over on E!, social media was flooded with comments about how he was getting rid of all the “dead weight” he’d been carrying around, so he could start afresh.

One Directioners in particular were thrilled that he had broken up with her, saying she was probably responsible for everything that hadn’t worked out for him in the past few years.

Obviously, that’s an exaggeration. Zayn and Perrie were plagued by scandal and rumors since their first months of romance; for many, a split was a long time coming.