Capture My Heart (BK3: Niall Horan)

-Ch 1: Old habits die hard, new ones crash indefinably.

Capture My Heart.

CHAPTER ONE- Old habits die hard, new ones crash indefinably.

The sweet and sticky smell of cleanings agents wafted around into every crack and crevice as I held my breath against it. I had watched the cleaner leave mere minutes ago, she had given me a strange look, then again it was probably deemed as weird to be here this early. But I had never exactly been one for late starts. Running my fingers through my hair I accumulated it into one piece smoothing my palms over it as I debated what to do. Plucking the brush from the ceramic surface of the sinks I pulled it through therefore terminating any knots or snags, not that there were a lot. But my hair got knotty within minutes of being left alone. Sighing at the fact that it wasn’t looking right today I brushed it from my face and tossed it into a rough ponytail. I pried two hair grips from my make-up bag and slid them into my bangs clipping them back in a small quiff.

Satisfied with my appearance for early morning I exhaled heavily before taking one final glance in the mirror and slinging my bag over my shoulder and heading out. The corridors were so familiar with their commodious and airy halls lined with art that nobody really understood, pictures of the long gone goers that everyone had forgotten, exam results that excelled, and newsletters that nobody read. It was nothing out of the ordinary for a place of education but all the same it was both comforting and unsettling to be back here. Even if for a short amount of time and reason. My trainers squeaked against the immaculate marble flooring not yet invaded by the muddy shoes of the football players and the people who walked through the park. I could smell the buttery aroma of biscuits flooding from the air vents and the thick smell of coffee floating in the air slipping in between the early fall breeze.

I was just turning the corner when I saw him. Nike Hi-tops, baggy jeans and a snapback hanging limp from his head. He was leant against the wall with one leg folded over the other reading a textbook labelled Mathematics Course 215. I knew from my academic ridden past that this was a just above average course, I’d never taken this one, the one above, but a few of my friends had and I remember them saying that it was harder than they made out. His hazel eyes were slowly scanning over the text as they sucked in every calculus, fraction, differential equation, geometry, syllable. I pitied him for a few seconds, I had always hated math. It was only as he looked up at me a smile soon spreading over his lips that I realised it was him. The smile gave me the sense of familiarity, the way he had dimples that were half showing and half not, only really visible if he grinned wildly. And the little twitch the corners of his mouth did when he did so. It was the same simper that he had popped me at the hospital all that time ago. But I still couldn’t place it. Nonetheless, I smiled back before continuing down the hallway slightly put off by how this was the third encounter of I had endured with him. I obviously knew him for somewhere, but where, I just couldn’t place.

The dawn breaking sun hurt my eyes at it sleeted through the clouds in blinding rays. It tumbled it’s lucent haze onto the fields making everything rise from it’s sleepy slumber welcoming the new autumn. For mid-September it was fairly warm and for the past week the weather had exposed it’s clement demeanour on London for once. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the sun, but I loved the fall. The oranges, reds and yellows merging into each other, the leaves scattering the pavements as they crunch underneath your feet leaving the trees bare to flaunt their wispy and abstract branches. And the cool breezes that aren’t freezing but are neither the heights of summer as they whip around you blowing leaves with them as they nip tight against your scarf. And the bonfires, I always loved them. Standing by the warmth of the ablaze branches as they crackle and spit before you into the foreboding night air.

All of this was soon to be happening as this month progressed. But now, the warm daze that was better suited to May was here, and I wasn’t going to waste it. Although the pattern was enduring in cold nights and warm days the scenery was nonetheless beautiful every day a perfect picture.