The One You Call | horan au

thirteen

flashbacks will be italicized from now on :)

-

Niall's P.O.V.

-

"Why do you look so glum?" Liam asks me.

The four of us are hanging out at Zayn's place and having a few drinks. Their girlfriends are having some frilly girls' night out and I guess the only way to compensate for the loss of their ladies was to have a guys' night in.

"Phoebe's got herself a new boyfriend and Niall's super pissed about it," Louis cuts in before I'm able to give Liam a proper answer.

"Oh wow," Zayn says. "Good for her."

I nod.

"But I take it that this is tearing you up inside," Zayn continues.

"Nope," I say, ignoring Louis's sly grin. "I'm fine."

"I didn't know you and Phoebe broke up?" Liam says.

"It happened a while ago, apparently," Zayn says. "It's been a while since we've seen her around, yeah?"

"I thought maybe she was just busy," Liam shrugged. "With her being in marketing and all."

"Nope," Louis says. "Dunzo."

While Liam complains about being the last to know everything, I find myself reminiscing about a time where I used to bring Phoebe around. I was reluctant at first because I couldn't bring up her name without Louis volunteering to plan our wedding. It didn't help that he had been booking a ton of wedding reception gigs.

"So when are we going to meet this girl that you've been seeing?" Zayn asked me over the phone one evening after he'd finished telling me about his current set list.

"I didn't know you guys wanted to."

"Why wouldn't we? You've met our girlfriends."

I never asked to meet their girlfriends.

"Yeah but that's the thing," I tell him. "She's not really my girlfriend."

We'd hung out, and f.ucked, and went out for pancakes a couple of times. She'd spend a few nights at my place and other nights I'd pack a few things and stay at hers. But I wasn't sure if that was commendable for a label. We'd only known each other for about a month but it was longer than anything I'd had with any other girl.

"Well she's the closest thing I've seen you come to having one," Zayn said.

I hummed in agreement.

It was all very new to me. But just as Zayn would tell me in the future, Phoebe was different.

"Why don't you bring her out to my gig this weekend?" he said. "Liam and Louis's girlfriends will be there, my girlfriend will be there. We'll make her feel comfortable."

"I don't know," I said. I didn't see how throwing the word 'girlfriend' around could possibly make her comfortable.

"Come on," he pleaded. "We're all dying to meet the girl that's making our Nialler so happy."

"I seem happier to you?"

"Are you kidding? You're like a totally different person."

"Um." I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by that. "I'll ask her. I'll let you know what she says."

"Make it happen, Ni."

That same night after hanging up with Zayn, I called Phoebe to see how she felt about meeting my friends.