"I'm not defensive-" He started, but when he saw her grin at his reddening face and raised voice, he took a deep breath and tried again. "I'm not defensive."
She tilted her head and stared at him intently, as if studying him under a microscope. Niall knew that look. It was the one Luz wore when she was in deep thought. "Sorry, you just looked forlorn watching them dance. As a member of the family and the wedding party, I felt like it was my duty to ask."
"Forlorn? You don't hear that word very often."
"Maybe not, but you'll find it fits your disposition perfectly."
Niall scoffed, but he didn't disagree, nor did he bring up the fact that he too was a member of Luz and Harry's wedding party. Maybe he was a little...forlorn, but that didn't mean he wasn't happy for his friends. "They're my best friends, of course I'm happy for them. It's just-"
"Your friends, who you've gone through milestones with, are now going through a huge milestone of their own without you, and it's making you feel like you're being left behind and are now suddenly aware that you're not getting any younger and haven't found someone to spend the rest of your life or grow old with?"
"That...pretty much sums it up," Niall said, taking a lengthy sip of his drink.
Here was this girl, looking at her perfectly manicured hands like she hadn't just read everything he'd been feeling for the last hour on his face, all the while looking like a fairy out of some ancient myth in a pink dress with puffy sleeves that was covered in flowers and tiny, painted-on flowers that were meant to look like freckles dotting the bridge of her nose and cheeks. She took the title "flower woman" to an extreme for her cousin's wedding.
"Well," Liliana said, now playing with one of the embroidered flowers on her sleeve. "The way I see it, you can do two things. You can spend your life trying to find 'the one.'" She took a moment to shudder, like the idea repulsed her. "Or you can live life to the fullest by recognizing a person for their beauty, or intellect, or whatever drew you to them in the first place and have a fantastic night- or two nights if you really, really like them- then go your separate ways to find the next person that intrigues you."
Niall considered Liliana carefully- her warm brown skin, deeper and richer than Luz's, her hair that was tied into tight box braids and fell down her shoulders, the way her collarbones shimmered with some kind of glitter under the soft lighting of the tent they were in. She looked like a dream. "I have a feeling you have a preference," he told her.
"I've met very interesting people this way," was all she said in reply.
Niall didn't think there were two schools of thought when it came to this stuff, that it wasn't nearly as black and white as she was making it out to be, the fact that he was at the wedding of two people he knew loved each other with every fiber of their beings being a good indication of that. But maybe Liliana had a point. What had searching for relationships done for him in the past? What if he was destined to be single forever, and was that a bad thing? He didn't think he could immediately jump from one person to the next night after night, or even week after week, but perhaps he could start loosening up a little bit, enjoy life in a different way.
There was also a chance that the setting of a wedding and the fact that his two closest friends got married today was making him think like this and that he'd probably change his mind in a day or two, but he would see where Liliana's perspective would lead him for now.
"I'd like to think I'm an interesting person," he said.
Liliana hummed, having gone back to studying him again. Finally, she said, "You don't happen to have a gold tooth, do you?"
Niall Part 2
Start from the beginning
