Adore

Chapter 4

"Audrey, look at this," Mary held her phone up to me, showing me a picture of Niall and I sitting on the beach watching the sunset. I had his jacket on in the picture because I was getting cold.

I rolled my eyes at Mary for taking it. To be honest though, I did think it was rather cute. It looked like one of those sappy, cute couple, lovey dovey pictures that you see everywhere. "Could you send it to me?" I ask her.

She gave me this weird looking smile as her fingers danced on her screen. "Did you have fun yesterday?"

"Yeah, I did actually," I pick up my phone and save the picture to my phone.

"With Niall?" She almost looks evil.

"I mean, I guess," I say, a little freaked out by the expression on her face. "He was kind of mad at me though."

"He was?" Her voice sounded surprised.

I nodded slowly. "Yeah, I uh.." I begin to stumble over my words. I was debating whether or not I should tell her that we hung out at the park way early this morning. "I kind of told him dating isn't my scene and he freaked out a bit."

"Why would he...?" She seemed confused.

"I kissed him at my party. Remember, he was boy of the night."

Mary shook her head. "You really need to stop with the whole "boy of the night" thing. It's not good." Her tone came off annoyed.

"You think I don't know that?" I snap back at her.

"Some people are really starting to like you, Audrey. You need to stop leading them on. Brett was talking to me about yesterday, how he may like you."

"You're being ridiculous. There's no way Brett likes me," I scoff.

"It's not ridiculous! It's normal! It's a completely normal thing to have strong emotions towards someone, how do you not see that?" Her voice was beginning to raise.

"It's not that normal for me, Mary! I don't even know where I'd start a relationship and with who," we were clearly yelling at each other by now.

"Niall, Brett, Tyler, George," she begins to make a list.

"They don't like me!"

"Yes, they do, Audrey. Open up your heart a bit, woman!"

I stand there in my room. Neither of us are saying anything as we keep a straight stare at each other. "I think you should leave," I tell her calmly.

"You still going tonight?" She says before leaving and I return her a nod.

The door closes and throw myself on my bed. There's no way those people actually like me, right? We're just friends. The only one who I really hang around with is Niall but that's because he's in one of my classes. The other ones I only ever text and hang out with them in our group. Mary went and got my mind going again. I don't like hurting people and I don't like them being mad at me. All of those boys surely mustn't be happy with me. Maybe I should really consider settling. Maybe I'll stop hurting people. I just thought they all understood me when I said I don't date but somehow they all fell for me. No one falls for me though, ever. I'm just the one they call a whore, jokingly of course. Right?

I need to shake these thoughts. I have a game to coach and need to get ready for that. I slide the coach polo over my head and put on some shorts. I don't bother with grabbing my cleats today and stick to some running shoes. I look at the clock and notice I have 30 minutes until I have to be at the field. I grab my penny board and begin to skate down there. It was somewhat nice out and I knew this would kill some time, so why not?