Always & Forever (A Niall Horan Love Story)

7. Secrets

            “Nope. No one special.” Lizzy looked away and suddenly it dawned on me: she was lying.

            “Okay. So who is it?”

            Lizzy’s body went rigid. She kept her face hidden, a sudden stance of defiance coming over her. She was making things difficult. “Lizzy! Who is it? I deserve to know this!”

            “There’s no one. Yet,” she said mysteriously, turning to grin at me. Her blue eyes were shining with a light- one that told me all I needed to know.

            “You’re like, in love! Oh my gosh! Why am I just now finding out?”

            “You’re not finding out! There’s nothing going on.”

            “Yet.”

            “Yet,” she clarified. “Your mom’s here. I’ll see you tomorrow after your shift, girl.” Lizzy gave me a crushing hug and ushered me from the porch. My mom’s car was waiting. I just hoped I didn’t have to wait much longer to find out about Lizzy’s new love.

Niall-

            “Niall!” Louis’ course voice rang from in the computer room. “Come here, lad!” I rose from my lazy seat on the couch and trotted into the room. Harry, Louis, and Zayn were all sprawled out on the couch. There was an open bottle of wine on the coffee table, almost empty.

            “Who’s been drinking?”

            “Me.” Louis grinned, tipping his imaginary hat to me. I grinned back, rather annoyed that the three of them had left me in there on the couch to nap. I raised an eyebrow and Louis’ smile grew. “You know I can’t get learned if I don’t drink a little somethin’ first,” he explained.

                    It was already Thursday afternoon, and the five of us were supposed to do our summer-schooling. Liam and I, the nerds of the band, had gotten up early this morning to finish, just so we could spend the rest of the afternoon doing rehearsal then chilling out. Little had I known that after rehearsal Liam would take off again to see his new girlfriend at the hospital. Despite that irritation at being left alone, I was pleased to know how much Liam fancied his new girl.

            Harry, Zayn, and Louis had of course slept as late as possible; the three of them were clearly the scholarly type (sarcastically speaking). They were only about half-way through their video for today; the notebooks and papers with doodles on them told me how much they’d actually been listening. I did my signature eye-roll and crossed my arms. “What did you need?”

            “Ah, yes, love,” Harry said, waving an arm theatrically. He’d been drinking, too, then. Zayn seemed to be sober, thank goodness. He shot me a sympathetic glance and mouthed ‘good luck’. Harry continued, his eyes trailing around the room instead of looking at me. “Explain this to us, would you?”

            I crossed the room and snatched Louis’ notebook from the table. The drawings on the paper overlapped each other. After examining it for a moment, I looked up. “Well, it looks like someone really loves chocolate pie,” I said. “I’m guessing that’s Louis?”

            Zayn laughed. Harry and Louis growled almost simultaneously. “Not that, lad! The video, the video!” Louis shouted.

            “It’s not like you’re going to remember it in a few hours anyway.”

            “We might! There’s this thing… called brain power. Mine’s really strong, Niall. You’re forgetting.” Louis’ words were slurred; how he could be drunk at this hour, I would never figure out. But, like he’d said, he just had to drink in order to ‘get learned’. Oh, the irony of that statement.