I glanced down at my phone to check the numbers in my notes on my phone before looking back up and confirming that I was here, this was the house, and this was the party. I tried to look as cool and confident as I know the boys wanted me to feel, but as I was walking up the stone walkway and into the house of Harry Styles, I had never felt more out of place. I could hear deafeningly loud music from behind the door, and decided they wouldn't hear me if I knocked, so I went in.
The instant smell of booze hit me like a truck while I walked in and slid through some people - some drunk, some dancing, some laughing - and attempted to take refuge in the kitchen, where two kegs and a cooler were sitting. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of my phone screen, seeing my blown-out straight brown hair and my face, which probably had too much makeup on.
Per the boys request, I was wearing a dress they bought me. It was a tight red dress that had cut outs in the back and only reached inches below my underwear, but the boys went on and on about girls at parties in red dresses and I knew I would be forced into wearing it. I reached for a red solo cup, but as I did, a different hand shot out and took it from me. I looked up and saw an attractive brown haired green eyed guy with a muscular build and a better-than-Zac-Efron face (which doesn't happen often) and he flashed me a white smile.
"You want a beer?" He asked loudly, trying to be heard over the music.
I nodded and smiled back at him, too aware that my smile didn't come close to being as brilliant as his. When he handed it to me, I said, "Thanks," in lack of not knowing what else to say.
He filled up his own cup and leaned against the counter next to me. "No problem. I'm Mac."
I took a sip. "I'm Ariana. Are you a friend of Harry's?"
"A friend of Josh's, actually," He said, and noticed my look of confusion and elaborated. "He's the drummer for their band. What about you?"
"I'm a friend of the boys,"
"Figures."
My brow furrowed. "What?"
He smirked, and gave me a once over. "You're gorgeous. They keep the most good looking company... clearly you're no exception."
I blushed and took a sip of my drink, thinking of how I'm here to seduce Niall and here this other guy is who I actually could like, being nice to me and getting me drinks and calling me beautiful...
"So, Andrea, do you want to get out of here? I have a really nice condo down the street where we could, you know, be alone..."
And that was the end of that.
I smiled, said goodbye, and walked away. Andrea? Really? I walked around for a few minutes, mostly looking for the other boys to keep me company, but a big part of me wanted to go someplace quiet and sit for a little. I was never a big party goer, and this was definitely a big party. I squeezed my way up the stairs of the oversized apartment and knocked on the doors until I heard silence as a response.
I opened up the door slowly, and looked inside. Empty. With a sigh of relief, I drank the rest of my drink and set it down on the night stand, looking around the room. At first, I thought it was a guest bedroom, but the more I looked around, the more I realized it was Harry's. Plain walls except for a few hanging posters, the world's biggest closet for hats, and a picture of Harry and his mom on his night stand.
I smiled at the photo, and went to pick it up before I heard a door close behind me. I jumped, and turned around, fumbling to put the photo back when I looked up and saw Niall. He looked at me peculiarly and took a few steps inside the room, brow raised and eyes locked on the photo I was holding in my hands.
"If you're here to steal anything, then you should just leave," He said bluntly.
I raised my eyebrows. "Steal?" Then, glancing at the picture frame in my hands, I held it up to hand to him. "I was just looking. I wasn't going to take anything."
"Why are you up here?" He questioned sharply, as if I was supposed to be nowhere near him or his friends' things.
"It was kind of overwhelming downstairs."
"Why didn't you leav-"
"Is this twenty questions or something?" I asked sarcastically, and then noticed he didn't take it as a joke, which I had hoped for. "Anyway, what are you doing up here? Aren't you supposed to love partying?"
Niall nodded to the bed, and I followed the nod to see a bag indeed sitting on the bed, which I presumed was his. I turned back around to meet his gaze, and felt his bright blue gaze piercing through me, like he knew all my secrets. I hated that feeling. I quickly looked away, down to the ground, and began to look at my nude wedges, as if I wanted to examine them.
I heard Niall begin to move around towards the bed, where I found myself sitting, and he finally remarked, "You don't know me, then."
"I never said I did," I snapped back.
"Who invited you?" He asked suddenly, and before I could even worry about answering it, he continued, "Why have I never seen you before, but now suddenly you're everywhere I turn?"
I felt a sense of panic kick in when he asked me that, and I didn't even know how to answer. I certainly couldn't tell him the truth, that's for sure, because if I ruined the plan then I ruined everything for me and Annabelle. He sighed, displeased at how I didn't have a response, and kept going.
"If you're a fan or something, I get it, but can you fuck off?"
That made me mad. Before I realized what I was doing, I was standing up, red in the face, ready to scream. "Can you just quit it with the bad attitude all the time? It's not my fault we've been running into each other a ton lately! It's just how the world works! Get over yourself, would you? And I can only pray to God that you have never said those words to a fan, because they have given you everything, and all you've done is be an asshole in return."
Niall looked up at me with his puzzling gaze that I will never be able to read and the corner of his lips turned upward into a smirk. I wanted to punch him straight in the nose, then, but barely stopped myself from doing so. Instead, I just turned around and walked straight out of the room, taking my chances with the stupid drunkards that were trying to grab me and hold me to talk or flirt with me along the way.
I was downstairs drinking my third beer when I finally saw a recognizable face. It was Louis and Zayn, both clearly plastered, holding drinks in their hands and over-enthusiastically greeting me with hugs and kisses on the cheek. I told them about my encounter with Niall - or at least tried to, when they weren't interrupting me - and quickly realized that they weren't listening. They were too drunk.
"Pretty girl, don't be upset," Louis slurred, and took a large swig of whatever was in his cup. "Here, d'you want some?"
I glanced in the cup to see clear liquid, and took as big a swig as he had before, letting the contents trickle down my newly burning throat before feeling more light headed than I had before. It went like that for a few more minutes - me drinking Louis' drink, and then my own, until I couldn't walk in a straight line if you paid me to.
A song came on that I had never heard before, and instantly I let out a shriek and yelled, "This is my jam!"
Embarrassingly enough, the boys let me dance through the crowds of people, around those who were making out or grinding or whatever, and all around the kitchen. I danced until my feet hurt, and then I danced some more, letting whoever dance with me as long as they could keep up. Sometime after the song changed a few more times, I stumbled outside, onto the back porch.
It was empty other than a few smokers on the other side, and I walked to the unoccupied side and looked up at the sky. It was a gorgeous dark navy color that, if you gazed at too long, turned into a perpetual slab of black with yellow stars glowing in the background. It was beautiful. I just stood there like that, for I don't know how long, until I fell asleep just sitting next to the fence, staring at the stars.
I woke up with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and a pounding headache. I was leaning against the fence on the porch outside, the California sun beaming right on my face. I rubbed my eyes until they adjusted to the light, and glanced around to see my surroundings out on Harry's porch. I saw a body slumped on the other side of the porch and pulled myself up to see who it was.
When I stood up, I stumbled, but caught my balance after a few more steps. Walking over, I took small shuffles that made my arrival time three minutes later than it could've been if I had just walked over like a normal, not hungover person, but when I finally got over to the body, his head was covered in a blanket.
I thought about forgetting about it and going inside, but something inside just made me need to know who it was. I slowly pulled the blanket off their head and saw a mop of blonde hair, messy and sticking up, and realized it was none other than Niall Horan. His usually cold blue eyes were closed, revealing his thick, long eye lashes, and sweet looking face. I almost couldn't believe he could look this nice and innocent while he was sleeping and wasn't staring daggers at my face, so I took the opportunity to stare for a second more.
Finally, I shuffled to the doors and stepped inside, only to realize there were only a few more people passed out in the other rooms. When I made it to the kitchen, I saw Harry sitting and eating a bowl of cereal, as if he was as giddy at eight in the morning as he was at two in the afternoon. He smiled when he saw me, and patted the seat next to him for me to sit down.
I took the seat and sat next to him, slumping my body and sprawling out on the kitchen island with a resounding sigh. "How'd you sleep?"
I glanced up at him and gave him a sarcastic smile. "Like a baby."
He clucked. "I didn't even see you last night until you were passed out on the deck," Harry told me, and took another bite of his cereal. "Neigh cas ow hair, too."
"Don't talk with your mouth full and expect me to understand," I muttered.
Harry Styles finished chewing before repeating himself. "Niall was out there, too. He told me he was going home, like, around ten. I saw him go upstairs to get his stuff."
He went to get his stuff when I was up there. I hadn't seen him the rest of the night - or at least, I didn't think I had - and was instantly confused. Why did he stay? And, more importantly, why did he sleep out there, too? Was he the one that gave me a blanket while I was sleeping so I didn't get cold? I almost scoffed at the idea. Niall was a selfish, arrogant asshole.... But I still had to pretend to like him.
I had nothing else to say other than, "Weird."
Harry nodded, and kept eating his cereal. We were enveloped in a comfortable silence then, and I spent a few minutes trying to work out the details of last night in my head. Did I see him come outside, and was I just too drunk to remember?
Just then, I heard a groan come from outside, and instantly shot my head towards the doors. Through the glass, I could see Niall waking up, and stood up from the seat. I don't know why, but I decided not to be there right then, and said a hurried goodbye to Harry before booking it out of there.
On Monday, I was shuffling around the coffee shop, bringing people's drinks to their tables and cleaning up the other empty ones. It was particularly slow on this Monday morning, so I took the opportunity to sit down at a table beside the barista counter and opened my book, On the Road. I read and especially attempted to keep my mind strictly on the book, and not look up every minute to make sure nobody had walked in.
Eventually, I lost myself in my book, only getting up few times for the customers coming in for a coffee, most of them leaving short after. I was at the best part in the book - this is one I've reread quite a few times - where the main character decides instead of living in solitude, he felt alone, and needed company. As I read the words he had encrypted in a notebook, the door opened again, the bell dinging in the front of the coffee shop.
I hesitated before getting up, quickly reading the notebook passage before looking up to greet the new customer. I glanced up while getting behind the counter to meet none other than Niall's icy blue gaze that somehow didn't seem that icy today. I straightened up a bit, but not before raising my eyebrows, wondering what he was doing.
"Here to yell at me for something?" I managed to ask, and his lips turned upward into a smirk that I couldn't tell if I loved or hated.
"No," He said, and for the first time, he looked a bit sheepish. "The opposite, actually."
I smiled, intrigued with what he had to say. "Go on."
His hand found its way to the back of his neck, rubbing it as he continued. "I want to apologize, especially for what I said before. You were, uh, right about the thing you said about the fans. If you were a fan..."
Niall trailed off, and for the first time, I felt an ounce of respect for him when he said that. I smiled and turned around and began to make two iced coffees, completely ignoring his existence or questions as to what I was doing until I was done. Turning around, I smiled at him and handed him an iced coffee, taking mine to the table I had just been sitting at, and sat down again.
He did the same after a moment of hesitation, and sat down across from me. Nialls' hand hovered over the book I had been reading before he picked it up and smiled up at me, holding it in his hands.
"So, you like boring books?" He questioned.
I scoffed. "This book isn't boring."
Niall rolled his eyes, still mysteriously unreadable, and mirrored my scoff. "I believe I once heard it was a book of a man without money or proper transportation living in the woods of Alaska. That sounds quite boring, actually. Worse than I originally thought."
I sipped my iced coffee and shook my head. "Read it."
It was him that raised his brow then, looking at me in dismay. "And why would I read a terribly boring book rather than spending my time doing something, I don't know, exciting?"
Niall set the book down in front of me, and I pushed it back over to him, letting all thoughts of trying to please him and make him like me and abandoning my personality to turn him into something he isn't fade away. As Harry had told me before: I need to be myself.
"Read it," I took his hand and put the book in it. "I'm serious."
He looked at me for a moment, before standing up with the book in one hand, iced coffee in the other. "What's your name?"
It hadn't occurred to me until right now that he didn't know my name. I thought back to the bar, sure I had told him my name then, but all I remembered was me saying a resounding "Hi, boys. What can I get for you?" And then I thought of the time we ran from his fans, and knew I hadn't told him then, either.
I stood up as well, seeing as he took my only reading material, and stepped behind the counter. "Ariana. It's nice to meet you."
He rolled his eyes and said sarcastically, "Because we haven't met before."
When he turned around, I actually laughed to myself, half at the ridiculousness of the fact we just had a sane conversation, and half at myself for fleetingly thinking I could actually be the reason or the change.