× Mercury
Three hours I had to ride in that bus. Three hours of obnoxious boys. Three hours of having to deal with my butt falling asleep. Three hours of holding in my pee because there was no way in hell I was going to use the bathrooms in the back.
It was almost ten in the evening when I saw the sign that said that there was only thirty miles left before we reached Doncaster. My butt and my bladder were thankful for that.
I looked across the bus and saw Niall multiple seats in front of me, leaning over to talk to William.
Niall had officially moved out of his dorm and to a new one in a completely new Hall. At least that's what Jace told me, because of course Niall wasn't speaking to me. And I was okay with that. I didn't know which House he was staying at; I just knew it wasn't the Aspen House.
He just felt like a whole other planet away, which was probably for the best. I would rather he feel alien to me than familiar.
Right then, Niall looked over at me and our eyes locked. I counted four solid beats before he looked away and engrossed himself into William's story once again. That was the longest contact we had in a week.
My mind was as jumbled up as the seats we were all sitting on. The multicolored chairs with blues, yellows, and reds looked like they belonged in the 80s and they were giving me a headache.
"So how's Jamie?" Jace asked from the seat across from me.
I blinked slowly and looked over at him. I was leaning up against the wall of the bus with my legs over the unoccupied seat beside me. I smiled when I registered what he had said. "Like you don't know. It's not like you don't text her every other day."
"I don't," Jace told me as he sat up in his seat with a smug smirk. "It's more like every day."
"Your phone bill must be massive to text internationally like that," I said.
Jace laughed. "I'm sure it would be. Jamie and I use an app that's free to text globally. We're college students; we have other things to use our money on."
"So have you asked her out yet?"
Jace looked at me, sadness in his eyes. "That's a little hard to do since she's kind of on the other side of the world."
Suddenly I felt stupid. Sometimes I forgot that my friends weren't with me, like I could walk over to UCLA and knock on Jamie's door, or Emily's. Like I could go to Macey for clothing advice and have her shake her head at my closet and just give me one of her dresses to save the time.
But Jace was right. They were across the world.
"Didn't you have a date a few days ago?" Jace asked, like the thought had just come to him. "I thought I heard Dylan mention it. How did that go?"
"Shitty," I told him honestly. The taste in my mouth suddenly went sour with the thought of Eli playing me the way he did at Club 606. "Apparently he already has a girlfriend. Remind me to never trust guitarists with good hair and a forward personality."
Jace laughed but didn't ask me to elaborate, which I was thankful. I wasn't sure if I wanted to admit to kissing a stranger just to get back at Eli.
"I'll remember that for next time," Jace grinned.
I saw Matt get out of his seat from the front of the bus and walk back to us, rubbing his palm against the back of his neck nervously. I hadn't talked to Matt since I saw him in the kitchen making out with another dude, so I already had an idea what he was over here for.
"Uh, Lynn," he started, looking at Jace and I in turn. "Can I talk to you? Alone?"
Jace looked at me disputably, but didn't question it as he stood up and made his way to the front of the bus so we could be alone.
Matt took his seat and looked forward, avoiding my gaze.
"Thanks for not telling anyone," he finally said. "About what you saw..."
I removed my legs from the seat beside me and scooted over. "It's not my place to say anything," I explained.
"It's just..." Matt started but stopped, clearly looking for the right words to say. "It's not that I'm in the closet or anything, but I just feel like I have to be around our teammates."
I looked at him oddly. "I don't think you're giving them the benefit of the doubt," I said. "They are more understanding than you're giving them credit for."
Matt sighed and rubbed his fingers at his temples, a clear sign that he was getting a headache. "It's not that either," he explained. "I just think coming out to them that I'm gay would make it awkward, you know? I just think they'll treat me differently. We share the same locker room."
There were many differences between girls and boys. This was one of them. Boys get all weird when their friend comes out to them. They act different; probably scared they might make a move on them or something. Where girls don't really care... for the most part. I mean hell, we're not afraid to admit that we have lady crushes, so why would we be weird if a friend came out to us?
"It's up to you, but I think you're wrong about them," I said. "It might be weird at first, but I don't think you have anything to worry about."
Matt nodded and looked down at his hands longingly.
"And if they do have a problem with it, I'll kick their ass."
He laughed, his brown eyes twinkling. "I know you will."
I leaned forward on my elbows and looked at him with wide, curious eyes. "So what's his name?" I asked eagerly.
Matt rolled his eyes. "Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm going to gossip about lads with you." When I continued to stare at him, he sighed and slumped into the seat. "His name is Trevor. I've been seeing him for a few weeks now."
"Oh, so things are getting serious, huh?" I wiggled my brows at him.
He laughed again. "Hardly."
× × ×
It was eleven by the time we had arrived to our destination. I was currently standing in my hotel room combing through my wet, clean hair as I looked around the room through the full-length mirror on the wall.
I was staying in my own room for obvious reasons, so there was only one bed with a deep red duvet and white sheets that matched the pillows. The walls were a cream color and the floor was a light wood with a rug that coordinated with the comforter of the bed. A red leather chair was pushed up in the corner with a small desk. There was a TV that faced the single bed and a coffee pot sitting on the desk that I had turned on before my shower with numerous choices of powdered creamers.
Putting my comb down into my bag so I wouldn't leave it behind when we left tomorrow, I sat down on the bed with a fresh cup of coffee in my hands and frowned.
Being in a room with a single bed, I had to be placed on a completely different floor of the hotel from everyone else and I just felt... lonely. I should have just gone to sleep, rest up for the game tomorrow, but instead I picked up my phone and called Macey.
"Hello?" she answered.
"Hey! What's up?"
"Uh, I'm sorry, Lynn, but I can't talk now," she said quickly, like the sooner she gave me the bad news, the less painful it would be. "Mom's actually home and I'm spending the evening with her."
My heart sank. "Oh. It's okay. I'll talk to you another time."
I haven't talked to Macey in a while. The last I heard from her was a week ago. I knew seeing her mom won over talking to me since she's never home and always out showing her face to the public eye, but it still hurt.
Moving onto the next friend, I tried calling Emily only for it to go straight to voicemail. I didn't try Jamie because I knew she was going out to visit her grandma in San Diego and I didn't want to interrupt their family time.
With no other option, I finished my cup of coffee, grabbed the keycard to my room, and left to the elevator.
I remembered Coach assigning Jace to room 303 only because that was my dorm number, so as soon as I got to the third floor, I went straight there.
I could hear noise from the other side of the door so I knew they weren't sleeping, but I only remembered that Jace was sharing a room with Niall after I knocked on the door and quickly made the decision to turn around and run away so I didn't have to face him. But before I could even lift a foot, the door was opening and Jace was looking at me curiously.
"Lynn? What are you doing here?" Over his shoulder I could see Reece and William trying to figure out some kind of electronic by the TV.
"Uh," I said as I started to back away. "It's not important; I'm just going to leave."
Jace stepped out into the hallway. "You should stay. Some of the lads and I were going to play some FIFA. Join us."
I fidgeted with my fingers and thought for a moment. The moment he said FIFA I wanted to stay. Ever since coming to London I was deprived of that privilege just because I simply didn't bring my game along, and I was really started to miss kicking people's asses.
"Is Niall here?"
Jace shook his head. "No, he went down to the bar."
And that was all I needed to hear before I brushed past Jace and stepped into the room.
The four of us spent a good amount of time playing FIFA and I was having a great time. Granted, it would have been a lot better if it was with my girls back home in California, but owning the boys in a video game was a close second.
An hour into playing Niall had come back into the room, but he barely gave me the time of day as he grabbed his luggage and headed into the bathroom that was followed by the shower turning on. It would have been smart of me to leave before he came out, but when I tried, William scored on Jace, tying the game and there was no way I was going to walk out not knowing who was going to take the prize.
"-losing it in the back of my car," Reece was saying as I tuned back into his story.
I wasn't sure how it happened, but Reece had the need to share his story on how he lost his virginity. I didn't give two shits if it happened in the back of a car or in the woods in the middle of summer, I just simply didn't want to know. But he insisted. You would think I would get used to these kinds of conversations for spending so much time with them, but sometimes there was just too much information being passed around.
"How and where did you lose yours?" Reece asked from beside me on the bed.
We were leaning against the headboard of one of the beds watching the TV screen. Jace and William were sitting up and alert, controllers in their hands, on the other bed with tongues sticking out in concentration.
"Reece!" Jace scolded, barfly looking over at him with distaste on his face. "You can't just ask her that. Privacy, mate."
"No, it's okay," I assured Reece before he could say anything. "I was seventeen at the time. One of the girls on the soccer team was going on and on about how their virginity was sacred and how they were going to wait for the one. I mean, that's all fine and good for them, but I thought it was all bullshit for me. So I said fuck it, told my boyfriend that I was ready, and it all happened under the school bleachers."
"Classic," William mused with a satisfied laugh, not taking his eyes off the TV.
I remember that day perfectly, not because it was magical or life ruining; I remembered it because I felt relieved. Relieved that all the hype was over. It was just sex. I'm not even sure why people call it "losing your virginity". I didn't lose anything, nothing was taken from me. I gained a new experience, gained intimacy with a partner, and gained a wicked sense of pleasure.
It seems weird that a tiny piece of tissue can create this huge ordeal. Especially since we were the ones who gave it that power.
"I'm not even sure it actually counted as losing my virginity, though," I added, thinking back at that day under the bleachers.
"Why?" a new voice asked.
All four of us looked up and saw Niall standing in the small entryway of the hotel room, hair wet and a white towel around his waist. He was leaning against the wall and I wondered how long he'd been standing there. I felt my cheeks flush.
"Uh," I said, flustered.
I told myself that my inability to speak at the moment was because I was embarrassed from my story, but I knew damn well that it was because the towel around Niall hung rather low on his hips.
"Because it was so bad," I said, playing with the ring around my neck nervously. "I'm pretty sure it only lasted two minutes."
"Are you serious?" Reece laughed loudly, probably waking up the whole hotel. "It's a good thing you were there, then. That lad needed some major release."
There was an awkward silence that followed after my story and I just sat and looked down at the duvet, refusing to make eye contact with Niall. I could feel his eyes on me and it was making me feel rather restless. I wondered if the other boys could feel the uncomfortable thickness in the air that the two of us created.
I swung my legs off the bed. "I should get going. I'm starting to feel tired now," I said and added in a fake yawn just to be convincing.
"You can't leave yet!" William insisted. "Reece still needs a rematch against you. There's no way he's going to let you leave after kicking his arse so bad in the last game."
"I'm sure Niall wants to sleep," I told him.
"Nah," William answered for him, his brown eyes looking between the two of us but clearly missing the obvious tension. "He's a killer at this game; wins every time we play. You two should go against each other."
"Maybe another time," I told him and continued to the door.
I could feel Niall's eyes on me as I passed him. Just as I was about to close the door, he stopped it and I finally look up at him. His blue eyes were hooded and tired and his blonde hair looked almost brown from getting out of the shower.
"I told you so," he said with a crafty grin.
I furrowed my brows. "For what?"
"About Eli. Jace told me what happened."
Responding to him would only fuel his fire, so instead I just turned my back on him and started making my way back to my hotel room. Before I could get to the elevator, though, his voice rang out through the hallway one last time.
"Sleep tight, Princess."