Alexia POV
I wake up to hushed whispers. At first I am unable to understand what they are saying because my head is spinning, but as I focus in the words become clearer.
"Can't we wait one more day, what could it hurt? Maybe she'll remember it all any way"A female voice says in a hushed tone.
I grimace, trying to get the pounding headache to go away before I open my eyes. The voices weren't helping, echoing through my head like waves pounding my insides over and over again.
"We have to tell her, you can't keep something like this from her it's not fair" A male voice now with a heavy accent. Was I dreaming this up now? Only one way to find out.
"Tell me what" I say loudly. The voices stop, I hear the male one curse under his breath.
There is only silence.
"Tell me what?" I groan, head pulsing. I sit up in my bed and open my eyes, clutching my head. Louis and Marie stand by the door, staring at me as if they'd just seen a ghost. Maybe they had the way I felt at the present moment.
"Um you want a glass of water first?" Marie says awkwardly. What on Earth was going on? Louis Tomlinson is in my apartment early in the morning, Marie is talking to him like they are old friends and I can't seem to remember how I ended up back in bed in the first place.
I give Marie a nod and she goes to the sink and fills me a cup. I take a sip and look at her expectantly.
She gives Louis a nervous look, but he nods at her. She takes a breath so deep I can hear the inhale.
"Last night at the party, I saw something." She pauses for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. Marie was never good under pressure and although I'm not sure where this is going I can tell by the look on her face that this is a situation she doesn't want to be in.
"You were pretty out of it. I don't know if you remember or not but Zayn and I decided you better leave early."
I think back trying to remember, I remember dancing but after that everything was fuzzy. I vaguely remember seeing Louis but only from a distance. Did he and Marie have some kind of blooming friendship in the midst of my drunk escapade?
"Not really" I say, slightly ashamed in my behavior. I watch a sigh of relief wash over Marie's face, but then Louis gives her a disapproving look which tells me that something else was going on.
"Alexia, when I went to tell Niall we were taking you home....." She inhales sharply. "I saw him with another girl"
My skin turns cold, and suddenly I can't feel the hangover. "What do you mean with another girl?" I say. My mind denying the first thought that it had come to. Marie had to be mistaken, Niall had lots of friends, lots of friends that were girls. I start talking again before she can even answer. "Niall has lots of friends ya know, like that girl! That girl that was at the soccer game...and"
"Alexia!" Marie says, stopping my train of thought as she places a warm hand on my shoulder. "Alexia, it wasn't just some friendly chat. Niall was cheating on you."
I feel my heart begin to pick up its pace. Its okay, its okay. I repeat the two words over and over in my head as if this will somehow keep me calm. As if I tell myself that I'm okay that I won't feel the heartbreak beginning to creep through my veins. The bitter taste of betrayal in my mouth. The thoughts of the few hours I remember of last night playing over and over in my head.
Its only when I hear Louis begin to speak that I remember that Marie and I aren't alone in this room.
"Alexia, I'm..." his voice begins to stammer but I blurt out before he can finish.
"No." I shout, my voice sharp and angry. "No you don't get to do this Louis. You don't get to tell me 'I told you so'. You don't get to lecture me about making this mistake. Why are you even here? To watch my misery? To laugh at the fact that I didn't heed your warnings and got burned? Why are you here?" I feel my blood boiling now, my sadness and ache transforming into anger. How dare he come here in this vulnerable moment. How dare he even think that he could be the person to comfort me in this moment.
"Alexia...I'm the one who asked him to stay..he's just trying to help"
I feel even more betrayal now. Marie of all people should know that Louis was not someone I wanted to spend time with. Especially now.
"Get out." I say without a hint of hesitance. Louis looks at me for a moment, confused I see him look at Marie with question.
"You heard me. Get out Louis. You have no right to be here" I am once again surprised by the strength and bitterness in my voice.
"You didn't deserve that Alexia. I'm so sorry he did that to you" Louis looks at me with those deep blue eyes of his. For a second I see the sincerity, for a second I feel that he is truly there not to rub his warnings in my face, and for a second I want to take back what I just said.
But then that second passes and the anger and agony returns. Louis turns to walk towards the door. Slowly at first, as if he is waiting for me to suddenly rescind my words. I don't and the door closes.
I feel the heat rise to my eyes, and I know the tears are coming. The strength that I just had vanishing. "You shouldn't have done that Alexia. He wasn't trying to hurt you" Marie lectures. But as she turns to face me and sees my face now flooding with tears, the harshness in her voice softens.
"Come here" she says, bringing me into a hug as I sobbed into her shoulder. I'm not sure how long we stay there, and I'm not sure how I managed to sob for so long. As the tears finally begin to dry up and my chest begins to stop heaving, I look to my friend.
"He was right." The words sting in my mouth as they come out, softly. But I know they are true.
"He was right and I didn't listen. I didn't even see the signs." There had been so many times when Niall's flaws had been standing straight before me. But I refused to heed the warnings, to even listen to the explanation that Louis was giving me. Simply because it was coming from Louis. If someone else had told me the same things would have been in the mess that I was in right now, crying, hungover and the most confused I had ever felt in my life. I think that's what hurt the most. Not the fact that Niall had betrayed me, not the fact that I had made the wrong choice, but the fact that as much as I had failed to admit, as much as I had chose to believe that it was all a lie. That Louis had been right, Niall is exactly who Louis said he was.
"Why was he here?" I say to Marie quietly. I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.
"Are you going to go all crazy psycho on me like you did Louis?" She says hesitantly, obviously taken aback by the side of me she had never witnessed before. I shake my head at her.
"Of course not Marie" She nods and clears her throat.
"You were bad, Alexia. You were really bad. And Louis, he was there. He saw how bad you were and got you a glass of water because Zayn and I had no idea what we should be doing" Marie's face shows her reliving the moment, and I can tell that I put her in a bad position.
"And then we were going to leave but Louis offered to help get you home, I think he saw us struggling and felt like he should help us out. I was shocked, because you know you always describe him as this awful, arrogant human being."
I look down at the bedspread below me, rubbing the material between my fingers. I didn't dare look up at Marie, feeling the shame of my actions and my evaluation of Louis' character.
"But I didn't know what else to do, Alexia. And I know you didn't want anything to do with him, but we needed help and he offered and...I didn't mean to make you upset"
I place my hand over Marie's to calm her down. "I'm not mad at you" I say.
She looks at me face full of concern. I've never seen her quite like this, full of worry and lacking an ounce of confidence. Is this what I had done to my friend?
"I get it, I put you in a bad position. You were just trying to take care of me. So, thank you." She nods and I see the relief wipe across her face.
"But why was he here this morning?" I add. Feeling as if Marie had not really gotten to the reason I was asking in the first place. She sighs.
"He brought you home, and you had been getting sick, and I didn't know what to do. You practically passed out and I was worried about your safety. So I asked him to stay. He didn't want to. You should know that the thing he was most worried about was upsetting you."
My mind flashes back to earlier this morning. The hurt that had raced across Louis's eyes after I told him to get out. Its almost as if he knew that would be my reaction. Had I turned into that much of a monster that this was my reaction? And if I had, why would Louis even help me in the first place, knowing he would get no sense of gratitude?
"I was a bit of a bitch to him wasn't I?" I say, instantly regretting the words that had come out of my mouth earlier. "But you have to understand, Marie, something about him just makes me so mad, and the fact that he had given me all those warnings. He told me so many times to be careful with Niall and I had just ignored them and took them as his way of making sure I wasn't happy, of getting under my skin and making me second guess my choices.... To be wrong, that was humiliating." My voice cracks, and I know the tears may be returning.
Marie doesn't say anything for a moment and then just reaches around me to give me a hug. "We all make mistakes Alexia. Louis will forgive you, he'll understand. You don't have to do it today, or tomorrow, or even this week. But when you get through processing all this and are ready to apologize for your actions, he'll understand. I think he's not quite the person we thought him to be."
Marie's words echo through my head, Louis's face comes to my mind. The crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, the way his words came out smooth as butter with that thick accent of his, the way his mouth curled into a smirk when he teased me. Had a been making a mistake this entire time? All the signs had been clearly in front of me and I had chosen to ignore them. Louis had shown me who he really was, but I couldn't seem to get passed the star soccer player in front of me. And I think that's what hurt the most, not the fact that Niall had betrayed me, not the fact that I had made the wrong choice, not even the fact that I had ignored every single thing that Louis had ever told me about Niall. It was the fact that I had someone standing right in front of me, but I couldn't see passed the outer layer enough to realize that there was something more. There was something great. And I had lost it.
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Yay! Finally had a chance to update, college always has to throw everything at me right away. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and the fact that maybe Alexia is actually starting to notice Louis.
As always, I appreciate all the votes, reads and comments that you guys give Chemistry!
Side note: I'm absolutely obsessed with Niall's song Flicker. Anyone else getting all the feels?